“Choke me!”
“Huh?”
“Slap me!”
“What?”
“Fuck me!” She grabbed his collar. “Right now.”
He winced. “You want me to fuck you in an alleyway behind a night club?”
“I want you to thrust into me so hard you start my period early.”
“Geez, okay.”
She grinded up against him, desperate.
He forced her hips to stop. “Youhaveto be mine.”
“Fuck me!”
“Relax, I will, God damn it.”
Cupping her cheek, he positioned her to look at him. Stars danced in her pretty eyes, her lips were raw and bitten from their kiss.
He smiled down at her. She threw up on him.
Once he realised she had more vodka in her belly than sense in her head, he placed her in a taxi and took her home.
Magnus De Astor found his little sister passed out on Dig Graves lap. Guards carried Delphine inside and upstairs while Dig watched her leave, the taste of her still on his lips, the feel of her still damp on his skin.
Magnus stood in front of him, his eyes trained on Dig like a hawk.
“She’s my Soulmate,” Dig said to him, relief filling the aches in his thumping chest. “You can’t stop it. She wants me. Soon, she’s going to come and find me.”
Magnus shook his head sharply. “You shouldn’t be with her.”
Dig gritted his teeth. “We were made for each other.”
“She’s a princess, you’re a…’ Magnus twitched his nose as if he had smelled something foul. Delphine’s vomit, probably. “You’re nobody. No, you are worse than a nobody. You’re the son of a Soulless maniac.”
Dig’s throat bobbed. There was nothing Magnus had said that had been unfitting. “But I am not a criminal, I haven’t hurt anyone. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I promise I’ll treat her properly.”
“Do you love her?” Magnus asked. There was sincerity in Magnus’s gaze. “Do you truly love her?”
“Yes.” Dig did not have to think on it. He touched his heart, his beating organ that moved for only her, the piece of himself that he would cut out and wrap in ribbon and lay at her feet. “I’ve never loved anyone before, only her. Only her.”
“If you love her,” Magnus said, a small smile spreading over his lips. “Then you won't stain her existence with yourself.”
Something inside of Dig’s heart fissured.
Magnus was correct.
Dig offered nothing to her but a painful past.
“What do you think she’ll do?” Magnus asked, his voice slipping into all the cracks of Dig’s mind. “If Delphine finds out her true love has the heritage of a monster? I’m sure you experience deep rejection, deep hate—do you want her to experience that too?”
“No. No, I don’t.”
