The Lord of Chaos cocked his head, staring at my thighs as the cold dungeon air raised goosebumps on my skin. He looked riveted, his eyes growing brighter. Then he moved closer, and he reached down to lift my right leg from under the knee, pulling it up outside his thigh like we were engaged in some kind of dungeon tango. He was just inches from my hips now, examining my skin. With his free hand, he traced his fingertip over the very top of my thigh, and shivers of heat rippled through me.
Holy hell, that was distracting. The magical pulse coming off him was seductive, intoxicating. Warmth radiated over my skin from the point of contact. I’d never seen anyone so fascinated with a little bit of skin, nor had I ever realized that a single touch could be so powerful.
“See?” My voice came out in a whisper. “No scar.”
He dropped my thigh. When he stepped back, I felt cold again.
He frowned. “Interesting.”
I exhaled. “And what’s the other thing?”
He curled his lips and bared two sharp, white fangs, then licked one.
I shivered. “What?”
“Mortal blood tastes different than demon blood.”
Primal fear slid through my bones. “You want to drink my blood? Like the old days?”
“All I need is a little taste.”
My heart pounded hard. “You realize this seems terrifying. Is there not a more clinical way to do this? A syringe, maybe?”
“I don’t have a syringe. But you might find it’s not as terrible as you imagine. Mortal women once flocked to offer their necks to demon males,” he murmured. “They loved it.”
“Sure, they did.”
He gave a slow, infuriating shrug. “I have told you that I’m an arsehole, right? So I don’t really care if I imprison an innocent person, and frankly, I don’t think your life here would be much worse than your life in the Osborne basement. I’ll feel no guilt about leaving you locked up here. So you can let me bite your neck, or you can stay here in the dungeon forever. Those are your options.”
Maybe it was time to start bargaining. “Okay. I’ll let you taste my blood. But when you’re done, I’m not going back to Osborne. I want to stay in the City of Thorns.”
He frowned. “You can’t. If you are mortal, then you don’t belong here. The only mortals who can stay are students and servants who inherited the role.”
I folded my arms. “I’m sure someone called the Lord of Chaos can find a way to bend the rules.”
He flashed me a crooked smile. “What is it, exactly, that makes you think you have leverage to make any sort of demands?”
I knew his weakness now—a lust for revenge. Something I understood implicitly. And the thing about a sense of vengeance as burning as his was that it could spread like wildfire. You didn’t just want to end the life of one person—you wanted to kill anyone who helped them, anyone who let it happen. You wanted scorched earth.
“You want revenge, yes?” I asked. “You said Mortana haunts your nightmares. That’s a pretty intense loathing. So is she the only one, or is there someone else you want dead?”
His eyes were glowing brighter, and I had the sense he understood where I was going with this. “She didn’t work alone.”
I took a step closer, tilting my head back to look up at him. “So I could pretend to be her. Get information from these other people you hate. I could be your spy.”
His body had gone as still as the stones around us, sending a chill dancing up my nape. At last, he said, “Assuming this isn’t all an act, I don’t think you’d make a convincing succubus. You’re not seductive.”
I winced. Ouch. “Anything can be learned. Even how to be seductive like a succubus.” Whatever that was.
He looked transfixed with me. “I will consider it once I’ve tasted your blood. I need to know for sure that you’re mortal before we continue any further.”
I opened up my arms. “Okay. Go ahead. Bite me.”
Instantly, his warm magic slid around me like a forbidden caress, heating my blood. He had me completely pinned with his piercing gaze, and I felt my nipples going hard under my dress. To my shock, I found that he was right. I wanted him to bite me. I wanted him to grab me, shove me against the wall, and clamp his teeth into my throat. In fact—bizarrely—I wanted him to do all kinds of filthy things to me.
He stared into my eyes, and dominance emanated from him. His seductive scent wrapped around me, earthy like burning cedar. There was something more powerful than fear snaking around my ribs: the instinct to submit. This instinct, forged by thousands of years of evolution, was telling me to give in to him if I wanted to live.