Page 77 of Veil of Night & Flames

“That is the end of the urgent matters. There are six others that can wait if⁠—”

It came on him with no warning at all—a warm flood under his skin. A pulse low in his belly. And a far-too-familiar tightening in his cock brought about by a heat that did not flow through his blood, but coursed through him as wild and powerful as the shock from a lightning bolt.

For a moment, he did not understand what it was, and he stood there with the parchment in his hand and the scent of wine in the air and a confusion that was almost embarrassing—a king ambushed in his own chambers by a sensation he could not name.

Then he realized.

Somewhere in the Real, Chase was inside the woman they both loved, and the bond was open, spilling sensation over him like a thunderstorm.

He put the parchment down with a shaky hand as satisfaction moved through him, underscored by heat and the soft rumble of a delighted chuckle in his chest. After all, hadn’t he told both Cora and his brother that he would not object to being on the receiving end of the bond? He’d meant it. And here it was, delivered to him at his own table in his own chambers as if the universe were granting him a gift.

The pleasure of it climbed through him a beat later. Clean and hot through his body that had not wanted anything in a long while the way it wanted this decadent pleasure. Cora. Chase. Both of them threaded through him and through each other in a wonderfully sensual knot.

It was exquisite, and the thing he wanted most was to close his eyes and savor it.

Instead, he had Kali at his elbow.

“My king?” He heard the concern in her voice and forced himself to stay calm. To show no reaction to the heat that rolled through him. Once upon a time, he would have had Kali naked and spread across his table if such a thing had happened.

Now, the very thought twisted in his stomach. He wanted her gone. Wanted to revel in the sensations coursing through him.

Wanted? Hell, he needed it.

“My king?” she repeated.

This time, he forced himself to look at her. “We will continue with these matters tomorrow.”

She did not move at once. He could feel her looking at him, this woman who had been reading him for an age.

Then she rose and circled the table to stand in front of him, her fingers already working on the ties that bound her breasts in the thin shirt she wore when not wearing her armor.

“No.”

She gaped at him, and he realized that was the first time she’d so blatantly offered herself since the day he’d ended their longstanding arrangement.

She stopped, but her hand did not lower. “My king.” Her voice cracked slightly. “You⁠—”

“No.”

She put her hands down.

“No more,” he said, and watched as a shadow seemed to slide across her eyes. “You already know that.”

“Of course,” she said. “I only thought that you—you looked as if you wanted it,” she said with a lift to her chin.

He said nothing. He was her king, and he owed her no reason.

The wild heat rolled through him again, a fresh wave of his brother’s wanting that was now indistinguishably his, too. A heat so alive he had to struggle to keep it from reflecting on his face, though from the way Kali’s eyes narrowed, he feared that he had failed in that task.

“You are dismissed,” he said, his voice rough.

She stood there for a beat, her eyes taking him in. Then she inclined her head, turned, and walked out of his chambers.

The door fell closed, and he stepped over to flip the lock, something he rarely did as the servants came and went to serve him.

But now, he would broach no interruptions.

He moved to the bed and stretched out, and the moment his back hit the silk, the bond rolled over him in a wave so deep he made a sound he was glad no one was in the chamber to hear.