Chapter 10 #4
I looked up, and my smile wilted as his nose touched mine. “I made it easy for you,” I breathed.
“Ethelsia Blueburn,” he rasped. “I doubt you will ever make anything easy for me.”
“Do you like difficult women?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and waited for him to kiss me.
He didn’t.
“I don’t know.” He slid a hand up my back. His eyes danced with mine. “The only woman I’ve ever liked this much is you.”
Before I could even try to keep that calculated statement from making contact, he kissed me.
A groan rumbled in his throat as he pressed his mouth to mine. It stayed there, his hand climbing into my hair and scrunching.
But I wanted more. So much more.
So I pulled my body against his and curled my legs around his waist. His erection met my stomach. He hissed, and I took advantage. I pried his mouth open with mine, deepening the kiss. The hand at my waist smoothed over my ass.
I moaned.
Brey moved his hand.
I plucked my mouth from his to say, “Put it back.”
“Gladly,” he muttered.
But he didn’t just return his hand to my ass. As I kissed him again, he squeezed it.
Delighted, I gasped. Another magical groan rumbled. This time, against my lips. Needing to hear it again, I pushed my breasts into his chest. But instead of a groan, I was rewarded with a slight snarl.
Then he took over.
I was kissed with such tender precision, my mind emptied. He opened my mouth merely to adore every bit of my lips. All the while, he further tangled his fingers in my hair and maintained a bruising grip on my ass.
Sensation swam through my melting bones.
I wanted to reach between us and guide his cock beneath my undergarments. I also never wanted this to end.
So as the tide rolled in toward our forgotten clothing, I just let him slaughter me softly.
After bathing, I secured my wet hair in a messy heap atop my head so that it would curl. Then I stole a robe hung upon the back of the door. Brey’s scent lingered heavily on the black silk.
A slip of parchment fluttered when I opened the bathing room door.
I crouched down to retrieve it. My finger traced the perfect curls that told me I’d find Brey in the kitchen. Dropping the parchment on his bed, I left the tower.
On my way down the hall, I opened some doors. My curiosity dried when the starlight revealed only thick layers of dust upon ancient and neglected furniture. I headed to the ground floor, in search of the king who’d kissed me until my lips became as dry as my salt-splashed cheeks and shoulders.
But all I could remember from his tour was that the kitchen resided beneath the palace.
After roaming the rear hall for a mortifying amount of time, I was about to give up when I heard a crash and an almost imperceptible curse.
I turned back to the stairs I’d avoided due to assuming they led to the dungeon.
I’d assumed right.
Beneath the stairs was a flame-lit hall. Halfway down it, steel cells winked in the dark beyond an arched entrance to my left. Distant light came from straight ahead. A clang sounded as I continued down the hall until it became an arched entrance to a dimly lit kitchen.
There, I stopped with my hand upon the aged stone.
Lemon and sugar clogged the air.
Countertops with gruesome brown tiles bordered the rectangular chamber, interrupted by doors, ovens, and a sink beneath the thin windows. Through the grimy stained glass, I could only see vines and swaying tufts of long grass.
Above an abused island bench in the center of the room, pots and pans hung precariously from a row of rusted hooks in the stone ceiling.
Woven baskets had been stacked by an open door across the room. One was filled with what smelled like night-old produce, another fresh. Noting the sandy steps and the faint sound of the sea, I realized the door led outside.
Another door to my left stood half-open. The scent of herbs and grain hinted at a storage room. Down here, there were no tiles on the floor. It was cream stone—dark in places and stained curiously in others.
Lemon remains lay amid the mess of flour and gunk on the island bench.
The king wore only a towel. It clung enticingly to his defined hips. His hair was still damp from our swim. Many black strands had escaped his braid to thickly frame his ethereal face. Flour dusted his forearms, which clenched as he mixed something in a large porcelain bowl.
Without lifting his eyes, Brey said, “My robe looks much better on you.”
Surprised he’d noticed me when he’d seemed fixated on his task, I asked, “How did you know I was here?”
He moved to a buttered pan down the bench. “You’re as stealthy as a bird who accidentally flew indoors.”
“I’m incredibly stealthy, actually. You just hear too much because you’re a cat.”
“Perhaps.” He smirked at the pan he scooped the mixture into. “Or perhaps I’m merely painfully aware of everything you do.”
