46
Where it leads
KADE
My mansion is quiet, the kind of stillness that hums with contentment. Zara moves around the rooms, her hair falling loose in soft waves, catching the sunlight streaming through the windows and turning it to moonlight. She’s humming under her breath, and it’s a melody I don’t recognize, but I already want to memorize.
She fits here, in my home.
More than that, she belongs here.
I lean against a doorway, watching her. She’s pretending not to notice, but the small smile tugging at the corner of her lips betrays her. It’s almost magical to see her move through my house, as if she’s always belonged here. As if my home was just waiting for her to arrive and fill a void I didn’t know existed. As if it were an empty canvas she’s finally brought to life.
I grind my teeth, irritated I’ve become a lovesick twit who’s fawning over his girl. There wasn’t one grain of untruth in my words when I told Zara she could have anything she wanted, andthat little witch knows she has me exactly where she fucking wants me. With my balls trapped in a vise, ready to do whatever it takes to keep her happy.
“You’re staring again,” she says without turning around.
“I can’t help it,” I admit. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She snorts, but the flush creeping up her neck gives her away. Zara is many things, but being graceful while taking compliments isn’t one of them. She turns to face me, making sure her skirt bellows outward as she pirouettes, and I catch a glance of her lithe thighs that need to be reminded of their fucking place.
“Beautiful?” She giggles and I love it. “That’s what you see when you look at me? Not the trail of dead warlocks or devastation?”
My laugh is dark and she loves it too.
Zara’s as obsessed about me as I am about her, and we’re both completely fucked. She’s going to be the death of me and I’m going to ruin her, and we’ll torment each other into happiness for the rest of our goddamn days. I don’t want it any other way. Neither does she. We work—chaotic, volatile, perfect—like we were carved from the same darkness and meant to collide.
“I see it, kitten,” I say, snaking an arm around her waist. “You’re a tempest, but even they can be beautiful.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Good thing I don’t need it.” I close the space between us, brushing my fingers over her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw like I’m committing it to memory. “You’re mine. All of you—fire, fury, and that wicked little pussy of yours that I’d burn down the world to fuck.”
I’m not lying.
Zara’s cunt has my cock aching most of the goddamn time, and it’s frankly embarrassing how often I’m hard for her. The slightest touch makes my dick quiver and when she looks at me with those emerald eyes of hers it turns me hard in a fucking instant. It’simpossible to be anything other than permanently ready to fuck her, and I’m planning on making good on my threat to christen every surface in every room with our come.
My fantasies run wild and the possibilities are endless, and I’m looking forward to breaking her in ways neither of us could have imagined before we collided. She knows it, too, because her wicked frown sharpens, daring me to keep going, to keep pushing until there’s nothing left between us but raw need and the jagged edges of our dark obsession.
“What are you thinking about now?” she asks, her eyes glinting with curiosity and mischief.
“All the ways I’m going to ruin your cunt, kitten,” I say, my voice low.
Her laugh is breathless, her head falling back as she bares her throat to me.
“You’re too fucking cocky for your own good, Kade.”
“Confident,” I correct, nipping her collarbone and savoring the way she shudders beneath me. “And you love it.”
Her laughter echoes, a bright sound against the darker backdrop of my thoughts. Zara’s right. I’m a cocky, arrogant bastard who takes what he wants without a shred of remorse. It’s who I’ve always been, and for a long time, I believed that was all I’d ever be. But Zara sees the monster I am and she doesn’t flinch, not even for a fucking second. She loves me, not despite of my evil, but because of it.
She is darkness, stitched into flesh, breathing, smiling, waiting. Her power isn’t something she uses; it’s something that devours, seeping into the bones of the world and bending it to her whim. There’s no spell to break, no charm to unravel. Once she’s touched you, you’re already lost.
Zara doesn’t need threats or weapons because she is the weapon, her power coiled beneath her skin like a serpent waiting to strike. She speaks, and the air bends. She moves, and the world shudders. There is no safety from her, no distance great enough to escape the reach of her magic.
She could unmake a man with nothing but a look, peel away his strength, his sanity, until he’s nothing but a whisper of who he was. She could turn love into obsession, devotion into ruin, and never lift a finger. And the worst part? She wouldn’t need to force it. They’d thank her as she destroyed them.
Zara is not a woman to be loved.
