Page 644 of Flirting with Darkness

“You CUNT!” She moves so fast that the open-handed slap catches me by surprise. Her palm strikes my cheek, fingernails barely missing my left eye. I jerk back; the sound that leaves my throat is something between a choke and a gasp.

“That’s it,” Braith’s deep baritone growls out, and wraps his arms around Emi, hauling her up and out.

“He just wants it,” Emi screams past his bulk as she struggles against him, “he doesn’t want YOU! You’re NOTHING!”

A hundred sets of eyes are on me as she’s manhandled out the double door entrance and down the hallway, disappearing around the corner.

My throat hurts. My fingers reach up and touch it, the skin tender. I’m just shocked the chain hasn’t broken, and with shaking fingers I reach up to take it off to check it for damage.

“Don’t do that.”

His voice sends an immediate thrill down my spine, and I whip round to greet it. Hadrion stands there at my back, and I’m struck by how seamlessly and effortlessly the whole world seems to melt away around us. The club is silent, sober, still; he’s the only thing anyone is looking at anymore. Just him.

And I’m caught up in it too, unable to tear my eyes away from his presence. My pulse buzzes under my skin, through my veins, and I close a single step’s worth of distance between us.

“Katy… Are you safe? Are you okay?” Hadrion lifts both hands to cradle my face, and he leans down shamelessly to kiss me. My eyes droop shut and I fall deeply into it, leaning up to kiss him back. His hands slide down my neck, framing it with his fingers, covering the abraded skin.

“I’m sorry she got in here.”

“How’d she know where to find me?” I ask, not entirely able to tolerate the tender way he’s touching me. I glance away. I writhe, awkwardly. Everyone’s looking at us. I can’t meet their eyes. I don’t like this, being the center of attention like we are right now. It’s hard enough to be his… his favorite, or whatever it is Live wants to call me. But the pressure of all of this public attention is too much.

“Can I go upstairs?” I ask, my voice small and hesitant. He frowns.

“Of course.” He glances over his shoulder and Live waves us off. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the side door that’ll take us up to the privacy of his loft.

“How did she find me? Does that mean they know where I am —?!” ‘They’, of course, referring to whatever consortium of very bad men she and my dad are apparently now associating with. Panic starts to spread throughout my body like the growth of an ivy, and I pause on the stairs, wondering for a moment if I might fall over. My knees are weak; the left one buckles.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Hadrion says instantly, a little too instantly, “but maybe…” He pauses, gilded eyes glittering as he looks down at me. He offers his hand and pulls me up the stairs gently, allowing me to put most of my weight on him. “Maybe it’s time I do what I have to, in order to keep you safe.”

Those words feel like they’re falling into my soul, shooting right through it.

“To keep me —?”

He reaches up toward me, and time seems to slow down. His big, strong hands are around my neck, thumb brushing the nape. Is he going to kiss me again?

“Would you let me keep you safe, properly? Do anything to keep you well and truly safe?” he murmurs.

“Yes,” I whisper back. “I trust you.”

“Good,” he replies, and then he leans down.

My eyes flutter shut. I sigh and tilt my head up to take what he’s offering. I’m open to him — mind, body, soul, and sex. All of me, it can be his. It will be, if he wants to take it, and I’m ready for him to do so.

But nothing happens. For a split second, his fingers drag along the base of my spine, and then the heavy pressure at my collarbone gives.

My necklace comes tumbling off. He catches it in his hand as my eyes open in shock. I stare down.

“B-but you said —”

“No, you said.” His breathing hitches, and he’s turning the necklace over in his hand, stepping backward, retreating up the steps. “Anything to keep you safe. Anything.”

“Hadrion?”

His yellow eyes flare, and he blinks once, slowly. And when he opens them again, they’re no longer yellow.

They’re living, breathing, burning flame, so red it turns to white, then to blue. The glow from them, inhuman and supernatural, brights up the whole stairwell in a way that seems both hot and cold, light and dark, all at the same time.

I stagger back, nearly falling down the flight of stairs. My hand shoots out for him to catch me, but he doesn’t reach back out to me. Instead my fingers wrap around the railing, holding myself fast.

---