Page 103 of The Hunted

Eryx smirked a bit. “I wasn’t following the rules an heir should, you see, and so I’ve been sent away to consider my behavior and how it should change when I am called to return to my rightful place.”

Oh.

Well …

“That explains quite a bit,” she noted.

“It’s been … enjoyable.”

She grinned.

He returned it.

Arelle went back to the book in her hands, asking, “But would you teach me?”

“I will, but not tonight.”

She placed the book back on the chair. “Not tonight, then.”

Continuing her search through his private chambers, she was amused at how he stayed back and let her pry without saying a word or stepping in to stop her. He never even hinted that he might. The one time he left her alone was to answer the knock on the door to take the bedclothes from the servant who brought them from her rooms down the hall. She didn’t even get a peek at the woman before the door was closed and Eryx deposited the items to the table.

Still wearing the gown Eryx had fucked her in earlier, Arelle didn’t care to redress. She hated their clothing anyway. Restrictive and meant to cover all the beautiful parts of a body, she really didn’t see the purpose of the clothes at all, except for the wealthy to show their riches in expensive fabrics and bright colors. Anyone with a lower status wore simple grays, whites, and black in materials that itched and barely served any function in the first place.

Besides, she didn’t mind being wet.

“Am I staying in here?” she asked.

Eryx picked up the goblet from the table and eyed her where she stood in the passageway to the bedchambers. “I think you should.”

“Okay.”

“That’s … all?”

“Shouldn’t it be?” she returned.

“I’m not sure. I don’t understand how any of this works.”

“Easily. Of course, if you let it.”

Eryx let out a heavy sigh before emptying whatever ale remained in his goblet. It clinked on the face of the table when he finished with it, and then he said, “The obsession started before the night on the island.”

She gave him a look, deciding it was probably better to let him talk at the moment.

“My mother was the only person in this realm who I cared for, and that night in the orchard … after everything, you just came out of the water and stared at me,” he murmured, his finger tracing the rim of the goblet while his gaze locked onto something else sitting on the table. She was more interested in staring at him than finding out what held his attention when she knew it was only so that he wouldn’t have to look at her while he spoke. “It felt as though you were taunting me, then—enjoying my pain. With her gone, I had nothing. My crown and name, they’d meant little when she’d been alive and they mean less with her dead. And there you were, knowing what you had done to her, watching me while I was bleeding inside … it started then. This need I have to do to you what you did to me, I mean.”

He took a moment, a breath and then another. He watched the flickering flames from the pile of melting candles create shadows on the wall. Then, quieter, he said, “It seems unfair that you did this to me now. I don’t get a choice at all in how I feel or what I want because of this thing we have.”

“Wrong,” she murmured.

Eryx lifted his head and met her gaze. “Oh, you don’t think so?”

“You consented to the bond, but that doesn’t make you love me. The thrall between mates is everything else—love is what we get to choose. You can hate me for the rest of our life, but it won’t break the bond.”

He cleared his throat. “Right … is it really all that different?”

“What?”

“Love and hate. Both are possessive. Obsessive. Dangerous. Selfish, even. One kept me moving for years—the other got me to this point.”