Renaud placed his hand on the back of the Guard's neck, and the male went gracefully, and silently, to his knees.
“As you do not care whether or not you die,” the Prince said in his chilly, cruel voice, “I will provide you with another incentive. Either you take the Vow, or this one dies.”
This time my throat closed for an entirely different reason. One breath, two, and then I stepped forward, internally cursing at myself because with that small movement I just put Renaud in the position of power.
“You wouldn't,” I said. “You wouldn't kill one of your loyal Guards just to coerce me into doing something you have no right to make me do.”
The Prince lifted a brow, lowered it. “I would not? Are you certain of that, Lady Aerinne? Are you certain enough of that to risk this person's life when you could save it?”
He called me Lady Aerinne when we were in public, in private when he was being ironic. . .or when he was angry.
Really, what was I fighting him for? Protecting myself from making another Vow when the first one I'd made was going to kill me anyway? I might as well take the second Vow to save this person's life. It didn't matter.
I exhaled, closing my eyes against a moment of despair and when I opened them again the Prince’s expression was even tighter, angrier, his eyes flat and gray.
“Very well,” I said. “It doesn't matter for me, does it?”
A faint wash of color painted his high cheekbones, and it certainly wasn't because he was embarrassed. The hand around the Guard's neck trembled for a split-second before it stilled.
“Repeat after me,” Renaud said. “I Vow to make no more Vows without the express permission of Prince Renaud. . .on pain of my own father's death.”
I sucked in a breath, glaring at him as my burgeoning despair and depression was chased away once again by rage. He’d twisted that knife out of malice.
“You bastard,” I said in a strangled tone. “Is this your way of courting a female? Coercion, threats, manipulation?”
“This is my way of protecting the female I am courting. Vow it, Aerinne.”
Through clenched teeth, I spoke each word, spiraling deeper and deeper into a well of cold anger as I did so.
Maybe he was trying to protect me. But he was taking away my choice, and I hated him for it. I hated him for treating me like a child in a way not even Numair did with his flashes of annoying masculine over protectiveness.
When it was done, another delicate chain of magic wrapped around my throat and Renaud released the Guard.
“Thank you,” he said. “You may go.”
So polite, now that he'd gotten what he wanted.
I waited just until the male closed the door behind him before I approached Renaud and punched him in the mouth.
His head snapped back, and distantly I wondered why he never defended himself against me. It wasn't as if I tried to hide my intention when I assaulted him.
His eyes brightened, blood blooming on his lips, and then both his hands were in my hair, yanking my head back, his mouth on mine.
“You want to play?” he crooned. “Then we will play.”
Cruel, suffocating, the taste of his blood in my mouth, one of his hands sliding down my back to cup my ass and squeeze, nails digging in.
I lifted my hands and grabbed handfuls of his hair, as rough with him as he was with me, returning the kiss with all my anger, all my hatred, all my desire. My teeth sank into his lips, and he hissed, chased by a snarl, and suddenly I was flying through the air landing on his bed.
I blinked, and he was over me, body crushing me into the mattress, his hips grinding into mine as I instinctively opened my legs.
Pain again as he moved from my mouth to my neck, and his teeth sank into the same spot as before. Mauling me, marking me, punishing me. I said nothing, because I'd started it first.
But the pain forced me to come back to myself a little. “We can’t do this. We can’t do this, Renaud. I don’t want to lose my soul to you before I die.”
I said it with no conviction in my voice, and closed my eyes as I abandoned myself to the lust, sank into the darkness of my soul until I was nothing but seething emotion, and desire. . .
. . .and Aerinne, of the Prince.
