Page 46 of Scourged

Mariah held his stare. “Have I had much of a choice? I don’t see many other options for me down here.”

“You could simply wear nothing. You’re basically there now.”

She tilted her head, assessing him. Andrian—or whatever beast wore Andrian’s skin—leaned against the wall across from her cell, arms crossed and posture ambivalent. But she couldn’t help noticing that despite this not beingherAndrian, despite the mask being one she didn’t recognize, it seemed there was no reason for his visit other than to taunt her. It was almost like … like he couldn’t stay away, like he was drawn to her for reasons the beast in his skin did not understand.

It made Mariah’s chest flutter with a fool’s hope. A hope born from the few flickering looks in his eyes, a hope fueled by the knife tucked beneath her mattress. A hope that now grew with the realization that perhaps it wasn’t the beast within that drew him down into the depths of the dungeons of Khento.

Perhaps, that was just …him. The pull between them was as difficult to ignore as it was when they’d both been adamant on fighting it.

That’s when her resolve settled, when her decision was reached.

She shifted forward on the cot, hiding the movement of her hand behind her body. She touched the cool handle of the paring knife as she tilted her head and morphed her expression, features relaxing into a mask she’d donned many times when she needed a man to obey her without him knowing.

Even if a man didn’t react well to power … they always responded to sex.

“Is that a suggestion, or an order?” she purred, voice low as she crossed her legs, doing what she knew best despite the lost muscle and pallid skin.

Andrian’s eyes flashed to her bare legs, and when they returned to hers, they were blazing.

He pushed off the wall and took the two steps to the bars of her cell. His expression was hungry, and it curled hatred in her gut for whatever it was inside him that dared to look at her like that.

But Mariah choked down on those feelings. She had a goal. She would do whatever it took to accomplish it.

“Come here,” he ordered, voice low and flat, but his eyes still burned.

Mariah, with a slow movement meant to flash more skin and allow her to hide the knife in her hand behind her back, rose from the cot. She took the few short steps to the cell door, holding that careful beguiling mask. She stopped just shy of his reach, blinking up through her lashes.

“Is this close enough?”

He growled, low and impatient. Shoving a hand in his pocket, he withdrew a familiar ring of skeleton keys. He shoved one ofthem into the lock of the cell, pulling it open with enough force for it to clang against the cell beside hers.

Andrian stormed through the door and was on her.

She let him paw and grab and pull her to him, hands possessive and foreign. His face buried into her hair, inhaling deeply from the skin of her neck.

“You evensmelllike her,” he whispered, low and dark and with a voice that raised the hair on Mariah’s arms.

She swallowed the last of her pride and disgust and continued playing the part she’d unknowingly practiced for years.

Arching her back, she slid her free hand up his chest, halting just below his collarbone. She leaned forward, whispering into his ear on a breathless exhale that wasn’t entirely forced.

“I can be whatever you want me to be.”

The answering growl against her felt hardly human. She was clutched harder, pushed toward the back wall of her cell until her spine hit cool stone, pinning her knife between it and her back.

Which was fine. Easier to hide as she continued to work.

The beast inside Andrian licked and smelled and tasted her skin, and she let him. He was distracted by her, by whatever it was about her that set him on edge in the same way it did her. She used it to her advantage to undo the first button of his shirt.

Then the next. And the next.

Down the line of his chest, until the skin below was visible. Until she was able to push the black material off his left shoulder, revealing the Mark tattooed on his skin by the hand of a god, the maw of a dragon wrapped around itself roaring and vengeful.

Mariah surged forward against him, freeing the hand behind her back. She took a moment to steady herself, clutching the knife by her side, focusing on the ground beneath her feet andthe air filling her lungs. She dropped her right hand from his chest, flipped the knife in her left, and sliced a shallow, clean cut across the skin of her right palm. She leaned forward again, her lips brushing the shell of Andrian’s ear.

“If you’re in there, Andrian … I’m coming.”

With the last of her strength, she shoved him back, just enough for her knife to arch up to his chest.