The prince eases both doors to his bedchamber shut and leans against them with a sleepy look in his eyes. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I just took a knife for you,” I point out, wobbling a little, though I’ll be damned if I show it. Surviving my mother’s court gives me a good grounding to face him like this. It doesn’t matter how much blood you’ve lost, you don’t dare faint in front of my mother or her people.
Especially not when I’m standing in front of the monstrous bed he just set me down in front of.
“And I’m grateful, but shouting a warning would have been just as effective.” His eyes hood, and thankfully he stays by the doors.
“I’ll consider that next time.” Along with simply standing aside and letting the assassin complete their task.
An enormous thronelike chair reclines by the fireplace, and thick, woven rugs are scattered across the stone floors. Everything’s been made on a scale to both impress and threaten, though there’s a sense of luxuriousness I hadn’t expected. Silk sheets on the bed. Luscious velvet throws in a dark mulberry color. The silvery ruff of fur just begging me to lie upon it.
A pair of sconces linger by the bed, and a sheer curtain is tied to the wall. Thiago moves to light the candles in the sconces, becoming little more than a shadow behind the gauze, his cloak flaring behind him like a pair of wings. I shiver, wrapping my arms around myself as I examine every inch of the room.
That bed is big enough for ten.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign of another.
“Not what you expected?” The prince blows out the taper he used to light the candles, and a ring of smoke curls toward the ceiling. He watches me through it.
It’s exactly what I expected.
One bed.
The two of us.
“Where are all the skulls?” I joke, instead. “The bodies of your vanquished enemies?”
“Under the bed,” he purrs. “Care to take a closer look?”
There it is. The suggestion we’ve both been dancing around. “And if I don’t care to?” I turn around, steeling my spine. The treaty only requires that I spend the three months in his court. Not that I serve as concubine.
The prince shrugs, slipping the cloak free of his shoulders. It pools around his ankles like a swathe of pure night, then he crosses to the decanter to pour two goblets of wine. “Your loss, Your Highness.”
My loss?
I stare into the wine he gives me. “Let us establish some rules.”
The prince sinks into his thronelike chair, rubbing forefinger and thumb thoughtfully over the base of his goblet. “Rules, Princess?” A wicked smile crosses his mouth. “I don’t play by the rules.”
I ignore him. “What do you want of me?”
It catches him by surprise. “What do you mean?”
I’ve spent years playing word games in my mother’s court. “Come now. Let’s not pretend you made this request because you’re interested in the pleasure of my company—”
“You might be surprised.”
“You want something from me. What?”
“What would you give?”
Nothing. But without anything to offer, I have little to bargain with. “A kiss.”
His eyes darken as he considers his wine. “A high price to pay.” Draining the goblet, he leans forward. “Once a day.”
Once a week would be preferable—or never—but I nod slowly. “Once a day.”
“And given freely.”
“If you keep your hands off me.”
“A kiss once a day, for the next three months. No more, no less, unless you initiate it.” He repeats it twice more. “Spoken thrice, my oath upon it.”
“My oath upon it,” I agree, and feel the magic bind us together. The oath tingles along my skin before slowly evaporating. “And if thus broken, let the bearer’s ass erupt in boils. Painful boils.”
That steals a startled smile from him. He has no need to agree to my additional terms—the oath is spoken. But he does. “So shall it be.” Then he laughs. “Hoping I’ll break it?”
“That wouldn’t be very kind of me, would it?”
“I do like a challenge. Getting you into bed will be deliciously satisfying, all the more so, when you come willingly.”
He’s got to be joking. “You think I would invite you into my bed?”
Another dangerous smile. “Stranger things have happened.”
“You’d have better luck with my mother.”
Instant erection killer.
His smile dies. “That’s disgusting.”
“My mother is beautiful,” I point out, relishing the look on his face. Oh, he doesn’t like this thought at all. “They say she’s insatiable too. And adventurous.”
“Please, Princess,” he mocks. “Have mercy. No more talk of your mother and her bed. Leaving me for the assassin would have been kinder.”
On that we agree.
I cross the bedchamber, avoiding the bed. “So… if you’re not intending to take what isn’t offered… where shall I sleep?”
He gestures toward the bed. “Right there.”
The bed looms, the demi-fey carved into its massive headboard practically leering at me. “But you promised. You swore an oath.”
“Did you think these chambers were mine?”
There’s a distinct masculine aura to the room. And I assumed they belonged to him.
