I’llneverdrink mulled wine again. I feel like shit scraped off the pavement, then stomped down a drain.
My desperate gaze falls on a mug set atop the wooden stool used as a bedside table, and I scramble for it, drawing a deep gulp of the contents. My entire body shudders at the taste—like a wash of chilled evening rain spiced with flower petals and a dash of sunshine.
I pull the mug from my lips and look at the clear liquid swirling inside.
“Wow … That’s the most delicious water I’ve ever tasted.”
Cradling the cup in my trembling hands, I sip at it, savoring each drop that flows across my tongue and drains down into me, soothing my belly from the inside. Easing the tender drum in my head. I set the empty mug on the stool, yearning for more.
The creaking strain of rusted hinges has me spinning, attention whipping to the shadowed figure filling the doorframe. My heart labors as I take him in—cloaked, hooded, yet I can still feel the chilled path of his focus carving across my face, tracing the slope of my lips … my neck …
My skin prickles, nipples pinch. This room feels so much smaller now that I’m dwarfed by his hulking presence. Now that he’s taking up the main exit with his broad shoulders.
Tipping his hood, I’m exposed to the full brunt of his savage beauty. To his eyes—a catastrophic mix of hunger and hell.
Scruff covers the bottom half of his face, and the vaguest memory of my hand slapping against it while I contemplated the feel of it between my thighs flashes on the backs of my eyes.
A deep, unsatiated throb has me swallowing thickly.
Kicking forward another step, he closes the door, the clunk of the lock sliding into place reverberating through my skin, flesh, and bones. He sets an orange on his desk and unbuckles his cloak, watching me as he drapes it across the back of the low chair that swivels and rocks with the weight of it.
My gaze travels down, up again, attention snagging on his loose pants hung low on his hips and his shirt clinging to every brutish pane of his body like a second skin.
Another deep throb almost buckles my knees …
“This is your room?” I rasp, like I didn’t already know—desperateto fill the silence.Anything to distract myself from the vision before me. From his piercing stare, as though there’s nothing in this world aside from the two of us and this room.
This bed.
This empty, yearning space between us.
“Yes, Milaje.”
I nod, allowing myself a moment more to enjoy this delicious peace before I let reality sink in and shred it apart. He must feel the moment I recompose those shields because his own stare hardens, arms crossing over his bulky chest as he widens his stance, quirking his brow as if to saythere it is.
I lift my chin and smooth my crumpled shirt in an attempt at composure … the hazy memory of wandering the streets, drunk and scrappy and seconds away from spewing all over the cobbled ground a mortifying slap.
But here we are.
“What’s the time?” I ask.
“Late in the day.”
My heart drops.
Shit.
“Why didn’t you take me back to the palace?”
His stare savagely maims me. “You expected me to scale that palace wall with you passed out in my arms, snoring and smelling like a brewery?”
I internally cringe.
Very, very poor life decision.
“You could’ve just done thenormalthing and dropped me at the gate. Asked someone to carry me back to my room.”
His eyes flash, as though lit with a silver spark.
