Page 139 of Prince of Masks
No, it isn’t any of those things.
It’s Dray.
Since the incident at Bluestone, he hasn’t really done anything to me. The season brings stricter expectations than we face at Bluestone—and so he must be caught up in all of that, and finds little time to torture me.
That’s what it feels like.
But it’s not what it is.
I know Dray, and there is a beast lurking behind his beautiful face, a darkness behind the crushed-glass blue of his eyes.
There is evil in him.
And there will be a reason for him sparing me from that evil.
I am too foolish in allowing this dance.
I stare harder at the silhouettes on the path, willing their slow, gradual paces to hurry the fuck up and get over here, quick.
They are not even halfway down the path when the melody ends, then shifts into another tune altogether.
I try to peel away from him, but Dray’s hold only firms around me.
I turn a blank look up at him. “The dance is over.”
The pad of his thumb brushes over my spine.
I’m held so tightly to him that, to look up at him is to angle our faces so close together that I feel the warmth of his breath on my mouth, the brush of his nose against mine.
I read him. I predict him.
And before his mouth can meet mine, I turn my face—and his kiss brushes over my cheek.
“Stop that,” I say, firm. “I am not yours to kiss whenever you feel like it. I am not yours to torture.”
Unfazed, his full mouth grazes the length of my cheekbone. “Would you rather I torture you?” The soft murmur of his voice sends a ripple down my spine. “Is it easier to go head-to-head with me, knowing you fail every time, just to avoid feeling…this.” The warmth of his breath finds the nook of my neck.
A shudder unravels down to my belly.
The nip of his bite is soft on my flesh. “Do you think about this…” His tongue flicks out, soft, sharp, over the curve of my neck, “the way it feels…” That nipping kiss of his glides up to my ear, and I shudder with a wispy breath, “when you touch yourself?”
A hiss cuts through my clenched teeth.
I tug against his hold, violent. “Let me go, Dray.”
His grin sweeps over my jawline. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I angle my face to align with his. My mouth curls around the words, “When it comes to you, the only fantasy I have is your grisly death. I dream up witch hunts, you burning at the stake, and I laugh as you scream.”
His lashes lower over eyes made from crushed glass, a warning.
I am not done.
A slick snarl darkens my face. “You overestimate your meaning to me, Dray. It will be a happy day for me when you die.”
Still, that arm is firmly looped around me, and I’m pinned to him as much as I was when I first started to pull out of his hold.
Dray brings his hand to my chin—then chucks a finger under it, arching my neck in a way that brings bites of pain along my throat.
