“Was it not in my best interest, then, to make your life unpleasant? To press you toward your inevitable surrender?” “You did not have to,” she whispers, hating the waver in her voice. “My dear Adeline,” he says, hand sliding up her neck into her hair. “I am in the business of souls, not mercy.” His fingers tighten, forcing her head back, her gaze up to meet his own, and there is no sweetness in his face, only a kind of feral beauty.
