Page 12 of To Crave Deeply
This was the best kind of foreplay, and I couldn’t fucking wait to let that dragon get his hands all over me.
Chapter 5
CASSIAN
A red haze had descended over my vision and all I could think about was inflicting pain on the woman in front of me. She was so fucking frustrating. She’d deliberately asked me about my family when my guards had been down. It was my own fault for letting her get so close. I’d promised myself I’d keep my distance from her, but my dragon fucking enjoyed sparring with her just as much as I did. He liked the challenge of making her submit, whereas I got off on the actual violence. It was a dark thing to crave the pain of others, but I had to admit, seeing Lori offering it freely had my body coming alive like never before.
But even that couldn’t distract me from the sheer rage burning through me. I hated talking about my family and the day they’d died. It brought nothing but pain and sorrow thinking about the moment I’d gone from having everything to having nothing but shame, grief, and misery.
I was going to make Lori pay for making me relive it. She was finally going to see how much I hated her for bringing back the nightmares that haunted me every time I closed my eyes. Since that moment she’d fed from me, I’d been unable to leave that memory in the box where I’d buried it and now, I was going to make her suffer just as much as I did. Maybe then, she’d leave me the fuck alone.
I could feel my dragon stepping into my skin. My nails grew into thick black talons and my senses went into overload. Ice pooled in my core, getting ready for the moment I might need to use it in battle. The air in front of me froze as my body temperature dropped. I took one last breath and then I let my fury take reign.
I charged at Lori, but she merely stood there and smiled like the Cheshire cat. She met me head on, and I attacked with every move in my arsenal. She blocked most of them, but I was quicker than her, more experienced than her and then, suddenly, she just stopped.
She still raised her arms defensively, but she wasn’t blocking my blows. Not really.
“Fight back,” I roared, my dragon making my voice deeper.
She twisted out of my grip and stepped back, grinning wildly. “Make me.”
She rolled her shoulders and adjusted her feet, so I charged again. Stupid girl. With all this fucking taunting, she was lucky she was already dead.
She sidestepped my attack and managed to wrap an arm around my neck. She pushed off the wall with her feet and leapt onto my back. Her legs wrapped around my waist, and she clung to me like a goddamn snake. I tried to shake her off, but she had a strong grip. I slammed her back into the wall, hoping to dislodge her, but all that did was make her moan deliciously down my ear.
Her tongue licked the length of my neck and I had to fight the shudder that wanted to break free.
“Come on, Cassie. Let it out.” She nipped my neck. “Let all that anger out.”
I roared. I was a mess of wrath, fury, desire, and hate. I couldn’t tell where one emotion began and the others ended. I was just so angry. So fucking angry. At her. At Sanna and Von. But most of all I was angry at myself.
I slammed her into the wall again. This time her grip loosened, and she slid down the wall. I turned on the spot and grabbed her upper arms.
“What do you want from me?” I screamed as I slammed her into the wall again.
“I want you to stop hiding from your past. Can’t you see what it’s doing to you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. No. I wouldn’t think of it. I didn’t want to see their lifeless eyes as their bodies swung in the cool breeze, broken and blemished.
“I don’t care!”
She huffed out a breath. “Well, I do. Fuck knows why, but I care.”
“You shouldn’t. You can’t fix me. I won’t let you.”
Her eyes darkened. “I don’t want to fix you. I want to help you. Tell me what happened.”
My mouth pulled into a sneer. “So you can feel better about yourself.”
“What? No!” she gasped. “Cassian, you can shout and scream at me all you want, but it isn’t going to change the fact that I care about you. We’ve not always seen eye to eye, and I think you’ve disliked me from the moment you saw me, but I can’t help who I am. If I see someone who needs help, I am going to help them, whether they think they deserve it or not.”
I stepped back and dropped my hands from her. She was so determined to be good, to save me from the sins of my past, but she had no idea what I had done. What I was capable of.
“You can’t save me. I don’t deserve it.”
“Why?” she asked, rubbing her arms where I’d gripped her.
“Because I’m a monster!” She flinched as my voice boomed down the corridor, looking for the first time like she was truly scared of what I might do to her.
