Page 113 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

He stared down at me with such brutal devotion that its intensity burned my throat. He gripped my neck with a strong hold without squeezing, his other hand moving between my legs. He alternated between pulsing two fingers inside of me and expertly working my clit until I was a dripping mess of yearning beneath him.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

In his hooded glare, surrounded by a veil of pitch-black darkness, I found my release. The hot, stinging pain on my ass only multiplied my pleasure. I took deep, sick satisfaction from the knowledge that I’d be donning evidence of his lust on my skin for days to come.

I let out a high-pitched gasp as I rode the waves of pleasure, holding fast to his dark brown irises.

He’d branded himself on my skin, just as I’d rooted myself underneath his. We were both hopelessly entangled like the massive, twisted overground roots in Crescent Haven’s forest.

52

SCARLETT

Snow lifted but a single brow when I finally made it to my seat next to her. We were in a private booth, our attendant and two rigid, burly vampire bodyguards just outside.

“Hey,” I said, smoothing down my dress and combing through my hair for the hundredth time.

Snow side-eyed me, shaking her head. “Hey.”

“I know,” I said. “It’ll only ever go down in flames. But I have to see it through.”

“That sounds very healthy,” Snow said, and I flinched at her snippy tone. She shook her head slightly. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Scar. I just care about you. I want you to be happy and loved, always.”

My lip trembled. Loved. Was that what Rune felt? Was that the driving force of our obsession, our lust, our addiction to each other? It couldn’t be. He couldn’t love me, if that was even something he was capable of as a centuries-old vampire ruler.

Childish delusions, Isabella whispered cruelly.

“I know, I know,” I said. “But he’s going to find Isabella, and that’s what matters most to me.”

Snow nodded. “I’m glad he at least seems to want to keep you safe from any suicide missions.”

“It’s—it’s not just lust,” I said softly, as the chatter of the crowd began to die down. The lights slowly dimmed, and raw excitement twisted up my insides. “It’s so much more. He sees me, Snow. And I see him.”

Snow stared at me, but she did not make a sound. She only reached for my hand before looking down at the stage.

Just before the curtains opened, she finally spoke. “You deserve so much more than what life has handed you, Scarlett. Don’t accept the half-love that you’ve grown accustomed to. Only accept the full, staggering devotion that you deserve. It’s what we all deserve. To feel wholeheartedly chosen, desired, secure, and nurtured. Anything less is theft.”

Her words lodged somewhere in my throat, and I swallowed and blinked back tears. I was so lucky to have Snow, to hear her echo back the things I knew in my soul but hadn’t yet believed in my heart.

I was starting to believe.

I was even beginning to believe in the grand romantic love I’d always craved, because I feared that what Snow described was exactly what Rune and I were stoking. In our own violent and twisted way.

Or maybe I was a silly, naive human caught in his web, forced to learn this brutal lesson the hard way.

When the performance commenced, all of these thoughts slipped away. At the first voice piercing the air—high, lyrical, like the vocal equivalent of a violin—I tilted forward, mesmerized. I watched with growing awe at the way music was used as storytelling, particular melodies attached to different characters, objects, and themes. The flood of emotions that burst forth through the lips of each singer and orchestral accompaniment.

I fell under the opera’s spell, occasionally peering out over the audience, soaking up the collective pleasure, the enthrallment of the mortals and immortals in attendance. I also peered into the sea of bodies and the private booths across the way. I wondered where Rune was seated.

If there was anything I knew about Rune, it was that if I ever found him, I’d see he was watching me right back.

My stomach fluttered. Was it even possible to fall in love this quickly? I didn’t know anything about being in love. Neither had Jaxon. Isabella and Phillip were hardly a shining example. My parents loved each other, but that felt different—sadder, more serious.

No, what Rune and I had couldn’t be love. It was too dark, too big, too violent of a push and pull.

Yet as the female lead performed an aria about love and loss, a tear slid down my cheek. She scooped me into her melody, lulling me back and forth in lapping waves. After her voice rose impossibly high, it sank back down into my chest like the slow dig of a knife.

My skin tingled, shivers running down my spine and across my arms. I gripped my seat, my ears open wide, my heart aching, my mind still cloudy from the juxtaposition between Rune’s sadism and gentle touch.

---