“Food and sweetwine,” the prince said. “Leave it outside the room.”
“Outside?” Galen asked.
By way of answer, the prince took my hand, pulled me into his room, and closed the door. Then he put down the wooden bar to lock it.
“Outside,” the prince said, through the closed door. And when Galen’s footsteps disappeared down the hallway, he turned around and looked at me.
My heart had never beaten faster.
Thirty-one
The room felt charged, like lightning might flash across the ceiling. The hair at the back of my neck lifted at the look in his eye.
“I asked you to stay in the palace.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers.”
His voice was low, and I became suddenly, viscerally aware that the room was small and we were alone. Or maybe that wasn’t a matter of architecture, but desire.
He smiled, and as he was looking down at me, his hand slid around my waist, long fingers across my abdomen.
My breath caught, and my body shuddered.
“You said you want freedom most of all, and I want to be the kind of person that hopes you get your freedom. But right now, I’m the type of person that just wants you here. That just wants to touch you, to assure myself that you’re here and safe. That we’re both alive.”
I’d learned many things over the last few weeks. “There are many ways to be free,” I said, and put a hand on his chest. Hardmuscle tensed beneath my fingers and his heartbeat quickened. “I want something beautiful. I need something beautiful.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Good. Because there are things I’d like to do to you. With you,” he amended. “And the list is very, very long.”
He pushed me back against the door, fingers entwined with mine. He raised my hands over my head, pressed them against the door, and devoured my mouth. I couldn’t move my hands but found I didn’t care. I trusted him enough now to let him touch, ravage, protect.
At least within the confines of this room. This palace-within-a-palace. This small storybook kingdom.
He captured my hands in one of his, slid the other beneath my skirt, up my thigh, then pulled me against him. He was hard as iron, and our breaths shuddered out at the same time.
“Have you thought of me, Fox? Since that night in the palace?”
“How could I not?”
He abandoned my skirts, his free hand rising to my breast. He cupped it with long, skillful fingers, ran a thumb over the nipple, already taut and sensitive. I dropped my head back to the door, moaned from the sensation. This wasn’t the first time I’d been touched. But I hadn’t felt this crazed need before, like a thousand years of hunger, of want, rising to the surface.
I pulled one of my hands free, touched his face, gripped his hair, pulled him harder against me. He groaned with satisfaction.
“I want to touch you. To taste you again.”
I could only nod—for once, ceding control.
He released my other hand and kissed me once more, tongue flicking across mine to tease, to heighten.
Then he fell to his knees in front of me, like a man preparingto worship one of the gods. I might have wondered how this was happening, how I’d found myself standing like a goddess before this beautiful man, his gaze on me as he slowly pushed up the dress he’d given me, then ripped away the undergarments someone in the palace had so carefully sewn.
Then he dropped his gaze and stared at the crux of my thighs like I was a rare wildflower he’d never seen blossom before. Then his lips brushed my shin. His mouth was so soft as he moved slowly upward, as if reluctant to miss a bit of me.
I sighed and closed my eyes, the breath leaving my body. Need built until my legs shook.
“What do you want?” he asked, and nipped at my thigh.
“You.”
