Page 119 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

She almost spit out her latest sip, choking on it as she stared at me. “That was beneath you.” She wrinkled her nose with distaste.

I grinned. “You want to be beneath me.”

At that, she threw her head back with laughter. “You say the dumbest things for someone so intelligent and eloquent. All your beautiful sentences, and these are the things you want to say to me?”

I brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and set down my mug on her bedside table. “Worth it to hear you laugh.”

She shook her head and looked down at her near-empty mug. “What did you do yesterday? Before you broke into my home and took advantage of me while I slept?”

I thought about evading her again, shielding her from the harshness of my world. But I knew that was unsustainable, and a sick part of me wanted to test her, to see just how much she could stomach without turning her back on me.

“Mason and I had the pleasure of torturing and killing a succubus.”

55

SCARLETT

Rune’s admission stunned me for a moment. Even though it shouldn’t have. I knew what Rune did—what he enjoyed doing. His stark contradictions could be just as jarring as they were seductive.

“Why?” I asked him.

“She was working at one of my smaller clubs, cozying up to several of my clan, teasing out information and feeding off their power to manipulate their desires. Succubi aren’t like you, Scarlett. They aren’t just seductresses,” he explained, sighing as he leaned against the headboard. “They’re Lillian’s demon spawn, soulless and sustained by the energy of others. A powerful, well-trained succubus isn’t only capable of provoking and feeding off sexual compulsion. They’re able to pinpoint deeper desires, perhaps even ones that contradict a person’s duties and loyalties. The little urges we repress, a succubus can locate and coax out, make so much grander than they ever would’ve been on their own. Incubi and succubi have toppled entire regimes when they’ve gone undetected.”

“That’s frightening,” I murmured. “How did you know that she was a succubus? Isn’t their true nature glamoured until detected?”

“Special blood magick spell,” Rune answered. “My mentor, Sadie, mentioned succubi during my last visit, and it got Mason and me thinking about this woman and her proximity to so many of my clan.”

Something flitted across Rune’s features as he stared across the room. At the mention of Mason, my stomach sunk. She really didn’t like me. Perhaps she thought I was an evil succubus too.

Isabella would’ve thought the same, if she hadn’t known I was her sister born to human parents. She always said my powers were evil, from somewhere dark and cursed by Helia. That sinking feeling in my gut multiplied in a way I couldn’t easily ignore. I could nearly hear the call of Isabella’s diary beneath mine and Rune’s bodies. From under the mattress, whispers floated upward, promising an answer to all of my most heart-wrenching questions.

Why didn’t I belong? Why had Isabella forsaken me? Why had I been abandoned by anyone who’d ever gotten close to me, including my own father? What was it deep inside that made me see myself in the description of a demon more than I saw myself reflected back in the eyes of fellow humans?

“Does it bother you I enjoy pain? Killing? Breaking people?” Rune asked me.

What did it say about me that I had barely thought about that part of Rune’s admission?

I looked over at him, at the unmistakable flash of vulnerability that escaped as my eyes scanned his.

“No,” I said. “Maybe it should, but it doesn’t. You don’t commit violence for sport.”

He took my mug from my palms and placed it next to his before straddling me. “Don’t I, pet?”

A few nights later, I was making my usual rounds serving at Odessa. The desire for Rune to claim me had become undeniable, as if he was the incubus who’d drugged me with my own obsession. I hated when he ignored me in public and at Odessa, especially when turned women were fawning all over him in the private section. Or when I watched him disappear into the sex dungeon—the dungeon I wasn’t allowed to see without him, despite my ravenous curiosity. The air that floated up from its abyss was downright magnetic. Sometimes I found myself gravitating toward the steps entirely unconsciously.

I couldn’t descend the staircase into the vampires’ den of depravity without Rune, but I couldn’t be seen with Rune unless I was ready to be his.

And Helia save me, I wanted to be his.

The lies I told myself about wanting it only to guarantee he save Isabella were laughable at this point. I would save Isabella because it was my duty to do so, and because the guilt was still eating my soul alive.

But I wanted to be Rune’s for me.

Because being in Rune’s presence was the only place I’d ever truly felt like I belonged. Watched by all, Rune was the only one who truly saw me.

Desired by all, Rune was the only man I yearned for.

Powerful emotions stirred within me as I became conscious of the fact that my choice had already been made. Fear slammed into my chest, followed swiftly by insecurity, the gnawing feeling that I was trapped in addiction to this man, this immortal, this god above the rest.

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