Page 115 of Taken By Touch and Torment

Sadie turned when she reached the doors. “Since no one bothered to say it aloud, let me be the first.” She pinned her eyes on mine. “What you accomplished during the worst moments of your life, with barely any knowledge about your own nature, is nothing short of incredible. It is an honor to be fighting with you, Scarlett Hale.”

Mason nodded, looking at me with respect.

“Agreed,” Uriah said. “You’ve kicked ass.”

“Thank you,” I said softly, the tension in my shoulders melting as they each filed out and shut the door behind them.

Rune stood, and my muscles tightened right back up as I faced his looming form.

“I didn’t need a break, Rune,” I said. “It felt good to be useful. I know you think I’m pushing myself, and that I’m rushing into things for the sake of others, but?—”

“I was the one who needed a break,” he said, cutting me off.

I closed my mouth, searching his dark eyes. He moved close enough to brush his knuckle across my cheekbone, and his mask of anger was soon to melt into something sorrowful. It was the vulnerability he wore only for me.

And it shattered my heart to see Rune look at me as if he were grieving.

Grieving me.

I melted into his chest.

“You may write to them, Little Flame,” he whispered into my hair. “These men who had no choice but to grow hopelessly infatuated with you. But you may not go to them, not until we see how our plan plays out. And I’d sooner lock you in a fucking cage before I’d let you go without any protection and a meticulous escape plan.”

I peeled away from him with a glare.

“How?” he asked, his voice hoarse. The heartbreak in his features softened me. “How could you even consider returning to the place that nearly broke you? After you’ve spent hours crying and shaking in my arms? After you nearly withered away, and you did everything in your power to fight your way back to me?”

I clenched my fists, my heart beating erratically. I remembered how I felt standing in that angry crowd of mortals at the human trafficking rally, when they’d demanded the turned crack down on the slave trade. I’d grown so angry that I’d inadvertently encouraged the entire crowd to turn violent, to act on their most base desires.

When I’d leaked my wrathful influence, I’d been thinking about the injustice of it all. How I’d been shown, over and over again, that my body had never belonged to me. That was the message delivered by Isabella and too many men to count.

There was this vengeful, spitting snake inside me that was growing hungrier the stronger I became.

“Because I owe it to myself, and all people like me,” I said. “I owe it to everyone who has ever been made to feel as though they exist only as an object to use and discard. People like Rosalind, who was slaughtered without a second thought.” That angry, venomous serpent coiled around my spine. “I’ve been forced to cater to men my entire life. To pretend to lap up their disgusting words, to absorb their pitiful attempts to make themselves strong and to make me small. I’m willing to go back to that tasteless shithole so I can see the look on Durian’s disgusting face when he realizes that the woman he tortured, brutalized, and assaulted—the woman he wrote off as nothing more than a stupid human pet—was the one who destroyed him and everything he has built.” I radiated power, now molten, in my stomach. “If only to make myself fucking feel good.”

I gasped, nearly panting now, as my veins flooded with heat. Rune’s eyes darted to my thighs, squeezing together beyond my conscious awareness.

My eyes hungrily consumed Rune’s form, his beautiful tattoos and forceful presence. I no longer cared why or whether it was appropriate. All I cared about was satisfying this sudden ache between my legs.

I nearly tackled Rune. He met me halfway, lifting me into his arms as I crushed my lips to his. He cleared gods knew what off the deliberation table, objects clattering to the floor as he placed me forcefully down and shoved his way between my legs. One hand was on the back of my head, the other roaming my body.

Just before he met my lips, he stopped. “I will not lose you,” he growled.

“No, you won’t,” I said. “I know that I can do this. This is the destiny I’ve always felt charging through my veins, the one that brought me to Aristelle. My destiny is you. And an eternity with you means slaughtering our enemies and building a better world for us all.”

This was my story. Not Durian’s. Not Brennan’s or Kole’s. It was fucking mine. My power flared, and I thought of Rosalind. Without her, I wouldn’t be standing here today. Just as she’d taught me, I would stand so firmly in my power that failure was an impossibility.

When Durian choked on his own blood as his palace crumbled, I’d think of her then, too.

I went in for Rune’s lips, drinking his desire as the room filled with Lillian’s decadent darkness. I locked my legs around Rune as the nerves between my thighs pulsed.

“Gods, Scarlett,” he said, pulling back to stare at me. “Now that I can see underneath your glamour… I can feel your power. It’s as potent as even that of my strongest clan member. Your body might be fragile, and your magick might not manifest as a physical weapon. But there’s a reason that mental magick is prized above all others, feared and hated above all others.”

He pulled at my bottom lip with his fangs, and I moaned into his mouth. “You’re a viper hidden in tall grass, baby.”

He fisted my hair at the base of my scalp and forced me to stare into his wrathful eyes. His shadows leaked from his imposing form.

“I fucking hate how much I believe in you,” he hissed, yanking me off the table to remove my dress.

---