The prince’s blood sang a primal note, fresh as the first snowfall and as sweet as the heady spring air. I tasted the sunlight on his skin and the tannins from the berries he’d eaten for breakfast. There was a slight zest of fear too that I savored. Despite his reservations, the prince was willing to be brave, perhaps even to trust me, eventually.
Trembling, he leaned against me, his hard length pressed flush against my hip, revealing far more than his clipped words and royal bluster. I let him use me for support, my normally stiff body relaxing slightly under his weight. He panted softly as I retracted my fangs and licked the few ruby-red droplets that remained on his skin.
“It’s official,” I said with warmth, which I attributed to the flush of heat from his blood. His face was rosy, and beads of sweat dotted his temple, darkening his hairline and tempting me further. “I’ll come to collect you at the summer solstice. I expect you to have wrapped up your personal affairs by then.”
In a daze, he touched my mark and nodded slowly. I raised my vanadium rod and, using my gift of metal sorcery, quickly fashioned a ring that was simple but handsome. I slipped it onto his ring finger, an outward symbol of the commitment we’d made.
“Is this silver?” he asked, turning his hand toward the light as if bewitched by it.
“Vanadium. Very rare, but it’s my favorite material. Strong and stubborn, it does not yield easily, but when it does, the results are magnificent.”
He glanced up at me, his expression open, vulnerable. I plumbed the depths of his tumultuous stare and found a soul inneed of soothing. Possibly, I could be that for him, a balm to his fiery temper, a harbor for when he was navigating stormy seas.
Lest I get caught up in something as dangerous as affection toward the fae prince, I nodded briskly and said, “Feel free to roam the grounds at your leisure until your ship is scheduled to leave. I have some important matters I must attend to.”
The “matters” included me not taking advantage of his unguarded state, pinning him to the wall, and ravishing him right there in my dining hall. I swept out of the room, tucked myself away into the nearest darkened alcove, and shoved my hand down my silk trousers in an attempt to quell the tension that had been building since the fae prince first arrived.
My mind was a blur, his taste still lingering on my tongue, as I stroked myself roughly, as though it were a penance, and spent into my hand like a fledgling. After hastily wiping myself down with an embroidered handkerchief, I straightened my shoulders and collected my wits, feeling foolish for allowing myself to get so caught up in the moment.
Thank the Goddess this betrothal was only meant to be temporary, for the prince was altogether too captivating to resist. And if I was meant to teach Cedrych discipline, then I must also demonstrate some restraint.
Chapter 2
Prince Cedrych
Lately my dreams had been dominated by fire and ice. The molten desire I’d seen in Lord Vasil’s eyes after he’d bitten me and the icy chill of his words when he dismissed me so heartlessly. Except this time, instead of leaving me in a wild, frustrated state, the lord stayed pressed against me, hard and unyielding, and in his deep, sonorous voice, he commanded me to use his leg as a humping post.
“Like a dog,”he taunted as I rubbed my stiff cock against his silken trousers. Furiously and without shame, I chased that wondrous, elusive pleasure until at last…
A sudden, chilling wetness had me sputtering awake, thwarting me from my happy ending. Again.
“What in Goddess’s name?” I exclaimed as I took in my surroundings, the stable outside of Honey’s Tavern where I must have been drinking the night before in yet another failed attempt at scrubbing the domineering Lord Vasil from my mind. My neck still burned from his bite, a fever that flowed southward in a straight shot to my cock. I rubbed the cold metal ring on my finger that reminded me daily of our betrothal. When I’d first arrived back in Emrallt Valley, I’d put the ring in a box on my bedside table, then I’d added it to the chain around my neckalongside an amulet of the divine Goddess Imogen. Lately, I'd started wearing the damned thing on my finger, as if beguiled by some strange compulsion.
“Cedrych,” said a voice laced with so many weighty emotions–worry, disappointment, pity.
“Godfried,” I replied to my somber older brother. Dark-haired and serious, he was the responsible one, the intellectual who’d always excelled at his studies and whose counsel our mother valued above all else. He’d have made a fine templar priest if he wasn’t already destined for the crown. Meanwhile, I couldn’t be trusted with even the simplest of tasks, such as commanding my own guard or choosing my own bedmate.
Godfried was the heir, my younger brother Edwyn was my mother’s darling, and I was the spare, largely forgotten and barely tolerated. It had been that way since my father died when I was still a fledgling. I took after my father, my mother always told me when she was particularly displeased with my behavior. The late King Reginald had been known to indulge in his hedonistic side while my mother was the one who revered the crown and its many duties. She’d inherited her title through her father, our former king, and married my roguish father to unite their lands. It was not a love match. Now, my only connection to my father was the scorn I saw in her eyes whenever she looked at me.
“Was the pail of water really necessary?” I wiped the moisture from my face while hoping that it was, in fact, water. I looked askance at my guardsmen, all wearing sheepish expressions, including Erikson, the one holding the bucket.
“I know that this betrothal–”
“I do not wish to discuss it,” I snapped. Not with Godfried, not with anyone.
“Mercier is a just and tolerant man,” Godfried said and damn my own envy that my older brother was intimate enough withthe elvish lord to call him by his first name. They were friends, at least. We were nothing.
“That has not been my experience.” I rose from the pile of hay which had served as my bed the night before and plucked a few stray bits from my trousers, trying to regain some of my dignity.
“Because you provoke him,” Godfried said.
“And how could I not?” I lamented, for getting any kind of reaction from the stoic Lord Vasil was the only way to ensure his ice cold heart was still beating.
“You’ve a habit of provoking everyone lately, it would seem.” Godfried gave me a pointed look, likely referring to the many brawls I’d gotten into lately. How could I explain that I enjoyed the occasional punch to the face or sock in the gut? At least I could go after them with my fists. My guards wouldn’t hit me, no matter how much I begged them, and my own people were too scared of my mother’s wrath to tangle with me, so I picked fights with foreigners. Mostly men who were bigger than me and could pack a wallop, preferably when we were both drunk. Physical combat was one way to silence the chaos in my mind.
Which reminded me of last night’s altercation, a dispute over the strength of the fae army versus that of the elvish, a slight which I’d taken personally and had resulted in what was now a tender and swollen right eye.
“Did you come here to lecture me?” I asked Godfried.
