He stepped between my legs, pressing his thigh against me, and I nearly shattered—my breath catching as delicious friction sent white-hot need flashing through me.Shackled to the chair, I couldn’t move, couldn’t run.His hand roamed with expert ease, mapping every shiver, every unsteady breath.
Then—just as my control began to slip entirely—he pulled away.
I gasped, left trembling, breathless, and aching.
Though I couldn’t see his mouth, I felt the smirk in his voice as he took in my disheveled state.“You’re more dangerous than you realize,” he murmured, his tone thick and sinful.
I exhaled shakily, forcing a smirk, though my legs still trembled.“And you’re not?”
He leaned in again, the lower edge of his skeletal mask shifting just enough to expose his mouth.His lips ghosted over mine—a cruel, calculated tease that sent another wave of need crashing through me.
“Oh, I know exactly what I am.”His voice was a promise—dark, wicked, dripping with temptation.His teeth grazed my bottom lip, a sinful tease before he pulled back just enough to make me ache.“The question is… can you handle it?”
I was still aching and trembling.
I forced my voice to steady, though it quivered like a leaf in the wind.“We can work together.Stop my father and Lord Winston before their plans unfold.Their society is hunting you, but I can help you.Let’s bring them down—together.”
He scoffed, shaking his head, the movement curt and dismissive.“I work alone.”His voice was silk wrapped around steel.“You might as well confess your every betrayal to your father because he remains blissfully blind to the true nature of his daughter.He sees only obedience.”
A slow, cold smile ghosted behind the skeletal mask, the kind that sent a thrill of dread down my spine.“I could strip away that illusion with a mere whisper in the right ear.Shatter his trust in you without ever stepping into the light.”
My hands clenched involuntarily, nails biting into my palms.“You wouldn’t dare!”I snapped, but the fear curling in my stomach betrayed my confidence.
“You think this is a game, love?”His voice dipped into something dangerously soft, a velvet snare.“You’re playing with forces that could devour you whole.You don’t understand the depth of this world—the power, the peril.And you are not ready for it.”
The words lashed against me like a storm, a stark reminder that I had stepped onto a battlefield where the pieces were moved by shadows and whispers, not brute force.
I swallowed hard, my pulse a frantic rhythm in my throat.“Who are you?”The question tumbled from my lips, raw, desperate.“Why do you hide behind that mask?”
Before I could move, his hand was on me—cold, immovable, seizing my chin in a grip that sent a jolt of dark electricity coursing through me.His touch was possessive and commanding, forcing my gaze up into the abyss of his eyes.
“Because monsters don’t need faces, my sweet venom.Only power,” he whispered, his voice an unnerving caress that slithered down my spine, a phantom touch I could feel even where his fingers didn’t linger.
Then—the world twisted.
Darkness unfurled from the depths of his cloak, a living shadow that swallowed the space between us.It coiled around me like writhing, cold, insidious tendrils, a whispering abyss that pulled me under.My breath hitched as the sensation wrapped around my body—velvet and void, sin and sorcery.I clenched my eyes shut as if I could will away the impossible.
When I dared to open them again, the dungeon was gone.
I was no longer trapped in stone and shadow but seated before my vanity.The air damp and frigid replaced with the familiar scent of my chamber.The candlelight flickered, uncertain as if sensing something still lingered in the air.
But when I lifted my gaze to the mirror, my breath caught.
Not my own startled reflection but his.The Black Wraith’s haunting image burned through the glass, so tangible it sent a shudder rippling through me.
“You should have stayed away, Elizabeth.”His voice was a whisper in my mind, in the air, in the very marrow of my bones.“I’ll be watching you, my sweet venom.”
A gasp tore from my lips, my pulse a frantic, erratic thing as I twisted around—but he was gone.
Vanished like a specter, like smoke slipping through my fingers, like the whisper of a dream that lingers just long enough to haunt you.
The silence was deafening.My chest heaved, my body still humming with the aftershock of his touch, the weight of his words pressing down on me like a velvet chain.
How did he do that?How could he disappear so effortlessly, like a ghost untethered by the rules of this world?
But worse—far worse—was the way my body still ached from his touch.
The kiss.The threat.The revelation that this masked man knew everything—about me, about my father, about the deadly poison I had created.
