And long after the aftershocks of my orgasm have started to fade, we stay like that, kissing and kissing and kissing. Until eventually, I start to get sleepy, my limbs getting heavy.
This time, Cage doesn’t mention a bath, and I’m thankful because, even if I had someone to help bathe me, I would probably still fall asleep in the tub. Cage helps me crawl up to the pillows and then covers me with my blanket before pulling away.
“No,” I say, the word bursting out of me. I shoot up in bed, grabbing onto his arm before he can move. “No, please stay.”
I can feel his hesitation in the long moment that he looks at me. And then he peels back the covers and climbs in beside me.For a moment, we lay there on our sides, looking at each other, and then he reaches out and strokes a single finger down my cheek.
“Goodnight, my love,” he says.
I want to discuss that, address it, beg him to tell me what he means by it, but instead, I get swept into sleep.
Six
I’m not sure if it’s the knock at the door or Cage getting out of bed that wakes me up a little while later. I roll over and watch him walk to the door. I push up onto my elbow and try to listen as Cage speaks to someone on the other side. Their voices are low, but I can hear the tone of Cage and Kale’s voices, the way Cage grumbles out a question before closing the door again.
But instead of getting back into bed, he reaches for his pants and pulls them on.
“What's going on?” I ask, sitting up.
“Most likely nothing. There was a slight disturbance at the portal. I’m just going to make sure all is well.” Leaning down, he presses a kiss to my forehead with enough affection that my heart aches. His hands slide away from me, and I watch him leave before falling back onto the bed.
This is…not happening the way I thought it would. And in fact, I’m not even sure I know what I thought this would be like. I guess I thought we would consummate the relationship and then maybe meet every once in a while after. I imagined that he would basically ignore me. That he would treat me the way he does all of his other subjects.
But I wasn’t expecting the mating ceremony to be so explosive. And I wasn’t expecting to miss him when he went back to his own quarters. And I wasn’t prepared for him to come to me in the middle of the night.
What the hell am I to this fire monster?
Something shifts somewhere in the darkness of the hallway that leads deeper into my quarters, and I hold very still. If I was back on Earth, I would assume it was an ice maker or an electric air freshener or something. But they don’t have those things here. In the silence, I hear the slide of something, like a shoe on the stone floor.
I shoot up in bed, holding the covers to my body as I stare into the dark. I can’t see anything now that Cage isn’t here with his bright solis. I strain my eyes, trying to make out the shapes of the hall that leads to the bathing room.
Something moves in the dark.
Throwing the covers off myself, I run for the door. But I’m not fast enough. Something hits me on the back of the head, and then darkness fills every crevice of my awareness.
I wake in the dark, but this dark is different. Where there’s something warm and comforting about the darkness of the High Mountain, the cave I wake in is cold. My head pounds as I lift it from the chilled stone and look around. I can’t see anything, and when I try to sit up, I realize my hands are bound together with rope.
I gasp and tug at the ropes, but they just dig harder into my skin. As my eyes adjust, I can see that the rope around my hands is attached to a metal ring on the cave wall. I pull at it, but it’s embedded so deep into the rock that I have a better chance of pulling my arms out of their sockets than pulling the ring out of the stone.
Looking around, I find that I’m in an empty cave. It’s relatively small, and across the way from me, there’s a darkhallway leading to some other dark part of the cave. And that’s it. Just an empty cave with a metal ring on the wall. Totally normal.
I want to call out, but I can’t bring myself to open my mouth. What the hell is happening? Who was in my room? How did they even get in there? At least they covered me. I look at my body. Of course, it’s with my bathrobe, but that’s better than being abducted completely naked.
I tug at the rope again, twisting it to try and get my hand out of it, but it’s so tight around my wrists that after a few minutes of maneuvering, I start to panic. I can feel tears rising in my throat, my situation finally really setting in. Someone kidnapped me. And Cage doesn’t know where I am. I’m in a cave somewhere, but I don’t know where or how long I was unconscious. Annaleigh once told me that there are other mountain ranges outside of Isiriel that are inhabited by other fire monsters. What if I was kidnapped by one of them? What if they’re not as nice as the males in Isiriel?
Setting my bare feet against the cave wall, I pull at the rope, but the ring still doesn’t budge.
“You’re wasting your time.”
I scream, spinning around and pushing my back up against the wall. There’s a man standing in the middle of the cave, holding a flashlight. Not a fire monster. A human.
“What do you want with me?” I ask immediately. If he’s going to try to assault me, I kind of want to know now so that I can face the situation head-on. The man comes closer, until eventually, he takes a seat in front of me, a few feet away. He’s small, scrawny, or maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with giant fire monsters. He’s sweaty and dirty, dark stubble on his chin and his head shaved down low.
His face isn’t familiar. I rarely pay attention to everyone in Isiriel, even from behind my booth at the market, so maybe I’ve seen this guy before and just don’t remember.
He sets the flashlight on the ground between us and folds his hands in his lap. “I know why King Cage married you. He thinks that he can marry a human and suddenly all of us will just accept him as king, right? Well, that creature is no king of mine. Isiriel deserves a democracy, and the rebellion is going to make sure it happens.”
“This is his home,” I snap at him. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave?”
