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He expected me to buckle, instead I slashed the dagger up, zipping open his chin.
He recoiled, swept a hand cross his face, then sneered at the blood collected on his fingertips.
“You look dashing in scarlet,” I quipped.
He lunged, locked hot fingers around my throat, and threw me against the wall, but in his rage, he’d forgotten I held his dagger, now poised under his chin. Arin stilled.
“Ah, I’d rather not take your head just yet.”
With the both of us locked together, panting hard, he stared, and I stared back. His punch had landed well. Its bruising heat thumped through my middle. The problem was, I liked it. The cut on his chin wept blood and blue eyes glared their fierce accusations.
“If I didn’t want to fuck you, you’d be dead,” Arin said. And there was therealPrince of Love. The little bitch who wanted my cock and lied through his teeth. “Take the knife from my throat, Lark.”
“I think not.”
He pushedagainstthe blade—into it, making it cut him. I eased off, reeling a little. Had I not eased off, the blade’s razor edge would have sliced into his neck as it had Draven’s.
He was insane, he had to be, and every inch of me burned to devour every inch of him.
His pretty mouth sneered. “Did you come here to kill me?” he asked, his lips brushing mine.
I still had the knife at his neck, and his grip remained on my throat, but the rest of him pressed close hurt more. “My life would be so much easier if I had. I came for the truth.”
His mouth hovered over mine. Our breaths mingled. “What did Draven tell you?” he demanded.
“Nothing, sinceyoucut his throat. Like you cut your mother’s—”
He recoiled violently, as though I’d struck him. He even staggered, losing his balance.
I stalked forward, pressed the tip of the blade to his chest again, and walked him backwards across the room. He stumbled and tripped, looked down at the dagger, then up at my face. “You don’t know anything,Fool.”
I marched him by the point of the blade to the end of his golden and white fluffy bed. “Strip.”
“What?”
“If we’re going to kill each other, we should relish it, no?” A quick glance down, and yes, indeed, the evidence of his interest poked from his trousers. The prince was as aroused as I was, even though he likely hated himself for it. So terribly conflicted. I was going to enjoy this. “Take off your shirt.”
He tore at the remaining buttons on his shirt, flicking them open, then yanked the garment off and flung it aside. “You’re not going to kill me,” he sneered, so sure.
I chuckled, eyeing his ripple of golden abs. “You still believe you know me? Why, because you’ve watched me dance?” I pushed the dagger against his chest, a little to the left, and indented his pert pectoral, just right from his nipple. “Because we kissed on your beach? Because a maid said I wasnice?”
His eyes widened. Oh dear, Prince Arindidthink he knew me.
“Lark, listen… I did lie. But not like you think. Draven would have ruined everything… I had to silence him.”
“There is no imposter, is there.”
He blinked. “No.”
Then it was all him. All of it. He’d manipulated me. Fuck, the slippery sense of betrayal knotted around my heart, painful, but oh-so good. I wanted to taste that snarling mouth, taste the hate there. “You’re a fine liar, if a poor juggler.”
“My mother killed herself.” His snarl twitched. He dropped both hands to his trouser ties. His arousal jutted impressively behind the trouser fabric. “Ask me why,” he said. “Why she killed herself.Ask me!”
So angry, so fierce, like a lion with its claws clipped. “She didn’t,” I said. “She was lost, but not so far gone to end her own life.”
Arin’s quick laugh belittled my apparent facts. He yanked his ties looser, slipping his trousers down his hips so they clung on, held up by his erection. “And you think you know my court, my family? My mother knew what was coming for her. She had no escape. Certainly not my father. She heard the weeping girls through the walls, you know. She’d heard the rumors, knew what he was like. Rumors that wereyourdoing.” He snarled, true hate beginning to boil inside him, yet he still fought with his trouser ties, eager to get his hands on himself. “You told your tales and your twisted little secrets and ruined my life, my court, my everything. With your thousand little secrets, spilled each month for the man who comes to collect them from the Court of Pain, bleeding blood from my veins!” He pushed at the dagger, and the blade gave a little, sinking into his skin. Blood welled.
So, he knew about Danyal. Knew it all. Draven had been wrong. Arin had kept his fury so well contained; I’d seen glimpses, but I was seeing it all now. He might impale himself on the dagger if I let this go on.
