Page 98 of Every Shade of Shadow

The calm, calculating Professor is gone, replaced by a madman. “You dare,” he snarls, “after everything I’ve done for you.” His nostrils flare, the blade pressing harder against my skin. “You gave me everything—your body, your soul. If I want to be in your head, I will. If I want to be in your ass, your mouth, your fucking beating heart, I will. You are mine.”

He must see the terror in my eyes, because the blade eases, the tension in his body dropping ever so slightly. “Never take your powers for granted. Ever,” he growls, his free hand pointing up at me. “You’re no match for me, my pet, not yet. It would be so easy to destroy you, to crush you completely, but I need you to see your part in this, in us. I need your full submission if this is to work.”

I summon every muscle in my neck. I do the same with my arm muscles, try biting my lower lip, but nothing works. My mouth just hangs open uselessly, drool cutting a line down from my lower lip and dripping from my chin like I’ve got fucking brain damage, and maybe I do.

He pulls away and I tip over onto the floor staring across the stone.

Feeling returns, moving up my body. I collect myself slowly from the floor, swallowing back saliva and my heart beating so hard it doesn’t even feel connected to my body anymore.

He stands over me, all-powerful, the knife dropping from his hand to clatter on the ground beside his feet.

He knows I won’t reach for it. Whatever challenge I felt before, it’s lost.

I reach for my neck, my fingers coming away hot and wet.

I’m lightheaded.

“Your powers have grown, and will grow further still this very night, but you must know your place, Ana.”

He walks towards me. “Place your head on the ground.”

I’m not sure what he’s asking, but I bring my head down to the stone, once more looking sideways across the floor.

He lifts his leg, the heel of his boot pressing down on top of my skull.

My breath catches.

“Say you are mine.”

I can’t get it out.

“Say it!” he screams.

“I-I’m yours.”

“Yours, what?”

“Sir. I’m yours, sir.”

His heel lifts. “Good.”

He crouches down beside me again, lifting my head up with two hands, the aggression gone.

He holds my face, gazing into me with tender eyes. “This gives me no pleasure, my pet. You must understand that, but I cannot have you questioning my authority. It’s for your own protection, your own good.”

I nod, close to tears. “I understand.”

“I will lift the mind-control spell if you ask me to, but I would caution against it. There’s still far greater danger here than you realize. And should you decide to leave, to go back to New York…I won’t stop you.”

Go back to what?

There’s nothing there for me. Sabrina, maybe, but that’s it.

But I wouldn’t go back.

Because he isn’t there.

Because there’s no Damien Darkwood in New York City to torment and drive me insane, to send me to that darkest point of pleasure I never thought possible. He’s turned me into an addict, forever chasing the dragon that is him and him alone. He’s the devil incarnate, true, but he is my devil.

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