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The prince has me.
I’m shoved forward, the table’s edge slamming into my hip bones. Suddenly clammy, my hands slam down on the edge of the table.
His hand is firm on the back of the neck, keeping me locked between him and the table, his chair topped over on the floor.
I’m utterly still. My eyes, alarmed, are wide and land on the blur of the room straight ahead.
Warmth from his breath tickles the nook of my neck as he leans over me, his head bowed at the shell of my ear. I feel the graze of loose strands of his hair fall over my own face.
His chest presses on my back, each one of his muscles clamping up against my bones. I feel it all; the thickness of his arms, the tension in his rippling chest, the heat of his breath cascading over me.
Grazing his hot mouth along the curve of my neck, he murmurs a softly spoken word against my prickling skin, “Evate.”
My lashes flutter with a panicked blink.
Evate.
It’s a word I don’t recognise.
My kind speak the dokkalf language, our old tongue washed out over generations, but my education is that of a farmer’s daughter. There are a lot of words I don’t know or understand. So when he repeatsevate, his lips moving with the word over my skin, I feel the punch of its mysterious meaning, but it is lost on me.
Keeping one hand on the back of my neck, my breath hitches as his other hand slips off the table to my waist.
Tension bolting my muscles to my bones, my breath is pinned to the base of my throat. His breath grows harsher, as though flooded with battled anticipation, as he runs his hand down my waist, over my hip, then along the curve of my side.
His voice takes a gravelly turn as he says against my neck, “You rule my thoughts.”
The prince’s hand leaves my side, letting free the breath trapped inside of me. It loosens with a gentle breath as a new sensation suddenly touches my side.
A frown creases between my brow.
It’s hard to get a look at what is travelling up my side with the prince’s hand at the nape of my neck, pinning me in place.
Then I feel the icy, sharp edge graze along the back of my arm.
My face falls and, inside my chest, my heart seizes up like a clenched fist.
It’s a blade. A dagger, I think. And it’s coming over my shoulder to the nook of my neck, just below the prince’s mouth.
“Will you still live in my mind if you are dead?” he asks, as though wondering aloud.
My breath turns shaky. Bones have turned to icicles and trembles have sunk into me. I shiver between the prince and the table.
“Please...” the plea comes in a shaky whisper, and I have no shame in begging for my life.
The blade presses more firmly against my skin.
His hand on the back of my neck glides around to my throat where it grips gently—almost tenderly, as tender as his lips on my skin. Something is wrong with me; I shouldn’t feel a flurry of excitement in my belly.
The prince’s mouth travels further up my neck to my jawline, where it wanders for a moment before settling on my cheek. He plants a kiss there, a whisper of one, almost as if it didn’t happen at all.
That flurry grows and I have to fight the flutter of my lashes. More anticipation builds in my body than it ever did with the farmhand in the barn those few times we tussled.
Then he draws back as quickly as he grabbed me.
I don’t think twice.
I’m racing out of the parlour room in a blink, terror in my heart.
