Page 103 of In Darkness We Claim

His smile twists into a wicked smirk, one that screams of a dirty promise, and I want to affect him as much as he does me. Knowing I’m playing with fire, I reach out and grab his hand, placing it on my thigh. I spread out his fingers, feeling the soft, silky material beneath his touch, before moving his hand underneath my dress.

I lean in close, whispering so only he can hear. “I think you’ve already corrupted me, since I’m not wearing any underwear.”

He gasps as his grip on my hip tightens, and I smile when his eyes darken with lust, his fingers reaching to confirm that he can’t feel the outline of my knickers. “I thought angels were supposed to be good,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly with desire.

I stand on my tip-toes, reaching up until my lips are touching his ear, and goosebumps erupt over his flesh from my proximity. “Maybe I was an angel until I fell.”

The words came out completely different than I intended. What was supposed to be a pun about fallen angels turning bad, suddenly sounded very much like me confessing my feelings for him. Saying that I fell—as in, I fell for him.

Fucking Wren and her words messing with my head.

Lawson’s gaze is fixed on mine, and his blank, emotionless expression sets my nerves on edge, as I don’t know how Lawson has interpreted what I just said.

I quickly try to correct myself. “I mean, I’m a fallen angel that was corrupted into falling from heaven.”

I wince at the piss-poor attempt at covering up what I’m almost certain I meant to say. Because Wren has now forced me to acknowledge how I feel, and I can’t deny that I like Lawson—a lot. I’m falling for him, despite knowing I shouldn’t, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.

I can’t put any distance between us. Not when I gifted myself to him for the full year, and he makes me stay with him nearly every night. I can’t close off my heart and simply enjoy the sex; it’s just not who I am. So I’m going to have to roll with it and deal with the inevitable fallout when it happens.

Though Lawson’s expression remains blank and unreadable, the familiar glint of molten silver has returned to his eyes, sparking with a fierce intensity that makes me exhale a shaky breath of relief. “I’m going to enjoy seeing just how far you’ve fallen tonight. Come on, don’t want to be late,” he says, grabbing my hand and pulling me behind him.

My head is literally spinning as I try to process what he just said. Did he mean fallen in the same way I did, or is he making a fucking angel pun? I have no idea, but tonight isn’t the night to have that conversation, if there ever will be a good time.

I’m not ready to lose Lawson, and I think that’s exactly what will happen when he realises I’m in deeper than I should be. He doesn’t care for me the way I do him, so he’ll have no problems casting me aside and moving on to someone less clingy.

I only hope he leaves the broken pieces of my heart behind so I can attempt to glue them back together, but I suspect some parts will always belong to him, leaving me not quite whole.

Seeing Harper in that pure white dress, looking like an innocent angel just waiting to be tarnished by me, is like the worst form of fucking torture. Going to a bloody Hawk Halloween party is the last thing I want to do when I could have Harper tied up, my cock buried deep in her tight cunt while she calls my name like I’m the God she worships.

But Xander made it clear our presence is mandatory, and we’re not allowed to just stick our heads in and leave two minutes later—which I admit was my backup plan.

To say the other Houses are supposed to be our rivals, they make a fucking big deal about us spending time together. They hope that when the time comes, and we’re brothers instead of enemies, we won’t try to kill each other as often.

Personally, I believe Xander has a completely different motive for forcing these events on us. He’s a competitive arsehole, and there’s no better way for him to show that he rules over the most powerful House than to have us boasting in front of the others.

I’m genuinely not interested in any of that political bullshit, not when my dick is throbbing with an insatiable need to have Harper. My ancestors will be rolling in their graves at the very thought, as nothing should be more important to me than becoming an Obsidian Council member, and until a few weeks ago, that absolutely was the case…then Harper gifted herself to me, and now she consumes my every thought.

“I’ve never been to Hawksmoor House,” Harper tells me as we approach the large brown-stone mansion on the opposite side of campus to where we’re based.

I furrow my brow at her revelation. “What? You’ve never been to their annual Halloween party before? Or any of the other events they throw?”

She shakes her head, biting her bright-red lip. “No. I was only ever allowed to attend Crow events.”

Despite knowing his name will taste like poison on my tongue, I have to ask her, and I can’t do it without bringing him up. “Didn’t Ryan, the douchebag, ever take you? These events are supposed to be a great excuse for people to show off either their Prize or their Betrothed.”

Even though most first and second-year Pledges have girlfriends, showing them off doesn’t add to your status. If you’re Betrothed, with a marriage contract in place for when you graduate, that’s something to fucking shout about, as it means your family is rich and powerful enough to have secured a match before you’ve even graduated. This means your Pledge ranking doesn’t even factor in.

Ryan is from a wealthy, powerful family, and he’s a high-ranking Pledge—despite living in my shadow—but having a marriage contract in place with someone like Harper, who was high-ranking before her father’s fall from grace, that would have cemented his superior status for all to see. So there must be a bloody good reason he wouldn’t want to show Harper off.

“Ryan said the parties were too wild for a girl like me,” she admits, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “He basically implied I was too vanilla to enjoy myself, and that I’d probably be bored.”

I let out a harsh laugh at Ryan’s fucking stupidity. “He must be fucking blind to not have seen the real you. I could see through your mask, and I barely knew you.”

“What do you mean?” She leans closer to me, her gaze locked on mine, as if the answer is important to her.

“Anyone who looked at you and truly saw the real you would have known you were playing a role. The good girl, the shy virgin, the meek little Order Wife…all were masks that forced you to hide the real Harper from the rest of the world.

“But every time you answered me back with your smart mouth, I saw the feisty girl hidden beneath all the expectations and rules. It hasn’t taken much for you to shed that old skin, to find the real you, and embrace the parts of yourself that you kept hidden for so long. If Ryan had actually looked, he would have seen what I see.”