“Tsk, tsk,” I said sarcastically. “I own you, Arabella. You don’t make the rules.”

Her breath hitched when I said her name.

I smiled. I liked that she hated it. Liked that I could get on her nerves so easily.

If only she knew how badly I could torment her.

How intoxicating I could make it.

How fucking obsessed she’d be.

I’d never been the white-knight type—the devil society that had tortured me while I grew up for being blind had ensured that—but fuck, I wanted to be Arabella’s villain.

I wanted her to cry my name in her sleep as she trembled from fear. Convulsed with it. Moaned with it. Choked on it.

I leaned back further in my seat and smirked. “Eat your meat like a good slave.”

She didn’t snap back like I expected. Instead, Arabella’s voice was monotone. “No,” she said with no inflection.

“Do it,” I snarled.

Silence.

I heard a rustling but nothing else.

“What is she doing?” I whispered to Orion.

My Revered said, “Flipping you off with both her fingers. Now she’s miming shooting you with a finger gun. Wait, now she’s holding her arm out straight and hitting her inner elbow and pulling her arm up. She just picked up a piece of meat, then stabbed her knife through it. I think she’s pretending it’s you. Now she’s—”

“Enough,” I cut him off.

At this point, she was begging for me to hurt her.

I tensed my muscles, ready to throw myself at her and drag her to the floor.

“The other legions are staring at us. Stop acting so embarrassing,” Zenith hissed, and I jolted with surprise.

The demons usually minded their own business.

“He’s right,” Corvus said through gritted teeth like it pained him to admit it.

Arabella and I both huffed, but neither of us did anything else.

I pretended to ignore her the rest of the meal, while discreetly piling food onto her plate whenever I heard her fork scrape against the empty surface.

Using my superior sense of smell, I avoided the meat because she was clearly being unreasonable about it. I didn’t like how delicate her neck had felt. It didn’t matter that she was a tall woman; she felt breakable.

It was like Orion said.

And it was unacceptable.

I needed her strong so I could break her. No one else was allowed to hurt her.

As the meal progressed, I pretended I didn’t notice that Arabella took forty-three bites of food and dropped ten pieces of meat onto the ground.

I pretended she didn’t touch John three times, whisper to him eighteen times, and pick at the scab on her lip seventeen times.

I pretended she didn’t take thirty-seven puffs of her pipe and forget to breathe four times.