Page 110 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“They won’t kill me.”

She shifted closer. “What if I beguile you?”

“Then you will burst into hives. Whatever sick attraction you have to me you will never fall to it, you only do it to annoy me. Now, arms around me, under the jacket,” I instructed, and she did as told.

She frowned. “You’re wrong. I want to beguile you. You will be beguiled.”

“As you say, Your Highness.” I said, pulling her close to me, her body meeting mine, perfume of flowers circling her. “Hells woman, you are frosted.” I hissed at the block of ice embracing me.

“You wanted to study my back like a map. How is that my fault?” she grumbled.

“Closer,” I ordered, and she shuffled tight in my embrace, her frozen cheek on my chest. I buttoned my jacket sandwiching us together tight. Like key to a lock, she fit perfectly. She was soft and small, flowery, and sweet. Death by a rose, poison, and sorbet. Only a woman, a strange woman.

“My wound,” she hissed, arching her back.

I noted my arm resting over her back and murmured a curse at my carelessness.

We’d both fallen silent for a long while, it was quiet enough that I heard each blink of her lids. I’d thought she’d be the most uncomfortable, but strangely she leisurely laid next to me while I’d gone completely still.

“Why do you have those scars in your palms?” I asked, finally not being able to hold it in.

She took a deep breath. “Maybe lemon drizzle rolls not a lemon cream puff.” She nodded to herself. “Yes, Ken makes the best lemon drizzle rolls.”

I blew a cold breath. “You’re infuriating.”

“And very hungry.” Her head pointed toward the skies. “Heavens, this Adriatian and all his limbs for a lemon drizzle roll.”

I bit my lip hard enough that it almost drew blood, it was becoming harder and harder to suppress how amused she made me at times. My mind begun working at what she had said to me before splitting our ways. If she let them escape, her father would kill her. Was she working behind his back again? She was in the works of something, and I could not exactly pick up what it was.

“Did you know they were working for your father?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Since a while, the family in Kirkwall had been supplying my father Aura from Adriata. He had known about the ex-Lord of Kirkwall, even worked together. A general of his had recruited these men.”

She was definitely messing in her fathers business with aim. “You had no intention on killing the family, had you?”

“No.” She paused, resting her forehead on my chest. “Not then at least.”

“You make horrible threats.”

Her fingers begun moving over my back. “Only because you know they end up in horrible deaths.”

“It is what normally comes after threats.”

“So smart,” her voice soft and teasing enough to put shame on Rehana, the goddess of tempt.

I grabbed her hands. “Enough with that.” Hells.

She giggled and shuffled closer, her body fully pressed against mine. “Oh my, you’re man after all.”

Vexation cursed me quicker than blood and I grasped hold of my anger a second too late before I said, “I bet if I stick my fingers down you I’ll find you equally as woman as I am man.” I was not suppose to feed her teases. I was supposed to catch onto her games. I had planned and devised strategies.

She rose her head, oddly she withheld a smile, her eyes lowering over my lips. “Lucky for you I don’t place bets with losing odds.”

I scoffed. “Your confidence is irritating.” I didn’t know whether she truly had that sick attraction to me or still spun me onto her wickedness.