Because we matched, somewhere deep down in the dark where the empath lurked. Dressed all in chains. Starving and wretched…
…but not alone.
Asher was hiding a secret as deadly as my own and the dots had all finally aligned.
Nature’s answer to the empath. Balance of the unseen forces.
Just the other side of the coin, and so,so muchpotential left untapped.
And now it wasmyturn for artful half-truths.
He felt my interest and groaned. Lips crushing the back corner of my jaw, he sent a tendril of dark elite magic zipping through my skin. Pure energy that penetrated far too deep. Too fast for me to even attempt to brace against it or dare to pull strength from it.
Hot and hard against my back, he nudged me forward. A single step toward the bed.
And then, against my throat, “What game are you and Alicia playing?”
“Jealous?”
He laughed, beard stubble rasping against my pulse, he dressed me in gooseflesh then sent a flood. Drowning me in an ocean of power I couldn’t so much as sip. “Temped,” he murmured, and placed his teeth. A gentle nip at my earlobe that drew a gasp from my lips. “Intrigued.” Rumbling at my back, one forearm snaked under my arm, braced between my breasts, so his hand might encircle the base of my throat. Cradling. “And yes,” he admitted, squeezing at my airway for an instant before long fingers moved up, to tease at my lips, “jealous. Deeply.”
He dipped inside, then. Prodding my tongue, before his fingers delved deeper. Stroking. Making me taste. Drawing up a flood of saliva.
It was a lewd action meant to humiliate, even as that wave of elite energy grew heavy, saturated with a sense of obedience. Compliance that bade me answer when he asked, “What are you hiding, pet?”
Drool pooling at the taste of the man, I closed my lips around that invasive digit, and swallowed before I gagged. Sucking. It was a brainless action, one I felt a fleeting instant of regret for doing, but it was smothered beneath his groan.
Lockstep, he drove me forward another pace. Inching closer to that heap of rumpled sheets. “Tell me.”
I hissed, squirming against his heat. Clinging to his forearm, I let his fingers go without drawing blood, and said, “Can’t. It’s a secret,” though a coy, devious little smirk.
His laugh was low and seductive, and it was a sound that curled around my throat, sent tendrils of wicked amusement singing in my blood. “Come now, pet,” he cooed against my ear. “You can trust me.”
“But you’ll be mad,” I sang, teeth gleaming through a smile that bloomed to reveal something… hungry.
“Mmmhmm,” he hummed, and took another step. “And I know just how I’m going to work out my temper. Care to take a guess?”
Without answering that rhetorical question, I let him sweep through my system without a hint of war in my blood…
… and set a trap of my own.
One he couldn’t help but be drawn to, for it was the exact opposite as the one he’d made for me.
A distraction made of truth—just not the one he was after.
“I know,” I murmured, drugged by his influence. Intoxicated by the dark magics coursing through my veins. Reaching for it because I couldn’t help myself. Couldn’t possibly resist the one thing I wanted above all else. “I know your secret. What you’re hiding from the empire.”
He hummed and drove me forward. One pace closer to a punishing reward. Silently commanding my secrets to spill, rough hands slipped down. Weighing my breasts, teasing peaks that begged for cruel torment.
“I know,” I said again, and let my neck roll where it was cradled at his shoulder. “Know how you do it… know what you are.”
“Is that so?” he murmured, lips strumming along my neck. Up, until he placed a single, delicate kiss atop my pulse where it thrashed beneath my jaw.
“I know what you’re hiding”—I laughed around a hiccup—“from-from the empire. How you’ve managed to hold the empath back for so long. Like it was easy.”
“Mmm,” he groaned, and his hand fell to my hip. Kneading, fingertips finding bone where before there had been an insulating layer of fat. “Tell me,” he whispered. “Say it.”
“You’ve done it before.”
