“What. The fuck. Are you doing here?” His breath pelted her lips and despite his barely restrained violence, he began gently tugging out her hair pins. “Why didn’t you go back to the colonies?”
“I—” she started, then steeled her expression. “You know why.”
“I really don’t.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, his biceps straining his evergreen dinner jacket. “I told you there was nothing between us.”
“I think you might be lying.” Her lips curled as she darted her eyes toward the obvious bulge tenting his pants.
“This isn’t a fucking joke!” he roared.
His fury coaxed hers to life. How fuckingdarehe?
“Isn’t it?” She struggled to keep her voice level. “Over the past week, I’ve been abducted, thrown in the back of a truck, stripped bare, fed from, sold off, and had a tracking device implanted into my neck!”
Cael’s face paled as he stepped into her, tilting her jaw to the side and brushing his thumb over the wound on her neck. “He put it in already?”
She nodded, tears welling.
He released her, then slumped onto the bed and dropped his head into his hands. “This is a disaster.”
She wanted to step between his knees, rest his head against her stomach, assure him that everything was going to be okay now that they were together again. But given his turbulent reaction, she didn’t know if she even believed that herself.
“You were supposed to go back to the colonies,” he muttered. “You were going to be safe there. I would’ve learned to live with it.”
“Lived with what?”
Cael cupped his hands together, circling a thumb into his palm, eyes downcast. “The bittersweet agony of knowing you still existed in this world, but would never be mine.” When he finally looked up, his anguish stole her breath. “I can’t protect you from my father here. And now you’re his fuckingproperty.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Xenia volunteered.
“I’m getting married in a month. And my newwifeand I will be expected to get our own household and start pumping out heirs to shore up the bloodline. Even if he’d agree to have you transferred to my household, is that what you would want?”
He rose from the bed, a ferocious beast stalking its prey, and backed her against the wall again. He shoved a hand under her skirt to caress the skin above her stockings. “Isthat what you want? To be my dirty little secret? The human mistress I fuck behind closed doors while my wife stands beside me in public?”
She shuddered as he inched his hand higher, tantalizingly close to her very bare, and very wet, sex. The weight of his body, his intoxicating scent—rainswept meadows and cool earth—the exploratory trail of his fingers… It was too much. In this moment, she would’ve given him everything, agreed to anything he asked. Even to being his whore.
He trembled as he grazed a fingertip up her slit. “Fuck, why aren’t you ever wearing any underwear?”
Her knees nearly buckled as she choked out, “You are being extremely confusing right now.”
He removed his hand from her skirt and dropped his forehead against the crown of her head. “That’s because you confuse the fuck out of me.” He cupped her cheeks again, gentle Cael making a rare appearance. “Why did you come back for me?”
“Because we’re not finished with each other. And I missed arguing with you.” He snorted an amused laugh and released her face. “Do you… Are you… Do youwantto get married?”
“Not to her.” Cael grimaced. “But evenifI were to break off this engagement—which my father would never let me do—and find a way to leave Stoneridge, what will happen toyou? He has the rest of my life planned out. If he thinks I’m straying from that path, he’ll come looking for the reason. If he finds a single shred of evidence that it’s you, he will kill you. And I will die before I let that happen.”
Xenia rubbed at the small scar beneath her ear. “I?—”
“IfI were to even consider leaving here with you—” Xenia let out a small gasp of excitement and Cael narrowed his eyes, “—we would need to get that thing out first.”
“How?” Xenia asked. “He said he’d be able to tell if it was tampered with or if I tried to remove it.”
“He’s right. Those things are bespelled against such interferences. We’ll need to see what we can learn about them. Have they given you your assignment yet?”
“No, I’ve only just arrived this afternoon.“
“You need to be extremely wary. Around my father, obviously. Around Laskaris. He looks at you like he regrets not purchasing you for his own household. And especially around my brother Tomas. Viktor won’t look twice at you; he’s inherited my father’s distaste for humans. But Tomas…”
“I’ve been warned. What happened? Your father said something about Tomas getting a human pregnant and said hetook care of it.Did he force her to get rid of the baby?”
