Page 10 of Faerie Fate
“There. Isn’t that better?” he whispered.
The lines around his sunken eyes were deeper now than the last time I’d seen him. Kendrick wasn’t only a man who’d seen too much but one who saw things no normal person was meant to see.
He’d found knowledge he shouldn’t have, in places no one should go. He’d survived an unnaturally long time which only gave him the opportunity to hone his delights.
A sadist to the core.
“I like looking at you.” He dropped his gaze to my lips. “You’ve grown up to be beautiful.”
His arms and shoulders were grotesquely muscled, and I knew from experience the fingers gripping my skin hard enough to bruise were scarred.
His strong, square jaw tightened, a vein standing out on the side of his neck while he perused me. His slightly misshapen and narrow nose had been broken in too many places to count and never healed right.
He still wore the earring on his right lobe, too, his dark hair longer and trailing past his shoulders.
I’d heard him described as a bad boy wet dream. I only saw the devil.
“You’ve been a bad girl,” he murmured. “I knew one day I’d finally get to punish you. That day’s here.”
I’m going to die. There was no way out of it this time. Not when the desire in his eyes took on a maniacal glint, promising my worst nightmares would come true.
He pinched my chin harder before shoving me backward with such force the chair rocked onto its back legs and teetered.
“It’s time for you to do your duty to me. To be mated to me.”
I squeezed my legs together when they trembled hard enough to give me cramps. There was no way on god’s green fucking earth I’d let this man touch me.
Not the way Mike touched me.
Some things were sacred. Or they ought to be, anyway. People like Kendrick twisted the beautiful things in life and made them ugly.
I couldn't speak. My throat tightened and made even breathing impossible. And the way he looked at me?—
Salivating.
Kendrick’s brazen laugh echoed in the space. “Oh, I see it written on your face. You hate me.”
He bent forward, gripping my knees in his massive palms, then shoved my legs apart roughly. Pain splintered up my thighs and into my hips and I yelped.
“We could do this the natural way, if you like. I’ll take you against your will, the way it used to be done by our ancestors, when the strongest wolf claimed whatever was rightfully his.”
“You’d rape me?”
My voice held firm even if my insides did not. I sneered up at him. If I let the anger go, if it slipped an inch, I’d break.
The steady tone of my voice only made Kendrick chuckle. “I promise you’d like it. Even if it started out as a no, by the time I slide into your sweet little cunt, it would be a yes.”
My uncle had given me to this creature.
He’d used me like a pawn to get more power for our pack. Had Uncle Will somehow scrounged a truce out of Kendrick, that the other alpha wouldn’t hurt me the way he’s proposing?
Surely Will wouldn’t let me be raped for the sake of pack connections.
Kendrick was so much stronger than me. When he forced my legs apart again, my thighs shook, and he slid his fingers toward my core.
He drew in a breath and I shuddered with sudden nausea.
“Such heat rolling off of you, Tavi,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to bury myself in you?—”
