Page 23

How can I be sure there aren’t more?

“This is exactlywhy you have to die.”

I’m flattened on my back, a hand clamped over my mouth, keeping the scream locked in my throat. My hand raises, fingers curled, prepared to lash out.

“Jesus, Baroness. Do you ever just quit?”

Not until he’s dead for good.

My fingers tighten–to nothing. No knife. I blink, and the hazy form of the man in front of me solidifies. It isn’t Armand, even though he does have a puckered wound at the neck.

A ghost?

No.Thisman is alive, dark eyed and breathing. He no longer smells like the dirt and decay of the forest. He’s clean. Soapy. I wonder if the fingers splayed across my mouth are the same ones that touched medown there.

Damon.

“Dreaming about the Hunt?” he asks, keeping his hand over my mouth. He thinks I’ll scream if he removes it. He’s right.

I nod, listening to my heartbeat pulse in my ears.

“Remembering what it was like to kill a man?”

Again, I nod. The memory floods over me every time I close my eyes.

He’s so close, his body straddling mine. It’s still daylight outside, probably just a few hours since Regina helped me into bed. Before she left, she tucked my hair into a silk bonnet, and I pull it off now, letting my hair cascade down my shoulders.

I take him in, that dark hair pushed away from his forehead. I get the sense his color is off. His cheeks are still a ruddy pink from the heat of the fire, but underneath his tan skin, he’s pale. For the first time, I can see the rest of his face, the various metal pierced and poked through his skin. His jaw clean, freshly shaved, revealing the hard lines of his features.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” he confesses. “But I have been killed.” He lifts his chin, showing me the scar. “My heart stopped–at least that’s what they say.” I watch him. Watch those piercings in his cheeks that look like dimples. “But don’t worry, Baroness, I’m not going to tell anyone what you did. Especially the King. Not as long as you behave.”

With his eyebrow arched, he slowly removes his hand from over my mouth. I swallow back the scream, understanding this game. Secrets. I’m good at secrets, even when they claw at my insides trying to escape.

“I didn’t get a chance to give you my mark, but I wanted to do it before the day of the Claiming is over.”

Under his weight my mind flashes back to him between my legs when I was on the altar. To the way he teased me, drawing me close to the edge of a cliff, before pulling away and leaving me squirming.

“The cut…” I start, drawing my hand to my chest. It pulses like its own heartbeat.

“Hunter gave you that,” he says, eyes shifting, and for the first time I see the stainless steel box on the bedside table. “But I wanted to give you one of my own.”

He leans over me, reaching for the box. His shirt shifts, giving me a view of the hard muscles lining his abdomen. Settling back on my hips, he lifts the lid and shows me the contents. They confuse me, until he says, “I’m going to pierce you.”

“Oh.” Well, that couldn’t be so bad. I’d never had a piercing before. My uncle didn’t allow it and any girls that came into the Manor wearing them had them removed.

“This requires a delicate touch, and you have to be very still.” He eyes my wrists, they’re red from where they’d bound me to the altar, and beneath that scarred from before. “I don’t want to tie you up again, but you have to promise me you won’t move and I’ll promise to do my best not to hurt you.”

I don’t want to be tied up again. Ever. “I promise.”

He smiles, one corner quirked up. “Sit up.”

Moving to a sitting position, I wince at the pain in my chest. Damon stares down at me, the look in his eyes indiscernible. His pupils are dilated and his tongue worries the hoop in his lip. I’mnot prepared when he reaches for the hem of my gown and lifts it over my head.

Once again, I’m exposed to this man. His gaze roams over the bandage between my breasts. A dot of dark red blood seeps through the padding. “I knew the minute I saw them that this is how I wanted to mark you,” he says, brushing his fingers over one nipple and then the other. They tighten into hard pebbles, sending that warm zing down my belly. Seemingly unaware of how my body is reacting, his forehead furrows in concentration. “A captive bead would look perfect here…” He lifts a stiff peak in assessment. “But we’ll start with the barbell for faster healing.”

“You’re piercing my nipple?” I ask.

“Both of them.” He directs his attention to the box and starts removing items. There’s a bottle of alcohol, a tool that looks like scissors but the ends are flat with an opening on each side. Everything is neat and packaged carefully. My belly flutters nervously as he removes a package of latex gloves and pulls them on one at a time. Next he eases a needle out and holds up the pointed tip. That urge to fight, toscreambubbles in my chest, but I know that if I do he’ll tell the King about Armand. I don’t want to upset him. I want to be a good girl. I never want to be sent back.