Instant erection killer.
His smile dies. “That’s disgusting.”
“My mother is beautiful,” I point out, relishing the look on his face. Oh, he doesn’t like this thought at all. “They say she’s insatiable too. And adventurous.”
“Please, Princess,” he mocks. “Have mercy. No more talk of your mother and her bed. Leaving me for the assassin would have been kinder.”
On that we agree.
I cross the bedchamber, avoiding the bed. “So… if you’re not intending to take what isn’t offered… where shall I sleep?”
He gestures toward the bed. “Right there.”
The bed looms, the demi-fey carved into its massive headboard practically leering at me. “But you promised. You swore an oath.”
“Did you think these chambers were mine?”
There’s a distinct masculine aura to the room. And I assumed they belonged to him.
He watches me with amused eyes. “My chambers are down the hall. Unless you want to share the bed? Platonically, of course.”
“I snore like a drunk troll. You wouldn’t want to risk your hearing.”
The prince smiles again, reaching inside his shirt pocket for something. “You don’t snore.”
“Oh? How would you know?”
He leans back in his chair. “Because I can read you like a book, Princess. You’re a little nervous right now, which makes you bluster and speak a little faster than usual. It’s endearing.”
Endearing.
I want to murder him for the thought, but my hands wouldn’t fit around that thick, muscular throat.
“I’m an Asturian princess,” I say in a frosty voice. “You can pretend to flirt, but I’m not falling for it, Your Highness. We are enemies—"
“We don’t have to be,” he says, in a smoky, sultry voice that could tempt a priestess of Maia.
“Unfortunately, that was written in the stars.”
“A prince makes his own destiny. And this war is between your mother and me. Not us.”
“I’m my mother’s daughter.”
“I’ll try to forgive you for that, if you can forget the fact I’m despicably handsome.”
I growl under my breath. He’s next to impossible. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Alone.”
“Come here.”
“It’s been a long day,” I protest.
“Ah, an Asturian queen to her fingertips. You think to renege on your deal so swiftly. Should I be surprised?”
“That you demand so much, so soon, doesn’t surprise me at all.” My eyes narrow. “One kiss.”
He hasn’t specified where, or how passionate it has to be. I can get through this and keep my dignity, and he’ll be forced by his own words to honor the pact and keep his hands off me.
“One kiss,” he repeats.
Fine. If he wants his kiss, then I’ll give it, but I’ll make him regret it.
Letting the borrowed cloak fall from my shoulders, I saunter toward him.
The prince reclines in his chair, watching me with those darkly amused eyes. His shirt’s unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and the only sign he feels anything is the way he swallows before his gaze dips down the length of my body.
I suffer a moment’s hesitation.
This is the enemy.
But this is also the price I’ll pay to keep myself safe.
I rest a hand against his chest, leaning down to brush my lips perfunctorily against his.
Soft lips brush against mine, but he doesn’t lean into the touch. I can feel the tension in him, his hands curling around the arms of his chair as if he’s fighting to restrain them. It’s a heady feeling, knowing that in this moment, I hold all the power. He cannot reach for me. He cannot touch me. Not without permission.
I own him in this moment, and the thrill is a dangerously beckoning lure.
He tilts his face to mine, breath whispering over my lips. I can taste the wine, the heat of him, the barely caged desire….
It’s the faintest of caresses, barely a kiss, and we both know it. And yet it holds a taste of the forbidden, a reckless, pinwheeling sensation that feels like I’m skating on ice without knowing how thin it is….
He captures my wrist, and our eyes meet, breaths mixing as I’m forced to hover over him. It gives me the ability to start thinking again.
“If you don’t want to sit for a week, then please, continue. I won’t mind at all.” I can feel his touch like a manacle.
His thumb brushes against the inside of my wrist, and I swallow.
Hard.
“Unless you initiate it,” he points out, and that’s when I realize my own hand is curled in his shirt, thumb brushing small circles over his chest.
All it would take would be for him to pull me down into his lap, and then I’d be at his mercy. It’s a heady feeling, knowing how much power I could wield with a simple “yes” or “no.”
And it is a no.
It has to be.
“You have your kiss.”
Thiago releases me, smiling slightly. “Is that what you call it in your mother’s court? Oh, Princess…. What I could teach you about kissing….”
Heart racing, I immediately set a few feet of distance between us. I have little doubt he could. Say what they like about his kingdom and people, they didn’t call him the Master of Dreams for no reason.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”
“Curious choice of words.”
Afraid….
“But there will be other kisses, Princess. Goodnight.” He crosses to the double doors, bowing before stepping back through them. The faintest of smiles touches his lips. “Sweet dreams.”
And then he shuts the doors, leaving only a single key on my side, which I swiftly use to lock them.
I’m alone with the bed of sinful thoughts.
I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly certain these chambers were his. It wouldn’t surprise me to find it amuses him to have me sleep in his bed. I grab one of the pillows and sniff it, and ugh, it smells of him.
Sweet dreams, my ass.
The only way I’m going to get any sleep at all is if I keep my knife beneath my pillow.
Three months. All I have to do is survive for the next three months, and then I’m free. Of my mother’s machinations, my sister’s scheming, and whatever the Prince of Evernight intends to do to me.
7
I wake to eternal evening.
There’s a moment of disorientation as I stare at the canopy of the bed I’m lying in, and then it all comes rushing back. The Lammastide Rites. The Prince of Evernight. The deal my mother struck with him.
And now this.
Three months as the prince’s plaything—sorry, hostage.
There’s no sound coming from outside the room, though the clock on the mantle reveals I’ve slept late. The fey lanterns in the room are slowly warming, as if to provide some sense of normality in this twilight landscape.
Slipping from the bed, I find my trunk of clothes and swiftly dress in my hunting leathers. The knife Mother gave me is wrapped in my shirt, and my hand hesitates beneath its weight. The thought of serving as her assassin makes me feel sick to the stomach, but better to be armed than to be helpless, and I wasn’t allowed a sword.