Gleam: The dark fantasy romance TikTok sensation that’s sold over a million copies (Plated Prisoner Book 3)

The ticking time between us is marked only by the beats in my chest, one that seems to match the thrum of the pulse in his neck.

Even though we’re standing in this wide entry, white beams crisscrossing overhead like the leather straps over his chest, it feels as if we’re in a tiny enclosure together, eating up every available space.

Rip assesses me where I’m slumped over the railing, and if I didn’t feel so awful, I might care about how weak I look. Yet my mind is far too burned out, so all sorts of caring have gone straight out the frosted window.

“Are you alright?” he asks quietly. His tone is different. So very different from the one he used with the guards. The sound of his smooth voice somehow seems to coat my body, like mist over a starlit pond.

“Me? I’m great. Perfect. Never better,” I reply sardonically, though my words are too sloppy, too slurred.

Rip narrows his eyes. “Are you drunk?”

“Drunk on power.” Much to my embarrassment, an incredibly loud snort erupts out of me as I begin to laugh at my own bad joke. Then I just start laughing harder at the frown on Rip’s face, until my entire body is shaking with mirth, making it even more difficult to stay upright. Yep. I’ve finally cracked. My senses drained right out along with my magic.

When the corner of Rip’s mouth twitches with amusement, my stomach flips at the sight. My laughter ebbs away with the pull of the tide, my hysterics drying up like an abandoned shoreline.

Warring desires have me unsure of whether I want to get away from him…or get closer.

Bad idea. Bad, horrible, terrible idea.

Yet my tiredness has stripped me down, because I just want to breathe. To stop planning, stop pretending, stop worrying, and just be for a moment. Though this is treacherous water, and I never was a good swimmer.

Suddenly nervous, my eyes dart around with the need for a distraction, with the need to do…something, just so I don’t take a step toward him, because I don’t trust myself right now.

“I need to go to my room,” I spout, voice belying my nervousness, my need to flee.

I jolt upright and move to take a step, but intense dizziness hits me, and my jellied legs give out. My feet slip from beneath me like the carpet is suddenly slick, and a bubble of alarm pops from my mouth as my legs buckle.

Before I can fall, Rip’s strong arms go around me, one beneath my knees, the other behind my back, and I’m swept up before I can even lose my center of gravity.

I look up at him with wide eyes. “I slipped.”

A soft laugh ripples out of him, as cool and refreshing as running water over timeworn rocks. “I noticed,” he replies, echoing the same conversation we’ve had before. When it was just the two of us standing beneath a blue mourning moon at the edge of an arctic sea.

Things seemed simpler then.

The spikes on his arms are gone, sunk back into his skin faster than a blink so they didn’t pierce me. I’m incredibly aware of his arms around me, of the way he doesn’t falter as he holds me up, as if he could hold me for eternity and never let go.

Why does that make me want to cry?

“You caught me,” I say, though my voice comes out in more of a whisper, the sound of an unsaid question drifting inside of it.

He tips his chin down, eyes coating me like shade against a scorched day. “I’ll do that anytime you need catching, Goldfinch.”

Now I’m dizzy for an entirely different reason. I peel my gaze away from his, my chest capering like a flock of playful birds spinning together in the sky.

“Shit,” I say, mind catching up as I realize how bad this is. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

The muscles in his arms tighten, but his face goes unreadable as he begins to walk me upstairs. “Because your golden king wouldn’t like it?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not that, it’s… Look, could you just put me down?”

“And let you fall? No.”

I’m far too flustered now. Even my ribbons are wringing, tugging against the loosely tied bows. Feeling the planes of his chest against my arm and his strong grip on my body brings a sixth sense of awareness. How can I emotionally distance myself when he’s holding me up?

“I could’ve golded you—I mean gilded. I could’ve gilded you,” I stutter, face growing hot.

“You’re sure you’re not drunk?” he says with a teasing grin.

Great Divine, when he looks at me like that, when he flashes that subtle, secretive smile, it transforms his entire face. He’s a smoldering, sexy warrior with transcendental beauty, and I like being in his arms far too much.

I lick my lips, and his eyes flick down to watch, making my stomach flutter. “Not drunk, but I’d really love to be right about now.”

His smile widens, and I find my own lips twitching, corners tilting up like they want to join his for the dance.

“But I could’ve gilded you,” I repeat. “Then you’d be a statue stuck right here on the stairwell, and I don’t think gold’s your color, Commander.”

“I disagree. Gold has quickly become my favorite.”

I gape at him, too dumbstruck to say a damn thing.

My gaping is so effective that my unblinking state of surprise sends my head into another exhausted dizzy spell. I slump further into him. “Ugh.”

Rip adjusts his hold on me, and I have to work not to let my neck fall back. “You’re very floppy.”

I rest my head against his firm, muscled chest. “You’re very hard,” I counter.

A rich, dark laugh slips from his mouth. “You’ve no idea.”

