Page 7 of Wicked Vows (Cursed Darkness (DarkHallow Academy) #1)

Dathan

H er hand stays on the floor. Her eyes, those violent violet storms, flick from my outstretched hand to my face with a look of righteous fury that makes my cock hard.

The air is a feast. Vance’s abrupt shock was a sharp, satisfying crackle, like lightning striking nearby.

The ambient terror from the rest of the class is a dull, predictable hum.

Appetisers. Lysithea is not afraid of me.

Not in the way prey is afraid. She’s assessing a rival predator who just trespassed on her hunting ground.

So much better.

My hand hangs in the air between us. An offer. A command. A test. The soon-to-be-corpse bleeding out on the stone is an insignificant prop in this little play. My focus is entirely on her.

Take my hand, little siren, and you admit a debt. Refuse, and you declare a war you can’t yet win. Either way, I feast on the outcome.

“Orderlies!” Strascream bellows. “A little assistance, here!”

Her gaze flicks from my offered hand to my eyes, searching for something. Weakness? Sincerity? She won’t find either. I let the silence stretch, letting the weight of my presence, of my claim, press down on her. The scent of her defiance is intoxicating, a promise of the exquisite struggle to come.

Come on. Make your choice. Show me what you’ve got.

She smiles, a small quiver on her bottom lip that defies the fire in her eyes.

I tilt my head, trying to weigh it up. She slaps her palm against mine, her fingers closing around my hand before she yanks her arm back and I go tumbling to the floor mat in an undignified heap before she rolls us over and straddles me, her hand bunched in my jacket lapel.

“I had that,” she growls.

But I’m too stunned to reply. All I can feel is my cock growing hard against her pussy, and I want to grip her hips, slam her back to the mat and fuck her until she weeps, audience or no audience.

A low laugh rumbles in my chest. Her face is inches from mine, a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. It’s glorious. My hands come up to settle on her hips, my thumbs pressing into the soft flesh just above her hipbones. A claiming touch.

“Did you?” I murmur, my voice a low purr. I shift my hips slightly, letting her feel the hard length of my cock against her. A silent promise.

She flinches, her eyes widening for a fraction of a second. It’s awareness. This is a new flavour. A challenge. It’s fucking exquisite.

“Now-now,” Blackgrove’s voice cuts into this sexy as fuck, unexpected sideshow. “Let’s not get carried away with a second near fatality. One is enough for today. Separate.”

The last word is a command that no one, not even me, dares to defy. I lift her easily and place her on the mat next to me, getting swiftly to my feet and leaving her to get up on her own.

“Who is responsible for this?” Blackgrove asks, his clear blue eyes hard, but also slightly amused.

“He did it,” Lysithea says instantly, literally pointing her finger at me.

I choke on the loveliness of her survival instincts. She threw me under the bus without a second thought.

I raise a single, mocking eyebrow. Beautiful. Utterly, beautifully treacherous.

Blackgrove’s gaze slides to me, a weight that could crush mountains. He doesn’t look angry. He looks interested. Like he’s just discovered a new, particularly venomous species of snake demon in his garden.

“Is this true, Mr Dathan?” he asks, his voice like the scrape of a tombstone over granite.

I give him a slow, lazy smile. The truth tastes better than any lie, especially when it’s coated in her righteous indignation. “Vance was touching what belongs to me, Headmaster. I corrected his mistake.”

Lysithea makes a choked, furious sound. The air around her practically sizzles. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve felt all day. Her outrage is a symphony, and I want to conduct it with my cock.

“Belongs to you?” she spits, her voice low and dangerous. It makes me glad we are in the sound-dampened arena, or most of us would be dead right now. Saving Blackgrove and maybe me, with a bit of luck.

Blackgrove holds up a hand, silencing her without effort. His eyes bore into me, seeing the hunger, the claim, the entire bloody mess. And he approves. I can see it in the slight upturn of his lips. He thrives on this chaos.

