Page 213 of Rage

Orion smiled before taking my hand. He turned my palm to the sky and placed the completed hank in my hand. The moment he looked away, I felt my own anger at him return.

“I don’t think you would break so easily, Hari.”

“Then let me and Dorian go,” I said.

The air between us thickened. The magic that hummed beneath my skin reached out to him, and I felt his emotions flash through me; anger, need, curiosity. They mixed with my own rage and want. The heady lust that had begun to overtake everything surged up.

His body was so close I could feel the heat of his skin radiating through my clothes.

This pull was undeniable. Dangerous.

“You know,” he said, voice so low I had to lean in close. “You don’t have to fight this. You don’t have to fight me.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, mind racing. I tried to grasp what he meant. What was I fighting?

His eyes were so easy to fall into. His touch intoxicating. And there was his hand moving to the back of my neck. All I wanted to do was to give in.

But Dorian was near… This was not my life. My life was serving the prince, keeping him calm, living in the kingdom.

“I am not fighting you,” I said. “I am fighting this life you have claimed me for.”

He studied me closely, eyes roaming over my face. A scar in his eyebrow twitched as he raised it. “Why fight for your Prince?”

I sighed heavily. “I have always fought for him. I know nothing else. I am his gentleman-in-waiting. It is my duty to cater—to sway him in whatever way he needs.”

The corner of Orion’s mouth ticked up. “You care for him like a piece of meat or a plot of land. You’re his very own princeling.”

Heat rose to my cheeks, and I clenched my fists around the rope in my hands. A vision of wrapping it around Orion’s throat flashed through my mind before I sucked my lip through my teeth and forced myself to calm.

“If that’s what makes sense to you.”

Orion’s brow furrowed. “But is that what you want? What would you choose?”

My fingers froze over the rope that I was tying. No one had ever asked what I wanted. Not in a way that I could truly answer. I looked down over the coarse hemp. I thought of the way it felt tied around my wrists, the way my abdomen heated as Orion’s breath teased my neck.

“A part of me wants to wrap this rope around you and pull until you take your last breath.” I met his eye, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.

“The men on this crew have done far worse,” he said.

I smiled, but set the rope aside, suddenly unable to trust myself with it. “Really, I want to be free, truly free. I want to be loved and love openly, and without restraint.”

“Do you love him?” Orion asked.

My mouth fell open. I searched for what to say, an explanation, but Orion’s eyes pulled me in.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“And does he love you without restraint?” he pressed.

A clatter sounded behind me, and Orion swore. The spell around us broke, and I spun and strode away from the cargo hold.

The hallway was filled with shouts from the crew eating in the mess, but I followed the sound of crashing to the galley.

A head of bouncing curls turned, and I stared deep into the amber eyes of Prince Dorian. His mouth was smeared with stew red as blood, and I sucked in a sharp breath at his state of disarray.

“Hari!” he cried out, his voice breaking.

I stilled, stunned, as he fell toward me. His arms wrapped around my body, his fingers squeezed my jaw.

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