Page 169 of Taken By Touch and Torment

“Terribly,” he growled, throaty and desperate.

“In front of all of them?” I asked, continuing to boost that ego run rampant. Encouraging him to look out over his people celebrating the capture of an ancient, powerful enemy.

You’ve done the impossible. You won, I whispered softly to his mind. You’re invincible.

“Yes,” he groaned, now slightly grinding against my ass as he breathed into my neck.

“I have a better idea,” I whispered with a giggle. “But it’s naughty.”

Brennan peered down at me as I twisted to look at him, his lips curving into a crooked smile. “Tell me.”

I allowed my cheeks to redden, my heart to pick up its pace. “Do you swear you won’t think less of me? It’s filthy… oh gods, now I’m embarrassed.”

Brennan gripped my chin. “Well, now I demand you tell me.”

I paused, teasing out the suspense until Brennan was nearing a breaking point.

“I think we should have some fun in the dungeons,” I whispered.

Brennan inhaled sharply, his cock impossibly hard. “Oh?”

“You see, I’ve never been wetter and more aching with need than when you had both of my kidnappers on their knees before you. Rune and Durian, in shackles and powerless. When you’d shown everyone in the palace who the true ruler of Valentin has always been,” I said, letting my voice get raspy with my alleged desire. “I want to see them like that again, while you’re driving inside me.”

The desire was real, my thighs pressing together with want. But instead of envisioning the picture my words painted, I imagined the walls of this palace painted with blood. Real blood.

Born blood.

“Fuck, Scarlett,” Brennan rasped. “You wicked, wicked creature.”

He lifted me at the waist, and I slid to the floor. He twirled me around so that his lips could consume mine again, and I giggled into his mouth.

The laughter was real, too. As real as my smile, as real as the wetness gathering in my thong. The hidden daggers at arm’s reach filled my stomach with warmth.

Fate was a melody, a rush as powerful as oceans, its certainty as bright as a field of stars. My veins pumped deep darkness, and sex oozed from my every pore.

I was addictive. I couldn’t be denied.

Brennan tongued my lower lip, biting roughly before pulling back. “Let’s. Go. Now.”

67

SCARLETT

Brennan was so drunk off me that he was ordering guards away left and right, ensuring I had enough privacy to be the naughtiest little slut for him.

This part of the dungeons was far less opulent than the side devoted to sex and debauchery, but they still had a surprising amount in common. Pain, pleasure, denial, and release swept through this vast underground, fueling the power I’d been building since before I knew what I was.

Since before I was proud of what I was.

We slipped into a hallway of stone and dim lighting, and Brennan ordered the group of soldiers posted outside a heavy wooden door to leave. They took one look at my wide pupils, flushed cheeks, and Brennan’s hand gripping my ass before taking off in unison.

The heat on my neck was a comfort, distracting me from the devastation of what I saw when I entered the dungeon cell.

Rune, blood streaming down puncture wounds in his neck and wrists, his heavy shackles attached to a hard point on the wall above his head. The sight of him impaled, hurting, and slumped against the stone, tore me open inside. I felt his wounds in my own skin, and now I understood just a fraction of what he must’ve felt knowing I was suffering for weeks at Durian’s hand.

My eyes swept to Durian.

The door boomed shut at my back, the sound of it reverberating through my bones.

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