Chapter 28
Silver woke alone to a cold bed and empty room. Any lingering effects of the drug he’d taken last night should have been gone, but he found himself eager to locate his mate.
He’d bend Nuri over the nearest flat surface he could find.
His cock was already achy at the mental image, and he tried to calm it as he dressed.
Once upon a time, simply sitting down for a meal with Narek had been enough to ease some of this chaotic tension swirling within him, but now that Silver had tasted him in bed, he’d gotten greedy for more.
Simply enjoying Nuri’s company wasn’t enough. He wanted to put his mouth and his hands on him. Wanted to sink inside and get lost in the sensations only Nuri could provide.
Then they could sit at the table and make small talk, and Silver could go back to pretending like he didn’t think about leaking word of their engagement to the press. Nuri would throw a fit if he did though, which was the only thing stopping him.
When it came to announcing him as his Royal Consort, Silver had to play it safe.
“Where is he?” he demanded as soon as he stepped into the hallway and found Falc already waiting.
“He’s in the study, majesty.” Falc pursed his lips in a partial frown.
Silver didn’t bother asking him about it. “We’ll be late for breakfast. Don’t make the staff wait. You’re all free to take the day off.”
He headed up the stairs two at a time, not giving Falc a chance to reply.
Yesterday, leading up to the party, there’d been phone calls from several idiots and a slew of emails from even bigger idiots.
The distribution problem had only just been solved, and even though that particular mess was his own damn fault for hiring those hacks to start the fires, he felt like his head was ready to explode from it all.
When he came to the door to the study, he shoved it open, only finally feeling like he could breathe again when his eyes locked onto the man standing on the opposite side of the room.
Nuri was in front of the large window, his back toward Silver.
He seemed to be lost in thought, staring out at the backyard, even though he probably couldn’t see much with the gray clouds blanketing the sky.
He was only dressed in a simple robe, which was odd since he never left the room like that, and at the sound of the door, his head tipped to the side, though he didn’t turn to greet Silver.
“Nuri.” Why did he get the odd sense that something was wrong?
Silver searched the area but there didn’t seem to be anything weird or out of place.
The coffee table where Nuri usually worked was empty, and though the man was standing on the other side of his desk, the surface seemed untouched as well.
Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling, and an unease unlike anything he’d ever known before began to coil in his gut. “Narek.”
Finally, Nuri turned away from the window, meeting Silver’s gaze with a soft smile touching his lips.
But something about that didn’t seem right either.
His gaze traveled down to Nuri’s outfit. He’d left the tie loose, the material opened suggestively, showing off a good amount of his chest.
Silver frowned. “Nuri?”
“I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve said my name in the past, and yet you keep saying it.
” Nuri came around the desk, and Silver noticed he was holding something.
He rolled the N.I.M. absently in his palm, and then perched on the edge of the desk and cocked his head.
“What’s wrong, majesty? You don’t seem like yourself today. ”
“The same can be said about you.”
“Oh?” Nuri shrugged. “Perhaps I’m just anticipating the end of our game.” He held up the N.I.M. “Speaking of which, should we get started?”
He’d almost forgotten today marked the start of their fourth week. “Right now?”
“No time like the present.”
Something was definitely wrong, but no matter how much Silver searched Nuri’s expression, he couldn’t figure out what that something was. He seemed more laid back, more relaxed, but also more in control—
The way he treated all of those people Silver set him on. This was Nuri’s business persona, the take-no-shit, leave-no-survivors version that he’d always appreciated watching Nuri turn into.
When it was aimed at other people.
He’d never, not once in the entire history of their relationship, looked at Silver that way.
“What happened?” he asked, instinctually lowering his tone, trying to sound coaxing and calm amidst whatever storm was raging inside of Nuri.
“Nothing.” Nuri’s smile widened.
Fake. So fake.
And calculating.
“Well,” he held up the N.I.M. again, “are we playing or what?”
Seeing that he wouldn’t get answers until they settled this first, Silver exhaled and waved at him, setting his hands on his hips as his frustration threatened to bubble over. “Fine. Yes. Let’s get this over with.”
Nuri hummed in understanding and bent to set the N.I.M. carefully on the floor, then he rested back against the desk, spreading his arms out to grip the edges in a display of sheer casualness that was honestly baffling. “N.I.M., roll the dice, please.”
