“Do it, then,” he whispered, hips flexing against the spot where I was wet and aching and warm. “Take what you need, little empath. My warrior priestess.”
I couldn’t help myself—I groaned. Set loose, free to indulge, I slipped beneath his skin and drank.
Just as I had with the general.
Just as Asher had taught me.
I gave the empath all she might ever want and settled back to watch the carnage unfold.
With scarcely more than an errant thought, the heart thudding between us grew erratic. His touch between my breasts growing sweaty before the blunt scrape of nails scored my skin.
“What…” He gasped. Seized my wrist, and brought my manacles to life. Freezing me where I straddled him, the pulse of molten gold surged through my veins.
But it was too late.
I was already inside.
Already drinking from a cup named vengeance, I was messy and wild. Free to indulge the joy of claiming this power over an elite.
Theelite.
The one who’d paid a mere fifty dollars for my freedom.
Who’d bound me for eternity with joy singing in his shriveled black heart.
The very man who’d taken my innocence from the back with rough hands and rougher words that had left marks too deep to wash away. Marks that couldn’t be cleansed with mere fire, and couldn’t be withered by a deep frost.
He’d promised to make me like it. To use pleasure to punish. To make me beg and swallow down every… single… drop…
And I had promised not to stop until every one of his kind lay dead at my feet.
No matter the cost.
That I might die trying.
I crooned as I felt his heart stutter and spit. Grinned when he bared blunt teeth and hissed without managing to utter a single word. And when his hand fell away, his influence flickering to a dull hum, I moved to take the rest of it.
To takeeverythinghe had left.
Because I didn’t need permission.
Not for this.
Agony lanced through my chest, shot down my left arm, and floundered behind my ribs—but still, I pressed on. Gulping him down despite the sweat beading on my brow. Ignoring the way the room spun and a peculiar, familiar tingle prickled at my lips.
And so I didn’t noticed when my vision tunneled down to a narrow point once more.
Not until I slumped against him.
Boneless.
All but unable to force a breath through the ring of frost gripping my lungs in a frigid grip, my cheek pressed to his shoulder.
“Sssstop,” he hissed, but that was all.
Nothing else could penetrate the ravenous dark when it yawned around us…
… and swallowed us whole…
