Page 23 of To Crave Madly
Oh, precious oxygen. Oh sweet, sweet air.
“Are you alright, Mistress?” Torsten’s deep timbre was like a soothing balm to my suddenly frazzled nerves.
I nodded, my throat too sore to speak. I was also still dragging air into my lungs. Fucking Hell, that was close. The mark on my chest fluttered and warmed beneath my fingertips. I imagined it was Lucifer reaching out with an embrace. I would say hug, but he didn’t seem the type to hug. No, he was far too lofty for mere hugs.
Torsten turned his attention to Cassian, who was still standing in exactly the same spot. Arms folded, deep scowl in place, ice-cold blue eyes devoid of any kind of emotion. It was like he wasn’t even bothered that he didn’t try to help me.
I could sense Torsten’s anger simmering at my teammate’s lack of help. “Why? Why do you not help?”
Cassian scoffed. “If she cannot save herself from a baked confection, she is not worth saving at all.”
He had a point. Death by donut wasn’t the classiest way to go.
Torsten rumbled in his chest and I could sense the need in him to fight for me and protect me. I placed my hand on his arm placatingly.
“He’s not worth it, Torsten.”
Something flashed in Cassian’s cold eyes at my words and for a moment I regretted them. A memory of the pain and anguish I had consumed when I had fed off him during a sparring session crept back to the surface. He made it so easy to forget that he was a man with a past, and it was clearly a painful past. The memory of all the hate and sorrow I had touched in his soul still haunted me now. I wanted to help him, I really did, but he made it fucking difficult.
Because he kept opening his fucking mouth.
“Gear up. We leave in thirty minutes.”
And with that cutting remark, he turned on his heel and strode out the door.
***
CASSIAN
Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid little girl. How I longed to wrap my hand around her pretty little throat and squeeze until the fire died in her eyes and her last breath caressed my cheek while I fucking watched. Everything about her had my blood boiling in my veins which, for an Ice Dragon, was impressive and not in a good way.
Every time I saw her she set my hackles rising. I was normally cool, calm, collected and now look at me… I was pacing the floor like a dragon possessed. She made everything about me frantic and on edge.
I fucking hated it.
Why? Why did it have to be her?
The question made me angry. So angry that every time I had the thought, my fist made another dint in the wall and a roar of vexation echoed around the small room. It didn’t matter how much noise I made down here. No one would hear my pain. The rooms down here in the basement were soundproofed so that pain, whether it was mine or my victims’, was only ever my burden to bear.
Not that I felt emotional pain very often. I hadn’t felt anything since the incident. I thought I had forgotten it, buried the guilt and the shame in some dark recess of my mind. I thought those agonising memories were locked away. But thenshecame and pulled them to the surface and now I woke up every night screaming as the nightmare of my past played in my dreams.
My eyes strayed to the locked drawer where I kept my only photograph. I never looked at it. I kept it as a reminder to never let emotion cloud my judgement again. Ever since that sparring session with Lori, where I had stupidly let her feed from me, I had been tempted to unlock the drawer and take the photograph out. Part of me knew I deserved to feel the pain, but another part of me wanted to confront the whole plethora of emotions that came with looking at the memory of the worst day of my life.
This was why I didn’t let myself feel anything. Why I shut off my emotions. There was just too much pain for me to even begin to process. I’d lost everything that day. In one moment, I’d gone from being part of a tribe, part of a family, to having nothing and feeling a loss that had left me empty.
And it was all my fault.
My hand reached for the drawer. I was going to look. Just once. Just one little –
“Cassian!” A cacophony of thumps pounded on the door following Lori’s deafening screech. “I know you’re in there! Time to go!”
My hand snapped back from the drawer and I resolutely turned my back on the memory. I rolled my shoulders and found that mental switch to turn off these fucking emotions. I’d felt enough to last me a lifetime and I certainly wasn’t going to make the mistake of letting Lori feed from me again. There was no way in Hell that I was putting myself through that again. Part of me wasn’t entirely sure I would survive it.
“Come on, Cassie!”
That stupid fucking nickname. If she kept calling me that, then one day I would bring her down here and not in a let’s-go-on-a-field-trip sort of way. I don’t know why I let her get under my skin so much.
I reached the top of the stairs and opened the door when she was mid-knock. She jumped and gave a delightful little squeal. I tried not to laugh, but the darker side of me did enjoy terrifying her.
