Page 124 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

My lips quirked up. “Yes?”

Flesh slapped into flesh, moans making my ears tingle, my body flushed with warmth.

Rune’s stance was nearly enough to send me to my own knees, despite every ounce of my rationality and anger.

“A patron has requested your presence,” he said. “Come with me.”

My cheeks burned at the insinuation, the lie. I admired what the sex workers of Odessa did, and despite being raised by Isabella, I didn’t feel at all as though their work was anything close to shameful. But I knew Rune had only used this excuse to provoke me, to bite me right back with a vengeance. He wanted to ruin the innocent persona I’d been leaning on heavily with tonight’s marks.

I tried to make my goodbye to Reggie, Zara, and Lars sound upbeat, but I wasn’t sure how convincing I was.

“Thank you,” I said to Reggie.

“Looks like you didn’t need my help,” he said, a hint of jealousy in his tone. He must’ve thought this mysterious patron was high in the pecking order too, if Rune was the one fetching me.

Out in a long hallway bathed in dim, golden light, Rune stopped leading me and turned. He didn’t say a single word, only stared me down as his form brutally towered over mine.

“I hope I didn’t cut your fun short,” he said casually before turning back around.

Still, the hairs on the back of my neck raised.

In a room to our left, two figures moved in the nearly pitch-black darkness. On a sprawling bed, a vampire man let a lit candle drip wax on a shifter man’s bare chest. He was wearing a wolf mask and nipple clamps. I’d barely seen half of what the dungeons had to offer, and according to Lars, things only got darker and stranger from here.

Once we’d turned down a shorter hall with a dead-end, the moans and screams from this labyrinth of sin faded merely to a dull background hum. Rune shoved me against the nearest wall and closed his hand around my throat.

I smiled, batting my eyes at him with an air of confused naivety.

He laughed darkly. His lips grazed my ear, and I shuddered. “Did that excite my disobedient little slut? Watching a human woman just like her surrounded by vampire men?”

I considered it. It was certainly arousing to watch despite my discomfort, but I didn’t want to ever do it myself. Rune didn’t need to know that, though.

“Yes,” I said. “You can have your group of subs worship you, and I can have a group of vampires dominate me.”

His branches leaped from his skin, thorns razor sharp. They spread across the floor and crawled up the walls on either side of my body like a threat.

Rune smiled. “I love your nasty jealousy, baby,” he purred, lips a few inches from mine. “That’s why you broke one of my inarguable rules, hmm?”

At the sound of footsteps, Rune grabbed me and whisked me away in a rush of wind and shadow.

I was disoriented when he set me back down, a heavy wooden door closing shut behind us. Witch lights flickered on overhead, illuminating all manner of sensual furniture, plush rugs and cushions strewn about, and sadistic tools strung up on dark walls. It was like a private, smaller version of the main room.

My eyes snagged on a painting of a nude woman, a marble sculpture of Helia below. This room had Rune written all over it.

“Go ahead,” Rune said.

“Go ahead and what?” I snapped.

Rune smirked. “Go ahead and let out all of that adorable pent-up anger. I think I can take it.”

“You’re trying to manipulate me,” I accused, ignoring his condescension. “With that blonde woman, then that group of girls, and you basically called me a sex worker! Which, obviously, nothing wrong with that, but I’m not one. And you were—” I cut myself off, struggling to remember all the reasons why I hated him right now. My head was swimming with pleasure, still high on the collective depravity swirling in the air.

When his irritating amusement didn’t break an inch, I fumed harder.

“I’m manipulating you?” he asked with a low chuckle. “Interesting perspective.” His eyes roamed hungrily, possessively, over my body. “Would you like to know what I would’ve done if you’d broken this rule after you’d given yourself to me?”

A tip of a thorny shadow grazed my ankle, scratching lightly. Any deeper and it might break my skin.

“I would’ve pulled you into this room by the hair, forced you on your knees, and cum all over that pretty face to remind you who the fuck you belong to,” he growled.

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