Chapter 37 #9
Her eyes widened further then she schooled her expression once more, fixing on a mask that worked to shut me out entirely.
“Don't do that.” I moved towards her, a tainted part of me taking over, and I couldn’t fight it even if I’d wanted to. No, I was surrendering to this need in me, because right now the pull of it was a force strong enough to rival the gravity rooting us to the ground.
“Do what?” she whispered.
She was wrapped in chains so tightly, I could almost see them tethering her to this life she didn't choose. And I so wanted to break them.
I was moving too close. I could feel her breath on me. It tasted like wine and the deepest desire of my unworthy heart.
A small part of my brain was screaming at me to stop, but a bigger part of me was awakened, taking over. Just for a moment. What harm could one, single moment really do in the grand scheme of things?
“You try to hide your true feelings.” I reached out as if to touch her face, then thought better of it and rested my hand on the railing next to hers. “You’re a princess, so why should you have to hide?”
“And what are my true feelings?” She scowled, assuming I was trying to own her like the rest of them did. She definitely didn't want to be owned, and she didn't want her feelings to be guessed by some suitor who'd paid for the privilege of standing here either.
“You're angry. And so you should be,” I growled, my own rage rising up to meet with hers. “I'd be angry too if I was placed on a pedestal and auctioned off to the highest bidder.”
“What would you know?” she bit at me. “Men don't have to deal with such things.”
“No. And women shouldn't have to either.”
“Coming from a man who's trying to buy me? That's rich.” She turned her back on me and my stomach knotted from the impact of her words.
Silence stretched on and I figured maybe I should have tried harder at being more like Drake.
That was what she wanted. This honest bullshit wasn't getting me anywhere.
I was just a dog with too many opinions and none of them really mattered.
But just as I tried to form some cocky remark worthy of the man she actually desired, she turned back to me with her chin held high and defiance in her eyes.
“You're right, I don't want it. And I do hate it. All of it. Every moment is insufferable, and I despise every one of you for taking part in it.” Her lower lip quivered with the fury in her words, the lash of them striking against me in accusation. I ached to tell her the truth, to bare who I was and show her I would never partake in the game she was trapped in, but I couldn’t risk being exposed.
Even if the princess hated Magdor, I was not going to wrap her up in this plot I was a part of and incriminate her if this all went to hell.
She probably felt horribly alone in all this, and I wanted her to know she had at least one person on her side.
Even if that person was just a guard, with no greater value in this world then the weapons in the royal armoury.
I nodded, a solid lump growing in my throat as she stepped towards me, looking hungry for blood.
“I'm the daughter of the emperor and I have no claim to my own throne. If you win, you'll seize it. You'll rule my country when my father dies and once you have your heirs from me, you may as well mount me on the wall like the trophy I am to you.”
I clenched my teeth at such a possibility coming to fruition, words rushing to my lips which I had no right to say, but they were the truth, and fuck she deserved that if nothing else. “If I were fortunate enough to marry you, princess, it would not be for a throne.”
“What then?” she scoffed.
For my entire career, I'd circled her like the moon circled our world.
Just an empty lump of rock in the sky with only her to look at.
I'd watched and admired, guarded and protected.
It had taken me this long - too long – to realise I wasn't just a hard, cold thing with nothing but a single path to follow.
I wasn't the moon; my core was molten and burning.
I was a man of flesh and bone and heart.
Every fibre of it wanted her. And she needed to hear the truth I had to give, even if it meant nothing because it was falling from the lips of a man who was not me.
“I've wondered for many years about what lay beneath your veil.
The first time I saw you I knew there was something much deeper there which I'd never have predicted.
There's a pain in your eyes that makes me want to carve out my heart and hand it to you in the hopes that it might ease your suffering.
If I were your husband, I'd spend my whole life devoted to turning that pain into joy. Nothing would sate me more than that. Nothing would come close to fulfilling me outside of you. I am a dog without a master, but if I could, I would serve you and only you until my days were up.”
Austyn stared at me as if she didn't know who she was looking at, and energy crackled between us that made it a task to breathe.
