Page 7 of Wicked (Dark Delights #5)

Isaac

This demon wanted him to answer questions he didn’t have the answers to.

He wasn’t privy to the inner workings of Sloan’s mind.

Sloan would never trust him with his plans for the guild.

Hell, he wouldn’t trust him with his plans for lunch .

He only knew what he was told, and that wasn’t much.

Isaac wasn’t a leader or a thinker. His was a much baser purpose.

He’d been toying with the rope around his wrists while he and this demon talked, searching for a weak spot he might exploit, but so far he’d had no luck.

Honestly, it was so tight he was lucky he could still feel his fingers.

His wrists were starting to feel raw, fuzzy pain burning in the back of his mind.

He was too worried about self-preservation to enjoy it.

There was a time for good pain, and this wasn’t it.

The copper taste of his own blood filled his mouth now.

Nathan’s punch had cut the inside of his cheek on his molars, and the demon’s punch reopened it.

He wiped Isaac’s spittle from his handsome face.

Everything about him seemed uniquely designed to appeal to Isaac, from his debonair hairstyle to the sharp angle of his jaw to the expensive clothes.

He looked like the kind of man Isaac would want to ruffle under any other circumstances.

But this was a demon—a black-eyed one, at that.

And one the traitors had tasked with torturing him.

“Cute,” Black Eyes sneered. He lunged forward so fast that Isaac’s eyes couldn’t follow, ripping the collar of Isaac’s shirt open and pressing the knife against his skin.

Isaac laughed again, tipping his head back and waiting for the pain to light up his nerve endings.

“Why are you laughing ?” Black Eyes demanded, and fingers curled around his exposed throat.

“You’ll have to try a lot harder than this,” Isaac said. “Go ahead, cut me.”

Black Eyes smiled toothily, and the blade dug into Isaac’s chest. Pain bloomed like fireworks behind his eyes.

An alarm rang like a gong in his mind, an automatic warning that his body was being harmed, but he kept himself lax.

It grew to a mind-numbing shriek as the knife sank deeper, and his lips parted on a wet gasp.

“Too deep and I’ll bleed out,” he warned breathlessly, his wrists twisting in the rope. “There’ll be no answers for you in my corpse.”

With a snarl, Black Eyes pulled the knife out and straightened. Sweat prickled on Isaac’s skin, and his blood trickled freely down his chest.

The demon lifted the blade to his mouth, licking Isaac’s blood from it. He leaned in, so close his breath grazed Isaac’s temple as he crooned, “You taste decadent, killer.” Teeth scraped against his cheek, and Isaac’s gut swooped with something he didn’t recognize.

He tilted his head back under the guise of getting away, and for just a moment, their breaths mingled. There were stars in the demon’s night black eyes. They had their own gravitational pull, and with a start, he realized his body was in danger of leaning in .

“Gross,” Isaac quipped, though his heart wasn’t in it. It certainly didn’t feel gross. “Don’t make me spit on you again.”

Fingers wrapped around his throat, tightening dangerously, and Isaac’s body tensed automatically in response, his thighs quivering uselessly with the urge to stand and attack.

“Don’t you dare,” Black Eyes growled, his chest rattling inhumanly.

He relaxed, releasing Isaac before the lack of air could become an issue, and backed away.

“I need to have words with the others.” He smirked. “Don’t move. I’ll be back.”

“Sure,” Isaac replied. “I’m so comfortable, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The demon laughed, a bright sound from such a dark creature, and left the room without another word, taking his blade and his disconcerting good looks with him.

The scent of the demon hung in the air, like black cherries and tobacco smoke. He inhaled deeply, letting the scent drip down into his lungs, and held it there.

Alone and unwittingly trapped, Isaac sighed.

“Fuck.” They thought he could give them Sloan’s secrets?

Sloan didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.

Isaac wasn’t stupid. He was made to kill things, not to make decisions.

Sloan didn’t care for his input about the direction he was leading the guild.

That was the way it had always been, ever since he was a child.

You didn’t put the junkyard dog in charge of the junkyard.