Chapter 36 Isi
ISI
“Screw you,” I snarled.
His slick smile deepened. “I’m glad we’re in agreement.”
“I’m not taking off my clothing. I’m not lying on your bed.”
He sighed. “Pity.”
Spinning me, he backed me against the wall, making a painting of a meadow shudder by my left shoulder. He glided a strand of hair off my face before tilting my chin, making me meet his gaze. “Why have you come to my private suite?”
I met his gaze with my own steel. “I got lost.”
“Inside my secret passageway that connects my study to my bedroom.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I happened to…stumble upon it.”
“Don’t lie to me, Minx.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But it suits you so well. Do you know much about the minx as a species?”
I couldn’t believe we were having an almost normal conversation. Inside his bedroom. With him pressing me against the wall, reminding me of what we’d done this afternoon when I met my last wall due to this man.
And him barely wearing a damp towel.
Steam still clung to his skin, like he’d been dipped in starfire. A droplet of water trickled through the hollow of his throat, disappearing into the dark hair scattered across his chest. My mouth went dry watching its path, though I inanely noted that his wounds were healing nicely.
Because I’d treated them. Me.
The towel rode criminally low on his hips, revealing the sharp cut of muscles that disappeared beneath the cloth. One wrong move, one tug, and… I forced my gaze back to his face, only to find him watching me with predatory satisfaction.
“See something you like, Minx?” His hand snapped around my throat, holding me in place, though not so tightly that I couldn’t breathe.
I shook my head. “I told you not to call me that.”
“I think it fits. They’re territorial and a surprisingly tenacious predator. A minx may not look like much of a fighter, but a minx can eliminate prey almost as big as itself. Large predators need to beware before approaching this testy animal.”
“I’m not testy.”
“No?” His lips twisted up on one side, and he leaned close, dragging his nose along the crest of my jaw to my earlobe that he nibbled. “You really shouldn’t have come here tonight, Minx. I’m…sleepy. One might even consider me vulnerable.”
I reeled back, meeting his gaze. “Tell me about Addie.”
He blinked and focused his attention on my mouth. Releasing my throat, he ran his thumb across my lips. Back and forth. Back and forth.
I hated that he could heat me up with such a simple gesture.
“Why do you want to know anything about Addie?” He seemed to taste the name.
“Tell me everything. When she came here. Why she stayed.”
While he kept stroking my lips, he cocked one brow. “Are you a friend?”
“You could say that.”
“I see.” His fingertips trailed down my neck, and he started stroking my collarbone, gliding his thumb beneath my tunic before sliding it back out, only to dip it down between my breasts. “Pretty woman. Petite. Dark curly hair. Slender frame. Smart. She laughs a lot.”
Laughed a lot, that is.
Tears prickled behind my eyes. “Tell me you didn’t kill her.”
His gaze widened with shock, real or pretend. I couldn’t tell. “I did not kill Addie.”
“You could be saying that. Placating me.”
“What makes you believe she’s dead?”
“I saw her body.” My own slumped. If he wasn’t pressed tight against me, I’d slump down the wall to the floor. “Torn apart. Bloody. Her hair…” My voice broke. “Her hair tangled and matted with blood.”
“And you believe I did this?”
“Someone did.”
“Tell me, Amarissa, why you believe I killed her.”
Amarissa…
I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
“I’m Isi,” I shot out.
He took one step back. Bowed. “Welcome to Syllavar Court, Princess Amarissa.”
“How long have you known?”
“She has your eyes.”
“Our mother’s.”
“I first saw them behind a hideous mask.”
The bottom dropped out of my world. “You’ve known who I am all the time,” I whispered.
His lips jerked up again in a slick smile. “From the instant you arrived, the moment when you should’ve introduced yourself but instead, stabbed me.”
The words had barely settled before my muscles coiled. Years of training sparked through me in a single, fluid breath. I drove my palm toward his sternum, pivoting into a strike meant to send him reeling.
He caught my hand with insulting ease, his fingers wrapping completely around my wrist.
“Predictable,” he drawled, though his voice had gone rough around the edges.
I was a weapon trained for more than ten years, and he was dismantling me like I was made of silk and wishful thinking.
I twisted, using the momentum to bring up my knee in a sharp arc toward his groin, only for his other hand to clamp around my thigh, halting me in midair like I was nothing more than a ribbon in the wind.
The smirk didn’t leave his face.
