My nerves bunched tight as Vincent’s face came into view, and I resisted the urge to flinch. He hadn’t looked at me with that much hatred since the first night we’d met. And that hurt even more than his silence.
When he stood in front of the bed, glaring at me with his back to the crowd, the deepest sense of dread hooked in my belly.
“Before we do this, we have to talk about what happened earlier.”
He gave no sign that he’d heard me as he got onto the bed, crawling over to me with the impressive expanse of muscles in his shoulders flexing and his wings tucked into his back.
I scooched backward, a lump the size of his fist lodging in my throat. “I know you’re still angry with me. I don’t want to do this until we take care of some of this tension. I’m down for a good hate fucking every once in a while, but you look straight up like you want to kill me right about now. This is our wedding, so I was kind of hoping for us to…”
I trailed off. This wasn’t the dynamic I wanted between us. Even if he weren’t going to have vaginal sex, we were going to make the crowd think that we were. Our bodies were going to be locked in an intimate way, with a thousand eyes all on us.
At least back in Boston, it felt like we were on the same side. We still were.
So why did I feel like I was in the same position as the female wood elf I’d saved when I’d first got here, only with more fanfare?
“Vincent. Talk to me. Say fucking something, or this isn’t happening.” I didn’t bother masking the anger from my voice. I felt my magical power swirl around me, lashing my hair around my bare shoulders even though the wind had died down. I bared my fangs and held up my claws, letting him know I wasn’t playing.
This was the part where we were supposed to see that I wasn’t messing around anymore. Where he backed off.
I didn’t want to even pretend to fuck, if he wasn’t going to make an effort to make me feel safe and loved while I was in bed with him. Especially when we had a freaking audience watching us.
I wasn’t asking for much. Just a little respect.
Had I really angered Feral to the point where I no longer deserved that in his eyes? That didn’t seem right or fair. It didn’t seem likehim.Then again, his monster was just that.
A monster.
So that’s how it was going to be? I held back my tears, refusing to cry in front of all these people. “Fuck you, and fuck your wedding ceremony. You can fuck your hand tonight because you’re not laying a single finger on me.”
I stood up to leave. He didn’t give me a chance.
Feral grabbed me by the throat and threw me down onto the bed. I screamed, loud and shrill, kicking at him. He knocked my legs apart with a savage blow of his knee and pinned them down with his weight.
I clawed savagely at his back, drawing blood. It didn’t stop him.
Everything inside me went deathly cold.
He wasn’t just forcing me to pretend to partake in the ritual. He was forcing me to actually go through the ritual. From the moment we’d made the deal, I was afraid he’d seduce me and pull out every trick he had in the virile fae handbook to impregnate me here and now without so much as a second thought lent to Sterling.
But I never would have thought that he would go as far as to rape me.
Vincent Feral wasn’t a rapist.
So why?Whywas he doing this?
Had I really upset him that much by bringing up his bond with Eros? I knew he was going to fly off the handle, but to drive him to dothis?This was the worst, most evil way a could hurt a woman.
What hurt the most was that there’d be no coming back from this.
We were over.
Hewas over.
I threw all of myself into a full-on battle, fang and claw, pushing against his chest, thrashing, fighting him like a trapped wild animal. He bore down on top of me, holding me in a painful grip that bore no traces of care or love, trying to line our bodies up.
He squeezed my throat, applying so much pressure I could scarcely breathe. His free hand pinned my right arm to the bed beside my head, leaving my left free.
He was beginning to shift, growing a third arm to trap my other arm. I only had so much time before it would be too late. I couldn’t hesitate. Couldn’t let my feelings for him stop me from doing what I knew I had to.
