Dark Prince's Desire by Jessa Slade Page A

of years.”
    She glared at him, the toxic sludge backing up into her throat, making her words rough. “Those are not only your secrets to keep.”
    “I made them mine.” He shoved back his leather sleeves to brandish the pale scars gleaming like a second set of cuffs around his wrists. “I am one of the last, Yelena. That is what changed me. I betrayed my brother to save my people. I cannot undo that. I won’t undo that.”
    Reluctant sympathy threatened to soften her rigid spine. “I don’t question the choices you made back then.”
    “Just the ones I’m making now,” he translated.
    “I would do anything to see my sisters freed. And yet you’ve kept your brother locked up for ages. Literally.”
    “He would have been the death of us.”
    “As if being buried alive is better.” She knew the accusation had struck home by the way he recoiled, though she hadn’t intended to toy with him. “I can’t stay here.”
    His jaw flexed. “Many non- phae have called the court home.”
    “Yeah, I’ve read those stories. They don’t usually end well. And even if they did, I’m not looking for a happy ending just for me.” She felt her cheeks heat thinking about the “happy endings” she’d already found in his arms.
    Worse was the hot prickle in her eyes at the thought she might never experience one again.
    But though the truth hurt—no wonder the phae didn’t like it—she wasn’t going to let him lie to himself. “You think you’re saving your people, but you’re as bad as that Afghan warlord, so afraid of losing what little you have you won’t let yourself reach for something better.”
    He flared his broad shoulders, and the furious silver glint in his eyes was as sharp as any steel had ever been. For half a second, she wondered at the power he’d once commanded that had allowed him to imprison a King of the phae. If only he’d use that power to guide his people instead of confining them....
    “You haven’t lived the past I have,” he said between gritted teeth.
    “And you can’t see the future I believe in.” The impossible divide between them made her want to scream, but she was afraid the echo across that distance would sound too much like crying.
    “I am leaving,” she told him, and she was relieved her voice didn’t crack. “Even by myself, I’ll keep looking for a portal out.”
    “I could stop you.” His voice was as flat and stony as the dying plain around them.
    She shook her head. “You can kill me. You can lock me up. But you can’t stop me.”
    “You haven’t even found your way back to the verita luna , and that is the heart of what you are.” He lifted his chin to an infuriatingly arrogant angle. “What makes you think you can trick your way through a phae portal?”
    The note of desperation kept her anger at his scorn in check. “I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. You told me when I first came through, it was my desire that triggered the passage.”
    “And now you desire to leave here.”
    The simmering emotion in his tone was as varied as the colors in the ammolite crystals of his cavern. Were there reasons beyond the alleged havoc she’d cause that he didn’t want her to leave?
    Slowly, she loosened the silky ribbons that bound the catsuit closed around her breasts. She peeled down the black and gold stripes, sensing Raze’s rising agitation. She couldn’t see anything—although she peeked—since the leather pants were too snug to reveal if another part of him was rising.
    The geasa on his hands stood out whitely around his clenched knuckles. “What are you—?”
    “You were right. I’ve been afraid to change, afraid to dream, since it went so badly for me last time. But you reminded me, living in fear of what might be is always going to be worse than what is.”
    Naked, she stalked up to him, stiff and still in his spiderling black. Careful to avoid his bare hands so she didn’t force him to say anything he didn’t want to, she gripped his