Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,132
blade.
He doesn’t even flinch.
Testing him, I graze the fingers of my left hand gently over his muscled oblique. His shoulders instantly shudder, and his dark head falls back as he lays a hand over mine, gripping me tight . . . And all while I keep the knife pressed against that scar.
The seconds tick by.
One.
Two.
Three.
It’s not until he turns that he spots the glint of steel. When he does, his entire body goes rigid. “What are you doing?”
“Proving a point.”
“And your point is what? That you plan to stab me?”
“No,” I whisper, careful not to prick his scarred flesh, “it’s that I’m standing here on the side that I know you can’t feel. It’s you having to trust me that I won’t stab you in the back—that I won’t let you down when you need me most—even when your guard is still stacked like a fortress. It’s me begging you to take a chance.”
A vulnerable shiver visibly chases down his ridged spine. Then, gruffly, “What do you want?”
The hope unfurls, twining between my legs, looping around my waist, until I cave to its demands and give him the truth: “I want you to see me.”
One moment I’m in control and in the next, the knife has clattered to the rug and my back is against the wardrobe and Damien’s naked chest is flush with mine. He presses one hand to the wood beside my head in a move that’s eerily reminiscent of the night that he came to take his revenge.
The similarities begin and end there.
“Don’t you think that I see you?” he growls, his lips coasting over mine as he frames my face and forces me to meet his glittering gaze. “Rowena, I can’t unsee you. I see you on your knees, ready to die. I hear you in my fucking head, the panicked gasp that left you when Guthram ripped off the brooch. I saw you. Terrified and pressed up against that wall, and I knew”—his fingers scrape the wardrobe as a ragged breath fills his lungs—“Jesus, I knew then that I would stop at nothing to find you.”
Tears sting the backs of my eyes. “Damien—”
“I don’t know how to . . .” With a tight swallow, he smooths his thumb over my bottom lip and dips his head to taste me. The kiss is brief, the kiss is sweet, the kiss is soul-shattering in its complete and utter simplicity because Damien presses his forehead to mine and breathes, “There’s no point to being free if there’s no sunshine waiting for me on the other side.”
My hands tremble as a dangerous wish thrums to life within my heart.
To love and be loved.
To feel its heat in my veins and its courage in my bones.
Rising on my toes, I clasp my hands on either side of Damien’s hips and brush my mouth over his. And then I pull back to let him see all of me, as no one has before: “I am not the damsel in distress, and I’m not some princess waiting for her prince.” When he parts his lips to interject, I cut him off with a hard, silencing kiss. “I’ll walk through darkness with you and I’ll dance in the pits of hell at your side, but I will never be the woman who stands back and waits to be saved. You take me as I am, Damien, or you have none of me at all.”
Anticipation teases up my spine. Gooseflesh kisses my skin. Strong fingers grasp my chin, angling my head so that all I see is him—the strong jaw and the soft lips and those blue eyes that gleam with want and need and hope.
“An ultimatum, Miss Carrigan,” he purrs, his breath hot on my lips. “Am I all out of choices?”
“Unfortunately,” I whisper, breathless, “you are.”
A dark, wicked smile curves his mouth, and then he lowers his head and presses that wicked smile to my ear, and he vows, “Then I’ll take you, Rowena. I’ll take you as you are and I’ll take you until you have nothing left to give, and then I’ll do it again for as long as you’ll have me.”
40
Damien
War arrives under the cover of darkness.
“You bloody bastard,” Robert Guthram snarls, thrashing in my grip as I push him down the shadowed stairwell, “You’ll pay for this. Do you hear me? I’ll make you—”
One sweep of my foot against his and he trips, his shackled wrists unable to break his fall. He lands face-first on the concrete steps