Page 65 of Wicked Tides #1

“You speak as if you’re just as vile as the rest. So, slice me open, take the thing that is keeping you from invading my waking mind, and do what you claim you’re built for.

Cut it out, Dahlia. Take my free will as your mother once did.

Kill me, if that’s your wish. There is no reason to keep me alive, after all.

The sons won’t find you here. Perhaps you were pretending all along to care for the girls just so I would bring you here. Is that it?”

When I did not take the blade, Vidar stepped back and turned it toward himself, pressing the tip into this already scarred skin. I watched it sink in and with nothing more than a stifled groan, he sliced upward.

“Vidar, stop,” I hissed. “You’ve gone mad.”

“Was that not your intention? To drive me mad?”

He clenched his jaw with a low growl as he dug into the shallow wound with the knife’s tip and a small, bronze pendant slid free, bloodied and warm. Crimson wept down the groove of his hard chest and stained his shirt, but he ignored the mess he’d made.

I stared wide-eyed at his chest when Vidar tossed the little pendant at me without a care and then threw the knife to the ground.

The blade lodged in the grass, standing upright.

I caught the pendant in my hands and stared at the seemingly worthless piece of metal.

Such a tiny thing and without it, he was without armor.

“You’re a fool,” I whispered.

He raised his arms up in presentation and cocked his head. “I’m without a shield. The boy in the cage who killed your mother has no silentium to protect him. No men to pull their guns. No bronze blade to slit your throat. What will you do now?”

The puzzle pieces were trying to align, but they wouldn’t snap into place. My mind was in pieces and trying to think of an answer to that question had me feeling crazed and almost panicked. I screwed my eyes shut and shook my head.

“Do not ask me that.”

“You can’t do it. Why, Dahlia?”

“Stop it.”

“Here I stand, alive. I thought you were a killer. I thought it was in your nature.”

“And I thought you would have killed me before you let it get this far!” I paced backward, raking my hands through my hair.

“The plan was simple. I was to manipulate you into feeling something for me. I needed you to not kill me before I could kill you, but I needed your ship to stay away from the sons and to know the girls were safe. That much has never been a lie. I peeked inside your soul, looking for the softest parts. The parts I could use. All you had to do was care for me in the end so I could win this stupid game.” I took a breath to let my words sink in, for me and for Vidar.

“And all I had to do was not feel something for you in return. I failed at that, as I’ve failed at so many other things.

I feel too much for you, Vidar. My heart aches for you, my greatest tormentor, and it is ripping me apart, a fact you enjoy, no doubt. ”

Tears stung my eyes and blurred the image of his face.

I tried to keep them from falling, but they, like so many other things, were beyond my control.

They soaked my cheeks, sapping the strength from my limbs.

My walls had crumbled. I had surrendered to something I never wanted to surrender to and I felt the weight of it pulling me down.

“I walked in your dreams and found myself weakened by you yet again.”

Slowly, his expression went lax as if some burdensome weight had been lifted away. It confused me. I expected to see ire. Disdain.

“That dream—that nightmare—I don’t even know whose it was,” I admitted.

“I’ve not been able to tell for a while.

It pains me to realize how many fears we share.

How many weaknesses. We are so similarly broken that I cannot distinguish one nightmare from the next and it’s turned everything upside down.

In trying to twist and bend you, you’ve twisted and bent me and you didn’t even know you were doing it. ”

Rather than speak, Vidar just stared at me, his chest bleeding and his heart beating so loudly, it drowned out my own. I didn’t know what I expected him to say.

I never thought my heart could ache without being pierced by a man’s blade, but Vidar was proving me wrong.

Unable to take the weight of his stare any longer, I pivoted and started to walk away.

“So, you’ll run,” he said after me. “I think you are many things, but never have I thought you a coward.”

I stopped, balling my hands into fists. I could feel my fangs aching and my heart thundering against my ribs. Frustration and need clashed inside me and created something monstrous. Something I didn’t know how to tame.

I turned toward him again, my eyes darkening.

I could see his warmth. The ripple of his pulse in the air.

I could see it because I was a predator, but instead of hungering for his flesh, I hungered for his touch.