He watches me with amused eyes. “My chambers are down the hall. Unless you want to share the bed? Platonically, of course.”
“I snore like a drunk troll. You wouldn’t want to risk your hearing.”
The prince smiles again, reaching inside his shirt pocket for something. “You don’t snore.”
“Oh? How would you know?”
He leans back in his chair. “Because I can read you like a book, Princess. You’re a little nervous right now, which makes you bluster and speak a little faster than usual. It’s endearing.”
Endearing.
I want to murder him for the thought, but my hands wouldn’t fit around that thick, muscular throat.
“I’m an Asturian princess,” I say in a frosty voice. “You can pretend to flirt, but I’m not falling for it, Your Highness. We are enemies—"
“We don’t have to be,” he says, in a smoky, sultry voice that could tempt a priestess of Maia.
“Unfortunately, that was written in the stars.”
“A prince makes his own destiny. And this war is between your mother and me. Not us.”
“I’m my mother’s daughter.”
“I’ll try to forgive you for that, if you can forget the fact I’m despicably handsome.”
I growl under my breath. He’s next to impossible. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed. Alone.”
“Come here.”
“It’s been a long day,” I protest.
“Ah, an Asturian queen to her fingertips. You think to renege on your deal so swiftly. Should I be surprised?”
“That you demand so much, so soon, doesn’t surprise me at all.” My eyes narrow. “One kiss.”
He hasn’t specified where, or how passionate it has to be. I can get through this and keep my dignity, and he’ll be forced by his own words to honor the pact and keep his hands off me.
“One kiss,” he repeats.
Fine. If he wants his kiss, then I’ll give it, but I’ll make him regret it.
Letting the borrowed cloak fall from my shoulders, I saunter toward him.
The prince reclines in his chair, watching me with those darkly amused eyes. His shirt’s unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and the only sign he feels anything is the way he swallows before his gaze dips down the length of my body.
I suffer a moment’s hesitation.
This is the enemy.
But this is also the price I’ll pay to keep myself safe.
I rest a hand against his chest, leaning down to brush my lips perfunctorily against his.
Soft lips brush against mine, but he doesn’t lean into the touch. I can feel the tension in him, his hands curling around the arms of his chair as if he’s fighting to restrain them. It’s a heady feeling, knowing that in this moment, I hold all the power. He cannot reach for me. He cannot touch me. Not without permission.
I own him in this moment, and the thrill is a dangerously beckoning lure.
He tilts his face to mine, breath whispering over my lips. I can taste the wine, the heat of him, the barely caged desire….
It’s the faintest of caresses, barely a kiss, and we both know it. And yet it holds a taste of the forbidden, a reckless, pinwheeling sensation that feels like I’m skating on ice without knowing how thin it is….
He captures my wrist, and our eyes meet, breaths mixing as I’m forced to hover over him. It gives me the ability to start thinking again.
“If you don’t want to sit for a week, then please, continue. I won’t mind at all.” I can feel his touch like a manacle.
His thumb brushes against the inside of my wrist, and I swallow.
Hard.
“Unless you initiate it,” he points out, and that’s when I realize my own hand is curled in his shirt, thumb brushing small circles over his chest.
All it would take would be for him to pull me down into his lap, and then I’d be at his mercy. It’s a heady feeling, knowing how much power I could wield with a simple “yes” or “no.”
And it is a no.
It has to be.
“You have your kiss.”
Thiago releases me, smiling slightly. “Is that what you call it in your mother’s court? Oh, Princess…. What I could teach you about kissing….”
Heart racing, I immediately set a few feet of distance between us. I have little doubt he could. Say what they like about his kingdom and people, they didn’t call him the Master of Dreams for no reason.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to decline.”
“Curious choice of words.”
Afraid….
“But there will be other kisses, Princess. Goodnight.” He crosses to the double doors, bowing before stepping back through them. The faintest of smiles touches his lips. “Sweet dreams.”
And then he shuts the doors, leaving only a single key on my side, which I swiftly use to lock them.
I’m alone with the bed of sinful thoughts.
I don’t know why, but I’m suddenly certain these chambers were his. It wouldn’t surprise me to find it amuses him to have me sleep in his bed. I grab one of the pillows and sniff it, and ugh, it smells of him.
Sweet dreams, my ass.
The only way I’m going to get any sleep at all is if I keep my knife beneath my pillow.
Three months. All I have to do is survive for the next three months, and then I’m free. Of my mother’s machinations, my sister’s scheming, and whatever the Prince of Evernight intends to do to me.