Page 58 of The Depraved Prince
She’s asleep, and even through the freezing Cathedral, she manages to warm up any room she’s in. She emanates peace and vulnerability and tastes like what I suppose heaven is. A realm I’m eternally banned from entering…she’s the closest fraction of heaven I’ll ever get to experience, and my father wants me to dispose of it.
I lay down beside her, careful not to wake her, as my hips dip into the mattress and the scent of pure strawberries waft into my senses. I grab a lock of her hair, and my nose trails the soft, black, wavy strands. I could get lost in her forever. She is a mysterious maze I would gladly never find the end to, and I would happily live like that.
My cock is immediately erect, and my God, it takes everything in me not to tear off her clothes and have her suffocate my dick with her mouth, her cunt…or her ass. I’ll take them all if she lets me.
“You’re here,” she breathes out, and I pause my movements. She’s awakened, and my plan to sink my teeth into her and drain her blood until her heart stops is already having hiccups in the process.
I don’t want to do this…but I must.
It’s either me or another immortal that finds her. Even my brother might get a shot if I don’t follow through with this.
“I’m here,” I reassure her, masking the dread that wants to paint its way into the conversation.
“What time is it?” she questions me as she stays still, not bothering to open her eyes yet.
“Three in the morning,” I tell her truthfully. She pauses and does something that has me questioning what’s left of my sanity.She dips her hand over the blankets and finds mine, snaking her fingers through them and intertwining us together.
“Maybe I’m crazy, but I’m going to thank you for saving me at the festival.” There is a short pause as my eyelashes rapidly flutter with amusement, and a vivid smirk crosses my face, and she knows it. “You’re still an asshole for kidnapping me, though,” she spits out and places both our hands over her hip, sliding them until they meet the soft mattress that she’s sleeping on.
“You still said thank you somewhere in that statement. You just made a confession that you lust for me as I do for you…I’ll take it,” I tell her wickedly as I pull myself in closer to her body. I need it on mine. Once her back hits my chest, images of my father sitting on his throne—the throne I will one day own, flashback with malice.
I resent my father’s order. I don’t want to kill her anymore.
How can I after finding out what she tastes like? After she’s placed some sort of trust in me?
Her blood is rare, and on top of it all, it tastes too damn good to let it die with her. When she touches or looks at me, it puts me into a fucking bubble, and I’mher prisoner. Granted, she looks at me like shewantsto hate me, but the way her heart flutters irregularly like it’s fighting its own battle to regain a constant normal rhythm again that flows to destroy the feelings that simmer in her veins when I speak to her, speaks mountainous volumes.
I know she won’t say it or admit it to me, but she thrives on being forced and choked. She loves it and craves it. I’ve read most of her diary, and she wants to experience it. She wants me to lose control just to feel her…and I lost that control months ago in Texas when I first laid my eyes on her.
In return, she makes me feel like maybe I do have more to give than to take. I’m willing to fight wars to keep her tetheredto me and only me for the rest of my pathetic existence. My selfish need to acquire my powers is starting to dwindle and be replaced by another selfish need—or rather, my obsession with her existence.
I pull down her black-laced nightgown until it reveals her naked skin, and she doesn’t fight it.
The scars on her breast that King Davenport’s son gave her stare back at me mockingly. A loathing reminder that I failed to protect her entirely; someone else scarring her makes me livid, and I see black.
“You say you’re going to kill me, but here I am, breathing in a room that my entire house fits, wearing clothes I know I’ll never be able to afford, in a Cathedral that looks like a castle high up in the mountains…in bed with you.” Her voice stabs my ears with determination. “I crave you, Hayden when I know it might be fucked up to feel this way. You have me in a dark fog, and I’m unsure I want to escape it. I know nothing about you…and yet you know everything about me. How is that fair?”
Her skin is warmer than usual. Her heart rate is faster than normal, and I sense something isn’t right about her health.
“Are you feeling okay? You’re hot.” My hand slicks across her warm temple. Is she sick?
“I’m fine!” she lies. “Don’t change the subject. I want answers, Hayden. Plea—” She refrains from using that word, and I twitch when she does.
She turns around and lets my hand go. An aura of emptiness flares into me cruelly at her absence. She turns to face me with beaming brown eyes, glistening even underneath the darkness; her eyes have a chokehold on me.
Mulling over her gentle yet destructive words, I’m hesitant to respond.
Because I came into this room with the intent to put an end to her life and an end to this brewing war, but the way shewreaks havoc on me, already dripping honey in between her thighs, is a reminder I want her alive more than anything in this world. I don’t want to betray her trust. Fuck. I don’t want to see the look on her face when she finds out the truth.
“You fail to realize that all I’ve done for the past six months is risk my right to the throne, my eternal damnation, standing up for everything I believed in to keep you and your family alive. My ways of doing so may be depraved and frowned upon in your fragile human world, but it has to be done. Keeping you away from the Davenports, your family, and the life you once knew is necessary.”
She narrows her eyes at me, and a tear falls down her cheek. I want to wipe it away, but I hold my ground. I need to get this out.
“Why did you try to commit suicide at sixteen years old?”
She stiffens.
“What? How do you know about that?!”
