Page 26 of Let The Devil In

I even stare at my open palms, trying to find it, but it’s gone and another set of fingers are curling around mine. I’m being drawn out of Roan’s lap, but the floor has turned into a giant waterbed and I sway into a solid weight of heat.

“Easy,” Lukan says from above me.

“Did ... did you drug me?”

I try to arrange my words to form the thoughts I can’t keep straight. A deep part of me wonders if I should be scared. I know them and I trust them, but they’ve never drugged me before and I don’t understand why they would now.

“Shit. It didn’t work.”

Roan’s panic is overruled by Lukan telling him to calm down

“Maybe we didn’t give the right amount,” he muses, voice distorted with a hollow tinny sound.

“It’s this place,” Kellen grumbles. “It might not work the same here. Let’s put her to bed and we’ll figure it out.”

“I’m ... I’m not tired,” I snap, annoyed.

“We know, sweetheart. It wasn’t supposed—”

I get myself untangled from his hold, but without his support, I fall into Roan who catches me and swings me up into his chest.

“You’ll hurt yourself.”

Everything is pulsing. The light is too bright grilling my eyes. They well with tears even with the hand I use to shield them.

“Roan.”

His arms tighten. His breath warms my temple where his lips brush skin.

“It’s okay, baby. Sleep.”

But I don’t want to.

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The crisp scent of pine greets me before I even open my eyes. It washes across my skin with the deliberate caress of a lover’s hand. Deft strokes over my nipples and down the plains of my stomach.

I suck in a breath and part my eyelids to the interwoven tapestry of naked branches. The filmy overcast pouring through like shattered waterfalls to illuminate my nest of leaves and pine, and the fire roaring at my feet.

And the creature hidden behind the flames.

“You left me.”

The deep baritone cadence of his voice scrapes with such delicious pleasure down my torso to my core. It stokes every nerve. Teases the fire building between my thighs.

I shift and the leaves rustle beneath me. My fingers dig into the earth like it can stop me from touching all the places I need him.

“Please,” I beg.

I extend my legs, part them. I bare myself to his gaze and wait for mercy.

Around me, the foliage shivers. The ground shifts. A second later, velvet vines bind my ankles. My knees. My wrists. More twist across my waist. Between my thighs.

I’m hoisted off the bed and dangled from the trees, supported by the restraints around my knees, waist and wrists. The position has my knees pulled wide, my sex open and exposed. Vulnerable to the thick braid of vines that force their way inside.

My scream is a choked gasp that echoes too loud in the soft silence. It tumbles from my lips as my head falls back and my muscles tense. As my limbs jerk and the bindings holding me creak.