I bite down on the insides of my cheeks, and I instantly fucking wish I didn’t. A wince spears through me like a fencing sword.
Forgot, even if only for a moment, about that throbbing heat on my face, the split lip I definitely have, my swollen cheek and the taste of metal on my tongue.
That guard struck me like he’d been waiting for the moment, looking forward to it… so I should do what this one says.
This one frightens me most.
And still, I hesitate.
My bones go rigid, my muscles go on strike.
I just look down at the cloths, then at the pile, before I lift my scowl to him.
“No.”
He doesn’t flinch. Not a flutter of the lashes, not a frown, not a flicker of anything.
Unwavering, his stare bores into mine.
“Not with you here,” I say, firm.
His boots flatten on the foliage, a single swift step to bring him closer, to have him towering over me, to have the warm mist of his minty breath disturbing my hairline.
I shudder against the intrusion.
His voice comes like cold death, “What do you say?”
I crane my neck, wide eyes on his hard face.
Takes me a moment to understand his question.
‘What do youmean?’
That instinct of defiance still flickers in me, a flame gasping at waning oxygen.
I utter the answer with too much breath, and not nearly enough strength. “You’ll look.”
His eyes flash, and in a gasp, my neck is in his hand, and my boots are lifted from the ground.
The warrior lifts me up, brings the tip of my nose to his, and in a fraction of a second, in a blur of movement I couldn’t quite see, I’m dangling.
His eyes are sheets of white, hooked onto mine.
Gone are the hues of green behind a winter mist, his eyes are white like blizzards now, like the summits of mountains.
My lips are parted, not around breath or words or whimpers, but just pushed apart by the pressure of his suffocating hold.
Can’t speak a word, even if I tried. The pressure of his grip is too tight, too deep, and my voice is silenced by it.
For a long moment, he stares into me, through the flesh of my eyes, andintome, as though he can reach with his gaze alone down my body to my ribcage and rip out my heart.
I see nothing but pure, unfiltered rage in him.
It comes in his tone, too. It comes with a battled, whispery warning, one that tells me he’s fighting himself right now, fighting the urge to just snap my neck like a twig.
“I haveneverdesired a human.” His lip curls into a silent snarl of pure disgust. “Your body is filth, it is perversion.”
He snatches for my hand on his wrist, his fingers fisting around my thumb—and he tugs it, bends it backwards.
