Page 89 of Venomous Lies
Every moment with her made a whisper of something slither past a barrier I didn’t even know was there. The very essence of this witch was wrapping around my heart and digging into me.
I hated it.
Just another thing that was happeningtome instead of it being my choice.
Part of me wanted to trust her, but I knew there was no out when it came to Thatcher. He had played me and played me well. I couldn’t kill him or even hurt him. It was in the fine print of our deal.
Thatcher had stopped moving now, but I could feel him readying something. This witch was important to him, and he’d do anything to keep her in his grasp.
That much I knew.
“I’m not asking you to trust me. That would be stupid,” she said, looking up at me imploringly with wide eyes. “But I’ll make a deal.”
Another deal.
One deal had gotten me here. Could another one really get me out?
“What do you want?” I found myself asking before I could really register that I was speaking.
“Kill Thatcher and let me go,” she whispered softly, leaning into me as if we were lovers.
“A direct violation of my current bargain, witch.You’ll have to be smarter than that.” I leaned down and scraped my teeth along her shoulders, savoring her whimper and the way her body shivered against me.
She didn’t back down, though, so I had to give her credit for that.
“You can’t kill or hurt him?”
“Correct,” I answered, amused and curious to see what she was trying to come up with.
“Protect my friends and my mates.” She licked her lips. “Find them out there and help them. Leave me with Thatcher. If he isn’t there to give you orders, you aren’t disobeying anything. He hasn’t ordered you to keep me here or to stop me, right?”
“And what do I get? What exactly canyouofferme?”
“What do you want?” she breathed, trembling as I smiled against her skin.
“You’re important to them, Isla Hallowes, important enough to orchestrate all this, but I know something they don’t and I won’t miss out.”
“What—?” She was cut off by a shocked gasp as I moved back and pulled out my knife. “Please don’t?—”
Still stumbling over furniture in his haste to reach us, Thatcher started yelling at me not to kill her after she began to beg, and his rising panic made his nasally voice even more grating. Pulling her further into the room, I kept my knife between us.
Isla paled even more, but I couldn’t sense any fear in her as she stared up at me, waiting for what I was going to do next.
“Why would I kill you, Isla? I’m going to thrive on every single nightmare you’re living through, and I want you to know it.”
I cut the palm of my hand then instructed her to hold out hers.
She hesitated only for the briefest of moments before she obeyed. Cutting her palm, I then clasped it in mine. As she gasped in pain, eyes wide with shock, I slanted my lips over hers, catching her fear with a dark laugh.
She whimpered against my lips.
It was perfect.
One of the first emotions I’d felt in ages slithered through my veins.
Pain.
I coaxed her into kissing me back, groaning at the taste of her as our magick threaded together.
