Page 69 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
It couldn’t be worse than the crawl or knowing I’d done all this for nothing. I bent. I kissed. I made sure to smear a little of my blood on the shiny leather as I gripped his ankle.
“Acceptable. Now, sit here.” He pointed to his thigh.
When I stood, a nauseating chill washed over me. The straightening of the joints found new ways for the pain to travel along my nerves, and it pulsed in my whole body.
I sat on his thigh. The warm hand that came around my waist pushed back the chill, but it wasn’t a thing meant for comfort, just for claiming.
When he brushed away the diamonds embedded in my skin, a shudder swept through me. His grip on my waist flexed, perhaps an involuntary movement to stop me falling off his lap.
Then, as if nothing had happened, he tucked in to his lunch.
Although everything inside me had changed, a cataclysmic shifting of reality, I kept up my stubborn sexualising of each bite he fed me. I licked the pad of his thumb, letting his claw graze my lip, sucking sauce from his fingers.
At this point, stubbornness was all I had. And it was a small flare of victory to see the hunger in his eyes that had nothing to do with food.
They were dim points of comfort, like the prick of his claws at my waist.
I’d failed and I needed to start again. Only now I had no idea who’d killed Zinnia and I was trapped as the prince’s pet.
He brought a glass to my lips. Clutching his shirt to keep my balance, I gulped down the berry wine with its deep, dark flavour that matched its purple-black colour.
“I understand now, little witch. You think this is a game. Perhaps even one you can win.”
Goosebumps chased over my skin at his hot breath in my ear.
He pulled the glass away and replaced it on the table, not making me drink the whole thing this time. Still, it softened the world, warming my insides.
“You think you can out-dare me, that I won’t rise to the challenge.” He pulled my jaw until I faced him, then trailed a claw down my throat, clicking over the collar’s jewels. “Do I look like a man who should be dared?”
My chest heaved as his touch grazed over it.
I’d been wrong, and now I was lost. Out at sea with no sign of shore and no north star to guide me.
All this time, he’d been my north star. My guiding point.
And now he was only a lie away from killing me.
The fuzziness in my brain wouldn’t budge. I had no plan. I didn’t know what to do next in my life.
I had only now.
And my stubbornness.
I lifted my chin and gave him a look that dared to challenge, that dared todare.
I wouldn’t be afraid of him.
I would not.
The corner of his mouth twitched like he fought a smile. His claw snagged on the light silk of my dress as it traced over my hip to my thigh. He passed the hem, skin searing as he squeezed. “What if I repeated last night’s attentions but they all got to watch?” He nodded towards the rest of the table, but his hooded eyes never left mine.
I gritted my teeth, because heat flared inside me even though this was a threat of punishment.
It was because I was sick. It was because he’d made me come so hard last night and my body remembered the pleasure his touch could bring, and stupidly didn’t understand how this would be different.
It was because some part of me, some deep, dark primal instinct, wanted the awful things he offered, the punishment, the cruelty, the pain. It thrived off that, freed by it, breathed to life by him.
Now it knew he wasn’t my sister’s killer, it could be louder, hungrier, unashamed to want our enemy.
