“Every choice I have made since that attack has been for you,”he murmurs.“Even when you don’t see it. Even when you don’t want me to. It’s always been for you.”
I shake my head against his words, trying to resist the pull of his voice.“Keeping him alive isn’t forme.”
“Not yet,”he says.“Because you’re thinking about now. I’m thinking about after.”
I bite my cheek, thinking over his words, and he uses the pause to eliminate the last bit of space between us.
“One night,”he repeats, voice dipping lower, eyes on mine.“You can give me that, can’t you?”His darkness brushes against me.“Just one.”
And the sharp glint of silver that flashes in his otherwise black gaze has me trapped. Because he could just take the traitor, but he isn’t. Kane’s letting me choose. Again.
Because Kane doesn’t compromise, but he does forme.
After the attack at The Inferno, when I’d lost my home, was separated from my only family, when I needed answers—he gave me that.
Even though this isdifferent, so far away from that first moment at the dinner table in some random hotel, I still know this matters just as much.
I force myself to turn away, to stare at the man—the traitor—who’s barely conscious. His skin pale and waxen, drained of all colour as he stares at nothing.
Almost gone. Almost too late.
“Is that a yes?”When his fingers skim my lower back, my darkness simply melts away.
Traitorous shadow.
“I’m thinking,”I mumble.
His soft rumble of laughter is awfully dangerous, as dangerous as his cool fingertips trailing up my spine in the ghost of a touch.
I feel it everywhere. Cold, soothing, consuming. One small touch, and he holds so much power.
“Barely any training,”he murmurs,“yet you meld the darkness to your will so easily.”His voice is so low, and full of admiration.“So much power. So much control.”
His fingers slide back down my spine, tracing tantalising cold over heated skin, making me question the very control he just praised.
“I’ve seen power. I’ve tasted temptation.”His breath brushes my cheek.“But nothing—nothing—has ever felt as dangerous as you.”
I blink, heart racing, internal voice shaky.“You’re just trying to convince me to let you have him.”
“No, immaru.”
That nickname. Now I know what it means, it cuts so much deeper. Makes everything feel so raw.
“Just like the dark,”he says, so soft it brushes my mind.“I am yours to command.”
Yours. Mine. Ours.
“But if he dies,”he murmurs, pulling me gently back until my shoulders press against his chest plate,“we may never find the girl.”
His grip tightens. A cage of cold, of power, of something else I can’t name.
“Let me have him,” he whispers against my ear, no longer in my mind, but real and close, “and I’ll find her.”
My eyes flutter shut. “You sound awfully confident.”
“When I want something, I’m relentless.” His lips brush my ear, his voice the tip of an icy blade across my skin. “And I always get what I want.”
I exhale slowly, trying to sound unfettered. “Fine. He’s yours. But you’d better find her, Kane.”
