Page 37 of Virgin Sacrifice

With one flick of my wrist, I could break hers. It would only take one easy move to yank her down over my knee while swiftly bringing it up to knock the wind from her, incapacitating her. A moment would be all I needed to snap her neck on the spot. Or worse, knock her unconscious so I could inflict untold horrors on her later.

I didn’t do any of those things, though.

Because despite all my digging into her, the countless hours Nix and I had spent watching her, I still couldn’t figure out what had happened to a girl like her that she could look me in the eye as though she had nothing to lose. As though death was nothing to her.

Maybe the promise of murder written in her eyes wasn’t intended for me. But then who did Luz Torres wish dead?

I waited for a moment to see if she would continue her attack, but instead, she stared at me, chest heaving, in a simple white spandex workout top that hugged every sinful inch of her.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” she hissed.

As I looked down at her, I realized that she was still hanging from my grasp, the tips of her toes barely touching the ground anymore at this point.

She started to shout at me.

“It’s you and your brother and that raging dickhole cousin of yours!” she yelled, well past the point of being embarrassed if anyone was near enough to hear.

They weren’t. I picked my post for a reason.

“It’s not enough to harass me in class or stalk me in the hallways, you have to leave your sick souvenirs all over campus for me to find!”

She was practically vibrating with the intensity of the emotions that overflowed from her, and something in me wanted to pull her body flush to mine to see if I could catch even the slightest taste of the passion she was feeling.

I didn’t.

I kept her at a distance, although I relaxed my grip, allowing her feet to touch the ground again.

I watched with clinical detachment as she stood there, quiet now but still seething as I considered my priorities.

As much as I was drawn to whatever damage she was so skillfully hiding, the girl would have to be punished for her transgressions here today. No one tried to lay a hand on a Blackwell and got away with it.

However, her claim that someone else was stalking her on campus, leaving things for her to find, piqued my curiosity.

I knew that none of my family members were involved, but given the earlier incident with the heart, I was curious, to say the least, as to what else she had been receiving.

There was also the fact that she lumped my cousin in with us.

I had known that Luz was in one of his classes, but when Nix asked him about her, Locke claimed to barely remember the girl. Someone had been keeping secrets, it seemed.

I had a choice. I could show her exactly what happened when you came at a Blackwell man. Or I could satisfy my curiosity about whatever it was she was squawking about.

The first option was tempting, very tempting.

I may have been the quiet one, but I was far from a fucking monk. And despite the fury still simmering in her eyes, she had made no effort to escape me, which made me wonder how much closer she would let me get to her.

Unfortunately, there was no way she would be forthcoming with me after I did the things to her body that I was currently imagining.

Keeping my grip firm on her wrists, which had to be getting sore by now, I tugged her farther into the darkness with me. Step by step she yielded cautiously, until she was toe-to-toe with me, looking up with wide eyes filled with an intoxicating mix of rage and curiosity.

My patience was waning as I relaxed my grip on her wrists and moved to hold her hands loosely at her sides. I watched as her head tilted ever so slightly as confusion overtook curiosity in her for the briefest of moments before she schooled herself.

No wonder she’d caught Locke’s attention.

Without warning, I yanked her firmly up against me, at the same time taking a step forward into her space so that every inch of her exquisitely curved flesh was forced against mine. I barely managed to contain the groan that rose up at the sensation of her warm curves pressing into me. When a throaty gasp escaped those perfectly plump lips of hers, I lost it.

“Petite diablesse,” I rumbled, sounding more like a monster than a man.

My voice was rough from disuse, but it was worth seeing the mask of anger she wore so brilliantly slip for a moment. For a single breath, her eyes flooded with amber and her petal-colored lips curved into a soft O before she caught herself.

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