My face instantly flares as he smirks, the creases of his cheeks lifting the glint of his scales and making him look so damn gorgeous that all I can do is stare.

He’s…flirting with me. And based on the giddy feeling in my chest, I can’t even deny that I like it. A lot.

Feeling this forbidden want is a different sort of freedom, like crossing the border of a new land. I instantly find myself wishing that things were different, that we had met under other circumstances. That we didn’t have King Ravinger and Midas and omissions jutting up between us in an impassable terrain…because I think I might’ve liked the trek.

How different would things be if he’d told me the truth about who he was? If I hadn’t felt like he was following in Midas’s footsteps with tricks and manipulations?

My anger rises up again, and not even entirely at him, but at the tangled web we’re caught in, because I feel so robbed. Robbed of something…something that could’ve been mine.

A lump rises in my throat, and no matter how many times I try to gulp it down, I can’t. “You shouldn’t touch me,” I confess, even as my gloved hands curve around his shoulders. “I’m dangerous.”

His eyes sparkle with amusement, crinkling at the edges, making him look so much younger, so much less hindered and gruff. “You look it.” I scowl at him, but that just seems to entertain him even more as he walks me up the stairs.

“I am dangerous,” I insist, though maybe my declaration is a bit discredited at the moment. “Well…maybe not right now, since I’m depleted. And not at night, since my power doesn’t work then, and not—”

“So your power does only work during the day? I thought so.”

I press my lips together, internally kicking myself, but it’s too late. I was right not to trust myself right now. Not just with my emotions, but apparently my secrets too. Although, he already knows the main ones, and he hasn’t revealed me. Yet.

A ball of worry rolls around in my gut. “Are you going to use that information against me?”

Rip looks down at me as he continues to walk, his aura thrumming around him like a syrupy murk.

His beard is thicker again like it was when I first met him, rather than the stubble that he goes back and forth with. The black hair over his pale jaw makes me want to reach up and touch it, just to see what it feels like. Is he sharp even there? Or is it softer, like the ruffled hair on his head seems to be?

Despite the fact that he’s walking at a brisk pace, he’s not jarring me in his arms. His movements are fluid and graceful, not at all what you’d expect by looking at him. But Rip has always been unexpected. Like when he replies, “My intention is never to use you, Goldfinch.”

For a moment, I can’t say anything. My hands tighten ever so slightly on his shoulders, a nervousness braced from my body to his. “You know, I think I believe you. Even though I shouldn’t.”

I feel the slightest bit of tension loosen from his bunched muscles. “Yes, you should.”noveldrama

One of my ribbons slips from its bow, the golden length looping around his arm, and an entirely too pleased look crosses his face. “Your ribbons seem to like me.”

“Well, they don’t have brains, so…”

The richest, deepest laugh I’ve ever heard lumbers through him and wraps around me. I almost lean toward the sound, like I want to bury myself beneath its bark.

Dangerous. I know this is dangerous, to be this close to him, especially in my current state. I’m not equipped, my walls not erected, and I need those walls to keep from toppling right into him.

So with a lot of willpower, I force myself to look away, breaking the heady connection with a tug on my ribbon.

As soon as I cut myself off from him, from the moment, I hear him sigh, chest rising and falling beneath my shoulder and carrying his breath of disappointment. “Which rooms are yours?”

Of course he needs to know that, but I feel suddenly shy to tell him.

Sensing my hesitation, he says, “Mine are on this level on the opposite side, with the snowflake door.”

I pretend not to soak up that information. “Just down this hall and up one more flight of stairs. It’s the door across from Midas’s.”

Almost there, and then I can shut myself away and hide from the way Rip affects me.

“Hmm.”

My eyes cut up. “What does that hmm mean?”

He ignores my question as he turns in the direction of my rooms. “Why is your power depleted?” he asks instead.

Always this back and forth that we fall into, of flinging questions at each other and hardly catching answers.

He’s tense beneath my ear, but the leather shirt he’s wearing is supple, much softer than I would’ve guessed. “Because I used too much of it,” I find myself saying quietly.

“And Midas drove you to this point?”

“He has a reputation to uphold as the Golden King,” I say with far too much bitterness slipping off my tongue.

Rip seems to catch the taste, biting down so hard that I hear his teeth grind. “You shouldn’t let him use your power anymore.”

The judgment in his tone makes me go tense. “You don’t understand,” I say, my mind immediately snagging onto Digby. “I have to.”

“You don’t have to do anything,” he retorts. His aura pulses again, but this time, it’s erratic, irritated. Well, that makes two of us, because I know what I’m doing, and this playacting at obedience is necessary.

As he makes his way up the last staircase, I remember how this will look and what’s at stake. “We’re nearly there. You should put me down before the guards see.”

Flared, brutal eyes snap to mine. “I don’t give a flying fuck about Midas’s guards.”

His abrupt vitriol cuts my expression into a frown. “Rip.”