“Come now,” he murmured. “Surely you can do better than that?”
I shifted again, rolling my weight to break his hold, aiming for his temple with the heel of my hand. He blocked me lazily, as if he was fending off an overwrought kitten instead of someone trained to eliminate all threats.
My frustration flared hotter than my temper. I ducked low and swept my leg out to take him at the knees. For a heartbeat, I thought I’d caught him off guard.
Then the floor shifted. No, he shifted. His grip tightened, and suddenly I was airborne, the world tilting in a blur of shadow and torchlight until I landed with a bounce on something plush and soft.
His bed.
The journal slid to my side, but there was no time to grab it. He came down after me in one smooth, predatory motion, the towel that had been knotted low on his hips gone, lost in the tussle.
Every inch of him was damp heat and hard muscle, pressing me into the mattress. His thighs straddled my hips, his weight pinning me in place. The mattress dipped under his weight as he caged me beneath him. Every breath brought me the scent of his skin, clean and male and dangerously warm.
The damp tendrils of his hair sent droplets onto my overheated cheeks.
“If you wanted me naked, Minx,” he said, and I could feel his smile against my ear, “you only had to ask.”
Heat pooled low in my belly. I was supposed to hate him.
I was supposed to be immune to whatever dark magic he wielded with his voice.
Instead, I was cataloging the feel of his thighs bracketing my hips, the way his chest rose and fell above me, the careful control of his grip that promised he could break me, but he wouldn’t.
Heat spiked through me, infuriating me in more ways than one.
I bucked beneath him in a desperate attempt to free at least one hand.
He shifted his weight, a swift, confident adjustment that pressed his knee firmly between my thighs. The involuntary gasp that slipped from me earned another wicked curve of his lips.
“Careful,” he said, his body a cage and a promise all at once. “Keep moving like that, and I’ll take it as encouragement.”
My breath caught, traitorously shallow. My pulse roared in my ears, a messy mix of battle-edge and something far more dangerous. I strained against his grip, but his strength appeared to be an unmovable wall, annoyingly, impossibly controlled.
“Get off me,” I snarled.
“Not until you listen.” His mouth brushed against my temple, his voice softer but no less sure. “She loves my cousin, Fenmark. While I was cautious around her at first, because he is my heir until I produce my own, which I so hope to do soon, you can trust that I didn’t kill her.”
The words vibrated against my skin, his breath stirring the loose hairs near my ear.
“I can’t trust you,” I bit out, turning my head enough to meet his gaze.
Something unreadable flickered in his eyes. Amusement, yes, but threaded with a hint of something darker, sharper.
“Then you’ll have to settle for wanting me instead. And Princess?” His voice dropped to a growl. “When you finally admit it, I’ll make sure you never want anyone else.”
This was what falling felt like, terrifying and inevitable and exactly like flying.
I tried to twist free again, but his grip on my wrists only tightened, the sinew in his forearms flexing with the motion. The knee between my thighs shifted upward, enough to remind me exactly how trapped I was.
And how much I craved him every waking moment, and even more in my dreams.
“This isn’t going to work.” I didn’t like how breathless I sounded.
“You mean this?” He rolled his hips the smallest fraction, a deliberate, maddening motion that sent sparks of unwanted sensation skittering down my spine.
I bit my lip to keep from reacting.
“Yes, that.” It took force on my part to make the words come out steady.
His grin widened, oh, so knowing. “It’s already working, Minx.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Call me that again and—”
“You’ll what?” His face was so close I could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, still damp from the bath I’d interrupted. “Stab me again? Perhaps you should consider less personal forms of retaliation if you want me to stop imagining them as foreplay.”
“I hate you,” I hissed, even as my body betrayed me, arching beneath him.
“Liar,” he whispered against my throat. “Your pulse is racing.”
“That’s fear.”
“Is it?” His thumb found that racing pulse point, stroking up and down. “Because it feels like something else entirely.”
This man was lethal in ways that had nothing to do with kingdoms and everything to do with the way he made me forget why I should care.
As silence stretched between us, I became acutely aware of the steady rise and fall of his chest against mine, the heat rolling off him, the way his hair fell in loose strands around his temples.
The way his cock twitched between us.
“You’re not walking out of this room with all your answers tonight,” he finally said. “But you will walk out knowing I didn’t kill her.”
His grip eased, one hand slipping from my wrist to trail, maddeningly slow, down the length of my arm.