Chapter 24
Brey took my hand and led me toward the side of the ballroom.
Apprehension clamped around my throat. A strange buzzing erupted in my ears, drowning out the noise surrounding us.
As if it were a leech, he plucked the tray from me. It smacked onto another empty tray on the table and almost knocked over a decanter of wine. He then raised my hand, the other meeting my waist, and began to sway.
Eyes stuck on something beyond my head, likely Maxus, he drawled, “Dare I even ask why you’re serving people?”
Unable to concentrate on anything but his fingers gliding over my own before they linked, I mumbled, “It seemed like fun.”
“Do you hunger for attention so badly that you forget who you are?”
That pulled me from my shocked state. “I’m not the one who needed to outshine my father’s entrance.” I couldn’t trap it, and added, “Nor am I the one who stood in wait against the wall for willing prey.”
“You just offered yourself to another hunter instead.”
“That wasn’t what I—” I shook my head. “Let me go. I have things to do.” I tried to pull free of his hands.
He tightened his hold. “I thought you wanted to play pretend.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“Interesting.” He moved his hand to my lower back, then pushed. His murmur and lips grazed my hairline. “So have I.”
It became impossible to breathe.
He was everywhere. So close, each time he swayed us to the tinkling tune from the piano, my breasts brushed against his dress coat. As the shock wore off, his scent rushed in—heady and stirring something dormant.
If he wanted to play pretend, then play we would.
I pressed even closer. When I tilted my head, my nose skimmed the clean-shaven skin of his jaw. My fingers splayed against his chest, opening and closing.
Brey tensed. “Darling.” A crooned warning.
“Mm?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed right next to my mouth. He didn’t respond for some moments, and when he did, I knew he’d decided to play along—to try to best me. “You’re making me strain against my pants.”
Heat spread throughout my body.
“What an incredibly indecent thing to tell me in the midst of company,” I admonished. Then I kissed his throat, and almost purred from the encounter with his skin. My whispered demand was more of a plea. “Tell me another.”
His hand tightened over mine.
Just when I thought he wouldn’t rise to the challenge, his fingers spread at my lower back, and his lips glossed my temple.
“I think that would be dangerously unwise,” he whispered. “I know how much you like it when I say filthy things to you.”
I bit down on my lip. My fingers curled at his chest.
He inhaled deeply. A slight groan accompanied his exhale. “Seems you’re already aroused.” A moment passed before he murmured, “Is it because you know he’s watching us?”
I hadn’t known Maxus was watching. He was likely only doing so due to the king’s inability to cease watching him.
“No.” Pressing my lips to his pulse, I felt my breath quiver. “And I’m most definitely not aroused.”
“No?” A taunt.
“No,” I said. “Merely a bit bothered.”
His swaying slowed. “How so?”
“Do you want me to describe it?”
Instantly, he said, “I fear you must.”
I wondered if he could feel my lips tilt against his skin. “Well, I just feel a little…” I hummed as if thinking about it. “Achy.” Intentionally, I paused then said, “Damp.”
Brey sucked in a sharp breath.
I was far from done. “And…” After another daringly longer kiss at his throat, I whispered, “So very empty.” With feigned apathy, I lied, “Must be the bond.”
“Must be,” he concurred smoothly. Again, his throat bobbed with a harsh swallow. His grip on my hand was almost too tight. At my lower back, his fingers scrunched. But he only said, “Whatever shall you do?”
“I suppose I’ll need to make my excuses.”
“And what then?”
“Find some assistance.”
Clipped, he asked, “From whom?”
Courage spilled into my chest like warm water. “My husband, of course.”
He didn’t respond.
Sound drifted in as though his long silence poked a hole in the cloud he’d engulfed me within. My pounding heart slowed. Unease and fear of further rejection cooled my overheated skin.
I’d taken it too far.
Before I could summon something to say that might fix it, I was pressed hard against his body. I felt his erection and gasped.
“Then my advice would be to head upstairs to wait for him in your rooms.” The harsh whisper met my cheek. “This instant.”
I was released so abruptly that it took me a moment to remember where I was.
Brey vanished into the crowd.
Hope singed my eyes and shook my hands. I didn’t make any excuses. I didn’t even consider the consequences or what I truly wanted. I acted on instinct—pure and bone-deep longing. Without acknowledging anyone, I hurried from the ballroom to the stairs.
“Ethel?” Clovia called.
I halted on the bottom step but didn’t turn. For a few seconds, I debated saying nothing. I considered doing what I’d always done throughout our years of friendship—pretend and appease. But I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to.
So I said, “I don’t particularly wish to speak to you right now.”
