Page 43 of Cursed Shadows 1

It’s not my sex that Taroh looks down on, it’s my breed.

But rape is rape, and I decide now—in this exact moment as his lips curl into a feral smile—that I will fight.

No Daxeel to come save me this time.

“And what—” I lean forward and hiss the words over his wicked smile. But slowly, in the thickness of the shadows, I slowly lift my right foot from the ground. “—is—” My angle, my hot breath on his lips, my eyes stealing his focus, all of that means I can discreetly slip out the small knife from the edge of my boot. “—my place?”

He answers with, “On your back.”

I have just firmed my fist around the knife’s hilt when he throws me to the ground. He could have kicked out and took my legs out from under me. He could have pushed me but fallen with me.

He chose to make it hurt.

So when I slam down onto the harsh stone, and the breath is knocked clean out of me, and my head cracks enough to dizzy me, I manage only a wheeze before he’s on me.

My arm is twisted, bent around my back, and pressed into the stone ground, but the knife is still in my grip.

I blink against the dazed stars in my vision, barely making out Taroh sitting over me.

He waits, patient, his eyes glowing through the shadows. He wants me aware—and the more I blink, the more my heart beats, the more aware I become, until I’m aware ofthat. His hands roaming me.

The pressure glides along my middle, up to my breasts—and they hold, firm enough that I wince. This isn’t for pleasure, not mine or his, this is a statement.

“Who are you,” Taroh growls, pushing his hands over my breasts to the soft curve of my neck—and he grips, tight, “to reject me? You are poor,” he adds and his thumbs dig into my windpipe, stealing the air from me, “and halved. You have no status, no network, no alliances—who the fuck are you,Narcissa,” the pure venom in his hissed words sends a shudder through me, “to reject a fullblood lordson?”

My face twists the tighter his grip becomes—but I’m tugging and tugging at the knife in my fist. It cuts my back as I yank it out from under me.

Taroh’s eyes shift to the glint of the blade.

I suck in a sharp, deep breath as soon as his hands leave my neck. He throws out one hand for the knife I lift, but his other arm comes up to his face to protect it.

He won’t regret that. My aim isn’t precise, I have no skill for this, but I have rage, fear and adrenaline.

I slam the knife into his elbow. It crunches through cartilage. I hear therippppof it before I hear Taroh’s shout. Not quite a cry, but a shout of surprise and pain that’s enough to have him falling to the side.

Tearing the blade from his flesh, I roll out from under him.

The knife is bloody in my grip, like the blood that’s all over my front now, but I don’t let go of it. I don’t drop it. I hold onto it with a grip so tight that my knuckles are seared ivory.

Taroh curses and holds his bleeding elbow to his chest.

His teeth clench against the fright of the pain—something he never expected from me.

Always underestimating me, all of them.

But I don’t stick around to gloat. Turning my back on him, I sprint down the corridor, take a hard left that has my boots skidding over the stone ground, then I bolt the fuck out of here.

Taroh doesn’t give chase.

10

††††††

Taroh keeps finding ways to touch me.

It’s some phases into the month already. I count over a week now, and I can’t seem to escape him.

That stabbing really pissed him off.

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