Tilly Ann.
I took a long look at myself after Mama left.
My dress was ripped at the shoulder. My drawers were a damp puddle on the floor near the mop bucket. My hair was coming undone, and my entire body was throbbing, humming with the memory of Chase Dubois's fingers.
I was a scandal waiting to happen.
There was no time to think, only to move. I snatched the ruined drawers from the floor, balled them up in my fist, and dove behind a tall stack of dusty grain sacks in the corner—just as the door began to swing open.
Mama must have circled back.
I held my breath. My heart hammered against my ribs so loud I was sure it would give me away.
Then I heard it. The quiet squeak of wheels on wood—wrong, all wrong, wheels didn't belong here, we had no invalids in the palace, no one in need of a chair—and then he rolled into view.
Chase. Stupid annoying handsome Chase.
But not the Chase who'd just had me pinned against this same door.
This Chase was wrong.
All the predatory grace was gone.
He sat in a wheelchair, his lean form looking suddenly fragile—though I knew, I knew he could stand.
I'd felt him pressed against me moments ago, all that strength, those thighs bracketing mine, the hard evidence of his want pressed into my stomach.
But clearly not for long. Clearly not without cost. The chair must have been waiting just outside the window. He'd climbed out straight into it.
He was back to playing the gentleman that Mama could trust their daughters with. If only they knew what happened behind closeted storerooms and doll houses.
I watched him blatantly.
The charming, disarming smile was gone, replaced by an emptiness.
The piercing eyes were now sharp, guarded, and cold.
He looked emptied out. Exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical exertion.
I should have felt vindicated. The great Chase Dubois, reduced to this. Instead, my stomach turned over for reasons I refused to name.
He rolled a few feet into the storeroom, his eyes scanning—and stopping directly on my hiding spot.
"You can come out," he said quietly. His voice was different too. Deeper. Rougher. Like the words cost him something. "I know you're there. You smell like..." He paused, something flickering across that empty face. "Like arousal and fury. An interesting combination."
I stayed frozen.
"I also saw you dive behind the sacks," he added flatly.
Right. Of course. Why the fuck am I hiding from him when I could be killing him!
I shoved myself out from behind the grain sacks—sacks he had made me hide behind like a common criminal—and went for him.
"You!" I hissed, keeping my voice low but trembling with fury. "Look at me!" I spread my arms to display the disaster he'd made of me. "Why did you jump out the window without putting me to rights? Look at me!"
His eyes flicked over my disarray—the torn dress, the wild hair, the no-doubt flushed and furious face. There was no warmth in his gaze. No amusement either. Just that terrible emptiness, and beneath it, something that might have been exhaustion.
"It was the quickest exit," he said. "After what I suspect was a welcome and successful debauchery."
"Quickest for who? And you did not debauch me!" I took a step forward, my bare legs chilling on the cold stone. "You left me here to be caught looking like—" I searched for words, my breath coming too fast. "—like a ruined tavern wench!"
"That's a first." Something flickered in his eyes. Not warmth, exactly, but life—like I'd managed to reach him through whatever fog he was trapped in.
"What's a first?" I snapped.
"Usually, the girl can't stop singing praises for the enormous cock she rode." The words were pure Chase, but the delivery was off—too fast, too practiced, like lines from a play he was tired of performing. Then his mouth curved. "Wait. You look considerably pissed. Was the cock not to your taste?"
I wanted to hit him, preferably with something heavy.
I wanted to shake him.
I wanted to demand answers to questions I couldn't yet form—starting with how are you in that chair when you were on your feet five minutes ago and ending with why do you look like you're dying and somewhere in the middle, was any of that real?
Instead, I held out my hand.
"Give me your shirt. Before I do something as outrageous as strangle you with my father's Manila rope."
He blinked. "What?"
"Your shirt. Take it off. Give it to me. Now." I wiggled my fingers for emphasis.
It was the only thing that could cover the tear, that could make me look less like I'd just been ravished in a closet by a man who apparently couldn't walk.
He stared at my outstretched hand as if it were a strange insect. "I can't just—"
"Do it, Dubois." The last thread of my patience snapped. "Or I will walk out that door right now and tell my father you slapped me. See how your Lycan King father will react to having a fiery, hot-tempered, grizzly-built man named Adonis Winchester dragon-fist his son's ass."