It was as I thought.
She considered everyone’s feelings but her own.
Chapter Eleven
Willow
The incapacitating grip of his shadows wrapping around my body pushed me into a blind rage I couldn’t afford with my powers still recovering. They wound around my limbs, pressing in like chains I couldn’t escape unless he allowed it. Each time I tested them, a glint flickered in his eyes, and they tightened slightly. Never enough to hurt, just enough to remind me who held the power.
Adrenaline flooded my limbs as I fought to break through, to show him how little his efforts to break me meant. To show him the kind of opponent he had chosen.
The bastard needed to learn. My whining witchcraft clawed at me, urging me to humiliate him, to strip him of willpower and enslave his mind just long enough to shatter it. My water power coiled through my arms, ready to strike, to drown him from the inside and leave him gasping at the brink of death.
The only problem was that it would most likely kill me too.
Pride versus survival. It was a tough choice when survival didn’t mean much if it cost me dignity.
My brief adventure with that tall, black-eyed disappointment I found on the porch the other day had angered him. Alec—the name I only remembered because he kept repeating it like it mattered—seemed to have grown attached to the woman he rescued from her oppression.
His little neanderthal brain probably pushed him toward me because, in the world of primitives, it would earn him my eternal gratitude. And more.
He would get more. A lot more of my attempts at making his life miserable until he eventually realised his little urges were wrong.
And he had urges, okay?
While he held me still and cleaned my bleeding nose, I could see the effect I had on him.
Whether it was my blood or powerlessness, I didn't care.
His sick fascination proved exactly why women needed to raise their standards and stop entertaining lacklustre men. It never ended well, and in extreme cases, they deluded themselves into thinking they had a chance with someone far superior.
A few hours had passed since he left me alone, and I spent them coming up with a way to crush him. Powerlessness gnawed at my entrails, eating away at my resolve from the inside out, but I refused to cower and hide behind excuses. There might have been little I could do, but that little could devastate him even more.
If I was being honest with myself, what I came up with was a little far-fetched and relied on third-party cooperation.Still, if it worked, it would serve as a valuable lesson and a shinyfuck youslapped right across Alec’s face.
Knocking twice, the door swiftly opened, and I barged in hoping for the best.
The spacious room offered ample opportunities for me to accomplish my little plan of ruin; the dimmed light provided a fitting atmosphere.
My eyes landed on the small sofa by the wall; it wasn’t the soft wool I was used to, but I didn’t have time to agonise over trivial matters like their inferior taste.
‘May I help you?’ Alec’s father asked as I sprawled across his three-seater. Surprise flickered in his gaze, almost making me cackle.
Was I bolder than their women, or were they so unaccustomed to female attention? Or perhaps it was the tight dress that clung to every part of me like an invitation.
‘In many ways, actually…’ I whispered, repositioning my body to lie on my side with a hand propping my head up.
Many times I’d been told that my tight waist and wide hips looked unholy in that position. All I needed from him was a tiny step toward the sin. I would take care of everything else.
The shadow daddy might have been reluctant, but the way his throat bobbed as my dress hiked up to reveal more of my tan thighs told me everything I needed to know.
A man was a man. An eager woman, and a beautiful one, was difficult to pass up.
‘What exactly do you mean, child?’ he rasped, not moving like he was afraid of what he might do.
The way he treaded carefully wasn’t how I envisioned it going, but I could make it work. I had conquered bigger hurdles and enslaved men much more reluctant.
His awkward stance made me giggle. ‘Child? Do I look like a child to you?’
