Page 71 of Dynasty of the Wicked

“Tell me,” she murmured. “When you awoke and I wasn’t beside you … were you afraid that I’d left you? Did you think you were all alone?”

Something flickered over his face. So minute that she almost didn’t catch it, but it was there, a sliver of vulnerability. She grasped onto it, relishing in the feel of it. He had been scared to lose her. She could tell.

“You were, weren’t you?” Zhi Ruo dug her nails into his skin, and yet he didn’t wince. “Despite what you say to me, despite how much you try to push me away, youloveme. Just as I love you.”

It was unfortunate, though, that love wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t enough for him to choose her over Chanming. It wasn’t enough to make him change his ways. To change his allegiance.

“When you’re dying, you won’t think of Chanming and his eventual rise to power. You will think ofme.” Her words dripped with venom, with wickedness, with the truth she believed in. She leaned closer to him, her mouth brushing against his ear. “When you take your last breath, you will regret leaving my bed,leaving my side, and letting me walk away from you. And you will wonder … what were you even fighting for? And then you will die, Zheng Feng Mian. Alone, like the monster you believe yourself to be.”

The color drained from his face and something simmered in his eyes—anger like she had never seen before. It wasn’t like the fiery craze she was accustomed to with every male in her life—her father, her brother Wanqing, the palace guards—no, this was a purely frigid type of wrath. The kind that was more terrifying than fire.

Zhi Ruo loosened her grip on him. She had, perhaps, poked the beast a little too hard.

“You are wicked, Zhi Ruo,” he whispered coldly, grasping her wrists in his large, calloused hands. In one fluid motion, he shoved her to the padded floor and pinned her wrists above her head, his weight pressing against her as he leaned forward. “Is that what you want? For me to die thinking of you?”

She cried in pain, the gashes on her arm pulling open with the motion. But it didn’t deter him; if anything, it only made his face darken. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from whimpering. She could feel the blood soaking the bandages.

“You’re hurting me.” Her voice wavered.

Feng Mian inched closer, his eyes reminding her of steel. “Answer me.”

She was all too aware of his touch, and she hated the way her body reacted to him. How a small, terrible part of her wished for him to take her like this, right here, right now, like he had the night before. She hated that her anger had diluted, overtaken by a need for him. Because even though Feng Mian had hurt her, betrayed her, and made her feel pathetic, she wanted to feel loved by him. She wanted to be held by him, to pretend that they were lovers when they embraced, instead of two enemies on opposite sides of a battle.

“Yes,” she nearly spat out, trying to reign in her emotions. “That’s what I want.”

His grip on her tightened. “You want me to die, Zhi Ruo?”

She wanted to say yes, just to see how he would react, but she couldn’t lie to him. Not right now. “No.”

“What is it about you that you want me to remember?” It was almost like a challenge—ataunt.

Zhi Ruo raised her hips against his and he stilled. A slow smile spread over her face. “You know what you would remember, Feng Mian.”

His eyes darkened with desire, and his grip tightened. “I will always remember you and my time with you.”

“But you don’tmake lovewith me, do you?” She narrowed her eyes. Her tone came out sharper than she’d intended it to.

“Do you think I have been with multiple women before you?” He released one of her wrists and dragged a knuckle along her cheek, and then down to her neck. A trail of heat followed in the wake of his touch. “I have never made love to anyone before, and I have never fucked anyone else before, either. You are my first, and only.”

This time it was Zhi Ruo’s turn to still. She blinked up at him, at his beautiful face, at his pristine silvery-white hair, at the piercing silver of his glare. He was too beautiful, unlike her, to have never been with anyone before. She would have thought … she would have thought that he had lines and lines of lovers.

“Why?” Zhi Ruo finally whispered.

“Why what?”

“Why have you never been with anyone but … but me?” She didn’t want to hear him say that it was because she was special, that she was the only one who made him feel that way. It would make it so much harder to stop loving him. It would make her fall even deeper into this messy, chaotic love of theirs.

“Because,” Feng Mian said, trailing his hand under her skirt, “you are the only one for me. I have never met anyone else like you. Who is dark, like me. Who is unloved, like me. Who is a monster, like me. I have only ever wanted you.”

“I’m a monster?”

“Your reputation.” He smiled, and it was the first break from tension between the both of them. Her heart swelled at the sight of it, and the back of her eyes burned. It shouldn’t have been so easy for her to forgive him for betraying her, for all the hurt he had caused, but something within her softened at the thought of being the only one for him. If he didn’t love her, she was sure he was at least headed that way. Maybe it was a pathetic way to think—that at least he was almost in love with her. Maybe she was starved of love, and that’s why she took the tiny offering he had given—that she was the only one he had been with, and the only one he wanted to be with—but … but she needed something from him. Love, yes, but more.

Zhi Ruo wrapped her legs around his waist, liking the way his body froze at the contact, the way his eyes darkened.

“Kiss me,” she ordered. “Andmake loveto me, Feng Mian.”

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