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“Why don’t you?” I taunted. “Call the police, Raelynn, if your phone even has any service. I’d love to see how you manage to explain why you broke onto private property, and into a private building.” I chuckled, stepping easily out of the remnants of my poorly drawn summoning circle. She stepped back hurriedly, stuffed her camera into her backpack, and held up her phone. She was recording me; likely a smart move if circumstances had been different.
A smart move if I’d been human.
“Is this the attention you wanted?” She glared up at me as she blasted the phone’s flash in my face. “Well, now I have it on video that you’re a creep who follows women into the woods. Good luck keeping your job after this!” Her heart was pounding a million miles a minute. I could smell the sweat on her skin.
Her gaze moved toward the door, contemplating an escape. Then she looked down, to the dark stain on the floor where her chalk markings had been. She stared in confusion, her belief that I’d only pranked her not aligning with what she was seeing.
“How...how the hell?”
Before she could make a move, I grabbed her wrist and yanked her phone down, taking the annoying light out of my face. I shoved her back until she was pressed against the pulpit, among all the candles and the Libiri’s vile trinkets to the Deep One. It was too easy to forget how quick humans would crumble under my strength; reigning it in, especially when I was frustrated, took no small amount of willpower. I was certain I felt my disguise slip for a second as I grabbed her—although she couldn’t have noticed the flash in my eyes with her light pulled down.
Her eyes were like saucers as she stared up at me, her breath coming in nervous gasps. I leaned down, my face within inches of her, the scent of her flooding me. Fuck, earthly bodies were far too reactive to stimuli. My heart beat faster, saliva increased around my tongue, and my cock gave an interested twitch as her alluring smell surrounded me.
“I warned you, doll,” I snarled. She needed to learn, and if scaring her was the only way to do it, then so be it. “Didn’t I tell you to behave? I told you not to come here, not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. Now you’vereallydone it.” With one hand still pinning down her wrist, I grasped her chin with the other. My hand fully encompassed her jaw and pressed against her throat; I could feel her thumping heart, pattering like a rabbit’s.
“You...you can’t tell me what to do,” she said, all the fierceness gone out of her. I grinned triumphantly to see her shrinking. This was no mere game to be recorded for internet fame.
This was life and death. This wasmyfreedom on the line.
“You’re messing around with shit you know nothing about.” I pulled her forward by the jaw, forcing her to gaze up at me with those defiant eyes. “Curiosity can kill you, Raelynn. What you’ve started here isn’t easily undone.”
Her eyes flickered over my face in shock. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’mwarningyou, Rae.” She was pressed right up against me, her legs between mine—a dangerously tempting position. The feral desire to claim her—allof her, body and soul—roared up in me. I wanted to see her fall to her knees and beg forgiveness for her mistake. I wanted to feel her soul meld with mine in offering. I wanted to taste her come undone on my tongue.
Something must have shown on my face, because she began to struggle in my grasp. The wiggle of her body between my thighs made my grip tighten instinctively, a growl rising in me, and her eyes swelled when she felt me restrain her.
But not with fear—with arousal.
Oh. So that’s how it was going to be, was it?
I took both her wrists in my grasp—such breakable little bones—and pinned them above her head, right against the carved wooden cross on the pulpit, making her twitching fingers a blasphemous Christ. I traced my finger along her stubborn jaw, pausing where I could feel the eagerba-bump, ba-bumpof her heart.
“You’re very lucky, Raelynn,” I said softly, holding her gaze, “that I don’t bend you over this pulpit and teach you a real lesson about not fucking with things you don’t understand.”
A little whimper burst out of her. Somewhere between disbelief and desire, she grit her teeth and growled back, “I’d like to see you fucking try, asshole.” She ground her boot down on my foot, as if she could hurt me. I chuckled, as my fingers reached her chin and the tiny, delicate dimple right below her pouting lower lip. She went still as I brushed her mouth, tracing the contours of her lips, her breath shuddering over my skin.
“Don’t tempt me,” I growled. “Just be a good girl, give me the book, and go.”
She had tucked the grimoire into her bag, which was slung over her shoulder and pressed between her back and the pulpit. She’d stopped resisting, so I slowly released my hold on her, and for a moment she didn’t move, other than her eyes. Her gaze moved over me slowly, assessing me, contemplating the risk.
Then she dodged away.
It would have been too easy to catch her. I faced her as she began to back toward the exit, her knuckles white as she gripped her phone. If she wanted a game, how could I deny her?
“Raelynn.” I smiled, approaching slowly, nonchalantly. “Give me the book. It’s for the best, truly it is.”
She shook her head. “No. The book ismine.”
“The book should notexist!” There was a petulant, possessive tone that had come into her voice in her desperation to cling to that wretched grimoire, and it stoked my anger again.
“Get away!” She was backing away hurriedly as I advanced. Little fool would rather run than cooperate. She wanted a chase, did she? She wanted a hunt?
Then she’d get a hunt.
I stopped advancing. I watched her retreat with the smile spreading wider over my face.
“Give me the book.” My voice was soft in warning. “Otherwise, you’re going to be a very sorry girl.”
