Chapter Thirty-Three
The scent of rich spice and pine reached me the second after the words.
Casteel.
My racing heart didn’t slow. “Why don’t you let go of my wrist and find out?”
“That sounds like a yes if I ever heard one,” he replied as my eyes adjusted. The glow of the lamp outside the canopy cast most of him in shadow, but he was close enough that I could see the arch of a brow and the amused tilt to his lips.
Promised to someone else.
Anger was a heatwave that swept away any lingering sleep. “Let me go.”
“I don’t know if I should.” His thumb moved in an idle circle along the inside of my wrist as he said, “Someone is likely to be very irritated if you stab me, and I end up bleeding all over the bed.”
“You could always clean up after yourself.”
“There’s something innately wrong with the idea of being stabbed and then having to clean up my own blood.”
I pushed against his hold, but my hand remained pinned to the bed. “There’s something innately wrong with you being in here! How did you even get in? I locked the doors.”
“Did you?”
“I did…” I sighed. “Key. You have a key.”
“Perhaps.” His head tilted. “Have you been crying?”
“What? No,” I lied.
“Then why are your eyes swollen?”
“Probably because I’m tired. I was sleeping, but you woke me up.”
“I wanted to come back sooner—it seems I always want to come back sooner,” he said, seeming to have accepted my answer. “Especially when you’re wearing something so interesting.”
The blanket had slipped to my waist in sleep, exposing the low neckline of the nightgown. Heat crept down my neck and across the swells of my breasts. “It was the only thing in here for me to wear other than the robe.”
“I like it.” He shifted, seeming to get comfortable as he reached out with his other hand, fingering the strap. “Such ridiculous, tiny straps. I like them.”
I knocked his hand away. “You can let go. I’m not going to stab you.”
“I find that oddly disappointing.”
“And I find that extremely disturbing.”
He laughed deeply, letting go of my wrist. I started to move, but he was so much faster, shifting so he was above me.
The warmth of his body pressed against my chest as one of his long legs ended up between mine, shorting out my senses.
A flash of heat rolled through me as every part of my body became overly aware of how close he was.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
“Making sure you’re comfortable.”
“And how will you accomplish that by lying on top of me?”
“I won’t.” A shadowy grin appeared. “I’m doing that because I like lying on top of you.”
“Well, I don’t,” I bit out, pulse thundering.
His chest brushed against mine, sending a velvet shiver through me. “That’s a lie.”
“It’s not.” I lifted the dagger to his neck. “Truly.”
“Do you remember what happened the last time you held a dagger to my throat?” His fingertips touched my cheek and slid lower, over my jaw. “I do.”
A lick of pleasure followed his fingers. “That was a temporary loss of sanity.”
“That’s my favorite kind.” He dragged his fingers down my throat and over the line of my collarbone. “I really do like these straps.”
“I really don’t care.”
His fingers slipped under it as his hand curved on my shoulder. “You lie so sweetly.”
I ignored that. “Casteel—”
“But not as sweetly as you say my name.”
I let out a little growl. “You are…”
“Marvelous? Charming? Undeniable?”
“Increasingly annoying.”
“But you still haven’t used that dagger at my neck.”
“I’m trying to think of the people who will have to clean up the mess.”
“How thoughtful of you.” He toyed with the strap. “Have I told you that you’re beautiful?”
“What?” The shift in conversation threw me.
“I might have, but I couldn’t remember if I did,” he went on, tugging gently on the strap. “Then I thought that it wasn’t something you could say too often. You’re beautiful, Poppy.”
My stupid, stupid heart skipped. “Is that why you decided to wake me up in the middle of the night?”
“You’re beautiful.” His head tilted, and I gasped at the feel of his lips on the longer scar of my cheek. He kissed that one and then the shorter one, above my eye. “Both halves, and you should never question why anyone would find you utterly, irrevocably, and distractingly beautiful.”
The skipping was back, but I ignored it. “That is a lot of adjectives.”
“I can come up with more.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I advised. “So, now that you’ve told me this, you can get off me.”
He smiled against my cheek. “But you’re comfortable, Princess, and you make me feel…well, you just make me feel.”
What did I make him feel? Lust? Amusement? Entertained? The urge to read him was hard to ignore. “That’s not a reason.”
“That’s the only reason.”
Irritation pricked at my skin even as his breath danced over my lips and his fingers skimmed the outer swell of my breast. “Well, good for you, but I don’t need you to be here.”
