Page 47 of Stalked By Seduction and Shadows

Perhaps Mason was right, and I was a mental masochist because I missed the pain of humanity. The fear, the scarcity, the rush of living with reckless abandon as death pushed up against me from all sides.

Maybe Scarlett was just another form of self-torture, a break in the monotony of my own supremacy.

I didn’t miss the fragility of being human, nor did I despise my vampirism. I enjoyed ruling, and I reveled in being the strongest, most competent and terrifying being on this vast island. My island.

While the rest of the turned had undergone their transformation process to become a vampire, I’d emerged a god.

Yet Scarlett didn’t fear me, though she was the most fragile of us all. As much as I wanted to break her, I also wanted to preserve the fire in her blood that made her so stupidly, recklessly brave and defiant. I loved the way she burned.

I’d just the same fall to my own knees before her, offer my worship with my tongue between her legs as she writhed and stared up at the stars.

I wanted to make her sing for me. I hadn’t heard her voice since she was a child. Her angelic melody had pierced through all of my walls and reminded me how it felt to be a man, or more shockingly, a child—though I’d been one impossibly long ago.

I couldn’t help but climb up to her window. She’d locked them tonight, unsurprisingly. I allowed my shadows to slither between the cracks to unlock them again from the inside.

I was inside her room in a matter of seconds, watching the even rise and fall of her chest under her bundle of blankets. She was surrounded by her new furniture—a mahogany armoire and dresser for all the beautiful clothes I’d buy her—bedside tables and crystal lamps. Though she couldn’t admit it yet, I knew she loved every last one of my gifts.

As I sunk back into the shadows and watched her, I became resigned to my new reality.

I was already addicted, and this inexplicable madness would only get worse from here, for both of us. I wanted to believe that any time at all with her would be enough, but I already knew it wouldn’t.

I would want her forever. I already feared the hole inside of me she would leave behind.

The horror of her eventual loss was far greater than the more immediate, pressing concern. She didn’t know it yet, but Scarlett had me wrapped so tightly around her finger that just one crook would put the whole city in peril.

The idea that I could keep her a secret from my inner circle was looking less and less likely. She’d need protection at all times now that she’d planted herself in the middle of my city.

The born couldn’t know what she meant to me. They couldn’t even glean a hint of her hold over me until she agreed to be mine, until she slept in my bed each night and enjoyed the full protection of the clan.

I couldn’t help the sudden onslaught of guilt. If only she’d stuck with her original plan and kept far away from Aristelle. She was so close to escaping me, to living a full, free life where she wasn’t in constant danger.

Not that she ever would’ve been safe. She seemed heedlessly intent on putting herself in peril as much as possible. In fact, the thought of her being out there in the world without me sounded far more dangerous.

My Scarlett loved to be afraid. She danced with the darkness, drew it out and played with it before feigning that deceptive innocence. We were a match forged in the depths of Lillian’s underworld.

She stirred, her soft whimper pulling all my attention to her lips. My breath hitched, and my cock hardened even more painfully than it had in the alley. Eventually, I’d wake her up by driving myself inside of her, my hand covering her mouth and stifling her shocked scream.

I’d drink all of her fear, lap up every last drop. I’d have myself buried deep before realization finally found her.

I grinned in the dark like the creep that I was, and at the next little noise that escaped her lips, I was back out the window.

She’d gotten me too worked up. If I couldn’t torture her yet, I’d need to find someone else in the meantime. Luckily, there were several naughty dissidents awaiting their god’s wrath.

24

SCARLETT

When I awoke the next morning, I did a full-apartment sweep that had become a part of my daily routine. After checking each room, secretly admiring Rune’s taste in furniture and subsequently chastising myself for it, I ran my hands over the window locks.

Wait.

The window in the kitchen was locked, but my bedroom windows were not. I’d absolutely locked them last night.

He didn’t. Horror and anger mixed in my stomach. I imagined his beautiful, dark features lording over me as I slept, his inky tattoos slithering across my helpless body.

And of course, while my mind bathed in disgust and vitriol, my body continued its blasphemous betrayal.

I stared down between my legs, where my long cotton shirt skimmed my thighs.

---