Page 31 of His Darkest Desire

“Don’t expect me to say thank you,” she said around the mouthful of food.

Her captor rolled his eyes as he tore off another piece of bread. “From what I’ve come to know of you, human, gratitude is the last thing I’d expect.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“The only thing I need know of you is that you agree—”

The wisps flared, fluttering to either side of him. Their haunting whispers filled Kinsley’s ears as her captor glared at the little creatures, his mouth twisting into a scowl. He buttered his bread, this time with far more aggression than grace, and tore into it with his fangs.

He looked like a child who’d just been scolded.

Kinsley watched him, amused. “Were you going to finish your thought, or…”

He turned his scowl toward her. “Have you finished eating?”

She stared at him as she slipped the last bite of the bread he’d given her into her open mouth with deliberate slowness. “Nope.”

One of the wisps moved to his ear and spoke to him, its voice barely audible to Kinsley.

“So you can understand them?” she asked.

Without looking at her, he ripped off one of the pheasant’s legs and placed it on her plate. “Unfortunately, I do.”

“Do they have names?”

The wisps turned toward her.

Her captor added some roasted vegetables to her plate. “Yes.”

“And they are…?”

Picking up a knife, he cut a thick slice of cheese from the wedge and dropped it beside the vegetables before gesturing to the brightest of the three wisps. “Flare.”

That was the one who’d been in the bedroom earlier. The one she’d drawn.

He pointed to the next. “Echo. And Shade.”

The last wisp, Shade, was a little less intense than the others, a little more incorporeal. And their core was just a smidge darker.

“Nice to meet you, Flare, Echo, and Shade,” Kinsley said.

Flare sketched a tiny bow that was mimicked by Echo. Shade dipped their head.

Kinsley picked up the pheasant leg and looked at her captor. “And do you have a name?”

“You may refer to me as your—”

She thrust the drumstick at him. “I am not calling you master, so you can just forget it.”

His features darkened, and briefly, it seemed as though the room had darkened with them. “My name is of no concern to you.”

“Lord Asshole it is then.” She took a bite out of the leg.

That light, tinkly sound came from all three wisps. Their laughter.

He growled, flattening a hand on the table. “My heart swells with gladness at seeing the four of you amuse each other so.”

Kinsley widened her eyes in mock surprise as she pressed her fingers to her chest. “You have a heart? Who would have thought?”

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