Their relationship was supposed to be in name-only. They weren’t even married yet and she’d already fallen into bed with him.
As she lay there, castigating herself, the door to her room flew open, smacking against the wall. Dominique jerked upright in the bed, her eyes wide. She clutched the sheet to her chest because she was as naked as Ronan. An obnoxious feminine cackle accompanied a swirl of silks and perfume as her sisters, Monique and Frederique, swept into her room.
“You’ve been holding out on us, sister!” Monique all but shrieked.
Her sisters stopped moving abruptly, their eyes bugging out in their heads as they stared at the bed. If she wasn’t so appalledby their entry, Dominique would have been amused at the expressions on their faces. She looked over at Ronan, noticing that most of his body was on display. The sheet pooled in his lap, hiding his dick, but one leg and hip were completely bare. His abdomen flexed as he propped himself up on one elbow and glared at the two females.
“What thefuckdo you think you’re doing?” he roared.
When the two women just stood in silence, staring at him, he jerked the blanket over his leg and reached out one long arm for his pants.
“Get the fuck out!”
Her sisters still didn’t move. Instead, they stood there, still silent, and blinked rapidly. Dominique could relate. The sight of a mostly naked Ronan left her speechless as well.
“Get the fuck outnow, or I swear I will have you stripped to the skin and whipped in the courtyard for your insolence!” His bellow echoed throughout the room and likely this entire wing of the castle.
That got her sisters moving. Monique and Frederique squeaked, scurried out of the room, practically tripping over their own feet, and slammed the door shut behind them.
Ronan threw the blanket back, turned so his legs were over the side of the bed, and yanked his pants up his legs. Then, he stalked over to the door and locked it with a flick of his wrist.
Dominique collapsed back on the pillows, closed her eyes, and flung an arm over her face. She focused on taking deep breaths and remaining calm. It had begun. Her family had arrived, and they were going to do everything they could to get her under their thumb again. She could see all her hard work to escape them being flushed down the toilet right in front of her eyes.
It was difficult to corral her surging emotions. This was why she despised losing her grip on her control. It was almostimpossible to stuff all those feelings back into the box where she kept them.
“I’ll handle them.” Ronan’s words were quiet, but they were as heavy and hard as granite.
“You’ll try. And so will I, but even after knowing them for over four decades, they still manage to surprise me with the depth of their depravity and the cruelty of their schemes.”
“I’ll handle them,” he repeated, his tone more gravelly than before.
Dominique could hear her mother’s voice coming from the hall. She sighed again, climbing out of bed. “Do me a favor. Don’t eat or drink anything that you don’t prepare yourself or watch its preparation. And don’t let them catch you alone. If you do, immediately go somewhere with witnesses.”
He cocked his head. “I’ll watch my back. And yours.”
Ronan turned, his head swiveling as he looked for his shirt. Dominique could see the faint shimmer of white scar tissue between his shoulder blades and on his lower back.
“What happened to your back?” she asked. It had to have been something horrible to leave scarring like that. Fae healed quickly and rarely developed scars unless it was from a traumatic injury.
He froze, his body facing the door that led to his bedroom. “Nothing.”
She walked closer, ignoring the fact that she was still naked, and lifted a hand to trace one of the thin lines of pale skin. “It looks like scarring,” she murmured. “What happened?”
Ronan turned to face her, his expression utterly cold and devoid of emotion. “I was whipped with an iron-tipped crop.”
She gaped up at him. He was the crown prince and the heir to the throne. Surely no one would whip him, much less intentionally scar him with iron. Wounds caused by ironweapons weren’t lethal to fae, but they were more effective than any other material.
“Who whipped you? And why in the hell would they whip you?” she asked, feeling anger rising in her chest. She didn’t want to care, but she did.
“My father whipped me.” His tone was wooden and frigid as ice. “It was my punishment for angering an enchantress enough to curse me and the little girl who was with me.”
Dominique jerked back, watching as he caught sight of his shirt and headed toward it, putting his back to her again. She stared at the scars in horror. This close to him, she could see how they crisscrossed over his shoulders and lower back. He must have sustained twenty or thirty lashes of the crop that were hard enough to break his skin and cut deep into the muscle. She wanted to count them, but the idea of doing it made her stomach turn.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry that happened to you because of me.”
He tugged his shirt over his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he finally said, his back still to her. His voice was gruff but quiet. “We were both children. How could we have understood the consequences of our actions?”
As he said the words, it sounded as if he meant them. Considering his anger at her had gotten her into this mess, she had difficulty believing it.
