Page 78 of Kneel Before Me

—K

Daphne stared at it in disbelief. The Frisky Sixty had just ended; it hardly seemed like the appropriate moment to go see Kronos. The sight of Maximus, the future king, cock in his hand, was still burned in her brain. He’d been so hard. For her. Daphne attempted to suppress the flush that flooded her face, but it was useless. She couldn’t deny that the sight had turned her on. Neither of them could deny it. Maximus had been just as aroused as she was—if not more so. Daphne wondered if he had touched himself again after she left. Part of her hoped he had. She did not need to slip her fingers between her legs to know that she was wet too. It was an inevitability—an unavoidable truth. The Frisky Sixty had revealed them both.

And now Kronos wanted to see her.

Daphne crumpled the note in her hand. She wanted to tear off her dress, lie on the bed, and touch herself until she came. But Kronos was waiting, and she wanted to see him far more than she wanted to think about Maximus. What if something was wrong? Or, more enticingly, what if he was jealous? He’d seemed that way earlier, asking whether she would undress for the prince. She hadn’t undressed for Maximus. But she might as well have. Perhaps she hadn’t revealed her skin, but she’d revealed herself in other ways.

Daphne didn’t even know why she’d done it. The sight of him naked before her had simply been too tempting—too appetizing to resist. It wasn’t that she’d wanted to touch him. That hardly mattered to her. She’d wanted to control him—to see what she could make him do. It was a power she’d never wielded before, and she was eager to wield it again. Usually men were the ones telling Daphne what to do, and she always did it. Tonight was the opposite. She’d been in a position of power, and she’d liked the way it felt. Now all she wanted was to feel even better.

Without a second thought, Daphne grabbed her coat and began the journey to the caves. It was a bitterly cold night, and by the time she reached the wall, she was shivering.

Kronos was waiting for her when she arrived, standing with the fire crackling behind him. The moment she arrived he turned and disappeared into the passageway. Daphne followed, her heart beating out of her chest. So they were going to his chambers again. That meant that whatever the reason he’d summoned her, it was important enough that he did not want to have the conversation out in the open. Daphne stayed one step behind Kronos the entire way to his chambers. He opened the door, waited until she was inside, then closed it after her.

“Did you undress for him?” he asked immediately.

“Whatever happened to hello?”

Kronos crossed his arms. He was shirtless, wearing the same low linen trousers she’d seen him in before. Daphne thought about how different his body was compared to Maximus’s—how the basilisk was a monument of breathtaking angles and muscle. Truly beautiful. The body of a boy versus the body of a man.

“Did you undress for him?” Kronos repeated.

“Is this why you called me here? Just to ask that?”

“Daphne,” he said, his voice becoming sharp. “Answer me.”

There was a hint of something in his command. Anticipation. Or perhaps fear.

Daphne crossed her arms too. She considered lying, just to see his reaction but something stayed her tongue. “No.”

Kronos looked surprised. In a wild moment of realization, Daphne wondered whether he actually believed that she wasn’t fucking Maximus.

“Would you care if I had?” she asked quietly.

He stiffened, then squared his shoulders. “I care that you win the competition.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it is the truth.”

Daphne knew that tone. It made her want to push him—to see how far she could take this. So she said, “He undressed for me.”

Kronos’s eyebrows shot up, then quickly returned to a neutral position. “Is that so?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you like what you saw?”

If she’d been sure before, now she was positive. An apathetic man would not ask such a question. There was no doubt in her mind that Kronos cared whether she liked what she saw. Daphne considered how to answer. Had she liked what she saw? She had. That was the truth. But not as much as what she saw before her now.

“I didn’t hate it,” she said primly.

Kronos let out a harsh bark of laughter. “That is hardly high praise.”

“It’s hardly your business.”