Chapter 12 Malice
MALICE
Fighting a headache before he even opens his eyes, there is a knock on the door deep inside of Malice: thump thump thump. He ignores the pounding. Eventually it will refuse to be ignored. Instead, it will demand. To be heard, seen, free.
When that time comes, Malice will deal with it.
He drags his hands down his face, trying to rub the sleep from his brain.
Glancing at the clock, he sees it’s just past seven in the morning.
Malice had been pleasantly surprised to follow Aerin back to the apartment around one a.m. last night.
After the drama, he assumed she’d be keen to obliterate all her senses with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol.
Instead, Aerin walked silently back to the apartment, less pointedly ignoring him and more lost in her own head.
There was no mention of the moment between them in the living room before the party. Or the moment between them in the destroyed bathroom. No mention of the way that something bound tightly around her seems to have loosened.
No, Aerin Tolvare didn’t speak to him at all. No obnoxious quips or attempts to piss him off. No brandishing words like knives. She didn’t even look at him, Malice nothing more than a shadow.
Malice isn’t sure if he should feel relief or annoyance. It’s for the best. If she looks through him, then she isn’t looking at him. Isn’t dissecting him with a gaze that seems to catch him like a fly in a web.
Throughout his life Malice has given away many pieces of himself, chipped them off and handed them over until he became a patchwork of blank spaces. He refuses to give any pieces to Aerin Tolvare. So, it’s better for Aerin to ignore him, really.
Sitting up, Malice grabs his phone off the nightstand, intending to check the cameras he’d set up last night. Instead, he sees a message from Bruin Tolvare.
Where were you?
The Prince included a link to a tabloid site. Malice opens it, apprehensive. He finds photo after photo of Aerin. Aerin hardly wearing any clothes, sandwiched between the Vipers in some dark booth. Aerin on a dance floor. Aerin taking shots. Aerin behind the DJ booth.
Malice sends back: I don’t appreciate being photographed and took care not to be.
He lies. He lies to the True Heir of Valtara. Gods. He is fucked.
How the hell had she gotten past him? It isn’t as if they’d come in and he fell right asleep.
He was awake in the living room for over two hours, certain she’d come out dressed in something even more risqué before leaving for a different kind of party.
He didn’t retreat to his room until well after 3 a.m.
Malice sees red.
He doesn’t think. Doesn’t even pause to put on clothes. He storms to Aerin’s door, pounding on it with a heavy fist. She probably isn’t even home, and he is fucked if the Prince ever finds out. The Tolvares are not known for being forgiving.
His pounding increases in tempo and force, rattling the entire wall. Any harder and he’d break right through. He finally stops when he hears a groan from inside.
Something releases in his chest. At least the Princess is here. He tries the handle and finds the door unlocked, pushing inside. Aerin is on the bed, still half asleep, hair a mess.
Malice has yet to be inside Aerin’s bedroom, but the smell of her hits him like a freight train.
Then the sight of her steals his breath.
Her hair hangs every which way, so tangled it seems like she’s been tossing and turning for hours.
The top she wears hangs by thin silk straps, displaying her defined shoulders.
Her lean arms flex as she rubs her eyes.
The fluffiest blanket Malice has ever seen is pooled in her lap.
She looks small, fragile even, like someone who needs his protection. Something clangs around inside of him.
Aerin appears delicate until she pulls her hands from her face and levels her gaze at him. Her golden eyes spark with fury, almost molten in their rage.
“What the fuck, Malice?!” she growls.
“You tell me,” Malice snaps back, his own anger coming out to play with hers.
He tosses the phone, still open to the photos, onto the bed in front of her. Aerin snatches it up, flipping through the pictures with a bored expression on her face before tossing the phone back to him.
Aerin shrugs, her fire dousing from inferno to simmer in a matter of seconds. She stretches those toned arms over her head, bending from side to side. Malice ignores the way he can see her nipples pebbling under the thin top. He puts the image behind another one of those doors in his mind.
“You seem pretty chipper for someone who just got into bed,” Malice snarls, going to pocket his phone before realizing he isn’t wearing any pants.
