Page 38 of Nocte
Oh, her hope is such a delicate, fragile thing. I’ll dangle it and toy with it. I’ll tease it to the breaking point before snapping it.
“What will you give me for more?”
Her eyes narrow and she casts a downward glance at her body. That shapeless, haunting body. The one I lust after like a dog in heat. I want to tear the robes from her skin. My fingers twitch but I force them down to my sides. I can’t.
But she can.
No,Cassius warns.Toe your boundaries.Stupid bastard. He thought he’d won, but he hasn’t. His game can be beaten.
“Take off your robe,” I tell her before she can question.
She stiffens. One pale hand flies to her throat, but not to the clasp holding her poor excuse for a robe together. She runs her finger along the pulse point as if to draw my attention to it. Taunting me with one of the many parts of her I can’t have.
Stupid, fucking Cassius. How I hate him. Hate. Hate…
My thoughts go quiet as she stands. I forget to think rebellious thoughts to needle the bastard with. I forget Cassius completely.
She has my attention in the palm of her hand, that slim pale hand that she uses to finally tug the opening of her robe apart.
A memory creeps in—one I don’t want. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. All the people I’ve lured for Cassius. Seduced for him. Plied for him. Fucked for him. They would eye me shyly, men and women alike. They’d strip as if their body was the only one that existed. As if I hadn’t seen them all before. Male. Female. Thick. Thin. Dark. Pale.
One and the same.
My skull is full of ripe, beautiful, imperfect, ugly bodies I could compare her to. Then she opens her robe and lets it fall to the ground.
I come up short.
No one is like her and perhaps that’s a good thing. No one Cassius craves anyway. Her flaws are numerous, her appeal to him in the negative degree. We vamryre in our collective all have the same cravings, the same tastes.
It’s what he wants us to believe.
As I look at her, all I know is... I want. Me, Caspian. I want her. I need her. I’ll have her.
Wait. Wait. WAIT!
A million warnings sound off in my skull, all unheeded. For now. I can’t kiss. Can’t fuck. But…
Cassius can’t demand a damn thing from me if I look at her. “Turn around,” I command.
Confusion flits across those eyes, but she complies. Has no choice but to. With slow, shuffling steps, she spins in a circle, putting her back to me.
I look, expecting more pale skin and visible bones. I find as much—and more. Someone has hurt her far worse than a skinned, battered knee. My hand shoots out, fingers grasping…over nothing. I force it down by my side. No touching.
Instead, I inspect her the way I would anything else. Some poor, desecrated thing.
Once—no, recently—someone took to the little fae over and over again. With a knife they made neat, clean cuts. From her neck down, they form a macabre row. A mocking imitation of wings.
I’ve seen scars before, on bodies vamryre and mortal alike. They are silvery with age. Sparkling reminders of violence.
Not hers. They glow, a strip of fresh crimson as if her blood still glistens there. Fresh. Bleeding.
“Enough,” I say.
Dutifully, she spins around to face me. “I don’t know.”
Her reply rings out in response to a question I never asked. Maybe I did.How? Who did this? For what?
She shakes her head. I must have asked her again.