It seems I will not make it back in time for dinner.
Chapter Fifty-three
The king shows me theparchment, the terms, with Benji’s name attached, and we stand, still clothed, before the streaming pool.
“Satisfied?” he asks as I read the words for the third time.
I cannot find a loophole. This note will ensure Benji’s autonomy for now, at least, so that he can build wealth and a future. If the king revokes the boy’s legal protections, and a complaint is leveled against him, then perhaps the other Houses will uphold their promises and defend the faerie. Perhaps not, but this letter grants time. Money. Savings.
So finally I nod, handing it back. Maxian snaps his fingers and the contract disappears.
“Your turn,” he says.
Nausea sways me once more, but I push it down. I push everything down, then conjure images of another bathing chamber, a silver one, and the silver fae who swims in its water.
I pull my tunic over my head. Rolling down the undergarments, I step out of the pile of clothes, and my nipples peak in the cold. Before me, the king is fully dressed, his attention dropping to my waist, my thighs.
Let’s play a game, let’s play a game, let’s play a game.I chant until my defiance and fear churn into something soft and acceptable: a coy challenge.
“Satisfied?” I ask.
“Get in the water.”
I touch my toes to the steaming, simmering pool. The heat sears my skin. I suck in a breath.
“Keep going,” he instructs from behind as his clothes smack against the floor. When I try to look back, he commands, “Forward.”
So tonight, he will direct and I will have to play along.
The burning rises to my knees, my skin red, my body clenching in anticipation.
“One more step,” he says.
I sink into the heat, the water singeing between my thighs. I gasp as it slaps against my sex, painful and pleasurable, and although I beg my body not to—it reacts. Shivers run up and over my skin, a betrayal my mind cannot comprehend. As the king moves farther into the pool, the water laps against me, then retreats, the chilly air rushing against my sensitive clit.
No.
I do not want this. I know I do not want this. But I want my friends to be free, I want to walk away with that contract in hand and leverage from his back and his lineage even if nothing else in me is intact.
Maxian maneuvers past me so I cannot see his scars, lowering himself onto one of the submerged benches. The water hits his chest, and he spreads his arms, leaning them against the ledge. The practiced movement of someone with something to hide. I try to relax my expression, keep out the twitching as something in me recoils in disgust.Please stop this. I don’t want to feel this.
He cocks his head and observes every inch of me.Does he know my true thoughts?I wonder as I start to understand his. It is like that night in his bed, the fight in the library: He wants me to enjoy it, against my will, as he was aroused by me against his. The way he looked confused at his palm as I walked away. Well, he does not look confused now, and I cannot walk away.
He blows on the water, a strong, strange wind. The heat onceagain envelops my clit, then drops away, the dance of warm and cold like a lover’s breath. My thighs press together.
“Avery,” he chides.
I close my eyes, breathing. I do not want to let go. I must, I must give in, but still, a part of me claws against the rising tide of desire, the water kissing my sex over and over and over as he moves it with his mind. A low moan builds in the back of my throat. I fight it the entire way. The feeling of standing in a different bath, the vulnerable offer, the sting of rejection. My desire begins to ebb.
“Why are you denying what you want?” he drawls.
“I’m not,” I breathe.
“Prove it, then.”
Soumeter, soumeter, soumeter.
He will know if I fake it—I was his teacher in that lesson. I dip my hands into the water, then, dripping, palm each breast. I work each nipple, pinching, twisting. I am swaying, I am ascending, my breaths coming in ragged, the air thin and strange. I am only sensations: the lapping water, the biting pain, the cold air, the weight of his gaze dragging down my figure.
