Page 164 of Crown of Darkness
The dangerous, charming seducer.
But he’s not just a pretty fae male sprawled across a bed. He’s a sheathed knife. Threatening. Unpredictable. The kiss of steel against your bared throat when you barely realized it was there.
Looking at Edain this close, his dark features barely a breath away, feels dangerous in ways I’ve never noticed before.
Perhaps I could tear his mask off and see what lies beneath those chiseled, urbane edges.
Perhaps we both wear nothing but masks.
We stare at each other for long seconds.
“I know what it looks like in the mirror when you hate yourself,” he whispers. “You and I are two halves of a whole, Andraste.” His thumb settles on my knee, stroking back and forth. “And you can glue the pieces back together and forge them into a shield, but there are fault lines in every inch of you.”
I tense when his thumb moves higher, and he leans closer.
“You hate me,” he whispers, his breath caressing my lips. “I see it every time you look at me.”
“I don’t hate you.” It’s a rare moment of understanding. “I pity you.”
His thumb digs in a little, and his lashes half shield his eyes, but then he’s stroking me again. His thumb questing higher, a question mark against my thigh. “Would you still hate me if I loved you?”
And then his lips brush against mine, and it’s unbearably soft—even as his words knife through my heart.
Love.
Love is ruin. Love is pain. Love is loss.
Love is a lie.
And he mocks me with the sound of that word.
My nails dig into his forearms, but he laughs under his breath, and I can taste it. And then there’s no more pretense that this is anything more than lust as the kiss turns hotter and more dangerous.
The shock of it makes me gasp, and then his tongue lashes mine. Somehow, I have a fistful of his robe, knuckles grazing the silky skin of his chest, though whether I meant to push him away or pull him closer is unknown, even to me.
I didn’t think he’d do it.
And even now I tense in uncertainty.
If Mother caught us, she’d have both our heads.
There is no escape.
There is no hope.
There is only one lie after another, and my mother never knows. She never looks at me—her trusted daughter—the daughter that would never betray her, and ever suspects….
But I’m not the perfect daughter. I’ve never been the perfect daughter.
And the two of us are trapped in her net, desperately trying to keep our heads above the maelstrom that is my mother.
Just this once, I want to betray her.
My teeth sink into Edain’s lip, and then I’m pushing against him, the kiss turning deep and hungry. He senses everything I won’t say.
Make it all go away.
And he does.
