He gave me a tired look. “The offer still stands. I never withdrew it. Anyone who breaks it will be rich beyond measure.”
“I don’t want your riches. But if I find a way to break your curse, will you set me free?”
He smirked, leaning back in his chair and propping his elbows on the armrests.
“You don’t belong to me,” he said. “I have you only for safekeeping. You aren’t mine to set free.”
“I’m sure you can find a way to persuade Leslo once your deal with him is over.”
I didn’t know the full power of his position, but surely the ruler of the ocean would be able to stand up against a dirty kidnapper.
“What do you know about magic, little human?” the king asked.
“Not much,” I admitted.
“Then why do you think you can break my curse?”
“Because maybe that’s what we need here? A fresh, new approach, not weighed down by any preconceived notions of this world?”
He looked at me closely before asking the next question. “Are you ready to risk your life for your freedom? You know what happened to those who didn’t deliver on their promise to break my curse.”
The threat was real. Twenty-seven people had paid with their lives for their failure to accomplish what I was taking upon myself here.
“Well, I won’t come to you to test some half-baked theories,” I replied carefully. “I’d only come to you with something I’d be absolutely sure about. If I put an idea forward, I always stand fully behind it.” In a way, this felt like giving a sales pitch to a new client, except that it would likely be the most important deal of my life, with my actual life on the line.
Until now, I’d fought for opportunities, for promotions, sometimes for simply being heard. Never before did I literally have to fight for my life and freedom.
He gazed at me with the same tired expression, like I was an ant under his foot and even my biggest efforts couldn’t possibly make any noticeable difference in his life.
“Your determination would be admirable if it didn’t come from ignorance,” he said. “Like a tiny minnow, you’re trying to swim against the current without realizing how much strongerthan you it is. No matter how determined you are or how tirelessly you work, it’ll sweep you under just the same.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“You want me to give up before I even start?”
“I simply don’t want you to waste your time,” he replied.
“What else am I to do with my time while you’re holding me hostage?” I snapped, shoving my chair back as a flare of anger sent me to my feet. “I have a life back home. A life that I’ve worked very hard to build. I have a job I’m good at, a man I promised to marry, my parents, my friends, and I’ll do anything to get that life back. I’ll lose everything I have and everyone I love if I don’t try. What do you have to lose, even if I fail?”
I marched toward him to loom over him as he sat in his glass throne at the other end of the table.
He raised a hand in warning to stop me from coming too close. Then, pushing with his hands into the armrests, he rose to his full height. His chest came to my eye level, but instead of looking up at his face, inexplicably my eyes traveled down the well-defined ridges of his abs, to the v-muscles below, and along the trail of transparent hair cutting through it.
For the first time, I took a close, deliberate look at his dick. Of course, that part of his body was flawlessly gorgeous, too, just like the rest of him. His cock remained down, but it no longer looked entirely flaccid. It swelled in both length and girth under my stare. The skin over it smoothed, gaining a luxurious satin sheen. As I stared, a thick ripple ran along its length, like a wave rolling across a smooth surface of the ocean. The dick suddenly jerked higher, and I shot my gaze up to his face.
He seemed surprised by this particular reaction of his body, but only for a moment. A lazy smirk spread across his beautiful face as he met my eyes.
“What do you know?” he mused. “You possess your own kind of magic after all, little minnow. So powerful indeed that it raises things from the dead.”
With hooded eyes, he gave me a slow once-over with considerably more interest and attention than ever before. I drew in a breath, growing acutely aware of every inch of my body during his close inspection.
I wet my lips as my mouth grew suddenly dry.
“You can’t touch me,” I reminded him.
“And isn’t that a shame?” he sighed, then cleared his throat. “Well, let’s pretend I’ll make a deal with you. My curse for your freedom. What will you do next? Where will you start?”
Taking a precautionary step away from him, I crossed my arms over my chest again. The gesture made me feel safer in his presence. “First, you’ll have to tell me everything you know about this curse and what led to it in the days prior.”