He said it so casually, almost flippantly, that it shouldn’t have hit me like a blow to the chest. I gripped the stone.
His eyes rose. Long lashes met his lowering brows.
My stomach squirmed. “Since when does a king bake?”
“Since he wants treats his cook often refuses to bake because he is the only one who likes them.” He then wiped his flour-dusted hands on a dish towel, tossed it over his bare shoulder, and took the tray to the oven.
Seizing the opportunity, I padded into the room. I swiped some of the mess out of the way, then pushed up to sit on the island bench.
Feet swinging, I trailed my finger through a pile of yellow gunk. “What are you baking?”
Turning, he snatched the towel from his shoulder to again wipe his hands. He wrung it between them as he watched me suck the batter from my finger.
When he didn’t answer, I raised my brows. Maybe he didn’t see on account of his eyes being on my mouth, his own parting.
“Lemon cakes,” I determined with a wide smile. “My favorite.”
With a slight shake of his head and a clearing of his throat, he said, “Mine too.” He turned back to the oven, as if to check it already, but not before I spied a flush rising over his jaw. “They remind me of you.”
Giddy, I swung my feet so hard I nearly left the benchtop. “Because they’re bittersweet?”
“Because the first time I saw you, you ate so many that people started watching you.” Amusement deepened his tone.
“When I saw you again, and you were eating them again, I realized that’s when you ceased caring what people thought of you.
” He returned to the bench. “When you came face-to-face with lemon cakes.”
Unable to decide whether I was flattered or mildly insulted, I gave him my best unimpressed look.
It went unnoticed.
“Of course, I simply had to try them.” Bracing his hands on the bench, he said, “My mother found me down here, attempting to make them, and she had this terrible bruise on her cheek that she didn’t want any of the staff to know about.
But seeing the disaster I’d caused, she woke Emyn, our cook at the time. ”
“She must have adored you.”
“When she could.” Seeing my frown, he tossed the towel back over his shoulder and said, “Most marriages between the born are superficial, I know, but my parents had something more than a fondness for each other. My father didn’t like being without my mother.”
“He would take her with him on his…” Attempting to find a kinder word for it, I failed spectacularly. “Escapades.”
Brey huffed. “All of them, yes. He was never cruel to her. In his own way, he was rather infatuated with her. So I let them be. I let him be and simply did what I could to fix the problems he made.” Appearing to hesitate, he dragged his teeth over his lower lip.
“Especially when I discovered those problems gave her that bruise.”
Sensing something horrid was coming, I stopped swinging my feet.
Brey noticed and rubbed his cheek. “You don’t really want to know this, lethal. This particular secret is not exactly fun.”
Staring at the flour he’d just put on his cheek, I said, “I might be frivolous, but I still have a heart, Majesty.” I gave him a stern look. “I want to know, but anything you’re uncomfortable sharing is not something I need to know.”
That flush returned to his face. “I didn’t mean—”
I waved my hand and made to jump down from the bench.
“My father,” Brey said. “I killed him.”
Shock stilled me and halted the beat of my heart. When I looked at him, all I could think to ask was a soft, “Why?”
As if somewhere else, Brey stood like a statue, staring at the mess beside me.
Not fun indeed. Really, this wasn’t just a secret.
It was a crime not even a king should get away with.
No born vampire could kill their parents. Not without publicly losing their heads. Otherwise, I’d have likely tried to kill my own father long ago. It had been the law since the dawn of our creation—to keep born offspring from taking their parents’ wealth and control of their own futures.
And to keep us from delivering our own extinction.
A laugh left Brey, sudden and hollow and almost menacing.
I jolted.
“Everyone knows about King Exayn’s refusal to feed the wards and the gambling that never ceased.
But they don’t know just how bad it truly was.
” Still staring absently at the bench, he said, “That when the coffers were drained, he didn’t stop.
Desperate to fulfill promises he’d broken and keep his head, he made it impossibly worse. ”
My heartbeat slowed.
“Of course, few would dare to kill a king, but many certainly sought to abuse my father’s weakness. His…” He swept a hand over his salt-laden hair. “This sickness he’d had since before I was born.”
I’d never heard it put that way. Yet I supposed he was right. Such an addiction was indeed an illness.
“When I shifted for the first time, I knew the excitement in my father’s gaze had nothing to do with being proud of my soul-reveal. I was twelve years when he sent me on my first hunt.”
I gasped.