CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STERLING
The lock clicked open, and Sterling peeled open her eyes to bright morning light spilling into Winter’s room. She hissed while blinking away the haze.
“Pleasant dreams?” Winter asked, and her eyes cleared, focusing on his alluring face, the bow of his perfect upper lip. He was already dressed, several buttons of his shirt unfastened.
She cast her stare away from his sun-kissed chest. “Anything is better than reality at the moment.”
Sterling stretched her legs and scooted forward when Winter opened the cage’s door. He tossed her another small jar of salve as he’d been doing for over a week, allowing her to gather her strength to participate in his next spectacle.
“You’re looking…”—his blue eyes swept down her body—“healthy. The game will begin this evening.”
Of course it would… “How’s my brother?” Sterling asked, lifting her tunic and rubbing the warm salve over her nearly-healed wound.
Since the last game, and after the atrocious celebratory meal, she’d been given plenty of ointment, new clothing each day, and occasionally helped with servant duties on the first floor of the manor.
Generally dusting. She was even allowed to bathe regularly.
Winter watched her with a predatory gaze, making Sterling’s pulse race.
Something felt different about the way he was looking at her this time.
It wasn’t only because she was his prisoner, his pet in a cage—it was as though he was protective of her.
However, that didn’t make sense, not when he just told her the game would still take place, meaning her death could be awaiting her that night.
But she would make certain that wouldn’t happen, not until Cyan was free from this place.
“I asked how my brother is,” Sterling repeated, letting the fabric of her tunic fall back down.
Without a word, Winter drew a folded sheet of paper from his trousers and pressed it into her palm, his long digits dragging across her skin, sending shivers down her spine, but not from fright, as he pulled away.
Her eyes widened and she gasped. She knew the way her brother crafted paper and could tell it was his work. This particular one was of a dove, their mother’s favorite bird.
“He’s all right,” she whispered.
The first few days after the game, Winter had conversed with her in a sense, but afterward had grown quieter, generally carving.
She would take the prince in, attempting to figure him out, and with the way he watched her from the corners of his eyes, he continued to do the same before slipping into bed. Always bare.
As she set the dove beside her, Sterling caught a glimpse of another white form peeking out from Winter’s pocket. She nodded toward it. “What else do you have in your trousers?”
He lazily arched a brow. “My cock?”
“No, you fool.” Sterling straightened, cursing herself for letting that slip. “I mean, Your Highness.” She forced a smile.
Winter’s lips curled up at the edges. “I like it when the real you makes an appearance. Not the obedient woman you’re pretending to be.”
Ignoring him, she pointed toward his pocket. “You have another craft.”
He shoved the paper further into his pocket.
“If it’s something Cyan made, I’d like to see it.”
“He didn’t make it.”
Sterling craned her neck, studying him curiously. “Did you make one then?”
“Why would I ever do something so mundane?” His tone and stare held boredom as he opened the cage’s door wider. “Go bathe. You have a game to prepare for.”
Sterling crawled out from the cage and stepped down. She peered up at him, not going into the bathing chamber as he’d commanded. Instead, she shifted toward him, knowing that she could be punished in some way for disobeying.
The prince’s lips parted for a moment before he angled his head, his dangerous gaze daring her to continue.
With her stare enraptured by his, she dipped her hand into his pocket, a heat she wasn’t expecting pooling in her stomach, and fished out the paper.
She examined what looked to be some sort of mutilated fish.
The multiple creases, the folds, and refolds as if the crafter was becoming anxious that it wasn’t perfect.
The atrocity most certainly didn’t belong to her brother.
“Why did you make this?” she asked, her brow furrowed. “What are you trying to do to my brother in that cell? Make him worship you? Make him forget me?” Her blood boiled in her veins, not knowing what tricks the prince had up his sleeve.
The Prince of Carnage’s smile grew beautifully wicked. “Why do you assume he’s still in the cellar? He’s in a private room on the third floor now. You and I have a bargain, remember? I don’t break those. You win tonight—he goes free in the morning.”
Sterling stumbled backward. Cyan was no longer in the cellar? He was a floor above her and the asshole hadn’t told her? “I don’t understand you.”
“Most don’t.” Winter turned his back on her and sauntered toward his desk to pick up a block of wood. “Go bathe.”
