Chapter 12
After the second sunset, I stopped counting the evenings until I could go home.
I began to wonder what life in this palace might look like. Such imaginings gave me the courage to explore. Brey wasn’t in his bedchamber when I left the bathing room, ready for a new evening. Nor was he on the balcony.
I eyed the slim spiral staircase beside the balcony doors. Then I gathered my crimson skirts and climbed to the second floor of the tower.
I’d assumed it was a storage room with another balcony. I wasn’t entirely wrong.
A round table, velvet-padded seats tucked beneath, stood on the left side of the room. On the other side were four easels, perfectly positioned to catch the moonlight falling over the paint-flecked carpet from the open balcony doors.
Novels, paint pots, and an uncountable number of paintbrushes filled the shelves of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase at the back of the room. Beside it sat a divan in the shape of a crescent moon, covered in a silvery velvet.
Halfway across the room, tempted toward the books, I stopped when I caught sight of the paintings on the easels.
Paintings of me.
But they were so much more. Proof, perhaps, that this king genuinely did crave more than my father’s gold and a noblewoman to bond with.
The evidence was revealed in the details I’d never even noticed about myself. Which certainly said something, considering how conceited I could be. It was found in the profile of my face—in the way my lashes curled, my lips pouted ever so slightly, and in the height and plumpness of my cheeks.
More evidence was found in the mischievous glint in my eyes, present in all four paintings. Eyes I’d never realized were a shade lighter than true emerald.
“You keep me very busy.”
I’d been so distracted, I hadn’t sensed his arrival.
But I didn’t startle.
I turned and assessed his goddess-gifted face.
Brey gazed down at me with a small smirk. It failed to illuminate his eyes, nor unclench his jaw. His heart raced. Or maybe that was mine.
I placed my hand on his chest. “You’re nervous.”
“Should I be?”
“You should be positively terrified,” I teased.
His smirk became a smile that finally reached his eyes. They gleamed as he said, “Oh?”
As I touched his smooth jaw, it loosened, and I reminded myself that I’d felt this type of exhilaration before. I’d chased the excitement that came with new dalliances numerous times. Yet I knew…
I’d never felt anything quite like this.
I knew that any high I tried to find after this king would elude me, and that scared me as much as our impending marriage.
But when my thumb encountered the corner of his mouth, I said, “Kiss me.”
He cupped my face as if it were a flower within his hands, and tilted it. Our eyes clashed, closing as he ever-so-carefully aligned our lips. Against my mouth, he sighed, then opened and caressed it with his.
Languidly, he lavished me with soft adoration. So soft, the effect was violent.
I gripped his white shirt and moaned.
A hand left my face to touch my lower back. To urge me close until I was almost squashed against his chest, my head tilted right back.
I didn’t mind at all.
He used his tongue to part my lips and stroke my own. As he licked under my upper lip, his thumb touched the corner of my mouth. A purred groan roughened his murmur. “You are the sweetest venom.”
I smiled and withdrew.
Taking his hand, I threaded our fingers at my stomach as I turned to the paintings. “Killing, baking, spying, and painting.”
He brushed my hair aside to place his mouth on my neck. A hum rumbled deliciously against my skin.
Leaning into him, I whispered, “You have numerous talents, Majesty.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“Oh, but I do.” Slowly, I lifted my skirts while I led his hand down my stomach. “So vehemently that I’m aching to know what else you can do.”
I felt him tense against my back.
With his hand on my upper thigh, I stopped. I tilted my head to see him and asked, “Do you want to show me?”
Appearing almost drowsy, he gazed at my mouth. His response was a breathy rush. “Want is far too small a word, lethal.”
Transfixed, I stared at him as I widened my stance—just enough to guide his hand between my thighs.
Brey hissed.
His arm and hand turned to stone. “No undergarments.” A harsh swallow, right near my ear, elicited gooseflesh. “Did you wake with the intent to devastate me this evening?”
“I’ll never tell,” I whispered.
But my pleased smile fell when he finally moved his hand. He seemed to pet me. I trapped a shocked and confused laugh, about to ask what he was doing when he cupped me.
Gasping, I arched into his hand.
He groaned, and I was glad I hadn’t questioned him as he trembled against me. As he smoothed his fingers over me.
He touched me like he kissed me—exploringly sensual. He stroked me, parted me, then groaned again when I moaned and he discovered how aroused he’d made me. “You must really approve of my talents.”
I hummed and clasped his wrist to push his hand lower.
