Chapter 84: What He Feared
The word slut left Serena's lips and thinned into the air, but Elias did not answer. The silence inside the car turned dense enough to choke on.
That only made it worse.
Serena had always been easy for him to provoke. If she was a line of packed explosives, Elias was the fuse threaded straight through it, and somehow also the spark. He barely had to move before she was burning.
She reached over with the practiced ease of someone used to taking what she wanted and pinched his jaw between her fingers, forcing his head back toward her. His mouth came into view first, split and bruised, the lips still marked from where he had refused to make a sound earlier.
She did not need to think hard to know why those marks were there. Even then, he had chosen stubborn silence over giving her the reaction she wanted.
Her gaze lifted from his mouth to his eyes, and for the first time since getting into the car, she hesitated.
He was calmer than she had expected.
