Chapter 9 #3
“What is this?” she hissed through her stiff smile and tapped the book’s cover. “This isn’t the book we agreed on.”
Benedict smirked, the expression glinting in his deep blue eyes. “But this one is better. The one we picked was boring.”
Boring was good. Boring didn’t have her spouting romantic lines while gazing into those too blue eyes and too handsome face.
“We wouldn’t want to disappoint the audience.” Benedict leaned closer to her, his breath a whisper against her hair. “They’re getting restless.”
Indeed, a few shouts and jeers were hurled at them from the crowd. If they didn’t get on with it, then the heckling wasn’t the only thing they’d hurl. Rotten fruit could be next.
“I’ll get you for this.” Beatrice gritted her teeth and glared at him, even as she tried to keep a pleasant smile in place for the audience’s benefit.
His teasing grin remained in place as he flipped his copy open. “I’ve marked the page where we’ll start.”
So that was how it was going to be. Fine. Two could play this game. She’d go along with him for now and read this book. But he’d better watch out. He’d get what was coming to him.
After all, she had years of practice with this war.
Beatrice snapped open her book to the marked page, the words blurring with her rage. She had to blink several times to bring the lines into focus.
Benedict read first, his voice ringing with confidence over the crowd. “Lethario strode toward her, his blade bloody, his skin glowing with the luminescent sheen of battle.”
How Benedict managed to read that with a straight face, Beatrice didn’t know. She barely kept herself from rolling her eyes.
“He swept up his love, the ethereal Eudoria, and held her in his tender embrace.” Benedict stepped closer, crowding her.
At least he wasn’t so presumptuous as to put an arm around her.
“As he held her so tenderly and sweetly, he whispered in her ear, ‘The battle is done. My duty to my king is fulfilled. I am now fully yours.’”
Wiggling bookwyrms, this was worse than Beatrice had remembered.
She forced her gaze away from Benedict’s face—far too close to her own—and down to the page. As the words swam into focus, she opened her mouth. But for several seconds, she couldn’t bring herself to actually say the lines out loud.
Swallowing, she peeked back at Benedict, the challenge in his eyes giving her enough backbone to finally force the words out.
“Eudoria gazed adoringly into the smoldering chocolate depths of her lover’s eyes, her knees so weak that she draped herself against him.
She murmured softly, ‘I have longed for this day with body and soul.’”
Somehow, she didn’t choke on the awful words. She couldn’t believe she was saying them while standing far too close to Benedict, his gaze fixed on her in a way that did funny things inside her chest.
Benedict softened his voice, yet it still had a quality to it that would carry over the gathered crowd.
He had somehow gotten even closer, as close as he could possibly be without actually touching her.
“‘I fought for you. All these years of serving my king, my thoughts and heart were fixed on you. You were the banner that led me onward. The standard I carried near to my soul. My love for you was the burning ember that preserved my life when I would have despaired in the darkness of war.’”
Why did those last few words sound far too true, too real, coming from Benedict? As if he wasn’t just reading the words anymore but that they resonated deep inside of him.
The line was merely a quote from the book.
It shouldn’t send tingles over her skin or a frisson down her spine.
Why was there a heat filling her head? Why was she leaning closer to Benedict as she spoke her next words after a glance at the page?
“Eudoria tipped her head up toward him, their lips inches apart. ‘My love for you sustained me all these long years while I waited with loyal fortitude for your return.’”
Benedict’s gaze cradled hers, his voice slightly hoarse. “Lethario closed the last of the aching distance that separated them and pressed a passionate but tender kiss to her rosebud lips.”
Their faces were so close now. Close enough for her to see the strands of blond hair that had fallen out of his queue. Close enough that she could have reached out to touch those strands of hair. Or swayed a few inches closer to kiss…
No. She jerked herself backward. Why in all of the Fae Realm had she been contemplating kissing Benedict? He was her nemesis, no matter what the mate bond said.
Reading this tale out loud was messing with her head. That was all. Between the words on the page and the mate bond forcing them together, she wasn’t thinking straight.
As always, there was no one who brought out her emotions the way Benedict did. No one else enraged her or lured her in like he did.
Yet she couldn’t forget that he had been horrible to her when they’d been growing up. And now he hated her sister, even if he didn’t know the Wild Fae Primrose was her sister.
Whatever this was between them, it had to end. Soon.