Unchained Beauty (The Deadly Beauties Live On 5)

“You wouldn’t have chosen me if fate hadn’t decided for you, Ella,” he says across my lips. “Hate me a little more.”

“You don’t believe in fate. You just call things magic or fate when you don’t understand it,” I remind him, sliding my hand up the back of his neck, pulling his lips closer to mine.

He comes closer, then resists when his lips are just barely out of reach.

“I used to close my eyes when another woman fucked me, just so I could see your face and pretend I was touching you, Princess. It was the closest to pleasure I got in there, and I imagined you in there with me, stuck for all eternity, touching me and making the pain go away.”

His lips slide down my throat, his hands pulling one of my legs up to his waist as he grinds against me, causing my breath to catch.

“Does that make you hate me?”

“No,” I whisper, letting my head roll to the side and exposing my throat more to him.

Groaning, he kisses his way back up it, teasing me with a hint of fang.

“Simone fucked me, Princess. She was my favorite, which is why she’s still alive, even after she left you for dead.”

A smallish growl escapes me, but I’ve heard Kya talk about what a shell of a person Simone has been since then. Hell, I felt sorry for her the one time I glimpsed her.

He twists words around his actions. It doesn’t matter what a person does if you don’t have the right why. At least not in our world. The why decides if you’re a monster, a hero, or simply broken.

I’m one of the first two, depending on which version of me I am in the moment.

Slade’s always something in between the first two, when he’s not busy being the last.

“Does that make you hate me?” he asks a little harsher.

My eyes find his and hold, as he searches them like he’s desperate to win this battle. But this one is my battle to win.

“No,” is all I say.

Our eyes stay locked for so long that I’m worried we’ve frozen this way somehow.

“Enjoy your run,” he finally says before he’s suddenly gone, and I let my eyes flutter shut as I slap the tree behind me.

Chapter 20

SLADE

“Flowers?” Kane asks, confused.

“Just plant them, then have one of your witches—dark or light user—spread them as far as possible,” I tell him distractedly.

He sits down, reading over the document. “You just need to get Alyssa to sign that,” I add.

“Should be an interesting discussion,” he grumbles. “Hopefully she won’t be too pissed at me.”

I allow him to read the rest of the document in silence.

“It makes cohabitation possible without the threat of rebellions. The fickle flock will err toward survival, and their chances increase with us,” Kane says to me, as I scrub my hand over my face. “How’d you get him to agree to this? He wouldn’t bend at all when I spoke to him.”

My eyes meet his. “He knows I’m as strong as he is, and he saw what they did to me.” Absently, I gesture to my face and bare chest.

He looks away, clearing his throat.

“He doesn’t want beings capable of that running wild on a planet where he’s still the outsider. Certainly not without the queen at his back to fight against a never-ending war,” I go on, looking at the picture of Ella he has on the desk.

“If they fight with us, that will render her harbingers useless.”