“See, that’s the problem.” His voice dropped to a whisper as his hand slid over the silk of the gown. The material was so thin, it served no barrier against the brand of his palm. “You don’t need me.”
“That doesn’t sound like a problem to me.”
“But…” Casteel’s lips glanced off mine, causing my breath to hitch as his hand slipped under the blanket and over my hip. His fingers reached bare skin, and a rush of damp heat pooled. “But you want me.”
Muscles coiled tight in my stomach and then lower as I pressed the sharp edge of the blade to his throat, nicking his skin. “Not now,” I told him.
Undaunted by the knife, he lowered his mouth. And when he spoke, his lips played over mine. “I can sense your arousal, Princess.”
There was no denying that. I could lie all I wanted, but it didn’t change that it took effort not to lift my hips against his, to not think of how he’d felt earlier, thick and hard inside me.
But the wound in my chest from what I’d realized was still there, and the memory of how shockingly painful it was to think he’d already been engaged had been a warning I needed to heed before I lost sight of what was important.
“Just because my body wants you, doesn’t mean any other part of me does.”
“Then maybe we should pretend more?” he offered, his fingers drifting closer to where I ached. If he reached that area, I knew I would be lost.
It wasn’t that he had that kind of power. It was that my desire for him did.
“Or maybe we stop pretending,” he said. “I liked that better, to be honest.”
So did I, but what was real to us was different.
Heart thumping, I tilted my head back. My lips touched his as I said, “Since you’ll be home soon, I’m sure there are other beds you could visit that don’t require you to pretend . I’m sure they’re probably numerous. But you could always start with Gianna’s.”
Casteel went still, his hand halting its movements on my inner thigh, and then he lifted his head. “That cannot be a serious statement.”
“Did I sound like I was teasing?”
He rolled off me, and I caught myself before I did something irrational like stop him. I sat up, clutching the dagger as he left the bed so quickly, it was almost like he hadn’t even been there.
A bitter sensation hit my veins, and I closed my eyes. I’d gotten what I wanted—he was no longer in the bed. So why didn’t I feel relief?
“I can’t believe you really said that.”
My eyes flew open in disbelief. “You can’t?”
He was a shadow through the curtains. “Hell no, I can’t.”
I scrambled across the blanket, shoving the panel aside as I nearly toppled out of the bed. A thin line of blood trickled down his neck, even though the wound I’d inflicted had already healed.
Standing, I slammed the dagger onto the nightstand because there was a good chance I would use it.
Especially when I turned to him and caught the slow perusal that moved from the tips of my toes all the way up the bare skin of my legs to the fluttery hem and the low neckline of the gown. Heated amber eyes met mine.
I gritted my teeth. “You were promised to another, Casteel.”
“Were you not listening when I made it very clear that it was a promise I never made?”
“I was listening very closely.”
“Apparently, not close enough.” Casteel’s eyes narrowed as he stared down at me. “You know, I’m glad you brought this up. I’d momentarily forgotten that this was something we needed to discuss. You really believed that I was already engaged to someone else, didn’t you?”
“Are you for real?” I choked, hands closing into fists. “Really?”
“Last time I checked, I was real.” He crossed his arms.
“Then why in the hell would you be surprised that I would think something like that? That you wouldn’t tell me? You and your wonderful history of lies and half-truths?”
The heat was gone from his gaze, replaced by a splash of surprise, and then his eyes narrowed again.
“Here’s the whole truth, Poppy. Yes, I was expected to marry.
I was expected by many, I’m sure. It was something my father had discussed for decades, but he never asked if it was what I wanted. Something you should be familiar with.”
I flinched. I was all too familiar with that. “I thought Atlantians rarely married if they weren’t in love.”
“They don’t. But as I’m sure you remember, my parents reign should’ve already come to an end.
It should’ve happened decades ago. My father believed that perhaps if I married, I would stop searching for Malik and do what he thought was right.
He knew that I cared for Gianna, that we were close, and thought she would be a good fit. ”
Gianna. That name. It sounded rare and exquisite. If this was something discussed for actual decades, then there had to be a history between them, and the sudden hot burst in the back of my throat tasted like an emotion I had no right to claim. “Make a good Princess, you mean?”
“I imagine that she would, but to answer your question, I never really said anything about it because I didn’t want to hurt her or for her to feel as if I were rejecting her,” he said. “She doesn’t need that when it wasn’t like she pursued me on her own.”