Page 14 of Empire of Dark

Anger visibly twisted through him, his body expanding from toes to shoulders—a swell of the ocean you don’t see coming until it knocks you off your feet. “You are not my prisoner. You can leave this place at any time. You should treat my home as your home while you are here.”

“And stick Triaten with a debt to you hanging over his head?” Run.Run.The instinct to get away from him screamed from every one of my nerves, the hatred in me starting to coat a thick tar along my belly. Instead, I took a step toward him, my neck craning to look up at his height. “No. I have to be here. That is the deal. And that is a prison no matter how you try to spin the reality of it.”

He glared at me for a long moment, his hard brown eyes shifting near to full amber in the light. “You are only wasting time, for, believe me, you will succumb.”

“Will I?”

A smile, easy, came to his lips. “Your presence is required for dinner every night I am in residence.”

“Also not part of the deal.”

His head cocked to the side, considering me for a long moment. “Yet I think you will be joining me.”

He stepped around me, picking up my untouched cup of tea and taking a sip. His look sliced into me. “Otherwise, how will you know if your food, if your drink, isn’t spiked?” He set the cup down onto the table and moved next to me, his chest brushing against my shoulder as he leaned down, his breath hot againstmy neck just below my ear. “And oh, the things I could do with your pliant, comatose body. Not awake to utter one word of denial.”

My face whipped to him, our noses almost touching, the hatred rolling off of me in boiling waves. “You wouldn’t.”

He stared at me in silence, his right eyebrow lifting.

“Bastard.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t need to resort to drugging a woman to get her into my bed.”

“Seems like that’s precisely what your kind would resort to.”

He chuckled, low and smooth like the thickest honey pouring over the tar of hatred coating my insides.

I blinked.

None of that shit. He wasn’t good looking and his breath on my skin wasn’t sending goosebumps racing up my scalp. Even if he was and it was.

No. He wasn’t anything more than a Folotto maggot. Maggot.

I turned my face away from his.

He exhaled a whisper of breath across my neck. “I don’t need tricks when I’m a master of pleasure.”

I scoffed. “Of course you are.”

“Don’t believe me?”

“I believe in a lot of things.” I took a step away from him to air that was my own, and I met his gaze. “What I believe about you is that your ego walked into this room before you even set foot into it. Men like you are wrapped up in how you think you can manipulate others. It’s sport to you, and I am just the newest toy to roll into your vision.”

His eyes flared.

I was dangerously close to pushing a malefic I had no business pushing, and not ten minutes into meeting him. But that didn’t curb my tongue when it damn well should have. “You think I’m here for breeding. I’m not. I’m here to repay a debt. I’mhere to help Triaten. One year. That was the agreement and I’ll abide by that. But I am not your newest toy.”

“If you wish to prey upon details to get you out of this year of breeding, then I do believe I didn’t agree to not drugging you. Especially when that will make you malleable enough that you don’t resist me and don’t put up the slightest fuss when I want to put seed in you.”

Bile slipped up my throat. “I repeat—I am not your newest toy. I’m not a fucking blow-up doll for your cock.”

A crinkle went around his eyes. Amused—he was bloody well entertained by my resistance. Had no one ever said no to the man? Conceited ass.

His stare didn’t veer from me. “No, what you are, is afraid.”

My eyes narrowed at him. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Ahhh.” His head angled to the side, and he nodded as he moved, collapsing the space between us. “If you’re not afraid, then you won’t object to me proving it to you.”

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