“We’ve been over this. You couldn’t even stand upright, Auren. I’m not putting you down,” he tells me, his voice the rough scrape of rocks, hard and unyielding. “I don’t care if Midas hears about me touching his favored. In fact, I hope he does.”

I sigh at the stubborn bastard. “It’s not just about Midas. I’ve made a mistake by making you think it’s okay to touch me,” I say quietly, unable to look at him. What if it hadn’t been dusk? One touch. That’s all it would take, and the implications of that terrify me. “It was selfish of me. But for your own good, you need to stop.”

He stops abruptly at the top of the stairs and then swings me around, suddenly settling my bottom down on the flat railing on the landing, facing my body toward his. I grip the railing beneath me, centering myself before I go pitching backwards, but I don’t need to, because his arms are already steadying me.

He boldly wraps his hand around the base of my head, fingers pressing against my nape with enough pressure to send tingles down my spine. Breath is locked in my chest as he angles my head toward his, lowering his face right in front of mine. He’s all I see, blocking out everything else until he’s all that exists.

“My own good?” The question is like a snarl, caught in the web of scales on his cheek. His voice is right there, felt against my lips like the sweep of a tongue, sinking past my ears and settling into my chest and making my entire body go on alert.

My ribbons are as frozen as the rest of me, snakes caught in the eyes of a charmer. “Y-yes.”

The intensity of his gaze lights a fire in my belly. “My own good was stuck on a pirate ship, with an aura like a beacon that flared across the Barrens,” he grits out, a thick spun voice meant to tie knots around me. “My own good was cowering before men who were nothing—fucking nothing—in comparison to her.”

All of my ability to breathe is gone as I stare at him in shock.

“My own good hated me, fought me, argued with me, but I didn’t care, because I watched her slowly come out of her shell, peeling back one layer at a time, and it was stunning.” He raises a finger in front of my face. “I got one touch. One taste, and if it was an act of selfishness, then you should know, it certainly wasn’t one-sided, Auren.”

I can’t blink.

I can’t think.

“What…what are you saying?” My chest heaves with the breathless question, like undulating waves in an uncertain sea.

I might drown in the depths of his bottomless eyes.

His teeth snap together, as if my uncertainty sets him on edge. “I’m saying that you are my own good. And for you, I gave you a choice, but you chose him.”

A storm rattles in my skull. A coiled collection of impregnated clouds billowing through my head, thundering through my pulse and threatening rain to fall at my cheeks.

But you chose him.

“Rip—”

“You will always choose him. That’s what you told me.”

I flinch at my own words that he tosses back in my face, a tumultuous deluge sluicing past the dam of my cracking walls.

“Is it still true?” he asks, like a desperate demand.

Water beads against my lids, a golden gaze hinged to pitch-black. The first drop trickles down my cheek, squeezing past my splintering resolve. But when I open my mouth to answer him, no words come.

Instead, Rip moves, and I move with him, wind and rain in harmonious tandem. My body turns, and he steps between my legs where I’m perched on the railing, one hand braced to my right, arm curled against my side to keep me from falling. That thumb against the nape of my neck holds firm, fingers dug into my loose hair.

When his mouth comes down, when it’s against my cheek to soak up the tear, I forget how to breathe. His firm lips take in my riot, like he wants to sip from my soul.

And I want to let him.

Pressing closer and closer, we act like we aren’t in Ranhold Castle where any number of people could be watching, but in a private void of our own making, a place where nothing else exists.

His mouth skims past my cheekbone, just below my ear, hot breath breezed against the sensitive skin. My hands tighten against the railing on either side of me, and I don’t dare move, not with my thighs already squeezing his hips, not when all I want to do is turn my head and fuse my lips against his.

“Tell a truth for a truth,” he murmurs, voice pebbling my skin.

“Or keep a secret for a secret,” I finish.

A hot tongue darts out, brined with the salt of my tear, and I have to suppress a moan. The dangerous pinch of his teeth land against my neck, making my head tilt in precarious invitation.

His hand moves until he’s cupping my jaw like he’s ready to drink right from my lips.

“Tell me, Auren.”

Fear widens my eyes, clearing some of the lusty haze. It hammers my heart, makes my mouth go dry. His words seem simple, but he’s asking for everything. If I give in, if I speak out, there will be no going back.

He’s a male. A king. Someone with secrets and plans. I don’t want to repeat my mistakes, and I’m terrified of getting hurt again.

A tortured whisper drizzles out with the shake of my head. “I can’t.”

Disappointment drenches us both.

For a long moment, we just look at each other, soaking in dreary regret.

And then Rip pulls away, leaving me to sway, to roll without roots.

“Let’s get you to your room,” he says.

I can only nod, unable to look him in the eye for fear of what I’ll see there.

In the span of a breath, his warmth, his intimate touch, it’s gone. The openness, the softness, they’re replaced by cold detachment, so remote that it’s like we’re suddenly a world apart.

The distance is agonizing.