His dick went rigid. His feet shuffled a step closer.
The chain that bound Soravelle to her bed was taut; she couldn’t reach him. He took another step closer before recalling that she had to be a dark sorceress to get him to willingly move toward her—the only person to nearly kill him in decades. Even now, behind the bloodlust, she had to be working her faithum, enchanting him, tempting him … luring him into her web.
He willed his feet to still—and they did, but just. His torso tipped forward, his cock pulsed.
“Princesa,” Marina snapped.
Slowly, Soravelle blinked, for an instant seeming to come back to herself. Just as quickly, the self-awareness was gone, and the monster stared back at him.
She moistened her lips with a curl of her tongue. Her chest heaved with deep breaths that scented his blood, probably his arousal too. Hers was so dense in the air, it was all he could smell, overpowering her usual scent of iron, olandry flower, and the sea, a scent he’d know anywhere, and never forget.
“Get out of here,” Baz ordered Marina on a growl.
“No,” the goblin said, when he’d used his command voice, the one legions of soldiers didn’t hesitate to obey. “I’m not leaving her.”
“This is no place for you.”
“My place is at her side.”
“She’ll devour you.”
“No, General, she’ll devour you.”
Baz whipped his head around to glower at the goblin, and he knew from experience that his glare was formidable enough to cause soldiers to quake. “Get. The fuck. Out of here. I’ll deal with you later.”
Marina had the gall to scoff and arch her bald brow as if to say, You wish, when she was plainly here to break out his prisoner.
“Haven’t you heard the stories? You don’t want to disobey me. You won’t like what happens to you if you do. This is only for her and me to share.”
“This? You have no claim to her. Release her at once.”
“She tried to murder me. Me, prince to the empire. Do you know what the punishment is for such an egregious violation of the dominion?”
“No, and I don’t care.” But her big nose twitched. She was lying, when goblins weren’t supposed to lie, and certainly not to princes and generals. For that matter, goblins weren’t supposed to defy or threaten them either.
Baz shouldn’t have deigned to explain himself to her. Junot would have a fit if he saw a son of his treating a goblin as an equal. For that matter, he’d lose all credibility as a commander among his troops if they were to witness him now.
Nevertheless, he said, “I have every right to torture her or to kill her or to keep her locked up in here for-fucking-ever if I want to.”
The goblin looked only as tall as his thighs, and yet she steeled her spine and turned to fully face him, her back to the door, her gaze darting from him to his prisoner and back again.
“You’re already torturing her. That’s what starving her is until she has no option but to be consumed by bloodlust: torture.”
Regret slithered through his gut, but he refused to examine his reaction. Whatever this was between him and his prisoner, it was already fucked up. He was fucked up. He didn’t need more evidence of what he’d already realized. He didn’t like how he felt without the irksome goblin jabbing her knobby fingers in his affairs.
“She makes sure to never fall to bloodlust, you know. She doesn’t want this, not when it’s up to her she doesn’t.”
More regret churned his insides.
The goblin tucked her hands in the front pocket of her frock. “Now you know. She’s a princess as much as you’re a prince. These are no conditions to keep a princess in.”
Baz scowled and crossed his arms. “And do you know I can order you killed for your disobedience?”
Saucy, impudent wench.
“Of course. I figure you can save yourself the trouble of issuing an order and kill me yourself. I came to terms with my fate a long time ago. Loving Sora was never going to be easy.”
No, it wasn’t, he thought before he realized he would. He growled—or was it his monster that did?
