Page 102 of Dare

I swallowed. “In blessed moments, I forget about them. But whenever I remember, it’s like the ink is sizzling, branding me all over again.”

No matter how far I went, I would never be rid of this harness around my throat. I had told Jeryn many things, but the memory of being caught as a child—what happened that day, what I’d done to earn my tattoo—squatted in my gut.

I couldn’t think about it. Not yet.

The villain prince also hadn’t asked, seeming to understand I needed time. Whereas I got the feeling he withheld a secret of his own.

Who marked you?

He’d already found out. All the same, I whispered, “It was Pyre.”

“I know.” Wrath contorted Jeryn’s face. “That’s why I dismembered him.”

My chest hitched. I’d figured as much. That accounted for Jeryn’s bloodstained fingers in the quad and why I hadn’t spotted Pyre on the night I escaped. However, knowing the truth and hearing it spoken were two different experiences.

The prince’s eyes flashed like torture devices. “I showed him no mercy.”

That malevolent look reminded me of his roots. I would be unwise to assume that side of him didn’t still exist, in all its methodical cruelty.

He sat there, the pose casual despite the fatal edge to his voice. “Except I would do worse now. If anyone came near you, I would prolong their punishment for years.” He drew out the words like a series of cuts. “I would kill them patiently.”

Celestial rain pattered the trees and plinked into the sea.

There was a time when I would have been disgusted by his brutality. Now too many other emotions pulled me in too many directions.

Everything he’d done to me. Everything he’d done for me.

All of it roused a question. To get the answer, I shrugged the blanket from my shoulders and pushed back my chair. My skirt brushed the sand as I moved toward the villain prince, then it rode high as I made the next move. Before he could say another word or push me away, I swung one limb over Jeryn’s lap and straddled him.

35

Jeryn

Damn her.

First, I had lost my grip on Flare’s gift when she’d walked into the vestibule wearing that fucking outfit. Seasons, the little beast had conspired to annihilate me. Depleted lungs. Aching cock. Erratic pulse. I’d scarcely had the brains to count above the number five, much less to utter a syllable.

Second, my inability to concentrate or articulate myself every time she smiled or laughed. The prepubescent grin that kept cracking from my lips, because her joy was infectious. The pride of showing Flare this place after discovering it, of witnessing her pleasure, of sharing a table and a meal together. The urgency to touch her. At one point, I had reached out, wanting to adjust the flower in Flare’s hair when she hadn’t been looking, only to pull back at the last moment.

Third, the sight of her feasting. With each voracious bite, she had licked her fingers clean, that curling tongue hypnotizing the everlasting shit out of me.

Condemnation, I had barely kept a steady hold on my chalice. This had been the case until she’d imparted the details of her search for a hidden key, an unknown mission regarding born souls. Then and there, my focus had solidified. And therein came the fourth nail in my coffin.

She trusted me.

Flare had been withholding this information. But finally, she’d confided in me.

And now with me thoroughly disarmed, the little beast committed the final critical act. She draped her body atop mine, her warm thighs splitting around my waist, the position rucking up that infernal skirt. Like a snare, her knees steepled, caging me in.

Slick heat brimmed under her skirt. The dainty fabric of her drawers chafed my pants. Fuck, the material was so finely spun it delineated the shape of her pussy.

My cock had already grown rebellious. Although I’d been rock hard since the vestibule, my erection sprang higher, the crown pushing into Flare’s navel. For devil’s sake, I had chopped humans to pieces without batting an eyelash. Yet this female’s ass resting on my pelvis whittled me down, as though I were a pathetic juvenile receiving his first lap dance.

However, that did not render me speechless. Rather, it was her face. The softest expression I had ever known stared down, followed by the softest touch. Slanting her head, Flare drizzled her fingers down my profile.

Sense deserted me. Pain cramped my features, the sensation threatening to seal my eyes shut. Her coaxing touches had always hurt.

That beating organ in my chest accelerated. Too much and not enough.

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