Chapter 020. A Distraction

Saeris’s room looked like a dragon had sneezed on it and lost interest halfway through.

The sheets were gone. One corner of the mattress was scorched. Smoke whiff still clung to the walls, thin and sour, and someone had tried, poorly, to cover it up with lavender.

“Fire caught the bedding,” a voice suddenly said behind her.

Saeris turned.

A girl no older than her … Talia, Saeris remembered, with those soft brown eyes too much like Ianthe’s.

“They think it happened by mistake,” the girl added. “His Majesty has ordered a new room prepared for you, just down the hall.”

So… they didn’t know.

Or pretended not to.

“I’ll show you.”

The girl didn’t wait for a response; she just turned and walked, expecting her to follow. And Saeris did — because what else was there? Pick glass shards out of her pillow and pretend she hadn't nearly been killed in that very room?

The new room was better. Bigger. It smelled clean, like polished wood and citrus. Another pair of servants were already inside, placing down rugs, arranging trays, and fluffing pillows…one by the window setting fresh magnolia and iris flowers into a flower vase.

Talia paused at the threshold beside her.

“Your clothes for the day have already been moved.”

“To where?”

“To the King’s chambers.” She stared at Talia who immediately added, “Since your new room isn't ready yet.”

The guard behind her shifted, and Saeris caught the subtle sound of leather creaking.

“I should at least pick my shoes then.”

Talia gave a small nod. “Those were sent earlier. Along with your body wash.”

Her mouth parted in surprise, then closed again. She wasn’t sure what unsettled her more: that Vaelen had ordered it, or that she had to meet him again just after practically scurrying away from him. She offered a curt nod and dismissed the maid with a murmured thank-you. Her fingers tugged at the hem of her sleeve.

It would only be for a moment. In, dress, out.

Never mind that she’d spent the night curled on his bed like it was hers. Never mind that she’d inhaled his scent and dared to dream in it.

No more than a few minutes. She’d survive it.

She always did.

She walked the now familiar path to his side of the court. The corridor was empty, sunlight slanting through the arched windows, painting the stone floor with fractured color. The glasswork, some odd, indecipherable art, still baffled her no matter how many times she passed it.

Two knocks on the carved door were met with silence. The guard took his position a few paces back, just as before. Saeris shot him a withering look, then pushed open the heavy door.

Vaelen’s chambers were, in a word, overwhelming. Now that it was daytime, she could see more. Velvet in deep red and onyx, carved pillars, and arched corners. Gold inlays lined the fireplace, and books, real ones, not for decoration, crowded the shelves. Everything was large. Heavy. Male.

And it smelled like him. Cold like the mountain wind … pine and snow and late-night temptation. The latter was born of her thought.

The far curtain rippled slightly, and then Vaelen appeared, bare-chested.

Her blood shouldn’t have reacted the way it did, shouldn’t have sung beneath her skin like a harp plucked by unseen hands, but there it was, thrumming. A reckless pulse at her throat, in her wrists, in the way her knees forgot to hold steady when he came out fully, from wherever that was.

Water clung to his skin. A single drop rolled down the center of his chest and vanished into the black waistband of his loose slacks. Her breath caught—tight and sharp—and her eyes, traitorous things, followed it all the way down, down the vee of muscle that vanished beneath—

Gods.

She wondered, despite herself, what his mouth would feel like, wondered how different he’d be down there. What he would do to a woman, what he would do to her. If he’d draw it out, make her beg … if he’d ruin her entirely.

He looked like he knew how to keep a woman up all night. Looked like she’d enjoy it.

Her blood thrummed, low and wicked.

Vaelen’s lips twitched, though the smile was cold and sensuous. “If you want it that bad.” Her eyes flew up to his face. “Come here and touch it.”

Saeris blinked.

She meant to say something clever, or sharp, or at the very least, neutral.

What came out was, “You’re not my type.”

Vaelen’s answering smile was the kind that could unravel kingdoms. “As convincing as that may be…” A chuckle. “You don’t believe that either.”

“And how exactly would you know what I believe?”

“That look on your face says it all. Besides…” he added, cocking his head, the dark strands of his damp hair grazing the side of his face. “I’ve been with enough women to know when one is lying.”

Arrogant, beautiful bastard.

Saeris bit the inside of her mouth. “How many?”

He had to be in his late twenties—maybe early thirties. But he was a king. Women had probably fallen over themselves at his feet for less than that voice alone. Her eyes wandered to the ink that sprawled across his chest.

“Enough to know how to handle any kind of woman. Enough to know exactly what will make you beg.”

Her breath hitched.

Vaelen drifted across the room, water dripping, past the center, right into her own breathing space. He leaned over her, nearly nose-to-nose, nothing at all amused in his face, in the cut of his cruel, sensual mouth, as he said, “But I don’t think you can handle the sort of things I need, wolfling. And I am never touching a woman with another man occupying their head.”

Her chest tightened.

And then he turned, a graceful sweep of his back covered with that crest said to be the court’s emblem.

Saeris stared after him, a hiss of rage slipping from her own lips. At the fact he’d read her like nothing, at the arrogance in his assumption, at the heat that had gathered in her core and now throbbed insistently enough that she clamped her legs together.

“What does that even mean?” she demanded.

Vaelen halted at the question, then half turned. “It means I won’t be touching you.”

Something cracked in her.

The desire. The fury. The damn need to be seen. Heard. Touched. Even if only once. Even if only to prove to herself that he didn’t matter.

So she said—too fast, too recklessly—“What if I asked for it?”

A distraction—and an excuse to experience, she supposed.

Vaelen turned fully then, his eyes still glazed in a way she couldn’t tell was lust or annoyance or both. His voice was rough as he said, “Maybe another time, wolfling.”

✦✦✦

Enough to know how to handle any kind of woman.

Saeris lay in the marble basin, her breathing uneven, her body flushed and aching.

She’d barely been able to hold herself together. And she’d been tossing and hissing under her breath for what had felt like hours—though it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes since she’d fled into the bathroom.

Enough to know exactly what will make you beg.

Her thighs clenched under the water.

She kept thinking about the tattoo on his chest, about his voice, about the way he looked at her.

She didn’t know what she was doing, or why, only that her hand slid under the surface…

Saeris moaned softly as her fingers slid between her legs, instantly slippery with the wetness pooled there, which hadn’t gone away since she’d been denied. Her hips arched into the touch, and she gritted her teeth, letting out a long hiss as she dragged her fingers down her aching, throbbing center.

The door was locked. That much she had managed.

So, she slid her fingers in deep, writhing at the intrusion…

“Your meal will get cold.” Vaelen’s voice filled her head.

Saeris froze.

Her hand stopped.

A pulse of amusement, amusement and satisfaction and wicked teasing, echoed down that space.

She nearly cried.