Andwhichtime had he seen?
How-how-how?
“That wasn’t me.”
The words stumbled out of my lips and I jumped to my feet. This conversation was over and it was never going to start again.
Except when I turned to leave,runall the way back to the palace to be alone and to regroup, March grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back toward himself so hard I nearly fell against his chest.
He was standing, too. Close. Way too close.
“Oh, it was you, all right. You were screaming in the woods.” He flinched, like whatever expression I had on my face disgusted him. “You were screaming atnothing,and you were crying, too.”
Impossible,said the voices in my head. He couldn’t have known. He couldn’t have seen.
“Sobbing, all by yourself.”
Shut up-shut up-shut up?—
“It hurt right here.” A finger pressed to my gut, right under my breasts.
I lost control of my body so fast I was surprised, too, when my knee jerked up and hit him right in his crotch.
The look in his eyes would have been priceless if I could just force myself to breathe normally for a second, but no. My heart was running wild, and my thoughts were all over the place, and I knew he wasn’t lying. Not just because I’d seen him in my mind, too, and I’d felt exactly what he’d felt, but because what he described was real. It had been real, and it had happened—more than once.
He didn’t have the right to know, damn it. He didn’t have the right to know where it hurt.
March doubled over, his hand on my shoulder, the other over his balls. A muffled moan escaped his lips and his head lowered and his entire body became rigid for seconds.
My father always told me that fighting men was easy—their most vulnerable part was out and easily accessible. All I had to do was make sure to be underestimated and strike first.
He was going to be happy to know that he was absolutely right, and his advice had gifted me with an incredibly satisfying moment. Every part of me rejoiced in his pain and the way his body was still shaking—and yes, I was smiling. It feltgreat.Because I’d wanted tobe nice.I’d tried to be polite, and even friendly, had told him how he’d felt happy and proud—and what hadhedone?
He’d tried to humiliate me.
That was it—I wasnevergoing to say another word to him again, nor was I going to help him even if his face was being eaten by a clockbeast.
Stepping back, I jerked his hand from my shoulder and turned around to leave again, sure that he wasn’t going to be able to catch his breath long enough to stop me.
I was wrong.
I’d only stepped between the trees when I felt his presence behind me. I spun around, planned to scream my guts out at him, but his hand was already around my jaw. When I moved back on instinct, he moved with me until my back hit a trunk.
Nowhere to go.
March towered over me, eyes bloodshot and teeth gritted, his chest rising and falling fast. When he squeezed my cheeks like that again, my skin was on fire, and thenmychest was rising and falling just as fast as his.
This stupid boy.
My stupid, stupid body.
I said, “Get off me.”
“No.”
My knee jerked up again—pure instinct, and it had worked the first time, but this time it didn’t. This time he was prepared, and he blocked my leg with his easily.
“That…hurt,” he said through gritted teeth, squeezed my face harder, leaned closer.
