Page 58 of The Witch They Crave

"Give me a second." My voice isn't steady. "Then your shirt's coming off."

He laughs, low and rough, and it's the best thing I've heard all day. I get my hands on the hem of his shirt and start dragging it up—and he takes over, hauls it off himself in one motion, and then he's pressing me back into the wall, kissing me hungry and unfinished, all that restraint finally slipping its leash.

I throw a hand out to catch myself against the stone—and a jutting edge bites into the side of my finger.

I hiss and flinch, pulling my finger in front of me to see the damage. A drop of crimson wells up and drips onto the ground between us.

Kage goes still.

Wrong-still. A heaviness settles over the room and Kage’s energy changes, expands until I can’t breathe being this close to him.

I meet his gaze and his eyes have changed. They’re wild.

The normal storm-blue color has gone black–the pupil has swallowed almost all the color. What's left is a dark rim and something behind it that makes the part of my brain responsible for survival go very quiet.

His fangs pop out and he sneers, his jagged scar pulling across half his face.

I suck in a sharp breath, a jolt of fear tearing through me until I’m shaking. “Kage?”

He tears himself off me.

Both hands shove flat against my shoulders—not to move me, to launch himself, the push flinging him backward across the room, and I stagger sideways along the wall and catch the workbench to stay upright. Hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that the print of his hands will be on me tomorrow.

He hits the far wall like he means to go through it. Back to me. Hands flat against the stone. Shoulders heaving.

"Go."

“Kage, wait–”

“Go!”

The fury in his voice rattles through me and all I can feel is pure terror.

I snatch my shirt off the floor and drag it on with hands that won't cooperate, buttons be damned, and I don't look back—can't look back, because some animal part of me knows that looking back is how prey dies. I shove through the door into the daylight and I run. Across the field, past the oaks, my finger still bleeding and my heart going like it wants out of my chest and the whole warm wanting thing from thirty seconds ago curdled into something with teeth.

He's a monster. I felt the shape of it—the real thing, the thing under the warmth and all the centuries of person he built on top of it.

He’s a monster…

And yet, he didn’t hurt me.

I keep running but that’s the thought that runs through my head on repeat even after I’ve gotten back to the mansion, run up the stairs, and shut myself in my extravagant room.

Kage is a monster–but I’m not sure that monster would ever hurt me.

Chapter 15

The woman in grey lays the dress on the bed like I have no choice in what I’m wearing tonight.

She runs this house. We haven't exchanged names. She hasn't offered and I haven't asked.

"Mr. Vassard's car will be ready at seven," she says, from the doorway.

"Right."

She doesn't leave. Looks at the dress, then at me.

I short-circuit, realizing she was sent up here to dress me exactly how Leopold desired and she’s probably just as much as his mercy as I am. "Uh, give me ten minutes," I say.