My jaw had dropped. “Am I just a job to you?”
Steel eyes smoldered with rage. “Don’t you dare twist my words,” he growled like a feral creature.
I threw my head back and laughed mockingly. “Excuse me for being a person with thoughts and feelings. I forgot you don’t listen to me because unlike the rest of your mates, I’m a filthy woman.”
He exploded in flames and threw me over his shoulder. I kicked and screamed and punched his back as he carried me to the bedroom.
He sat down on the bed and pulled down my pants.
A flaming hand slapped my ass. “Take it back,” he snarled. “Take it back, Aran, or so help me sun god.” His fingers splayed possessively across me.
He said darkly, “You’re not filthy.”
A rough sound rumbled in his chest.
“You’re.”
Slap.
“My.”
Slap.
“Woman.”
I squirmed, hyperaware of the hardness pressing against me.
“Um, what?” I panted intelligently.
He caressed my ass, flames sizzling deliciously as they touched my frost-covered skin.
I squirmed.
He let out a low moan and ground himself against me. “You’re mine,” he repeated like a man possessed.
I rubbed against him and nodded, unsure how we’d gotten here.
Snowflakes fell around us.
The temperature of the room plummeted; scarlet flames burned brighter.
“Are we going to fuck?” I whispered.
Corvus pulled himself away from me like he’d been stung. “I’m sorry,” he whispered brokenly. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?” I asked with confusion, but he was backing away.
“I need to leave before I do something we both regret,” he said harshly.
Before I could tell him that I would not regret anything, he left the room.
It was obvious what the problem was.
He was afraid of how turned on he got around me. I was too sexy.
A mature woman would have respected Corvus’s boundaries and let him leave.
I wasn’t that woman.
I chased after him, yelling sexual innuendos, as he ran down the stairs. He’d looked back over his shoulder, and I burst into laughter at the pure fear in the big guy’s eyes.
Objectifying him was my new hobby.
Time meandered forward.
Life wasn’t perfect.
We weren’t perfect.
But gradually as the warm days passed, we panicked less and laughed more.
Against all odds, our lives became more.
Every day, I practiced flying while the men watched with proud expressions. We weren’t training for war or trying to hone our skills; we were just marveling at what we could do.
Life was simple.
I also woke up each morning to a new gift from the kings.
One day, it was a room full of sweet-smelling flowers in vases that I eagerly placed around the estate. The next day, it was a pair of priceless diamond-encrusted heels.
The days continued in a pattern.
One day, the kings would give me sweet, thoughtful gifts—like handwritten notes from Corvus that said all the different ways he was grateful I was his Revered.
Then the next day, they’d give me a ridiculously extravagant gift, like an ancient mirror that showed the viewer cityscapes of faraway realms.
The most surprising gift genuinely left me speechless.
All of us decided to try our hand at drawing.
Most of us were stick-figure level, but Orion drew a masterful landscape with fancy markers that looked like paint. After I failed yet again to draw a duck, I doodled ice and fire symbols onto Corvus’s arm with a marker while we lazed together under our favorite tree. I also wrote, “Aran is the best,” in cursive script for fun.
It turned out Corvus and I were the laziest out of everyone. We preferred to spend long hours lying on the blanket and doing nothing. Either I was flying or I was lying still; there was no in-between.
The rest of the men tended to keep busy all day.
Corvus didn’t.
He liked to lie beside me in silence after I’d flown, and we’d watch the pond. The best days were those when one of the miniature ponies or sheep would join us.
The leader of the kings was full of surprises.
Case in point: the day after our drawing activities, Corvus rode off on his horse and yelled something about getting dessert from the local village.
At dusk, he shook me awake.
Groggily, it took me a second to process that my doodles on his forearm were now tattoos in enchanted ink, which meant they would never disappear for all of immortality.
My jaw dropped as I stared at the new permanent design declaring that I was the best. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and put a cookie in my gaping mouth.