Page 16 of Kneel Before Me

“It is.”

“Very well.”

He stood, and she followed suit. They walked to the head of the path together, and the moment the icy air hit her skin, Daphne shivered. She could have sworn Kronos reached for her, but he must have curbed the impulse immediately, because he stopped at the head of the trail, his arms firmly behind his back.

Daphne stared up at him, utterly at a loss for words. Much of what she’d been taught about the basilisks had been wrong. They were not bloodthirsty or cruel. Kronos had noticed her hunger and attempted to address it. He had pushed her intellectually but not physically. He was nothing she could have predicted.

“You will return tomorrow night,” he said.

An order.

“Fine,” she said back. It was clear she didn’t have a choice.

Kronos held her gaze. Then he dipped his head in a strange imitation of a bow, turned, and disappeared into the darkness.

CHAPTER THREE

Daphne

The moment Daphne got home from the caves, she went straight to her room to touch herself.

It wasn’t the way she’d expected to end her evening, and yet after meeting Kronos, there was no other possible course of action. Daphne imagined what it would be like to pull down his trousers, to behold the cock he was so proud of. Surely, it was impressive. The outline she’d seen already was enough to intrigue her. She wanted to see the entire thing. She remembered what Kronos had said he would do to impress her: I would put my cock in your pussy. Then she pictured him doing it.

She wondered if Kronos was doing the same.

The next day was spent helping her mother with her work. Daphne came from a long line of seamstresses. Customers brought their coats that needed mending, their socks that needed darning. From a young age, Daphne had learned how to fix things. It was easy to lose herself in the rhythm of sewing, to understand life just one stitch at a time. On days like these, she was grateful for the distraction.

By the time it was evening, she was utterly distraught. Nothing she did soothed her anxiety—no amount of chores or sewing was enough to quiet the maelstrom in her mind. All Daphne could think about was Kronos.

She traversed the trail to the caves with a surety she did not understand, putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as she could. When she reached the base of the mountain, she paused. Daphne knew she was being stupid, that she was acting like a schoolgirl with a crush. There was no worse thing to be around a basilisk. And for some reason, she wanted him to respect her, to view her as an equal. It was an absurd desire, and she tried to suppress it. But as she entered the cave, she found that she couldn’t. She was so eager to see him—to feel his eyes on hers.

He looked the same as he did the night before: regal, proud, sinfully gorgeous. His long wavy hair was thrown back over his shoulders, his golden eyes piercing the air between them.

“Daphne,” he said. Her name from his lips was like a church bell. It called to her.

“Kronos,” she said back.

“How are you this evening?”

Nervous. Terrified. Absolutely out of her mind.

“Fine.”

He nodded. “Good.”

There was a pause.

Then Kronos extended his hands to her, palm up. “Will you join me?”

Daphne looked down at his hands, which were unreasonably enormous. She noticed he had a unique pattern of freckles—twelve on each palm, three beneath every finger except for his thumbs.

It was such a specific arrangement of pigment that she paused to stare at it, not even realizing that the silence had dragged until he said, “Daphne?”

Her gaze snapped up to his. “Yes?”

“Will you join me?” he asked again.

“Of course,” she said quickly. “Sorry.”