Page 18 of Grim and Oro (Lightlark)

Finally, I can’t take it any longer. She’s been in there long enough. What if she’s hurt? What if she needs me?

I stride through the tents and building, shredding fabric with my sword, ignoring the shouts that I’m not allowed back here. I pull apart curtain after curtain, until I find her, atop the thief, straddling his lap.

My blood runs cold.

“Don’t kill him,” she says, just as I realize I’m about to.

I glare.

“You look like you want to kill him.”

Of course I do. Even if she has already incapacitated the fool. “I want to kill a lot of people,” I tell her, trying to make her understand, trying to warn her away from me even as I simultaneously long to pull her closer. “I kill a lot of people.”

It’s true. I’ve killed thousands.

I’m a monster. And pain has only made me more powerful.

She deserves better than me. I wish I was strong enough to let her go. But even I have limits.

She swallows, and my eyes go right to her throat. Right to her pulse. It’s racing, just like mine.

My self-control snaps. I stalk toward her, toward the wall she’s now leaning against. She has no idea the danger I pose.

She has no idea, because she wouldn’t look so amused right now if she did.

Her tone wouldn’t be so mocking as she says, “I got the information. I know exactly where the sword is. Seems like I’m a perfectly good temptress.

Tell me, nonpowerful Nightshade. Was I able to tempt you? ”

I frown down at her. Does she have any idea who she’s trying to get a rise out of? Does she have any idea how much danger she’s in?

“Did I make you fall hopelessly in love with me?”

That’s it.

That cursed word .

She gasps as I pin her against the wall. The sword isn’t here, I know that now, so I release the vise I’ve been keeping on my powers.

Her emotions hit me like a battering ram. I’m suddenly tasting her want, her pleasure. It nearly brings me to my knees.

My hands grip her hips. My fingers trail up the sides of her stomach, thrumming up her ribs, until I reach her chest, and gods help me.

Every part of her is perfect.

Her desire flares, she wants this, she wants me .

She shouldn’t want me.

Every movement, every word, inches us both toward that cliff, toward a fall that feels more and more perilous and inevitable with each passing day.

I know it, yet I keep taking step after step toward its edge.

Did I make you fall hopelessly in love with me?

“No,” I say against her parted lips. “You are not something special to me. You are not something I want to love.” I reach up to her cursed lips, and smear her red lipstick with my thumb, the same paint she wore that first day I met her, that same mouth that has haunted me every moment since. “You are something I want to ruin.”

Then I do what I’ve been dying to since the moment I saw her.

I duck my head to her throat, and bite her.

I’m gentle—gentler than I want to be, but she gasps right into my ear, and the sound goes straight between my legs. I lick across her pulse, wanting to feel her pleasure on my tongue. Wanting to taste it.

Her desire becomes a wildfire surging around us, enough to burn the entire world to ashes, enough to make me want to burn with her. I’ve never been so hard in my life.

I turn her around in a single motion, gripping her hips and pulling her against me so she can feel exactly how much I want this. My fingers rake up her legs, drawing her skirt up, and curling around her upper thighs.

I can feel her trembling with need, can feel every single thing she wants from me.

My blinding desire is nearly enough for me to forget my duty, forget my plans, and give it all to her, right against this wall.

But she is my enemy. I am planning against her.

So I make a portal to her room and push her through it without me.

I’m so full of feelings, I portal myself right to the Algid, the coldest part of Nightshade, and throw myself into an icy pool.

It isn’t enough.

The want is endless, infinite , and I can’t unfeel it. I can’t unfeel the desire cresting from her, her heated skin, her soft moan in my ear.

I can’t unsee her dancing in those bits of fabric, I can’t un want her.

Somehow, like a curse, she has sewn herself into my very soul.

I groan, sinking deeper into the ice-cold water. It does nothing for my condition.

“ Did I make you fall hopelessly in love with me?” she said.

Worse.

So much worse.

I’m obsessed with her.

I can’t go a minute without thinking of her. I can’t go a night without dreaming of her. I can’t go a day without missing her.

This obsession is maddening. It is debilitating.

Soaking wet and shivering, I return to my room, and give up all pretenses that this will go away on its own. With her on my mind, my want clings to me; my arousal refuses to diminish.

It’s all I can do not to follow her back to her room and show her exactly what she has done to me.

To make her want me the way I want her. Crave me the way I crave her.

But I can’t.

It is dangerous. It is treasonous.

I need to stay away from the temptress.