I sit next to him on the edge of his bed and examine the book clasped in his hands. There’s no title on the worn, red cover. “What is that?”
He snaps the book shut and smirks. “A dirty book. That I rather enjoy reading from time to time.” He taps the tip of my nose. “But not when pestering little girls are in the room.”
I return his raised brow and push my chest out a little. “I’m far from a little girl. Or have you failed to notice?”
“Apparently so. Perhaps because I’m approximately twelve—or is it thirteen?—times your age. Math never was my strong suit. You may be twenty and five and feeling older and wiser, but you’re still a youngling to me.”
“As is everyone else in the world!” I throw up my hands. “That’s not the point right now. The point is that I have no one else to go with me, Colden, and you’re the king, for gods’ sakes. Everyone would love to see you.”
He groans and drops his head against the mounded pillows behind him. “If you had any notion how many of these parties I’ve attended. Can you not take Alexus?”
When he looks at me again, I make the most awful face. “Alexus is not fun at parties, and you know it. He sits with his beer in the shadows and broods.Broodingly. Youknowhe won’t dance with me either.”
Colden laughs. “He can dance. Slowly. He just won’t.”
“Yes, well, I’m not looking for anything slow tonight. I need…” I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Fun.”
“That new bowyer from the plains seems to fancy you. He keeps coming around. Perhaps you should go find him.”
“Joran Dulevia? No, thank you. He’s handsome and all, but the ladies say he’s a horrible prick. Besides, I don’t want to go with him. I want to go withyou.”
I take his hand between mine. Sometimes it strikes me that in three short years, this deadly hand I loathed when I first came here is now the hand that I constantly find myself reaching for, sure and comforting.
Again, I sayplease,but this time I draw his hand to my chest.
A sigh of relent leaves him as he tosses his dirty book aside and stares into my eyes in that easy way of his. He shakes his head. “Godsdamnit, you hold far too much power over me, Nephele Bloodgood.”
I squeal and bounce on the edge of his bed before hurrying to his oversized wardrobe where I swing open the carved doors. “I’ll find you something lovely to wear. Silver, maybe? Purple? No.Blue.” I reach for a blue satin dress jacket and black pants I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him wear. “Blue is definitely your color.”
“Whatever you think. So long as I’m more comfortable than I am pretty.”
When I look over my shoulder to say something snarky, he’s standing from the bed, his back to me—completely naked.
I can’t look away.
He’s beautiful, of course. I’ve thought that since I first met him. I’ve seen him shirtless a time or two in training, which was breathtaking. Butthis… The long, lean muscles stretching down his tapered back. The tight curve of his perfect ass. The soft, golden hair on his long, muscular thighs. He seems more powerful like this than any other way I’ve ever seen him, even sweaty and half-naked, with a glint of mischief in his eyes on the training field, bearing dual swords.
It’s… overwhelming. Enough that not only does my pulse pound but my mouth waters, too.
Colden opens a drawer beside his bed and slips his book inside. I gulp when the way he’s angled affords a glimpse of even more of him, certainly more than I’ve seen before tonight. It’s a side view, but I think… I think he’s half-hard.
Something clicks in my brain. He was in bed and undressed when I came into his room unannounced. Reading a dirty book. With one hand beneath the covers.
I interrupted him.
“It’s not polite to stare.”
His voice rattles me out of my daze. Startled, I blink up to meet his eyes, my face burning. “I… I wasn’t?—”
“Yes, you were.” A sly grin curves his lips as he grabs a shirt from another drawer and holds it over his private parts before strolling toward me. He stops only inches away, and suddenly there’s simply too much of him in this room. He takes the suit from my grip. “I’ll get dressed and meet you in the south garden in half an hour?”
I clear my throat, paint on a fake smile, and pray my face looks a little less than utterly mortified. “That sounds perfect.”
The moment I skirt around him, I groan inwardly and roll my eyes at myself. Who stares at the king’s cock? Me, apparently.
“Oh, Nephele.”
With my hand on the doorknob to his room, I turn back. “Yes?”
