Page 84 of Empire of Dark

“Good.” I nodded. “Also, we need to bring Venetia.”

“No.” The word barked out, harsh, his look hardening. “Absolutely not.”

I waved my hand in the air between us. “We’re not bringing her to the club—I’m not an idiot. We’re bringing her with and leaving her at the villa that I’m sure you’ll arrange for us on the island. We go to the club, deal with the Genoras and your brother, and tomorrow we take her shopping.”

“Shopping? Have you gone mad?” He gave me a look to melt the skin off of bones.

Good thing my skin was impenetrable.

My arms folded in front of my chest. “She hasn’t been out of here in years, Damen—hasn’t been off this mountain.”

“So?”

“So Venetia needs to see the world. How do you expect her to be able to live a normal life if she’s neverina normal life? She needs to see the world, start to think about finding her place in it. Learn to be around average people. She isn’t ten anymore.”

“No.” He turned away, starting to walk to the castle door.

I grabbed his arm, digging my heels into the gravel. “Do you know your daughter loves to shop, but she’s never been in an actual store?”

“No? What?” His feet stopped and he glanced at me, his brows drawn together. “She likes to shop?”

I moved in front of him, blocking his path. “How have you not noticed that? She buys stuff every day because she’s so bored here. She has a view of the world that is only through a little screen. She has no idea what it is to be around people.”

Ridiculous as it was, he actually looked perplexed. “You want me to take her shopping?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a bad idea.”

I smirked, my brows wiggling. “Or an idea that you’re open to and will let me convince you of the rightness of?”

The smallest smile quirked up the right side of his lips. Even if he was trying to maintain a façade of ire.

Looked to me like someone was going shopping.

Chapter Twenty-Two

{ DAMEN }

For the life of me, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Waiting by the SUV, I’d been staring at Ada since she’d stepped out of our cliffside villa on the northeast coast of the island of Sardinia and walked toward me.

She was a damn supernova.

The brightest explosion in the galaxy and I could look nowhere but at her.

My hands reached out, itching to touch her before she strode over to me, her heels that added three inches to her height digging into the crushed shells of the circular drive. The heels were attached to knee-high black leather boots she wore that made her legs look impossibly long, the short skirt of the tight silver dress ending indecently high on her thighs.

I could just make out the outline of the long, flat dagger she’d hidden along the inner side of her left boot. The skirt of the dress was tight along her hips but flared slightly at the bottom, the sway of it shifting under the waning light of the sun to look like magical ripples over water. The upper part of the dress was looser, with a scooped neck and enough play in the fabric to reflect every one of her movements.

But the dress highlighting her body was only half of it. All of her blond hair was down, falling in loose waves about her shoulders and trailing along her back, her eyes rimmed in a dark liner that made the green of her irises pop. And hell, red lipstick on those full lips of hers and I was seriously reconsidering taking her to the club.

What I really needed to be doing in the moment was throwing her over my shoulder and charging back inside to rip that dress off of her.

Fuck me.

I’d let the whole damn world burn down around us and I wouldn’t give a shit as long as my cock was buried deep within her.

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