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“That whatever you are, you couldn’t even conceive a normal demon. Jolene didn’t tell you I see auras?” Drew snickered. “I’ve never seen one like yours before, but at least you have an aura. Your kid? No. He has a black smudge where an aura should be. A smudge that pulsates. Whatever you impregnated Harper with isn’t natural.”
“Whatever I impregnated her with?” Knox echoed, enunciating every word carefully. “Asher is a person, just like you and me. He’s not a thing. He’s not unnatural.”
“Well, he’s not a natural breed of demon. He’s something else. Something that does
n’t have a marker. Something I’ve never—” Whatever he saw on Knox’s face made Clarke’s eyes narrow. “You knew. You knew he wasn’t a sphinx. You know what that black smudge is, too, don’t you?”
“Forget all of that.”
“You think I’ll honestly forget—?”
“I’ll make you forget.” Knox thrust his mind into Drew’s, allowed him to feel his presence there. “I can erase memories. All I have to do is find them and—” Finding a particular thread of memory, Knox smiled. “There.” He snipped the thread. Like that, Drew could no longer remember Harper’s taste.
His eyes widened. “What did you just do? You can’t take my fucking memories!”
“If you had simply removed the tattoo and returned to Cuba, we wouldn’t be in this position. You put yourself here.” Seeing that Drew was trying to visualize a brick wall in his mind, as if it would bolster his shields, Knox’s demon rolled its eyes. “You can’t keep me out of your mind. You’re simply not strong enough for that.”
As he surfed through the hellcat’s thoughts, it surprised Knox to find that … “You see me as someone who sauntered in and stole Harper right from under your nose. But that’s not really accurate, is it? Someone can’t steal something from you if it never belonged to you. And Harper was never yours. She never would have been yours. She was meant to be mine.”
Drew said nothing. Just kept on visualizing a brick wall, cheeks flushing red.
Ignoring the hellcat’s futile attempts to keep him out, Knox went deeper into his mind. “My, my, my, you do like to lie to yourself, don’t you, Clarke? You’ve managed to convince yourself that you’re on a good and noble path; that your efforts to separate her from me is ‘right’ for Harper. But there’s a little part of you that keeps shaking its head sadly—a part of you that finds it somewhat distasteful to try to tear apart a family.”
Drew’s eyes flickered.
“You don’t even hope to gain anything from it at this point. You’re not under the illusion that you have a chance with her. You know she doesn’t love you. You know she’ll never belong to you. But you’d hoped that you could scare her into fleeing with Asher. You don’t even care if she flees with you or not. All that matters to you is that she’s away from me. You don’t even care if it means that she’ll be miserable without me. Tell me, Clarke, where’s the nobility in that?”
“She’s not safe with you,” Drew gritted out. “I’d rather she was safe than happy. And if I’m going to lose her to someone, it should be to someone who deserves her. Someone who I know will care for her and give her what she needs. You’re not that person. Never will be. I don’t know how the fuck you managed to make her care for you—”
Knox laughed, and it was a dark sound that made the hellcat tense. “Don’t lie, Clarke. You think I somehow manipulated her into believing she loves me. I’m guessing you haven’t shared that belief with her. She’d have slapped you for thinking her so weak-minded.”
“She’s not weak-minded, but she’s soft inside. She wants to be loved. You know that, and you’ve played on it.”
“The only person who’s been manipulating Harper is you.” Knox stepped closer to him. “You know she finds it difficult to believe that people can truly love her and will stick around, and you played on that. Only it didn’t work, did it? She’s secure in what I feel for her. But if you’d tried that in the beginning when I very first met Harper, it might just have worked.” A smug smile tugged at Knox’s mouth. “I suppose that only makes it worse for you that Jolene insisted on you being kept in the dark about my presence in her life. How very sad.”
Clarke sneered. “She would have chosen me if I’d come for her back then.”
Knox laughed again, and there was a hint of genuine humor in it this time. “You really do enjoy deluding yourself, don’t you? Perhaps I should pity you. It must be difficult to have a mind that simply can’t deal with reality and has invented its own version of it. You’ve not only blinded yourself to what Harper feels for me, you’ve blinded yourself to why you’re so intent on separating her from me. Do stop with the pretense that you’re doing what’s best for her. Oh, you do want Harper safe, that’s true. But you mostly want her away from me because you’re jealous that she loves me and not you.”
Clarke shook his head. “It’s not—”
“Lie to yourself if you must, but I’ve been in your mind. When you get down to the bottom of all the bullshit in your head, Clarke, you can clearly see that this is just a very simple case of jealousy. But then, people have been doing extreme things out of jealousy since the beginning of time, haven’t they? It’s a very potent emotion.” Something that Knox hadn’t truly experienced until recently. “And it only makes it worse for you that I can offer her things you can’t. It also annoys you that, power-wise, my dick is a hell of a lot bigger than yours. You know you’re nothing close to my equal, and you hate that.”
Hands curling into fists, Drew pointlessly struggled against Knox’s psychic grip.
“I’d like to say that, in your shoes, I would walk away and let her enjoy the happiness she’d found with another, but I’m not sure if that’s true,” said Knox. “I know I’m a ruthless bastard. Whereas you … you truly believe yourself to be a good, honorable person. But wouldn’t a good, honorable person tip their hat and walk away in such a situation?”
Drew ceased struggling and lifted his chin. “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with.”
“I’m not going to kill you.” Because Tanner had been right. It would impact Harper’s life. Clarke was nothing to her, and he needed to stay nothing to her. Knox didn’t want any of her thoughts centered on the hellcat. But Knox couldn’t guarantee that he’d have the same restraint if such a thing happened again.
Experimentally, Knox shot a laser of hellfire out of his finger. He saw understanding light Clarke’s eyes. “I gave you the chance to get rid of it yourself.” With his psychic hands, Knox twisted Drew, slammed him face-first into the wall, and held him there. “This shouldn’t take long. But I won’t lie to you, Clarke, my demon wants me to make it last. And, well, I’ve decided to give it what it wants.” Knox tore open the back of the hellcat’s shirt. “Do feel free to scream.”
Drew hissed. “Do your worst.”
“I will.” Knox was quite sure the hellcat meant to suffer in silence. But the moment Knox honed that laser of hellfire onto the tattoo, Drew screamed.
CHAPTER TWELVE