Standing in the Princess’s room in only his briefs. Perfect.
“I got just the right amount of sleep,” Aerin quips, shimmying to the edge of the bed. Malice decidedly does not take notice of how her skin is flawlessly tanned from the sun. How it’s pristine, not a single mar, scar, or beauty mark.
Aerin slips her feet into obnoxiously fluffy slippers as she stands.
“How did you sneak past me?” Malice grinds out. Humiliation sneaks up his spine. Here he is, in his fucking underwear, before a Princess, asking her how she bested him. Again.
“Did you really think I’d make this easy on you?” Aerin asks, her words sharp once more. She strides past him to enter the bathroom, closing the door behind her. The click holds a finality Malice refuses to accept.
Folding his arms over his chest Malice widens his wings, blocking her inevitable exit. He wants answers, and Aerin acting like he isn’t worthy of an explanation infuriates him. In fact, Malice doesn’t think he’s ever met someone as infuriating as Aerin Tolvare.
He waits as the toilet flushes and she washes her hands. He hears the buzz of her toothbrush, listens to her spit and rinse. His limited patience snaps. He pounds on the bathroom door.
“Hello! I wasn’t done talking to you!”
The door swings open and Malice halts his fist just before it strikes her. Aerin doesn’t flinch. Instead, she runs her eyes down his body and then back up again, before she rolls her eyes and turns away, retreating into the bathroom.
Malice could roar. Never in his life has he met someone as disrespectful as her.
He lists her negative attributes again: selfish, vapid, reckless, and now brazen.
Malice barely resists the urge to grab her by the arm, to make her look at him, acknowledge him.
But Malice won’t lay a hand on her. He won’t force her attention or her respect.
Instead, he grinds his teeth together. He’ll be lucky if they aren’t down to stumps by the time this is all over.
Aerin goes to her vanity and sits on a plush chair. A robe now covers her once bare shoulders. She grabs something in a dropper bottle, dispensing lines of the liquid onto her face before rubbing it in with care.
“Do you even need that?” Malice grumbles, looking around.
The bathroom is massive. To his left is the counter space, two sinks and Aerin’s vanity.
A mirror runs the entire length of the wall.
To his right is an enormous shower, large enough for at least five creatures, multiple shower heads on the walls and ceilings.
A large glass door encloses it, with a bench seat on one side.
At the back of the room are two doorways, the toilet in one, and closet in the other, and against the far wall sits a giant claw footed tub.
Aerin, unsurprisingly, ignores his question, putting another liquid on her face. He watches her follow with a cream, then something she brushes through her eyebrows.
“Are you ever going to answer my questions?” Malice finally snaps. Aerin turns her head to look at him, hairbrush in hand. Her skin is glowing. She is so beautiful.
No, he shouldn’t think that.
She is infuriating and selfish and awful.
Aerin takes a long pause as her eyes travel over Malice’s bare chest and thighs. Her gaze trails over him, leaving his skin humming with awareness.
“Are you ever going to put some clothes on?” Her features morph into a smirk as she turns back to her reflection, beginning to brush through the nest that is her hair.
“After I get some answers,” Malice retorts. He will not let her scrutiny get to him. She shrugs as she untangles the strands.
“I guess you’ll be naked for a while then because I’m not telling you a damn thing. Don’t forget that I don’t want you here.”
Malice knows it’s a stupid thing to say, but it falls from his mouth anyways: “It’s not your choice.”
The Princess laughs, though its forced and aggravated. When she finally stops, she stands and strides to him. She halts her approach a few inches too close to him, looking up through her thick lashes. In exactly one breath, all the anger that gripped his body leaches out.
Replaced by something else, something like a taut string drawn between them, begging to be plucked. Aerin licks her lips, her eyes catching on Malice’s.
Then she speaks, and the moment is shattered.
“Being my personal guard is your problem, not mine. Good luck keeping up.” She pats his bare chest with a few terse taps before slipping by Malice once again.
If Aerin Tolvare wants to play games, then he is ready to play.