Sound of Madness A Dark Royal Romance - Maria Luis Page 0,70

The king said that love is carnage, and it must be, because Isla Quinn destroyed everything that made my brother cold and she made him human.”

He steps forward, steps into me, his hands locking on either side of my hips to grasp the altar. Calloused fingers slide over mine. The fog returns with swift vengeance and, once again, I’m spinning, spinning, spinning, a round top with no hope of ever falling still.

“You’re a closet romantic,” I mutter when his knuckles slip between my fingers, locking me in place, “the hero that you so desperately don’t want to be. Don’t even bother to deny it.”

“Is that what you really think?”

No. Yes.

I don’t even know.

I can’t even remember my own name when he stands this close. His muscular legs bracket mine, and the hard edge of the altar cuts into my lower back, and my hands, now pinned beside my hips, are trapped under the delicious weight of his.

I’ve never been the woman who melts for a man, never been the sort of woman who falls prey to the big, bad wolf. No. I am the wolf. Always have been. But holy hell, here, right now, with Damien’s broad frame plastered against mine, I might as well be drowning. Kicking my legs, pumping my arms, anything to break to the surface when the undertow is intent on swallowing me whole.

Needing to assert myself, I squeeze his fingers between mine, all too aware of the confession burning in the pit of my stomach.

I think that I ran, knowing he would follow.

I ran, because it’s the first time in my life where I haven’t chased a man, a target, for anyone else’s benefit but my own.

I ran, because I wanted to be caught.

Not by the hero, not even by the closet romantic, but by the Mad Priest, a man with heat in his veins and arrogance in his bones and a voice that leaves me shaken, shattered. Without my vision to piece together the rest—the nuanced expressions and humanizing tics—it’s all I have of him. A voice that beckons me closer, a voice that drags me deeper into the shadows. A voice that thrusts every dulled, unpolished desire of mine into the light.

In Damien’s arms, every broken shard of my soul feels infinitesimally beautiful. And I want . . . I think that I want to be worshipped.

Mustering the nerve, I tilt my head back. “You lied. That’s what I think.”

He growls deep in his throat. “How? Because I didn’t tell you who really murdered the king? Or because I tricked you into a bargain that you never had a hope of winning?”

If they hurt me, then I’ll touch you, and I won’t wait for an invitation.

Words that caused warmth to explode in my blood. Words that I knew, deep down, would change my life forever. Damien Priest is universally despised, for reasons that aren’t necessarily his doing, and it was a foregone conclusion that someone would be out for his head once introductions were made.

I knew all of that and still said yes.

“No,” I answer honestly, straining under the prison of his fingers, seeking the irrefutable tension of him keeping me restrained, “not because of that.”

“Then what?”

It’s now or never.

As I suspected he would from the very second that I heard him at the Palace, Damien Priest has the ability to push me from the cliff with nothing but a crook of his finger and the purr of his voice. I leap, recklessly, and fall into the crashing waves below: “You told me that you break the weak and wreck the strong, and that I’d never hear you when you came for me—but Damien . . . that was a lie.”

His breath hitches, and mine expands to fill my chest.

“Feet thundering down the stairs, the way you roared my name. You came for me, and I heard you every step of the way.”

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

Gruff. Rigid. If I could tease my fingers across his face now, he would be stiff as stone. A man holding on, a god preparing to fall. “You followed me,” I murmur with a softness that I know will unravel him, “and you chased me. Not for Saxon or Isla Quinn or the Crown, but for me. For a man not willing to be cut down at the knees, Damien, you sure are—”

A gasp flies from my mouth when he grips my waist and abruptly spins me around. Like a sacrifice, I’m flattened against the