Silver didn’t even glance at them as they were tossed, keeping his eyes locked on Nuri’s face instead, still searching for any clues to help fill him in on what was going on here.
But Nuri was a blank slate, his expression set in a pleasing partial smile that only had the sense of danger building in Silver’s mind.
“Six,” Nuri announced, glancing up at Silver coquettishly before giving his attention back to the device. “N.I.M, roll the dice for the Emperor, please.”
He really didn’t get it. They hadn’t officially made up from their fight, but Silver had hoped after last night, things would be at least a little better. Sex could be a good ice breaker. It’d worked for them in the past.
The dice were cast and Nuri straightened from the desk, but instead of coming to him like Silver assumed, he went to walk right past him.
“Where are you going?” Silver grabbed onto his arm, air catching in his lungs when Nuri turned to him and he noticed the fury in his eyes now. Gone were the faked niceties. There was only anger and disgust now.
“I’m leaving,” despite all of that, Nuri’s voice still came out crisp and clear.
“What are you talking about? You can’t leave.”
“Of course I can,” he disagreed. When Silver continued to stare, that cutting smile returned and he tipped his chin over Silver’s shoulder.
Silver turned to look, eyes dropping down to the holographic dice that were still being projected across the floor. The world seemed to come to a complete stop the second he realized what the numbers on the surface were.
“Snake eyes,” Nuri said. “That means you rolled a two, majesty. I rolled a six. I win.”
“How—” He gasped when Nuri yanked his arm out of his hold.
“How could you have lost?” He spat, losing the cool tone with each and every word until the man left before Silver was practically shaking with pent-up emotion.
“It’s a game of chance, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be surprising that you lost when the odds were fifty-fifty.
Oh. But they weren’t fifty-fifty, were they? ”
He’d found out.
That’s why he was acting differently. That’s why he was so angry. Nuri had found out.
“I can explain.” Not really, but it was the best thing he could come up with.
“Explain?” He laughed, the sound mocking. “Where will you start? Will you begin with how you hacked my N.I.M. and rigged the game from the very beginning? Or will you start further back than that?”
Silver frowned and shook his head, but Nuri didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“How about telling me why you filmed yourself having sex with another man and then played the damn video for me?” Nuri swung an arm out toward the wall where the projection screen was. “Or why you concocted this bullshit story about how he was blackmailing you?”
“Nuri,” he held up a hand, but that was slapped out of the way as well.
“Or how about,” his voice darkened and lowered, “you tell me why you released the hospital footage of your father in his Swift form for the entire galaxy to see?”
He’d thought he’d been uneasy, but Silver recognized the foreign feeling within him now for what it truly was. Fear.
He was afraid.
“Save your explanation,” Nuri said when Silver had remained silent for too long.
“I did it for you,” Silver told him anyway, wincing when he realized too late how that sounded.
“You did it for you!” Nuri disagreed. “Because you’re selfish. You always have been, and yet I was too stupid to see it. If it wasn’t aimed at me I could make excuses for you, but this, this is too far. You screwed over your own father!”
“He was already dead.”
Nuri looked at him with pure, undiluted disgust.
“It was the only thing I could think of at the time,” Silver frantically added. Panic was starting to cloud his mind and his usually carefully crafted responses were becoming impossible to summon. “When I realized you meant to leave me—”
“I was leaving the position,” Nuri corrected. “I was going to resign as your secretary. Which I have the right to do.”
“You were going to leave me,” he snapped. “Don’t think I didn’t know about your plans to visit your siblings and stay there. On a different planet. Completely out of my reach.”
“You mean your control!” Nuri planted both hands on Silver’s chest and shoved him with all his might, and surprisingly, Silver stumbled. “That’s all you care about! You just don’t want to lose! Well, the joke’s on you, because you just did.”
Silver glanced down at the dice Nuri was pointing at. “That doesn’t count.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then neither do the first three rounds,” Nuri said, “but, wait. You already cashed in on those wins, didn’t you?”
“Nuri—”
“Was it fun?” He growled. “Taking advantage of me like that? Laughing on the inside every time I got my hopes up when we played?”