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Which she would not get from me.

I felt her pussy start to squeeze around my fingers before I slipped out of her. Her cry of desperation, a plea to make her come, took everything in me to ignore, going against my nature. But it felt more than that with her, like it went against my soul. I knew if I allowed myself to sink under, be consumed by her one more time, I would never find the surface again. I would let myself drown in it.

I stepped back, needing to suck her taste off my fingers, but knowing I would fold, the line I was trying to hold was almost nonexistent.

Her lids narrowed, fury brightening her eyes, realizing what I was doing.

My cruelty wasn’t done.

“Your father?” I gritted my teeth, already wanting to stop the words from coming out. “He’s dead…because of you.” I turned, stomping off back to the camp, feeling like my malicious words only drove that dagger into my own heart.

Chapter 10

Katrina

Croygen’s silhouette slipped back into the darkness, leaving me staring after him, unable to move. My body heaved, aching for release, wondering what had just happened. I tasted his cruelty like a bitter pill sticking in the back of my throat. The pleasure he inflicted was turning to pain, cold shivering through my body.

Disbelief, confusion, hurt, disappointment, and anger collided, a battle playing out between them with no winner.

I had wanted him to feel my rage, to drop to his knees under my brutality. Yet in seconds, he flipped my emotions about like a dying fish, staring wide-eyed and gasping for air, relinquishing me to perish.

At the camp, I had felt his irritation and ire stronger than if he actually spoke words. It billowed off him, was in every breath, spearing into me like a thousand razors. It wasn’t normal. This shouldn’t be something I could feel. Not like this. Not like he somehow embedded himself in me like bacteria, growing and spreading into my soul.

Laying there, a dozen ways to kill him went through my mind, yet all ended with me sliding down his shaft, riding him until we both expelled our demons. My core squeezed with desperate need, and I forced the imagery from my mind. My thoughts only seemed to gain his wrath, like somewhere inside him, he was battling back without even realizing why.

The need was there to turn my father’s blade on myself and cut out whatever disease blackened my soul, whatever weakness Croygen was making me feel.

I wanted it to stop. Because somehow I knew—one time with him, and there was a chance of escape. The second time, there would be no way out for me, and I’m not sure I would even fight it. Just let myself sink into my ruin. I couldn’t let myself do that. I made a vow to myself and to my father…

“Your father? He’s dead… because of you.”Croygen’s malicious words rang through my head, finally breaking through the fog, and finding their place front and center in my mind.

What the fuck did he mean?

Hekilled my father. His ship sank and his crew died because ofhisfailings, not mine. He ruined his reputation and put himself on Amara’s leash becausehewas weak.

I had nothing to do with any of that; he had affected my whole life. I was beaten and abused in boarding school, orphaned, and then lived on the streets, hungry and scared. I became a pirate because of him, lost my best friend because he was all I could think of.

It all led back tohim.

Pricks of rage tingled the back of my neck, my gaze going down to where his t-shirt still hitched up, exposing my traitorous body, still throbbing with need, not caring what it had to sacrifice or do to feel him inside me again.

A hiss gurgled up my throat, my gums aching as my canines grew longer, my focus locked on where he left. How dare he turn this on me. Getting the last word in. Walking away as if it were nothing.

Yanking my shirt down, I pushed off the tree, stomping for the camp. Fur danced down my vertebrae, my cat ready to attack.

As I stepped out into the clearing, magic sizzled at my skin. A slight crackle of energy popped in my ears, whipping me around as a small, older human man in thin cotton pants and a threadbare robe-style jacket came out of the fae door.

The moment he exited, his feet came to a halt, his gaze darting between me and Croygen. His slight frame locked up, his shoulders going back defensively, his gaze searching over the space like he was looking for someone.

“Your son is not here,” Croygen spoke in Mandarin.

The man’s eyes still jerked around in pursuit of finding him, taking in Annabeth’s sleeping body near the fire, evaluating and analyzing everything before his dark, sharp eyes went to the pirate.

“Where is he?” he replied in English, already assessing our first language. “Who are you?”

Closer to my height and weight than Croygen’s, the man didn’t wear pride and strength as a badge; it was embedded in his DNA. He knew we were fae and had no fear of us. His shoulders back, he was ready to battle us if he needed to.

“Your next customers.” Croygen eased closer, his charisma oozing from him. “Take us to the exact same place you took the last group, and we pay you a nice sum. Simple as that.”