Page 59 of The Alien's Vicious Starflash Manor

“Lara! Where are you?”

I went completely still, and on my shoulder, Kila jerked, her wings buzzing in my ear. Neither of us said anything for a long moment.

“Why would they use Duke Ivrael’s voice?” the raya finally asked, her voice barely a whisper in my ear.

“No clue.” It wasn’t like I was somehow more likely to answer an Icecaix noble than I was to answer my own sister—or her voice, anyway.

But his voice continued calling my name. And it sounded farther away than the other wolfish voices.

It wasn’t until those wolf-like creatures started hissing and snarling that it occurred to me that there really was something different about this new voice.

“Don’t answer him,” one of the wolves said.

“He doesn’t want you.”

“Not like we want you.”

“He’s exactly like all the other Caix.”

“He’ll just use you and throw you away.”

That’s when I knew the other voice must be the actual Duke Ivrael. I hesitated for only a moment, certain that I would regret any choice I made.

But in the end, I decided that I would rather live in Frost Manor with the possibility of escaping some other day than die in a foreign Caix forest, shredded until there was nothing left ofme but bloody strips, ripped to pieces by wolf-monsters straight out of a fairy tale.

And not the good kind.

Never the good kind.

But oh, God. I knew in the moment just before I called him to us, that there was no one—not a single person in his world or mine—that I would rather have come to my rescue.

“Ivrael,” I shouted. “We’re over here!”

CHAPTER 16

IVRAEL

In the gallery, I pull away from our kiss for a moment.

I know there’s no way she could ever want me as much as I want her. Not after all the ways I’ve already betrayed her.

But I’m willing to accept whatever she’ll give me in this moment.

Or whatever I can take.

Power surges through me as I snap the ribbons taut, savage satisfaction coursing through my veins when she gasps.

Her wrists slam against the wall above her head, bound by my will. Such delicate restraints for such precious cargo.

I could hold her there with pure magic, but the ribbons... the ribbons let me feel every tremor, every instinctive pull against my control.

She arches into me, a whimper caught in her throat. I claim it with my mouth, drinking down her surrender to her desire for me even as my ice magic crackles through the chamber. The temperature plummets. Frost blooms beneath my feet incrystalline patterns, spreading outward like the waves of desire radiating through my core.

Let it spread. Let her see exactly what she does to my control.

Her pulse races beneath my lips—a frantic, fluttering thing. So fragile.

So susceptible to monsters.

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