Page 92 of Infernal

A meld of fiery emotions flickered through his eyes as he clamped down on his jaw and pushed forward into my personal space. “You. Are. Not. Going. Anywhere. With. Him.”

Fighting the urge to cower away with him, I held my ground, though my voice lacked any real punch when I muttered, “I don’t think that’s your call to make.”

His eyes tapered as a devious smile impressed itself upon his lips. “If you think I’m going to stand by and allow you sacrifice your life to Lucifer, for a useless human no less, you have gravelly misunderstood who I am or what I am willing to do to get what I want. And make no mistake about it, angel.Youare what I want.”

I chose to ignore the last part of his statement, even though it made my stomach feel as though I’d just taken a swan-dive off a cliff.

“If you think that Taylor is a useless human, you have gravelly misunderstood whoIam,” I quickly fired back instead.

“Perhaps not in your eyes, angel, but in the grand scheme of things, she most certainly is.”

“If I don’t give him something he wants, she’s going to die!” Of that, I was certain. He would not hesitate to kill her just the way he did Hannah and the people at Temple. None of us meant anything to him.

“Then she dies,” he said flatly, his tone and expression void of any emotion.

Just hearing him utter the words sent a torrent of rage through my body. “I’m not going to let him kill my best friend! That’s not even an option!” Pissed off, I hopped off the bed and tried to put some much-needed distance between us, but he was already in front of me, blocking my path by the time my feet hit the ground.

“I will follow you wherever you wish to go, angel, fight as many of these doomed wars as you wish to fight,” he said, craning his head so that we were at eye-level. “I’ll even help you save these unserviceable humans you call friends, but I will not, under any circumstances, allowyouor anyone else to extinguish your light.”

“You can’t stop me,” I challenged, though I regretted it as soon as the words sounded back to me.

“I most certainly can,” he laughed icily, his dark eyes glimmering with something sinister and foreboding.

Shit. Hecouldstop me. Pretty easily too. I needed to back us up, to bring us back to neutral grounds before he went ahead and did something stupid, like compelling me to run off to Paris with him.

“Look, I can save her, Dominic,” I said, my voice softer now as I quickly tried to explain myself. “I know I can, and maybe just maybe, I can save everyone else too. If I can get him to agree to take me instead and trick him into coming back to Hades with me, we can figure out a way to close the Gates and trap him there.”

“And what of you?”

I shrugged, because it didn’t matter. “I don’t belong in this world, Dominic. Everything I touch turns to shit.”

“I wholeheartedly beg to differ.”

“Yeah? Name one good thing that’s happened since I came here,” I challenged.

He straightened his back and lifted his chin, making me feel as though he were towering over me. Heat pooled in my stomach when he gazed down at me and said, “You’re looking at it.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

“I like to think that you’ve made me a better man, angel,” he said and then cracked a mischievous smile. “Well, much better than I was when you found me.”

As sweet as his words were, I shook my head at him and said, “That doesn’t count.”

“Why not?” He appeared to be offended by that.

“Because we’re bloodbonded,” I answered gingerly.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know. It just seems like something that should disqualify you.” I looked away and then muttered, “Either way, it isn’t good enough.”

Not when I got my boyfriend trapped, Hannah killed, and my best friend kidnapped—twice. Not to mention the countless others that have been hurt or killed indirectly because of me. The list wasn’t even almost even.

“I have to do something, Dominic, and this is the only thing I know of that doesn’t involve plunging a sword into Trace’s heart.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you should be considering that alternative?”

My nostrils flared as my eyes locked onto his. “I’m not killing Trace. I can’t do that to him.”

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