“You’re blushing.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You love it.”
I did. God help me, I did. Hearing him read smut in that unfairly attractive voice was doing things to me. Dangerous things. Things that made it very hard to maintain my position of righteous indignation.
“Read me another chapter?” I asked that evening.
His grin was insufferable.
I was developing a serious addiction. An otherworldly experience, hearing the future king of Duskmere narrate explicitsex scenes with the gravitas of a Shakespearean actor. I’d never be able to read romance novels the same way again.
And through it all, he’d been asking to take me on a date.
“Let me plan an evening,” he said. “A real date. Please.”
I resisted. I was supposed to be making him work for it, after all. Maintaining some semblance of control.
But the foot rubs wore me down. And the smut-reading. And the way he looked at me with those golden eyes, so hopeful, so eager to please.
“Fine,” I relented. “One date.”
His smile could have lit up the entire kingdom.
We’d returned to the castle that morning. The cabin had been a wonderful escape, but real life was calling. And now I was being guided through the cold, a blindfold covering my eyes, Caelan’s hands warm on my shoulders.
Doors had opened and closed, and I’d lost all sense of direction. The air had changed, though. Warmer. Humid. Smelling of... flowers?
“Almost there,” Caelan murmured.
We stopped. His fingers worked at the knot behind my head.
The blindfold fell away, and I opened my eyes.
Holy hell.
We were inside a greenhouse. Not just any greenhouse, but a massive, sprawling cathedral of glass and greenery. Flowers of every color bloomed in wild profusion: roses and orchids and lilies and species I didn’t recognize, their petals bright against the dark winter night beyond the windows. Vines crawled up the glass walls, laden with blossoms. Trees stretched toward the ceiling, their branches hung with small lights that twinkled in the darkness.
It was magical. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
“Do you like it?” Caelan’s voice was uncertain. Hopeful.
“I...” I turned in a slow circle, trying to take it all in. The colors. The scents. The way the lights reflected off the glass, creating an infinity of stars. “How did you...?”
“It was my mother’s,” he said. “She built it decades ago. For my father, actually. He loves flowers. She’s been maintaining it ever since.” He moved to stand beside me, his shoulder brushing mine. “I asked if we could use it tonight.”
“It’s incredible.” I reached out to touch a rose petal, soft beneath my fingers. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Come. There’s more.”
He took my hand, and I let him, letting him lead me deeper into the greenhouse. We passed through archways of climbing jasmine, past fountains surrounded by water lilies, past a section filled entirely with night-blooming flowers that glowed faintly in the starlight.
And then we reached the center.
A massive tree rose from the ground, its trunk twisted with age, its branches spreading wide overhead. Beneath it, a blanket had been laid on the soft grass, surrounded by pillows and more of those twinkling lights. Because there was actual grass here, growing lush and green despite the winter.
A picnic. He’d set up a picnic for me, under a fairy-tale tree, in a magical greenhouse. This man was absolutely unreal.
