Page 86 of Slaying the Shifter Prince
“You don’t know who killed my sister, but you know who was there that night, don’t you?”
He inclined his head once, cautiously.
“Then help me catch her killer, and I’ll lift your curse.”
His expression didn’t budge, but his pupils gave him away, contracting. I’d piqued his interest. “Why do you want them?”
“I want justice.”
“Liar.” His canines showed like I’d amused him.
“Fine.” I exhaled the pretty lie and let my true desire show, all sharp and seething. “I want to kill him like he killed her. I want to end him. I want revenge.”
His pupils blew wide as his lips parted. “Oh, nowthat’smore like it. Yes.” He shifted me higher up his lap until I was over his hardening cock. “Determination. Viciousness. A thirst for vengeance even after all these years.”
He said these things like they were parts of me a poet might name in a sonnet cataloguing my beauty. Eyes like a doe’s. Shining hair. Creamy skin. All that bullshit.
Eric had called me stubborn, like it was a bad thing. He had frowned and gone distant when I’d let slip my secret desires to make the prince suffer. He hadn’t taken my need for revenge seriously, and when he finally had, he’d betrayed me for it.
But Sepher looked upon me now like they were as much things of beauty as my thick hair and full lips.
To be seen like that lit a fire in me, one I’d thought burnt out in the theatre.
Smiling, he bent closer. “Do you have any idea how much that turns me on?”
I rolled my arse over him and was rewarded with a twitch of his dick and a groan so soft, I felt it more than heard it. “I have an inkling.”
He plucked my glass away and deposited it with his before twisting me so I was straddling him, the robe rucked up around my waist. “You’d make a fine queen, Zita. I could be your throne.”
Some part of me must’ve liked that idea, because my fingers were already on the waistband of his trousers. I had to seize control of myself to stop them from pulling him free.
I could fuck him again. It didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. Sex never did.
But I had something important to do first.
“Do we have a deal, Sepher?”
His pupils flickered as I said his name. “There’s a little fae in you, I think.”
“I hope there’s about to be more than a little fae in me.” I smirked. “But first, our bargain. Help me find my sister’s killer, and once I have my revenge, I’ll remove your curse.” The lie twisted in me, something dark and dirty—a shame I’d never felt before, but that I imagined was like the shame other people felt over sex.
“You have a deal.” He pulled me against him, not caring that I was getting the front of his trousers wet where he pressed my pussy against his hardness. “It is so. Now say the words and get on with fucking me, witch.”
My pulse soared both at hearing him saying the words of power that sealed our bargain and at the exquisite friction.
I freed his dick and lifted myself to its tip. “As my prince commands.” Groaning, I lowered onto him with a promise I knew I would have to break: “It is so.”
36
The next day, our work began.
He cleared his private dining table and covered it with pens, pencils, and paper. My sketchbooks also appeared, stacked amongst the supplies, and my chest sat on the floor.
“I thought you might need them to refer back to,” he said with a shrug, when I asked about the sketchbooks.
At once, I rummaged in the chest for my locket and fastened it around my neck. I squeezed it, absorbing the familiarity of its smooth oval shape.
He watched me with an odd look, then had me work at one end of the table, writing a list of everything I remembered of that night. Everything—from watching the audience arrive to cradling Zinnia’s body after he’d fled the scene. If I focused on the outer details rather than the inner experience, I could write it without tears.
