Page 63 of Empire of Dark

“I…” She shook her head, then her body convulsed and she pushed herself off of me, stumbling to her bare feet. “I can’t be here. Can’t think of this. I just…can’t.”

I sensed it instantly, the firestorm of energy with nowhere to go exploding in her, threatening to take her down. Forcing her to flee.

I grabbed her wrist before she could gain a step away from me. “I can feel it in you.”

She twisted her hand out of my wrist, stepping over to the table to pick up her shirt and pants, her movements jerking, manic. “Which is why I need to go—I can’t trust.”

“You can’t trust me?”

She didn’t answer, her hands yanking the fabric of her pants in all directions, trying to right them enough to pull them on.

I stood, sidling next to her. “Except you can trust me.”

Her hands stilled and she looked up at me. Pain was already starting to creep in along the edge of her irises. “I can’t trust you—I can’t use you as a crutch.”

“Or you can stay and use my body as you need to in order to dispel the energy. No trickery. No power on my part. Just my body, yours to do with what you want.”

She stared up at me, her jaw shifting slowly back and forth.

In a flurry, she dropped her clothes and jumped on me, her mouth and body crashing into me. Hungry and raging and weirdly sweet with the innocence that permeated her.

But harsh. Brutal and demanding.

Fuck, yes.

This was going to be fun.

And if I had to use a bit of my power to help suck the vicious energy from her while she was screaming in ecstasy, she never needed to know.

I wrapped my hand into her hair, yanking her head away from me so I could attack her neck, my teeth raking across her skin, knowing I couldn’t draw blood, much less bruise her.

Damn, but this woman would destroy me.

I wasn’t sure I cared.

Chapter Sixteen

{ ADA }

The Folotto family thrived in creating chaos in the world.

It was where their riches, their power came from.

Topple governments. Install dictators. Assassinate dictators. Start wars. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Chaos.

And I had let the one member of their family that was the opposite of chaos, that was control down to his pinky toe, create chaos in me.

The whole reason I was here was to deny Damen, to stall for a year. To see what chaos of my own I could create in that time. To finally find the ones that killed Lyle and tortured me. To gain that peace that would come with their deaths.

But here I was, a month and a half in, and I was already in Damen’s bed—every night for the last two weeks. And I already adored his snarky, witty, weirdly kind daughter that had suffered under his family’s hands just as I did.

This didn’t seem like chaos. It seemed like me folding at the first touch of Damen’s hands on my body.

Weak. I was weak.

Triaten hadn’t thought that of me. If anything, he thought out of all the panthenite breeders, I had the strongest mettle of mind against the Folottos.

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