Nectar of the Wicked (Deadly Divine, #1) (54)
It mixed with a pleasure so complete when the king reached under my robe and between my thighs. They parted in permission—enough for his fingers to discover just how thoroughly my body liked to betray my mind.
“You speak true,” he said, thick and perhaps even a touch shocked.
My head was then tilted for his mouth to brand the skin at the curve of my neck with a hard suck from his lips and a kiss of teeth. “You loathe me, yet your body melts from my presence.”
I had nothing to say to that. Nothing wise, anyway. “The book I was reading before you so rudely interrupted was getting very...” I swallowed when he brought my arousal to my clit and circled. “Interesting.”
My stomach tightened, and my thighs shook. I gripped his arms, my nails digging into the muscle beneath his thin shirt.
“If I find you’ve made yourself come without my assistance, I’ll remove them all from the manor.”
Surely, he couldn’t be serious.
He pressed hard upon my clit, and I both flinched and moaned. Breathing heavier than I’d have liked, I asked, incredulous, “You’re jealous of a book?”
His teeth sank into my neck, breaking the skin. The sharp bite of pain made me weakly attempt to push him away. “No one makes you squirm but me.” He licked at the punctures he’d made.
The mere thought of him feeding from me, no matter how small an amount, both thrilled and enraged. “Don’t you dare feed from me.”
“Sweetest fucking creature...” His tongue flattened to my thudding pulse, then trailed up my throat. His hold on my hair loosened. His mouth fell over mine. The copper taste of my blood turned my heart over in my chest. “There will come a time when you’ll plead for me to.”
I wouldn’t let him do that to me. Ever. “You’ve taken enough from me, wouldn’t you agree?”
Florian reared back to meet my eyes and searched them. “I’ve not taken nearly half as much as I wish to, butterfly.” Then his finger slid inside my body, and scalding pain lanced through me as it met resistance.
As it met the barrier he’d referred to.
He withdrew and spread my arousal again. Sparks of pleasure ignited—making me forget the pain, the lies, and every reason I shouldn’t want more. My thighs shook harder, and I knew it wouldn’t take much more for him to make me fall apart over nothing but his touch once again.
Then he stepped back, his eyes on mine as he placed his finger in his mouth and sucked. Unbalanced, I fell to the edge of the bed.
He groaned and stalked to the door. “Good night, pet.”
Another entourage arrived at dawn.
These wagons appeared to be filled with rice and grain and various other treasures I now knew were from Baneberry.
“Will he have the stolen goods disposed of?” I asked Kreed when I went to fetch my breakfast. “Or will he at least make sure they’re not wasted?”
I was no longer interested in eating in the dining room—in pretending that this nightmare was the magical world I’d naively thought it to be.
Kreed did not protest when I grabbed the sugar-and-banana-dusted oats from my breakfast tray and sat on a rickety stool by the door to eat. But he did pause in slicing vegetables as he said carefully, “We live in endless winter, Princess. We waste nothing unless it has been contaminated.”
“Poisoned, you mean?” I questioned. “How can you tell?”
“It’s thoroughly inspected by those the king trusts with the sense for such things before we use any of it.”
The sense for such things.
Briefly, I wondered what other types of magic the Fae of Hellebore possessed that I hadn’t known, and if detecting poisons was something all of us could learn how to do. “And if it is poisoned?”
“Then it’s dumped over the border into Baneberry with the severed heads of whom were involved.”
The oats became glue in my throat. I coughed and forced them down. “They can sense that too?”
Kreed’s voice held a notch of unmistakable pride when he smiled at me over his shoulder and said, “All of us have the ability to hunt, Princess. Some just more so than others.”
He resumed chopping, and I stared at his broad back. “So Florian has been doing this for a long time.” He didn’t need to confirm as much. The weight that now sat in my heart ached. “Years of stealing from a land that is not his.”
Kreed’s tone hardened with his next words. “I do not meddle in the king’s business, and he doesn’t meddle in mine. Some things are better left alone.”
“But you are his cook.”
“Exactly. He trusts me as much as he can trust anyone.”
Interesting. I knocked a piece of banana around in my bowl with my spoon. “How long have you served the Hellebore family?”
“A few decades now,” he said.
Which meant he might’ve also served Florian’s father. Perhaps his sister.
That weight became heavier.
Kreed added, “Though they were too little to be of much use, the king allowed my sons to stay and work here when their mother passed on five years ago.”
This cook had the king’s favor indeed.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, although it seemed as if he’d been estranged from their mother.