“For it is better that we slay a coward than through a coward be all slain.” —The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights
Del
I wake up in his arms, warm, protected, safe. I smile for a brief moment, then realize that I’m naked, completely naked, and pressed against his hot skin. His arms brace me tight. I’m suddenly unsure of what to do. I mean, I agreed to this, but am I supposed to pull away and tell him he only gets one chance a day? Or am I supposed to just lie there and enjoy the moment I’m not supposed to enjoy?
I clear my throat like a weirdo.
He doesn’t move.
I clear it again.
He holds me tighter.
So now I’m in a position of trying to figure out how to put space between us because that is one hundred percent what my brain is telling me to do despite what my heart keeps beating over and over again.
It was amazing.
It was our moment, and yet it wasn’t. It should have been Roman’s, right? Not King’s. I’m both confused and horrified at how much I enjoyed the minutes… hours I spent in King’s bed.
Correction. Our bed.
He exhales, his arm crosses over my body tighter, and then his eyes open, and like some creepy stalker, I just happen to be staring right at him when he does open his eyes.
His smirk should be illegal. “You been watching me all night, or am I just this lucky?”
It’s not right. It’s not even a little bit okay. He doesn’t smell like morning breath, and his muscles seemed to have someone grown overnight. Like, what the hell?
I lick my lips, suddenly self-conscious until he takes all second guesses I have from me and firmly presses his mouth to mine. “Six days.”
We have an official countdown.
My chest tightens to a painful degree as he pulls away, his eyes search mine like I have answers to the test we both didn’t even realize we were taking.
“You’re pretty,” he says softly. Lips meet mine in a soft kiss before he gets out of bed and walks like a god, completely naked, toward the bathroom.
I can’t even form words as his ass flexes with each step. It’s not normal, that kind of beauty, and it’s not normally my kind of reaction when I know full well my heart belongs to someone else. It feels like cheating. It feels wrong. My eyes are still, however, glued to his ass as he walks, and my heart decides to start pounding.
The shower turns on, and my stupid cheeky brain is like, yeah, um, you’re turned on too.
No. No. No.
I’m just tired.
Exhaustion does a lot to a person.
So does a sexy firm ass, but that’s beside the point.
I’m frozen in bed just listening to the water fall, likely on the most perfect body I’ve ever seen.
Minutes later, he returns from the shower, a white towel wrapped low around his hips. Full lips grinning at me, he runs his hands through his messy caramel-colored nearly shoulder-length hair, spraying droplets of water over the bed… and me. His eyes never leave mine.
I suck in a sharp breath and wait for him to demand something of me. Isn’t that how this is supposed to go? I marry him. I make a freaking blood oath to have sex with him until I’m either pregnant, which is ridiculous, or at least until my stupid family is satisfied that our families are tied without any worry that they’ll betray us. And that’s it. Maybe he starts cheating. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t actually want any part of this because come-freaking-on, he’s the godfather of these parts, as insane as it sounds.
He’s it.
King. Is. It. A King.
And I’m nothing but a pawn in a game my dead father couldn’t wait to use, and my stupid uncle couldn’t wait to throw into the game.
My family officially sucks.
“And so does King,” my brain reminds me.
No, no, no, no, no.
I rebuke those stupid thoughts and wait for him to say something like, hey, that was fun last night, or we did good, or hey, only six more days left, I like your boobs.
“Food,” King finally says. His eyes don’t trail down my body, they don’t pause and look at my right boob that has just been exposed, and his hands don’t sneak beneath the covers. He simply grins like this is the easiest thing in the world and then tugs the comforter from my body. “Go get dressed.”
I immediately cover myself as much as I can with an awkward arm across my breasts and one lower.
Again, he doesn’t look. “Go, I’m starving. I hear they have great bacon.”
“Bacon,” I repeat. “You’re thinking about bacon?”
“Hell no.” He leans forward. “I’m thinking about eating”—he licks his lips—“basically everything but bacon, but since it was a long night, I’m going to take it easy on you, bite down on something that tastes less sweet and suffer… and trust me. I will be suffering.”
“By eating bacon,” I state.
“By eating food when I want to be eating you.” He shrugs. “I’m basically a martyr at this point.”
My jaw drops.
He smiles again and tilts my chin back up with his pointer finger. “Get dressed, don’t make me tell you again.”
I grit my teeth. “You can’t just threaten me because you’re the next mother fu—”
His hands clamp down on my bare thighs and spreads them. “I’m sorry, did you want to feed me first?”
My entire body trembles. I shake my head. “No, thank you.”
“So polite,” he whispers, and this time I feel it; I feel it all over my body like he’s running his hands lightly across my skin. “Six days.”
He just has to remind me again.
I bite my lower lip. “Six days.”
“Let the countdown begin then.” He winks.
I feel his hands on my thighs the entire time I shower. Dress. And walk next to him down the hallway and into the elevator and wonder if I made a huge error in aligning myself with him knowing full well what his touch does to me—something Roman’s doesn’t.
I burn.