Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,29

doesn’t shove me away.

No, he drags me into the hard cradle of his body, so that there’s no mistaking the solid length of him against the base of my spine. The position flattens my cheek against the windowpane, and oh God. Behind my ribcage, my heart takes on an entirely new rhythm that screams flee! Run! Save yourself!

I don’t have the chance.

Not when his velvet voice wraps like a noose around my neck, squeezing all the air from my lungs: “Don’t play games that you’re not willing to lose.”

“That’s not—”

“I’m not a man you can wind around your little finger, and I’m not your father, using his daughter to do his dirty work.” He presses even closer, his chest plastered against my back. “When I come for you, you’ll never know. I break the weak and I wreck the strong, and when I fuck a woman, it’s not because her father told her to spread her legs for me.”

Embarrassment and self-loathing flood my body, heating my face and wrenching my heart in two. It’s too close to the truth. Too dirty and raw and—

“Let me go,” I whisper, struggling in his arms, despite the fact that his hand remains a shackle around my wrists. “Let me go.”

“There are no heroes here. Remember that.”

I stomp on his booted foot, but the bastard doesn’t even grunt out in pain. “I said, let me go, Godwin.”

“Damien.”

A startled noise emerges from deep within my throat. “What?”

“My name is Damien Godwin,” he says in a tone as merciless as the waves that strike the white-chalked walls of the White Cliffs of Dover, “but you’ll know me as Damien Priest.”

I freeze.

Go absolutely still.

He chuckles, the sound so low and wrathful that terror sparks in my blood. And then he strokes my hip with his thumb, like he has all the time in the world to make me wish that I were already dead, even as he dips his head forward and whispers in my ear: “No one escapes the Mad Priest, Rowena . . . least of all you.”

11

Damien

Freedom tastes like desolation.

With my back plastered against the shadowed walls of the Parliamentary Offices, and my eyes locked on Westminster’s Victoria Tower, across Abingdon Street, there’s no hiding the fact that seven months has forever altered London’s landscape.

I may have lost my humanity, but this city has been stripped of something far worse.

The streets are empty, the people gone. Sirens wail somewhere off in the distance, the sound so bone-chilling against the utter stillness that it feels like I’ve stepped into a post-apocalyptic world.

This is not my home.

This is not my London.

But somehow, someway, it’s come to this.

Dropping one knee to the wet grass, I peer around the corner wall of the Offices. Illuminated by only streaks of moonlight escaping a thick sweep of clouds, the Jewel Tower stands like an ancient fortress, its stone walls artfully crumbled but still holding strong after seven centuries.

Two guards congregate near the front door, identical SA80s slung across chests dressed in combat body armor.

“Bloody taxes, my ass,” I mutter under my breath.

The only reason Carrigan would assign security to the Jewel Tower, of all places, would be if he has something inside worth protecting. Which means that Rowena lied to me . . . again.

Gritting my teeth against the memory of imploring violet eyes, I press deeper into the shadows and prop my forearm on my bent knee. The movement activates my wristwatch, its blank face glowing red. I tap the tiny map in the righthand corner and wait for it to calibrate my coordinates.

Idiot.

I shouldn’t have given her my name.

Shouldn’t have allowed her to poke and prod and stroke my temper to life, until I was spitting fire and harder than I’ve ever been and prepared to do just about anything to wipe the smirk from her face.

Facts keep me steady; data is my only book of prayer. And yet, with her finger grazing my chest and her breathing so blasted steady that she could have been touching a piece of wood, instead of a living, breathing male, I lost control.

For the first time in my life, I lost control.

Fucking hell.

Another sharp glance at the Tower reveals that the two guards haven’t moved.

A humorless smile tilts my mouth. Seven months of house arrest may have wrought more damage on my psyche than I even know, but in this, no amount of space and time can ruin what I do best.

Spying The Cloisters on the interactive map, which sit on