“I was worried you might…” She stopped and sighed before softly saying, “Ethel, I’m sorry.”
My hands clenched my skirts. “Was it because of Maxus or the king?” I asked. “Or was it because I seemingly had both?”
“I had an opportunity to marry the king,” she said, as if that excused it. “An opportunity I will likely never have again, no matter how long we live.”
I should have told her that although she was almost as beautiful as Brey, she’d never truly had the opportunity to marry him. I should have told her that there was a room in this palace solely dedicated to storing portraits of me—moments captured from my life in secret over years and years.
I should have told her that Brey had made a fuss about finding a wife to attend to the wards because he’d hoped I would show interest.
Instead, I smiled at her over my shoulder and said, “I wish I could tell you that it’s everything you would have wanted, but I would only be trying to wound you.”
Then I hurried to my tower, where I tried to decide whether I should undress or bathe.
As time crept on, I did both and climbed into my bed. Anticipation kept me from lying still. Relief kept a smile continuously on my face.
Perhaps it could end, this war between us. Perhaps we could be done with loathing one another. Perhaps I’d been wrong to assume we could never come back from what we’d done, and we could actually mend this—us—after all.
But as my mind finally quietened, I realized just how much time had passed.
Too much.
I made my way down to the tower door, pulled the steel open with a grunt, and listened. There was only faint music and laughter from downstairs. The ball was drawing to a close.
And Brey wasn’t coming.
My fingers went slack over the handle, and the door shut with a quiet shudder. The cold steel warmed beneath my naked body as I leaned against it and closed my eyes.
I’d thought I’d run out of tears for this cruel husband of mine. But as one slid down my cheek, I knew it wasn’t just him that caused them to blur my vision. This time, my hurt had been my own doing.
I’d toyed with him. Provoked him.
Given him the opportunity to keep me away from other men and embarrass me.
Except I wasn’t embarrassed. As I swiped the tear from my cheek and headed back upstairs to my bedchamber, all I felt was increasing confusion and anger.
I went to retrieve a nightgown but ended up pacing instead. My hands delved into my hair, ruining the curls. I recalled every burning moment in that ballroom, turned them every which way. But every angle looked the same—how he’d reacted to me remained anything but pretend.
It just didn’t make sense.
Brey had stalked and painted me for a decade. He’d written to my father when I’d failed to show interest in his quest to find a bride—a quest he’d orchestrated merely to ensnare me.
I hoped for you.
Maybe he’d hoped for my father’s gold?
No. Even when he’d gotten a signed contract and payment, he’d painstakingly pursued me until he was certain the only thing I craved was him. He’d chipped away at my defenses and reservations until he became as essential as the heart in my chest.
Only to leave me vulnerably adrift.
Maybe he had been obsessed with me. Once upon a time. Before he’d had me. Maybe after that, after finally having sex—and plenty of it—he’d gotten bored. Maybe believing that I’d been with Maxus had simply given him the perfect excuse to discard me.
And to enjoy other people.
He was probably bedding one of our guests right now. Or those rotting feeders.
He fucking pays them, Ethel.
Hanna’s frustrated outburst clanged through my mind, stilling me at the foot of my bed.
She could only have meant Sheya and Ergon, who were paid handsomely to provide us their blood. That, and the fact that Brey was, well, Brey, made it hard to believe they were also paid to fuck him.
I gripped the bedpost as it began to finally dawn.
As I looked back and failed to find any memory of Brey even touching those feeders. Afraid of what I might walk in on, I didn’t visit his tower often. But I’d visited enough to see Sheya and Ergon there plenty of times. Always together.
Never with Brey.
But paying them to pretend they were his lovers would be laughably absurd. Unfathomably malicious.
Yet…
Brey’s soul shape was a cat. Since the moment I’d met him, his personality had proven to be wholly feline—adoring, mischievous, playful, and quick to attack and hold a grudge when slighted.
My king had gone to great lengths to make me his. Therefore, it stood to reason that he would go to extreme lengths to lash out at me after discovering he’d failed.
Such as paying our feeders to prance naked around his rooms so that I’d assume the worst and hurt as much as I’d hurt him.
I knew Hanna wouldn’t tell me how she’d discovered this, and that if it weren’t for how flustered she’d been, she wouldn’t have vomited a damned word. Groth was too annoyingly loyal to Brey. Ovan likely didn’t care enough to retain anything he heard.
Brey would never admit it.
With the exception of finding and threatening Sheya and Ergon, I could think of only one way to clear any shred of doubt. So I fixed my face and hair, then loosely donned my robe.
I had a vindictive husband to seduce.