Page 128 of Black Sea

An impulse I didn’t like at all suddenly tingled throughout my body. I tensed up to the point of spasm to ignore it with every fiber of my being and ordered myself to interrupt the connection with the elf’s mind.

I couldn’t do it, damn it. The only thing I could think about was that I wanted to go to her.

Her, her, her.

I took an annoyed breath, my lips twisting in a grimace. Then I closed my eyes.

73

Mornon

“Stop thinking of me so intensely,” I said, my delivery flat, as I appeared in the center of the chamber, hands clasped behind my back. “It’s impossible for me to stay away from you if you do. And it’s quite annoying,” I added as she leaped off the mattress in a feline sprint.

I lingered with my gaze on the unmade bed, the sheets still stained with our arousal fluids and the blood from the elf’s virginity.

The bed where I had slept for the first time since I had devoted my existence to the dark arts, welcoming evil into myself.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Still couldn’t understand how sleep had found me. How I had given in to it so naturally.

Nauriel stared at me with a look so murderous it bordered on madness. She seemed to want to tear my face off with her nails like a beast, almost as if she couldn’t bear the sight of it.

Her eyes darted to the door, and for a moment, I thought she would bolt for it, calling for help at the top of her lungs. Instead, she suppressed the instinct to reveal my presence.

Because she wanted to be alone with me.

“I saw your body turn to ashes before my eyes,” she said, her voice hoarse from crying and shouting, almost animal-like.

I slightly canted my head to the side and looked at her from head to toe, admiring the web of darkness that branched through her body, unchallenged. “My magic makes me immortal.”

But unfortunately, it still had taken me over a hundred years to regain my human form.

At that revelation, Nauriel’s heartbeat quickened, and her eyes widened in shock. “Why did you never try to take the Crystal back all these centuries?”

That question struck an annoyingly raw nerve.

“Because it’s not the Crystal I’ve been thinking about for all these centuries,” I replied stiffly. “And you can’t understand how much it irritated me.” I couldn’t help but look her up and down again, recalling what it was like to have her cling to me as I thrusted myself into her with such force to punish her. To punish myself for the immoderate way I wanted her. “How I tried to resist you.”

However, my mind had done nothing but fixate on a single image: the golden-haired, blue-eyed elf trying to fight me in my unholy darkness like a white, blazing star.

Over and over and over again.

Until I’d managed to regain control over my elven side, channeling my wicked rage against the Spirits and my overwhelming need to claim that female, and focusing on developing a plan to reach her.

To make her the instrument with which to get the Crystal back.

“But in the end, you came to me,” Nauriel said, taking a tiny step forward.

I wore a small, smug smile. She wasn’t capable of staying away from me, even though she knew who I really was. She was so mine.

“In the end,” I agreed in a subtly cunning tone.

Once every pawn had positioned itself exactly as I wanted, I’d started my game.

The elf began putting the pieces together, her face growing more distressed. “It was you,” she whispered in disbelief. “You caused the Lake Caran dam to collapse.”

“The first move on my board,” I confirmed.