Adrian, though, seemed to like it.
“My feelings are far from disapproving,” he said, and as if to drive the point home, he drew me closer, the hard swell of his cock pressing into my stomach.
I held his gaze, a fire igniting in the pit of my stomach.
“You are not angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry?”
“Because I danced with Lothian,” I said. “When I was supposed to dance with you.”
“Hmm,” he said, understanding. “You are lucky I like him.”
“I promised to protect his balls,” I said.
“Suddenly, I like him less,” Adrian said.
“I am angry with you,” I said.
Adrian raised a brow. “As if I could not guess by your actions. Safira?”
“You said you would cease feeding from her.”
“I have,” he said.
There was a pause as we continued to dance, slow and controlled, the skirt of my dress swaying and tangling around my legs and Adrian’s.
“I had only told her a few moments before I entered the great hall. Poor timing, perhaps, but it is done. As you wished.”
I bristled. “Do not guilt me.”
“It is not my intention,” he said. “I would do anything you asked if it meant you might see me as more than a monster.”
I could not quite isolate how his words made me feel, but it was something akin to shock.
“So you danced with Lothian because of Safira?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t like being told what to do.”
A cruel smile spread across his face. “I think you wanted to drive me mad.”
“Did it work?”
“It made me want to fuck you,” he said. “Right here in front of my kingdom.”
“How primal of you,” I said, though his words opened a chasm in the bottom of my stomach that burned hotter than any flame.
He did not deny it. “Primal, possessive,” he said. “It is in my nature.”
It was in my nature too. I could feel it every time I thought of Adrian’s vassal.
At least we could be honest with each other.
“You would do well to remember it,” he said.
“Or what?” I challenged.
Adrian kissed me.
There was nothing gentle about it. He grasped my head in both hands as he bent over me, parting my lips. I clung to him, meeting the thrusts of his tongue with my own, feeling both desperate and reckless. Our bodies were so close, our fingers digging into each other’s skin. I wanted him, to be stretched by him, filled with him, possessed by him, and I hoped he could hear every single thought.
Adrian growled and released my mouth, gleaming eyes meeting mine. But before he could fulfill my wish, my eyes slipped from him over his shoulder, to the doors where a man—a vampire—entered, flanked by two others. In his hand, he gripped the head of Zakharov.
Adrian turned to face the newcomers.
“I will have vengeance, King Adrian, for the death of my son.”
I tried not to react to the presence of the newcomer, but my heart was racing, and I gripped Adrian’s arm a little tighter. He held me close, a hand on my waist, lips still gleaming from our kiss. As I looked up at him, he seemed unconcerned.
“Your son accosted my wife, your queen, Noblesse Gesalac,” he said. “And for that, he was punished. It is your choice to kill him now. Burn him or not, it is for you to decide.”
“That is no choice at all,” Gesalac snapped.
It wasn’t. If vampire bodies were not burned after decapitation, they would reanimate, not as they were before but as revenants—essentially vampires with no humanity. They attacked humans and animals alike, thirsting endlessly for blood. We had learned this at a young age during training, but it had never occurred to me that vampires also practiced this, mostly because I had never imagined they had any sort of justice system.
“Then you have your answer,” Adrian said.
Gesalac threw his son’s head at our feet. It rolled, landing with his half-opened eyes facing me.
“You risk my allegiance for a woman—a mortal one at that?”
“Careful of your words, Noblesse,” Adrian said. “No one is irreplaceable.”
“That also goes for you, my king,” Gesalac replied.
There was a moment of tense silence when I wasn’t sure Gesalac would leave, but he bowed his head and left with his men.
The celebration resumed, and I got the feeling that this wasn’t an unusual occurrence. I lifted my dress to keep the hem out of the blood draining from Zakharov’s head and used my foot to roll it away, unnerved by how his eyes watched me.