My insides burned to feel him. To taste him.

My instincts screamed at me to tear him apart and resisting the primal voices in my head was driving me insane.

But… it was almost thrilling, too.

I walked toward him, narrowing my eyes as my hands shoved against his shoulders. He stumbled backward, hitting another thick tree. The impact made him grunt. Taking a deep breath, I caught the tantalizing scent of his blood and peered down at the red stream coming from his chest.

“Do not forget what I am, Bone Heart,” I hissed. “Not when you are so rash, you tempt my impulses. I will show you how soft your heart truly is.”

I threw the silentium pendant at him as I moved forward.

“I have not forgotten what you are, Dahlia. It’s who you are that intrigues me. No. It’s more than that. Perhaps I am damning myself for saying it, but you’ve captured me. Whether it was with your hypnotic dreams or not. I am a traitor to myself for admitting it.”

His words took me aback. My body just kept yearning to be near him when I should have kept running.

My heart missed a beat and I remembered how good it felt to kiss him.

I wanted to feel that again. I wanted that bliss over the pain and violence that plagued me.

Over the hate and anger. Over all the things that I thought made me who I was.

But a reprieve from it all was the last thing I deserved.

I was being ripped down the middle.

I turned away to make another retreat when he reached out and clutched my arm, spinning me to face him. Before I knew it, he was crushing his mouth to mine.

I wanted it so badly. I needed it, but still, I denied myself and I tried to push him away.

He held fast, instead pulling me closer.

His fingers bit into my thighs and he hoisted me off the ground.

I struggled from his grip and landed on my back beneath him on the cold grass.

Relentless, Vidar continued to kiss me, his tongue pressing into my mouth as if he’d forgotten my teeth could bite it off.

I turned my head to the side with a snarl. “Get off! You should want me dead.”

He shoved his way between my legs, sliding the thin, damp skirt of my dress up my thighs.

I bucked as he pressed his lips once more to mine.

His tongue darted into my mouth again and a wave of hot excitement washed through me, making my core pulse with need.

I continued to fight him, sinking my teeth into his bottom lip until he bled.

Vidar drew back, growling at the pain, but the sight of blood on his mouth sent another delightful flood of anticipation through my veins.

“You discover I’ve been assaulting your dreams and you hunger for my body instead of my death,” I panted. “You truly have gone mad.”

I drove my thumb against his shoulder where I knew he’d been shot.

Vidar roared and sat up on his haunches, out of my reach.

Blood blossomed on the fabric of his shirt where I’d irritated the wound, but he did not relent.

He grabbed my knees and drew me against him until he was once more pressed between my legs.

Heat fluttered through me at the sight of him covered in his own blood. Yet, he was still overpowering me.

His strength over me was thrilling. So thrilling I lost myself in trying to test it.

I reached for the fallen knife, driving it toward Vidar’s ribs. He caught my wrist, slamming it down and pinning it above my head.

“You cannot fool me, Dahlia. I do not even believe you’re fooling yourself.”

By Lune, the way his cock hardened against me in our struggles made me ravenous. I pressed my heels into the ground and lifted my hips to meet him. His other hand collared my throat and squeezed, trapping me in place .

“I’m done dancing with you,” he said against my mouth. He gripped me tighter until I could not breathe. “It is you I crave.”

He ground his hips against me, stroking his swelling desire between my legs. Then he released the pressure on my neck and I gasped, letting my breath out on a moan. More tears gathered in my eyes as I lifted my head, licking my tongue across his bleeding lip to get another taste of him.

“Then lay claim to me, Vidar,” I said, breathless. “Or something else will.”

What that something else was had haunted me since birth and it could not be explained as one thing.

The sons and the madness they wrought. The idea that I might one day want to end it all against the tip of my blade and be the coward so many thought I was.

The dread of being alone when I had never truly wanted to be.

It all clashed together into a dark, empty creature that had been clinging to my back my whole life like a parasite, feeding off my soul.

But Vidar silenced that creature. When we were fighting. When we were kissing or fucking. When we were wondering how to end one another. He stole my thoughts from it all and he blinded me to the things I did not want to carry anymore.