It was a relief to have spoken those words after having held them within me, bottled up and desperate for an outlet, though it came at the price of knowing they were worthless. Sand cast to the wind.
Her hand slid along the railing and her fingers brushed mine.
Electricity pounded through to my core, setting every nerve-ending in my body on fire.
I'd devoted my life to protecting her. I'd already given her that, but now I was starting to crave something so much more.
Something forbidden and tantalising at once.
I desperately wanted to close the distance between us, the space dividing us feeling as though it were full of fate-woven threads binding us together, drawing us nearer to one another. And the longer I stood there, the more of them there were, pressure mounting in my chest as I inched forward.
I was a ghost of a man hiding in the skin of her true desire, but all I wanted was to steal this moment from him and brand it as my own.
I stepped closer and her lips parted seductively, her eyelashes casting a fan around her big, amber eyes as she gazed up at me.
Lust pooled in her gaze and ignited a fire in me that burned hotter than any furnace I had encountered.
It was easy to forget I wore Drake’s face as I leaned nearer, pretending that look was all for me, wishing for it even as I reprimanded myself for it too.
You're a sinner, a thief, a liar, and now you're a lech too. If you kiss her, it will be a filthy lie you can never undo.
“Drake,” she whispered, and the spell was broken, cracking apart and sending sharp, jagged shards directly into my heart.
I moved back, but she closed the space between us the moment I did so, resting her hand on my pounding heart.
Her eyes widened as she felt that traitorous beat beneath her fingers.
Drake's heart probably thumped to a casual tune no woman could ever affect. Even the princess. But mine was a racing, rioting lump of emotion that belonged to her even if she’d never once noticed me before now.
She only saw me because I wore another man’s face and was deceiving her with every breath that passed my lips.
I had never committed a deeper sin than this.
“There is something so very different about you tonight,” she said, her eyes narrowing with suspicion and my heart rate built to a crescendo beneath her palm, giving me away to her.
I captured her wrist, withdrawing her hand from my body, my throat thickening at the smoothness of her skin beneath my palm which was so unsullied by the taint of men. I did not want to be responsible for tarnishing it either.
She slid her hand backwards, my grip loosening to allow her to free herself, but instead she wound her fingers between mine.
A wild, tempestuous hunger grew in me, demanding more. More of her voice, her breath, her touch.
“What's the deepest desire of your heart?” I murmured, desperate to know.
I longed to unravel her secrets one by one and devour each of them for myself.
It was a selfish and urgent need I couldn't shake.
I wanted every piece of this woman I'd admired my entire life, and I didn't want any other man to have a scrap of her.
“Promise not to tell?” she asked on a breath.
“I swear on all of Osaria,” I growled.
She leaned in close, so close I couldn't think, my thoughts scattering so I lost my hold on reality completely.
Her mouth brushed my ear and lust drove a flood of heat through my body, making my muscles tighten and my cock stir to attention.
“To be free,” she said against my skin.
I shut my eyes and my hands curled around her waist, drawing her flush against me as I fell prey to a dark fantasy of mine which I had dreamed of so often.
She moved into my body like it was designed to mould against hers, but this wasn't my body. And if she fit Drake so well, then it was clearer than ever that she wasn't meant for me.
I knew this would be the only night of my life I would ever hold her like this, perhaps ever touch her again at all. It was my sole chance, and it was already slipping from my grasp as the seconds ticked by and moved towards an inevitable close. So what was I going to do with it?
Break every oath I have ever taken.
“I would free you, princess. If I were the emperor, I would cast out all the old laws and give you the throne you're owed,” I said, my tone fierce and full of honesty.
Her chin tilted up as her gaze roamed over my mouth and my fingers fisted in the golden material at the base of her spine, not letting her move another inch as I studied her.
Between the warm night air, the sweet scent of her skin, and the hungry look in her eyes, it was too much. I was only Fae. And apparently, I was the shitty kind because I was standing here with my greedy hands all over the princess herself with no mind to leave.