Page 84 of To Crave Madly
He had my forearm locked against my upper chest and, as I tried to remove it from his grip, he pulled it tighter.
“Let me go, Torsten.”
“No. Try and escape,” he jibed as his fingers with those ridiculously sharp onyx fingernails flexed on my wrist. Okay, so the Shadow Fiend wanted to play, did he?
Well then. Let’s play.
I threw my free elbow backwards into his ribs before slamming the heel of my boot into the top of his foot. He grunted by my ear as he fell forwards slightly and I used that motion to throw him over my shoulder. Torsten landed flat on his back but he still had hold of my wrist so in seconds I found myself following him to the floor and very quickly pinned beneath his tall frame. His knees rested either side of my hips and each of his hands encased one of my wrists.
“How are you going to get out of this one, little Hellcat?”
He’d clearly never seen any of my sessions with Cassian. I was an expert at getting out of this one.
I thrust my hips forward and rotated them to the side, and nothing happened.
Shit. That usually worked but Torsten hadn’t even budged an inch.
He grinned down at me and my anger rose at his laughter. That just pissed me off. I wanted to go and see Lucifer, not play at self-defence class.
I tried again to thrust my hips forward, but I still couldn’t get him to budge.
“You’ll have to try harder than that. You have the tools to escape, Lori. You’re just not using them all.” He looked so smug up there, staring down at me while I struggled to escape. I was determined to wipe that grin off his face.
I smirked up at him as I reached for my magic. The air crackled with static electricity and a buzzing filled my ears. I called the Sin Reaper to me to balance the power of the magic and give me added strength to break Torsten’s hold.
The fool didn’t stand a chance.
As the Sin Reaper grew stronger within me, my anger turned to rage and my attack turned decidedly savage. I lost control as my actions turned instinctual. One second I was on my back and the next, I had rolled Torsten’s mountain of a frame beneath me and stared down at my hands wrapped tightly around his neck.
The familiar need to feed burned deep within my core. My dark side had taken over and was pulling the dark energy from the man beneath me. It was a hedonistic rush as I tasted Torsten’s pain. There was so much darkness that he had amassed over the thousands of years of his existence that I almost didn’t know where to begin feasting.
It had been so long since I’d fed my demon. So long since I had surrendered to the bliss of feeding that I almost missed Torsten’s words.
“That’s right, Lori. Feed from me.”
The dark fog in my mind started to clear and reality came crashing back with all the force of a freight train.
My hands were around my protector’s neck as he willingly submitted himself for me to feed on.
“Why?” I croaked.
“Because you need to feed, and I did not think you would do it willingly.”
I pulled my hands back from him in shock. “So you manipulated me?”
“Yes. Your life depends on keeping your demon satiated.” He said it so calmly, like it was the most natural thing in the world to offer yourself up on a platter to be someone’s meal. I was disgusted. At him and at myself. Feeding while in battle with an enemy, or someone who deserved to be punished, was one thing but feeding just because I could seemed wrong. It was a dark thing to feed on pain and rage, to enjoy the taste of suffering, and I didn’t want to do it unless I had to.
I quickly jumped to my feet, wanting to put as much distance between me and my bodyguard as I could.
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” I snapped. I was beyond angry. I was still coming down from the high of feeding my demon. I hated to admit that I had enjoyed it. That wrestling with Torsten had fired up my adrenaline and then feeding from him in such a display of dominance had my blood singing. And I hated that I wanted to do it again. That the mere thought of tasting Torsten’s sins had me itching to wrap my hands around his flesh and feed upon whatever he was willing to give to me.
“You need to feed,” Torsten stated as he stood up. His mismatched eyes held my gaze firmly and I wilted a little under the scrutiny I saw there. “Your demon will suffer if you do not give it what it needs to survive.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Don’t be a fool. You might not understand this now, but soon, you won’t be able to control the hunger. Soon, all you will tasteisthe hunger and then you will become wholly submitted to the darker side of your demon and you will disappear completely.”
I was so furious. At Torsten. At myself. At the world for giving me all this shit to deal with. Why me? Why did I have to be the person saddled with all this shit? Couldn’t they have found some other idiot to dump it on?
