“Just fucking tell me. Stop being a little Hell Cunt and tell me!” I pout so hard I can feel the line crease between my eyebrows.
He turns his head ever so slowly and glares a look of pure demonic wrath my way. “Drop. It.”
My lips part while my eyebrows lift slightly higher. “Nnnnooo,” I reply in the clearest, most pronounced tone so I know his little puppy brain can understand.
Two well-thought-out blinks are his only response.
And then he’s on top of me.
He pounces so fast I never see it coming until he’s straddled over me, his fingers clenching my wrists above my head as he looks down on me with blazing fiery eyes. Hell is in his gaze. I feel it burning off his skin in hot waves that seep into my very bones. This kingdom’s magic is alive and well in his strength now.
“Someday, you’ll listen when someone speaks, beautiful,” he whispers, getting in close as his nose runs the length of my jaw line.
His hands shift, and suddenly he’s holding my arms higher with both wrists clenched in one big fist of his. With his free hand, he pushes my hair back and hovers his hot mouth just against the shell of my ear. I feel his breath there, and it races a shiver across every inch of my flesh.
“There are cruel, cruel men in this kingdom, beautiful. They’ll break you.” His voice dips, catching lightly before finding the gruffness of his tone. “I found out the hard way. I don’t want you to be like me. When someone says to fucking drop it”—his words fans along my throat, and the way he holds me and the light graze of his fingers is suddenly more erotic than aggressive—“you fucking drop it.” It’s a warning. Not because he hates me. But because he’s worried. He’s worried I’ll end up like him.
And I can see that in the pain of his eyes.
His grip on me loosens, and I feel him shift against my hips, the hardness beneath his pants suggesting the very heated thoughts that are flickering through my mind as well. Big dilated eyes catch mine. Our heavy breaths mingle. Our lips are so close I can taste the plea still lingering on his tongue.
A rough hand snatches my chin and tips my head up, our lips coming even more dangerously close. “Say you understand, beautiful,” he whispers in a desperate tone.
I search his gaze—those beautiful light emerald eyes I remember falling into the moment he first looked at me.
He cares.
Even if he doesn’t want to.
And that’s why I submit. I nod to him.
There’s a long moment when his attention slips down, lingering along my lips. An ache glides through me with every passing second as he realizes just how close he and I are.
It hurts to feel the tension. It hurts so good. It hurts even more when he shoves off the mattress. He strides as far away from me as his long legs will carry him.
The door clicks closed.
He leaves.
And it’s only then that I catch my breath.
Possibly for the first time since I arrived in the kingdom of hell.
* * *
“The Prince’s dinner is tonight.Thedinner,” Zilo explains.
As ifthe dinnerandregular dinnerare somehow different in my mind.
Whatever. I’ve learned in our short twenty-four hours together that it makes those lines around his pretty eyes deepen if you interrupt him when he’s plotting.
Which wouldn’t be a big deal, but the motherfucker is always plotting.
Like right now for example:
“I have training with the lowers of hell this morning. Avian is going to train you for tonight. He’s good. He’ll make sure you’re ready.”
Training… Right.