A finger found my opening, and my head lolled against his shoulder as the tip of it slid inside me.
Brey tensed once more.
I failed to hear his heartbeat. Not until his hand left me and he brought that finger to his mouth. Stunned, I looked up in time to see his eyes close.
As he took his time savoring the taste of me, he made a strange noise. A growled purr, I realized when he released his finger and gazed down at me with utterly feline eyes.
He then returned his hand between my thighs to do it again. He dunked, then sucked—each time pushing his finger a little deeper into my body than before—until my legs shook and I was certain I’d never been more aroused.
It was as if my body wanted to please him as much as he was pleasing it—by providing him with more than enough evidence of my desire for him.
But that desire soon became painful desperation.
I gripped his wrist, ready to plead.
He spoke first. “I had come to retrieve you for breakfast.” He sounded different. His voice was deeper, rougher, as if on the cusp of growling. “Now I’m afraid the only thing I want to eat for the rest of my nights is you.”
“Then please,” I rasped—nearly whimpered. “Start now.”
We moved to the divan, where I released him to unfasten my gown.
“Leave it on,” he murmured. “And lie down.”
I didn’t argue. Eager to see what he had in mind, I climbed onto the divan as he lowered to his knees on the floor beside it. Before my back met the velvet, my ass met the end of the seat. My skirts were tossed over my waist.
A shocked laugh became a hitched breath when Brey smoothed his hands over my inner thighs. In response, they opened wide.
For moments that tempted me to grab his face and push it against me, he just stared at my sex. “Utterly breathtaking,” he muttered.
Then he finally touched me.
He parted me with his thumbs, pressed an open-mouth kiss to my mound, my clit, my opening, then dipped his tongue into me. Again and again, he prodded my entrance—as if trying to see how far he could delve.
My body didn’t care how odd his tactics were.
Pleasure careened through me in a rising wave that curled my back. Brey waited until it flattened on the divan before swiping his tongue over me so slowly, so softly, the wave crashed. With gasped pants and choked moans, I unraveled.
As I did, he held my legs open to feverishly lap at the mess he’d made.
Needing to end the exquisite torture, I tried to close my thighs.
He didn’t let me.
Not until I squirmed and laughed out, “Brey, you must stop.”
My skirts were then pushed down. His eyes rose above them, slit and scowling.
Unable to trap it, I laughed again. “Are you pouting, Majesty?”
Though his scowl eased, his displeasure remained. It soaked his deliciously deepened voice. “I wasn’t done.”
I sat up and scooched back. “I don’t know what your other lovers can handle, but for me, it’s too much too soon.” Inviting him to sit with a pat on the divan, I said, “Give me a few minutes.”
His gaze gradually returned to normal. He stood and took a seat on the end of the divan. Clasping his hands between his spread knees, he looked at them as he asked, “Have I disappointed you?”
Taken aback, I didn’t respond.
I blinked at his profile, waiting for one of his disarming smiles and something tantalizing to fall from his lips. But he stayed silent and looking at his hands.
I didn’t know what to say. What to do.
I wasn’t usually one to appease or feed a man’s ego. Not unless it served me. Lies told merely to obtain what I wanted. Yet as gulls screeched in the stretching silence, I struggled to determine whether Brey was fishing for compliments.
Or if he truly was uncharacteristically and incredibly unsure of himself.
Men rarely did anything to warrant genuine praise. So it more than bothered me to feel compelled to give it to this king. It unsettled me—the urge to comfort him. An urge that grew the longer I watched him.
Until I couldn’t ignore it.
“I cannot believe you’re making me admit this, but…” I sighed and waited for his eyes to slide to me. “Never have I climaxed so quickly.”
His brows scrunched, and his eyes brightened. “Never?”
“Never,” I said, my lips curving.
He failed to return my smile.
And watching him watch me with such raw vulnerability tainting his emerald eyes, my mind began to drift. His odd attentiveness to my sex—also to my mouth—and the way he hadn’t wished to stop…
Perhaps it hadn’t been a starved man’s reluctance to cease feasting. Perhaps he didn’t know any better. He had spent much of his life sequestered in this palace. But just because he’d been hidden to better do his father’s bidding didn’t mean he hadn’t had sex.
Yet the longer I stared at him, the more his hands clenched. As did his jaw a moment before he averted his gaze to the balcony. He pried his hands apart to sweep his thumb across his lower lip, lost in his thoughts or contemplating what to say.
But he stayed quiet.