“Please?”
“That’s a very bad idea.” His tone’s receding, and my fear of losing Ivy entirely rises up in my chest.
“Please, Ruiner.”
“You escaped once, Bella. You won’t leave a second time.”
“Please.”
“I—I have to go.”
He’s saying no without actually saying no because he and I both know that he can’t fucking say no to me!
My soul isn’t tainted. I’m not cruel or sinful. I’d be delicious. He has said so himself a time or two.
I leap from the bed. My boots hit the floor hard with impatience, and instead of fearfully pulling back the sheet, I rip it away and reach into the heavy darkness.
You never reach under the bed.
Never.
Because a monster can’t resist the smell of a human.
Especially a monster who can’t resist me already.
Claws sink into the skin of my wrist. Pain tears through my flesh. Air shoves from my lungs. A slamming overtakes my frail heart. My eyes clench closed.
And then he takes me.
Chapter Four
The splinterof floorboards bites against my stomach as my shirt catches on an old nail and then a twisted, jagged tree root. Dirt scatters over my hair and eyes. My mouth clamps shut, and I try not to breathe in the cold earth as I’m pulled right through it.
The talons around my wrist are accompanied by another set of razor-sharp nails before a hard, strong chest meets mine. Everything’s a mess of darkness and dust. It takes some time before it all settles around us in shining rays like glitter glinting in the sun.
But it does settle. My eyes open slowly, and those piercing bright blue eyes stare down on me. Not blue like the sea... blue like nature clawed its way into this man’s gaze and froze his heart solid.
Singed cerulean maybe. Crystalized turquoise.
His eyes are so hypnotic, I don’t immediately notice the burning scar that’s lighting up his face like lava just beneath the inky black wound.
“Wha—what happened?” My fingertips lift, and the sting of his jagged blemish burns across my fingertips. But I don’t pull back.
Dark lashes close softly, and for a moment, it feels like eight long years haven’t passed at all. He’s cradling me in his arms. His broad shoulders and towering height shadow over me like I’m a small gem he’ll always keep hidden away close to his heart. Enormous black wings cover protectively around us. Hidden beneath those wings are eight spiderlike legs. He uses them like weapons. He splits his victims open, and...
I blink those vicious thoughts away.
When he looks at me, it’s like I’m that sixteen-year-old girl still trying to remember how to keep my weak heartbeat steady so he doesn’t hear how he affects me.
Ruiner isn’t generically attractive. He’s bulky and scarred. A man with eight thin spider legs and massive black wings isn’t typically called cute. But just beneath that calm and collected exterior is a violent man.
He’s sinfully sexy. A roughness that can protect and a heart that can love only emphasize that.
And I fell right into that attraction as a young girl. Even if I never did tell him.
The sunlight shines high in the sky above the pine-scented forest. The midnight hours of my little hometown are long gone. That’s not the only difference between the two places though. No, the magic that’s burnt into this kingdom effects its inhabitants far more than anything else.
The darkness, they call it.