Sterling clenched her jaw and marched toward him while he sat relaxed in his chair to carve.
She would do as he commanded for Cyan’s sake, but she could do it in the way she chose, in a way to rattle him.
He so easily removed his clothing in front of her, and she wouldn’t cower in the bathing chamber like the lowly human he believed her to be.
She unfastened her trousers, then let them drop to the floor before kicking them aside with her bare foot.
Winter didn’t spare her a glance as she peeled her tunic over her head, nor did his expression alter.
However, his shoulders grew more rigid, his movements along the wood slowing, digging deeper.
“You so easily fuck a harlot,” Sterling drawled, “but you seem to have trouble looking at me now. Is it my face? My disgusting scar?”
Continuing to ignore her, Winter set his things on the desk, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her into his lap as she gasped. He lifted her chin roughly. “There’s nothing wrong with your face. Only your vile bloodline.” Something flickered in his expression and his grip on her gentled slightly.
Had he always hated her kind? “Did you like humans before…”
“Before your grandmother killed my mother?” he ground out. “No.”
“But did you hate them?” The way I hate your kind.
“No,” he said simply.
And then Sterling realized she was still sitting in the prince’s lap, bare, one of his hands on her hip, the other still on her chin.
She could usually speak her mind to anyone, but for the first time, she was at a loss for words, only savoring the warmth of the prince, the way desire pulsed inside her, his scent of clovers and embers surrounding her.
As if sensing her thoughts, his thumb slid across her hip, caressing.
“Do you truly carve anything?” she finally asked. “I never see you finish a piece.”
“Sometimes. Mostly, I like the feel of the knife as it scrapes away the wood,” Winter cooed. And then his fingers left her chin and ventured down to her other hip. “Is this what you want? To distract me? To fuck me for your freedom?”
Her eyes widened that he hadn’t rejected her.
Had he decided to give in to what she’d previously offered?
Why did the thought not sicken her now? Was it because she hadn’t fucked in weeks?
“I’ll fuck you anyway you want,” she vowed.
“Do anything you please. I’ll never hunt another wolf if you let me go with my brother afterward. ”
“You’ll never be free again.” Winter smirked, lifting a forefinger to her scar, gliding down it to her lips.
“But if you win tonight, I may let you sleep out of the cage.” He leaned his head closer, his soft lips seizing her throat, his teeth grazing her neck.
She could feel his wolfish canines slip out further as his tongue tasted her salty skin, could feel his cock harden beneath her.
Sterling’s breath caught, and she couldn’t hold back from rolling her hips into his. Winter’s callused hands curved around her buttocks, allowing her to grind harder against him.
Digging her own teeth into her lip, she reached for the laces of his trousers and his hand gripped her wrist, bringing her arm around his neck.
“Make me believe you want me,” Winter growled. “Tempt me. Kiss me.”
Sterling didn’t hesitate, capturing his lips with hers, tasting the sweetest of flavors.
He kissed her back expertly, roughly and tenderly as though he wasn’t certain if he should punish or reward her.
Both drove her mad with lust. He parted her lips with his tongue and trailed it up and down hers, coasting across it deliciously.
When she could take no more of this need to go further with him, Sterling broke the kiss. “Do you want me to suck your cock?”
Winter’s fingers entwined in her hair and he tugged her head back, his lids slitted. “After I taste your cunt.”
The prince would rather pleasure his prisoner than make Sterling lick up his shaft? Something was afoot… He had to be coming up with another vindictive game of his own.
A knock came at the door, and he narrowed his eyes toward the sound of the interloper. “Go bathe,” he said without looking at her.
Sterling blinked as she stood from his lap, her heart thundering.
What had just happened? Loathing churned inside her …
for liking the prince’s touches, his kisses, for yearning to feel his tongue lick up her heat.
But that didn’t mean she liked him—one could easily relish in the pleasure of fucking, regardless of who made her come.
Just before she entered the bathing chambers, the deep rumble of Micah’s grating voice seeped into the room. “If the bitch wins the game tonight, the king wants to speak with you upstairs immediately.”
“He’ll be out of bed soon, it seems. It’s a miracle,” Winter said silkily. The king had been here healing all along?
“It took longer than I’d expected.”
“Mm, indeed it did.” Winter paused. “I’m going to the brothel, but I’ll be back before the game starts tonight.”