The twins barreled down the stairs as I set my bowl by the sink. Olin followed, muttering words I didn’t catch at their backs.
The steward glared at Kreed with a flaring of his nostrils. “Your spawn were annoying the newest and youngest member of our staff.”
Kreed hid a smirk behind his hand as he rubbed his mouth. He crossed the room and waved Thistle and Arryn on. “Get washed up and start on lunch.” He then looked at Olin and asked, “Annoying?”
“The poor thing was red in the face and hiding behind the mountain of bedding she was attempting to take to the washrooms.”
Kreed snorted. “I see.”
Olin shifted his weight to his other foot, his attention unmoving from the cook.
Tension warmed the already stuffy kitchen, and though Olin hadn’t so much as glanced my way, I had a growing feeling that I should quietly excuse myself.
I smiled my thanks at Kreed, then climbed the steps right as Olin hissed, “You’re conversing with the swine’s daughter?”
“She’s hardly his daughter when she’s never even met the asshole, Ol.”
“That doesn’t make what she is any less real.”
Kreed cursed. “She’s young, harmless, and just trying to understand all of this. Sharing a few words with her won’t hurt anyone.”
The softer and lower tone of Kreed’s voice, as well as the way he’d addressed the steward, had me pinching my lips together as I leaned back against the wall atop the stairs.
Olin’s response was snide. “Providing you don’t keep it a secret from Florian, of course.”
“Must you make everything I do a fucking crime?”
“It’s not my fault you’re as trustworthy as a fox in a henhouse.” Olin’s steps sounded below, and I ducked into the hall.
Zayla frowned and straightened from the wall. “What have you done now?”
“Nothing,” I said, smiling. Then shrugged. “Just a little eavesdropping.”
Olin grumbled something behind us as he exited the stairwell. When he passed, he said sharply, “Your beast has soiled the carpet. Take it outside before I have its head removed and hung above a mantel and her pelt made into a cushion for my feet.”
Zayla watched Olin head into the foyer and out the doors, murmuring, “Well, he’s certainly more surly than usual.”
“He found me talking with Kreed.”
She nodded, as if that made perfect sense, then whistled slightly.
I was tempted to ask her about it, but I had enough plaguing my mind. Not to mention a lovely mess to clean up.
Dinner was eaten in the kitchen while Kreed cleaned in a tense silence I assumed had nothing to do with me.
I wasn’t hungry. Food wouldn’t help to alleviate the tension in my head and muscles. The aches unsettling my flesh and bones. I ate what I could anyway, knowing I needed to and not wishing to offend Kreed.
Upon returning to my quarters, I found them empty of my wolf.
“Snow?” I called, inspecting the bathing and dressing chambers.
About to charge out into the hall and back downstairs in search of ghastly Olin, I stopped dead in my tracks.
The door connecting my rooms to the king’s was wide open.
Beyond it was a dark and narrow hall squashed between his bathing and dressing room.
He’d taken her as bait. Yet I still walked toward the dim light of his bedchamber. To get her back, I had to, and I’d grown fond of having her comforting weight at my feet while I lost sleep in this manor filled with serpents.
Florian sat shirtless on his bed with a glass of whiskey in hand. My wolf dozed at his side, the novel he’d evidently stolen from my nightstand in his lap.
“I see what you mean,” he said by way of greeting. “Though the descriptions do leave a lot to be desired.”
Snow’s ears pricked when I told her to come with me, but otherwise, she didn’t move at all.
Traitor.
Florian smirked and ran a long finger over Snow’s head. “She would make a lovely—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
His eyes flashed. “Pet.”
I gritted my teeth, growling as I spun to leave.
His chuckle quickened my heartbeat. “I do not intend to harm your wolf, butterfly, or she would already be dead.” There was a pause, then threateningly soft, “Come to me.”
The command lashed at my skin with caressing fingers. My own curled into my palms, temptation mixing with hatred and a myriad of other warm and cold feelings. It should not be a hard thing, ignoring this king after learning his true motives.
Yet it was.
Even without the needy changes occurring within my body, it was nearly painful to ignore a being so overflowing with wretched power. A being with a presence so commanding, it had rendered me submissive from the moment I’d first laid eyes on him.
It went beyond mere attraction.
The sound of his voice stirred more than the acute and growing want inside me. Florian Hellebore evoked a violent blend of hunger and curiosity. An unquenchable need to get as close as possible and burrow deep beneath his skin.
But surrendering would only give him what he wanted.
And I was now all too aware that his wants were not the same as my own, and that he’d tricked me with honest lies.
Kreed’s earlier warning lingered. But it couldn’t stop me from saying, “I’d rather not.”
Though the words had been more gentle than I’d intended, they still created a silence that felt like a heartbeat thudding closer to my back.
The heat of his gaze was a winter breeze, and I swore some of my hair shifted over my shoulder before he made a sound of amusement. “Your little games of disobedience,” Florian said, and my skin grew taut over my flesh, “are good for nothing more than exciting me.”
I shouldn’t have, but I’d already done so many things I shouldn’t have, so I turned and said, “You only say that so I will stop disrespecting you.”
A thick brow arched, his eyes darkening as I stepped closer to the bed he lounged upon as though it were a divan.
As if the growing tension in the room rankled, or she could sense what was about to happen before we could, Snow stalked back into my chambers via the door I’d left open.
Florian placed the book upon the bed, carefully and with his gaze moving from mine to the erection pressing into his loose cotton pants.
My stomach swirled, my eyes unfastening from the truth he’d shown me and roaming up his stomach. They took their time, counting his abdominals as I imagined what it might feel like to touch every muscled and defined inch of his bare torso.
He noticed. He noticed everything.
Rather than allow the embarrassment to creep up my neck to my cheeks, I forced a small smile and swayed closer to the edge of the bed.
He might affect me. That much I could never deny.
But that didn’t mean I would do as he expected—flee from him with my cheeks heated and my heart thrashing through my limbs.
The only tell that he was surprised as I climbed onto his bed at his feet was the slight narrowing of those moonlit eyes.
Crawling between his knees, I prayed to the goddess he wouldn’t hear the fear in my thundering heart, and said, “I’m afraid I do not understand what you’re talking about.”
“To be expected.” He sipped his drink, then set it on the nightstand without taking his eyes off me. “As you are very much a hands-on learner, aren’t you, sweet pet?”