“Christian,” Rorrick warns.
“Crymson, sit up for me.” He clasps his hands casually in front of himself, an image of patience from a man who is anything but. “Sit up. Face me like the fighter I know you are.”
I shift in Seven’s arms, and his hands hover around me as I move. My thighs meet his as my back presses fully against his chest. My pulse hammers, pleading with me to run, but I know it’s no use.
He’ll always find me.
Christian takes slow steps, drawing out every second of his game until anxious adrenaline is thrumming erratically inside me. When his long fingers grip the twisted vines of the armchair, Seven’s palms push more protectively across my stomach. Magic slips through him and into me, the thick feel of it calming my heartbeat and clearing my thoughts. I’m pressed in between a strange mixture of psychotic danger and unearthly bliss.
“He can’t save you, Pet. None of us can.” Christian’s hellish eyes bore into mine. “What do you expect us to do for you?”
He’s right. The Blood King will never release me from the promise my father made. I’ll never have a life. I’ll only be a thing to be used and abused in the most disgusting way.
But they’ll be here too. They’re being used, too, in a way. They’re the only good thing in my life... even before I was taken to this chaotic kingdom.
“Never leave me,” I whisper on a jagged breath.
It’s strange to ask him to always be with me when he’s an inch away from ripping my throat out himself. But I know this isn’t the real him. It’s whatever dark magic curses his blood. And even that cruel part of him is better than spending all eternity alone with the vampire king.
Christian’s eyebrows lower over his glinting eyes. Some of the steel gray shines through. My trembling fingers lift, brushing over his cold knuckles ever so slowly. It feels like I’m reaching through the bars of a lion’s cage...
But that drowning chaos in his gaze softens even more. The inky lines crawling over his face lessen and fade. Until mesmerizing starry eyes look back at me.
He stares down at where my hand touches his. I almost expect him to push it away like he did the girl in the study...
But he doesn’t.
“I’ll always be here with you, Crymson,” he says on a gentler tone. A voice that sounds more lost than anything I’ve ever heard. Maybe he’s saddened by that admission. Does the Blood Prince hate being here as much as I do?
“I don’t want you to be here with me. I want you to be hereforme.”
Say you’ll be the one thing good in my twisted, fucked-up little life.
Please.
“You want the Blood Prince to cater to a half-breed?”
I consider the fae mark I saw behind his sister’s ear. His messy blonde hair doesn’t hide the natural curve of his own ears.
There’s no tattoo there, but... is the Blood Prince a half-breed just like me? Is he actually a “lying fucking creature” his father taught him to hate?
Eloquent fingers reach out, and he strokes the long length of my shining locks. His hand tangles there as he twists once, twice—my head jars up hard, my body bowing beneath him.
“You want me to bow to you, Crymson Vain?” His lips brush lightly over mine, and I taste his wicked words.
I shouldn’t like it. But I do. I crave his affection that he hides so well. I love that he gives it to me despite how hard he tries to hate me.
My thighs shift with a tingling neediness coiling through my core. My jaw is angled up hard, and I refuse to look away from the glint in his blood-kissed eyes.
“Yes,” I whisper across his cruel mouth.
I want so badly to feel his lips against mine. I want to get lost in his kiss the way I did that very first night. Before I knew what kind of monster he was.
Before he flipped my life upside down with no hope of it being normal ever again.
“Then show me what we get in return.”
His hand drops from my hair and jaw, and I don’t know why I lean into the absence of his body even as he steps back. One step after another, he gives me space like he’s waiting for me to make a presentation to a room full of New York executives.