Chapter 7 #2
A smirk laced his lips. “You are the one who came into my chambers. Is there perhaps something you wanted from me?” He ran his hands through his damp hair, his silk robe shifting across his chest and his muscled shoulders.
I swallowed hard at the obvious shift in his pants where the fabric strained against his growing need. I willed my heart not to race. “It looks like you are the one who wants something from me.”
Turning away, he scoffed. “That’s nothing any other courtier in the kingdom can’t take care of.”
I made a sour face at his crass remark. “Your Majesty is certainly virile.” I stepped back again, feigning a little curtsy. “I shall leave you to it.”
“Stop.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help the puzzled furrow in my eyebrows.
“You will play chess.”
“What?” I blinked, my gaze darting toward the chess set on the table.
He moved smoothly to take a seat. “Since you are already here, you will indulge me.”
Again with the non-optional decrees.
I bit my lip. “Um… fine.” There was little point in protesting. I sank into the seat across from him. It wasn’t like I had anything else to occupy my time, and a game of logic and strategy might prove a worthwhile distraction for my restless mind.
The king waved his hand, and the pieces reset themselves. Then, without preamble, he moved first—his pawn forward two squares in front of his king. A traditional opening.
I tilted my head slightly, already trying to anticipate the next moves. Perhaps I could pretend I was playing with someone else. I could focus solely on the game and not on my challenger.
Leaning forward, I slid my knight out from beside my king, placing it where it could exert pressure. I let my fingers linger on the piece for just a moment before releasing it, aware of his gaze following the motion.
He responded by bringing out his own knight, matching my pace with an ease that suggested confidence rather than caution. Smooth and unhurried, he leaned back slightly in his chair, entirely too confident for someone who had yet to prove anything.
The soft click of carved pieces against the board was the only sound in the room, in the entire castle, it seemed. I attempted to mirror his calm as we played, but the silence that surrounded us seemed a presence in its own right.
“The castle is so quiet.” I couldn’t help my observation. “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else here since I arrived.”
His reply was short. “I live alone.”
I blinked. “Alone? What about the guards?” I cast my eyes around the cozy library once again, even though I knew I would find no other soul nearby.
“They stay outside. I do not need them to guard me.”
I moved my bishop next, angling it toward the center of the board and, more importantly, a weakness he had not yet bothered to defend. When I looked up, I found his attention already on me, as though he had been waiting for that exact move.
A faint smile curved at the edge of his mouth before he brought out his own bishop, mirroring my position almost perfectly, the symmetry of it deliberate.
Not careless.
Measured.
Testing.
“Don’t you have a royal council? Advisors? Companions?”
“No.”
“You mentioned—” I cleared my throat. “Courtiers.”
“They do not live here. I summon them only when they are required.”
“What about servants?”
“What can’t I accomplish with my magic? I have no need for servants.”
His tone was bland, impatient. But the meaning of his notion dawned fully on me, and unbidden, it tugged on my heart. “Do you mean…you’ve been living here alone all this time?”
His dismissal was curt. “I’ve had enough of these questions. Play the game.”
Almost startled by his brusqueness, I blinked again to focus. With a quick shift in my seat, I moved a pawn forward to support the center. My strategy was to build slowly, not strike too soon.
There was a subtle change in his posture as he leaned forward just a fraction, his interest sharpening as he seemed to contemplate the board.
I would have been congratulating myself on my foreseen victory, but what the king just revealed was overwhelming.
He had been here alone.
All this time.
I gave a brisk shake of my head to clear it.
Focus on the game, not him.
Admittedly, outside of my laboratory work, this chess game was the most stimulation my one-track brain had received in months. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. And I wasn’t about to let him win simply because he was the king.
A low groan from across the table distracted me from strategizing my next move.
My gaze flicked up to meet those intense blue eyes.
The king’s eyebrows were furrowed, his jaw set.
He appeared to be…heaving. His left fist was propped against the edge of the table. But his other hand was out of my view, beneath the table, clearly moving… in such a way that—
I sucked a sudden breath in.
I instantly, instinctively knew what he was doing.
The Wicked King was touching himself across from me.
He was getting off on this.
I let out a shaky breath, struggling to decide whether to indicate that I had noticed or pretend not to have seen.
I should hate this.
I hate this, I tried telling myself.
Except I couldn’t help the quickening of my heartbeat. The intensity in the king’s expression, the haze on his face, the lust in his eyes—it called out to all the aching places in my own body. A shock of warmth flushed through me, along with a surge of triumph, an irrational spark of hope.
It had been eight whole months. Could it be that he still wanted me?
While I was reeling with this thought, with what he was doing, the king was still remarkably focused on the game.
He answered my latest move by developing another knight, placing it where it added pressure to my advancing pieces. The move was clean, controlled, an unspoken challenge clearly behind it.
I took a whisper of a moment too long, and those heavy-lidded eyes flicked up to meet mine. “It’s your move.”
His words were a deep, low rumble, the rasp of his need undisguised. It rolled through me, sending delicious chills up my spine, settling in my lower belly. I was starting to breathe heavily myself.
“I think I need to leave—” I pushed up off the chair, but he cut me off.
“It’s—” he snapped, “your move.” Those searing eyes bore through me, his gaze intent as he watched me slowly sit back down, as if he himself was willing it.
I cast the board a glance, trying to remember my strategy despite my pounding heartbeat.
With shaky fingers, I moved my central pawn forward, breaking open the position and forcing the game into something more active, more dangerous, my eyes flicking up just in time to catch the way his expression sharpened in response.
He took the bait, capturing that pawn with one of his own, the piece sliding forward with quiet certainty.
The gleam in his eyes, the slight lift of his lips were pure pleasure, but I wasn’t sure what he was deriving it from.
His other hand was still hidden, still in motion, his heavy breathing growing more labored.
Did I even want to know?
Taking a deep breath, I advanced my supporting pawn and took his piece in return, the capture clean, deliberate, aggressive—shifting the balance between us. “Check,” I mumbled softly.
That did it.
The Wicked King loosed a deep, long groan in his throat.
I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t stop looking at him.
With a sheen of sweat on his brow, he panted through his release. His eyes closed for a moment, his head tilting back ever so slightly, that purely male scent wafted faintly in the air. When those steel blue eyes clamped on me again, a wave of heat flushed exactly right between my legs.
I still wanted him.
Dammit. I still wanted him.
Utterly panicked by my own realization, I shot out of my chair to bolt out of the room, but shadows slammed the door shut.
I spun around just as the king caught up with me.
His forbidding figure cornered me by the door.
Not touching me at all, but effectively caging me in—with his warmth, with his closeness.
I tried not to meet his eyes, tried to breathe. “Why are you doing this?”
His tone was lazy, sated. “Why am I doing…what?”
My gaze pinned on his ridiculously built bare chest, if only so I didn’t need to look at his face. “I don’t understand.” My hand felt around for the doorknob behind me. “Who even are you? Are you still Rabb?”
“I always have been. To what are you referring?”
I flinched at the late realization. “S-Sorry, I know nobody is allowed to say your name.”
Still desperately sweeping the surface of the door with my hand, I was panting like a mindless idiot. The king’s powerful aura had too much sway over me. I had to get away immediately.
His voice lowered even further. “I will allow you, Allie. Only you,” he rasped close to my cheek—too close.
My entire body thrummed with a restless, electric heat, every nerve alive and sparking with a fierce, aching hunger that coiled low and deep, a pulse of want so consuming it felt as though it might burn me from the inside out.
Finally finding the doorknob, I turned it, quickly ducking out of his bodily cage, and slipped away into the darkened halls before my heart could explode out of my chest.