Page 64 of Sinner's End

I smile at her, not an inch of humor left in me. “I grew too big for my own ego, little human,” I say softly, watching that pulse beat out of time with my own. My hands itch to hold her tight, squeeze until that pulse slows, and tap out the rhythm to match mine until we both…

Stop.

Her breath catches as I find myself a mere breath from her lips, arched over her body, long steps from my desk where I left myself the last time I checked. Instead of cursing up a storm or retreating, I reach for her. When she doesn’t back away, standing frozen like good prey always does, I fit my hand around her slim neck.

My thumb finds that spot I like, tapping gently as her body’s beat increases. A deep snarl leaves me when she doesn’t react the way I require.

Addi stares up at me, confusion, not fear, etching her stunning features. “What do you need?” she whispers, searching my face.

I should pull away, drop my hand, and let her go. I should tell her to leave this place and never return. Stay the hell away from the living dead who remain within the boundaries, because all we will do to her innocence is destroy her.

She cannot withstand our combined wrath unscathed. We will break her, like we ruined Bowen. He served me, and look at the outcome of that little venture.

A reaping, sin, and carnage.

The dirt floor of Harken bathed in my personal fluids, and not the fun sort.

I still have no idea how he managed to complete a full transfusion of his blood to mine, but right now isn’t the time to contemplate his wicked ways.

And yet despite all Addi’s declarations she’ll stay away, here she is, within arm’s reach. Within my hands.

“You said no sex, little hell kitten,” I breathe, watching her eyes dilate as I close my hand around her delicate, mortal throat. “But you didn’t say anything about death. What if I take us both back to my home, and show you what true pleasure is?”

A lie, because there’s no way I’ll take her to a place where she’ll never escape. After today I’m not certain of the welcome I’ll receive there when I do return. She could end up in the realm I left and I could be stuck … here.

Or nowhere.

The yawning pit of nothingness reserved for a greater sort of damnation than anything I’ve delivered with my eternal, unending soul.

“Do it,” she breathes, crystaline eyes sparkling with tears of the horrors she’s tread simply to get to me. “End us both and show me who you are, Mana. I want to know.” Her head tips back as she offers me everything without a single thought otherwise.

The sound that grows within my chest isn’t human.

“You have no idea what you’re asking, little one.” My thumb traces the line of her jaw. I could close my hand, collapse her windpipe, and crush her bone structure in one snap of my wrist. She’d feel pain for less than a second before she fell.

“Show me,” she begs with all the purity of a freshly broken heart.

I swallow the need breeding within me. “Another time I would pull your chest open and drink from your bleeding heart while you still breathe,” I serenade her, my voice low and seductive, the one I’ve used on a hundred-thousand souls ripe for devouring.

Addi quivers in my arms as her tears fall, but they aren’t for herself. No, these tears—they’re for the monster in me. She feelssorryfor me.

The need to shred her flesh doubles, triples, until I’m fighting my own base nature to keep her alive in my hands. The simplest answer is to release her, turn around and throw myself from the window. I don’t care if I wake on the ground, alive, in pain, or not at all.

As long as I don’t take her with me.

I lean down and press a kiss to her pulse, gently, sweetly. “I will not bring that fate to you, Adreana.” Before I can claim her mouth, I release her, though I don’t back away, still inhaling the scent of her, needing to listen to the blood thrumming through her body. Needing to know she’s real.

This day is beyond fucked up. If she’s a hallucination, I won’t be surprised. Right now, I’ll take everything I can get.

“Because you love me.” New tears coat her face, glazing her skin with anguish.

I smile gently. “You should go, sweet girl. This isn’t the place for you. It never was.”

Her lips tremble. “Are … are you throwing me out?”

The odd rearrangement of our first meeting, the meaningthe same, the words twisted, sits strangely in my gut, though it sounds right.

“No, my love,” I whisper to the girl I hated on sight and fell in love with for all the wrong reasons. “I’m not throwing you out. But this place is not safe for you. I am no longer your haven.”

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