Page 15 of Empire of Dark

My fingernails digging into my palms at my sides, I glared up at him. “I’m not afraid and I’m not taking my clothes off for you.”

“Fine. If you’re not afraid, then you won’t mind me innocently touching you here.”

His hand moved down toward my crotch and just before I was about to catch his arm and break it, he flattened his palm against my lower abdomen.

It was instant, a flush of pleasure, so pure and blinding and sinking into my core that my breath stopped, my eyes closing at the intrusion between my legs.

Damn. Triaten had said he was an empath—but this was nothing like any empath I’d ever been around. Putting actual feeling into my nerves, not just emotions into my brain.

The pounding started, the throbbing of my folds, my clit, my inner walls. Pulsating with such ferocity I curled over his hand on my belly, my panties soaked. Panting, I tried to fight thepleasure that had my body in a vise. Building and building deep in my core until it was raging, thundering me toward the edge.

He shifted his fingers ever so slightly on my belly and that was it.

Fucking hell.

Gasping, I slammed over that damn precipice, the pleasure ripping through my body and sinking into my veins, not letting me go. My body ignoring my brain as I orgasmed in brutal wave after brutal wave.

“Hell, you are ripe,” Damen chuckled in my ear. “That was easier than usual.”

“Get your fucking hand off me.” I ripped his hand off my belly and stumbled away from him, putting the coffee table between us. My legs barely able to hold me upright for the quiver in them.

Pain from him—that didn’t scare me. I’d already suffered the worst pain in my life, so he had nothing on me in that department.

But what he’d just done—that scared the shit out of me.

My hand went up between us. “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again.”

He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, the smallest smile quirking his lips. “I’ll have Josie show you to your room. We eat at eight. A wardrobe has been provided for you.”

He left the room and I seethed in a breath.

I picked up the tea cup and drained it.

I was parched.

And pissed.

And still fucking throbbing.

Chapter Five

{ DAMEN }

The threat of drugging Ada was enough to get compliance.

She would eat with me, if only to get food that she was assured hadn’t been drugged.

Not that I would ever do it.

But I certainly wasn’t above threatening it.

I collected her at the door of her room at seven fifty-five. A generosity that I would afford her this one night. I could have sent Josie or another maid to fetch her, as I usually did with guests at Netherstone. But I was curious on how defiant she was set on being. Plus, she needed to be shown the way through the castle.

I even knocked.

While she surely already assumed I would full well barge into her room without warning, she needed to know I had a civilized side as well. The woman was mine for a year. It didn’t need to be an unpleasant year.

The door cracked open, the top half of Ada’s face peeking out at me. “Oh. It’s you.”

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