He’s right. He warned me. The Courts will fling me at him—least of all in the hopes that any urge for violence and mayhem after fully awakening will be sated in me. It won’t be the first time the Fae toss a sacrifice to a beast and sit back to critique the carnage.
He decides on a third option and those long, sharp nailed fingers slide under the thin straps of my gown to push them down my shoulders.
My nails dig into the back of his hands before he bares my breasts. “Renaud, no.”
Brilliant black slashes me. “. . .no? You aremine.”
I slap him. His head snaps to the side with the force of my blow.
The forest goes still.
Maybe I am a fool after all.
“That's what I said, High Lord. No.”
It is the most difficult no that has ever left my mouth. The nerves in my body make the denial a lie, and I'm afraid of denying him, but I won't let him take me like this. Tear off mydress and take me into the ground after only our third meeting, with the Court a minute away. I am worth more than this, even if my surrender is the price of peace. I am still worth more.
The Prince turns his head back to me and there isnothingnormal in that movement. Inhuman, mortals would whimper. Adalessikai don’t have a direct translation for the concept, other than Dark.
The leviathan behind his eyes wakes.
He seizes my throat as every hair on my body shrieks at me to beg forgiveness, curl up into a ball at his feet and hope he thinks I’m dead and it’s too much bother to abuse my offensive corpse.
“Renaud!”
His nails dig in just short of breaking skin. The air ignites with his growing rage.
My hands are strong but I’m half-human and female. They'll never be as strong as his.
He grips the back of my head, fingers curling tightly in my hair and yanks my neck back, arching my spine, and then he's bending down and that mouth with the slightly too sharp incisors is on my breast, biting down through fabric I refused to let him remove. He could have torn it off; he didn’t. That tells me much. Some of it good, most of it bad.
Still, I cry out fury and denial, even as my breasts swell and pebble. The humiliation, theindignity, brings a snarl to my lips.
I wedge an arm between our bodies and slam my fingers between my breast and into his mouth, uncaring if his teeth slice me.
The Prince resists, grabbing my wrists and slamming them against the tree, scraping my skin. It takes him one hand tosecure me; I learned from our fight I won't win in a direct physical confrontation against him.
“You're a monster,” I spit.
His lips curve slightly, but I sense neither amusement nor triumph. “Yes.” The word is soft, sibilant.
“Let go.” I tug at his hold.
The hand still in my hair tightens, bringing a pinprick of enraged tears to my eyes as I stare up into the forest canopy.
If I strike him again, if I defend myself, will he kill me?
I'm almost frozen with indecision. The truth is. . .I have no idea how to handle this situation. I haven't decided what atrocities I'm willing to endure for the sake of survival. And so I am frozen.
“Don't do this. Damn you, Renaud, don’t do this.”
When did I begin using his name? It seemed preposterous when he made the offer, but the obscene intimacy of this moment makes using his title mockery.
Slowly, his fingers leave my wrists. But I don’t move. Not yet.
“What is ‘this,’ Aerinne?” He buries his nose in my hair and inhales. “This is the scent of your need. Don't try to lie to me.”
Weeping will do no good, neither will screaming obscenities. “A physiological reaction.”