“Detention, Mr Dathan,” he says, his tone bored. “My office. And do try to keep your acquisitions tidier in future.”

He turns and sweeps from the room, the two orderlies trotting after him with Vance’s body floating between them.

Lysithea’s fury spikes, a sharp, exquisite note that I savour all the way out of the Blood Pit. If anyone had any intentions of touching her, they know better now. She will be kept pristine and unscathed before she gives us what we want.

Detention with Blackgrove will be interesting.

It’s not a punishment. It’s a meeting. He saw the opening move of my game, and now he wants to know the rules.

Or maybe he wants to add a few of his own.

It doesn’t matter. The board is set. The pieces are moving.

My queen doesn’t even know she’s in play yet. But she will.

My cock is still hard as I replay the moment she was on top of me, the anger on her face, the way her body felt pressed against mine.

She has no idea how close she came to being taken right there on the blood-stained floor.

Next time, there won’t be an audience. Next time, her fury will turn into the scream I’ve been craving.

Blackgrove’s office is at the heart of the academy, a place where the ley lines converge into a knot of raw power.

The door is a slab of petrified nightmare, its surface writhing with trapped souls.

It doesn’t have a handle. It opens for those it deems worthy of an audience.

It swings inward on silent hinges at my approach.

The room is vast, the ceiling lost in a nebula of captured starlight. Blackgrove sits behind a desk carved from ebony, an orb of swirling darkness hovering near his head. He doesn’t look up.

“An impressive display, Mr Dathan,” he says. “But a messy one. You’ve upset the board.”

He gestures to a chair opposite him. Not a request.

“I prefer a direct approach, Headmaster.” I take a seat. “It clarifies intent.”

His eyes finally meet mine. “She is a dangerous creature. Probably one of the most dangerous DarkHallow has housed, and that is saying a lot.”

“She might be dangerous, but she has no idea of her power.”

“You think that. She has the gift of seeming innocent, but she is far from it, I can assure you.”

“That is contradictory to what I have observed.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“Why are you telling me this?” It’s like he’s giving me a warning wrapped up as a gift.

Blackgrove leans back, the shadows in the room lean with him.

“Because an unchecked acquisition can become a liability. And I detest liabilities.” He smiles, a thin slash in his pale face.

“Consider it a piece of friendly advice. The most dangerous games are the ones where you underestimate your opponent.”

He’s daring me to continue. He’s pouring petrol on the fire just to see how high the flames will leap. The old bastard is bored.

“Noted.”

“Dismissed.”

I rise and walk to the door, but he stops me with his next words. “Do not lay your hands on her again without her permission. You won’t like the consequences.”

“Oh?” He knows he has intrigued me with that comment.

“She has a past, Mr Dathan, as does everyone. Respect her or find your arse being handed to you. Clear?”

Was I just threatened by Blackgrove? Or was he threatening me on behalf of Lysithea? Either way… “Noted… Sir.”

The office throws me out, and the door seals behind me with a sound like a final breath. I walk away, the headmaster’s words echoing in the vast, empty corridor. A past. A warning. It’s not a deterrent. It’s an appetiser.

He’s protecting her. Or maybe he’s protecting me. The ambiguity is the point. Blackgrove doesn’t manage his students; he cultivates them, watering his little garden of monsters with chaos to see what grows.

Respect her. A novel concept. I respect her power, the raw, beautiful violence coiled inside her. The rest is just packaging I intend to tear open. But the warning adds a new layer to the game. No touching without permission. I wonder what will happen if I ignore that and touch her everywhere.

The memory of her straddling me, the heat of her body, the fury in her eyes, sends another jolt of raw hunger through me.

I take the hidden path to the Ossuary Tower. The stones shift to grant me passage. Verik and Evren need to know. Our beautiful, fragile key has a few secrets of her own. The hunt just got infinitely more interesting.