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“Ada…” His voice emerged as little more than a whisper, almost like a caress to my name. “Your flesh is not untouched. That either makes you a whore or a woman with a husband.”
A flare of heat let my chin rise. “My husband died two summers ago.”
“Without ever giving you a child?”
A sudden emptiness hit my core. How could he know these things? “Life never blessed me with children.”
Punishment for my failings as a woman.
No, not a woman.
An unwoman.
The King’s command scraped over the nape of my neck. “Turn around and climb out.”
Everything in me tensed.
I hadn’t shown my body to any man but John, and only for the first two years of our marriage. “It’s not decent.”
His fingers wrapped around my throat from behind and his lips moved against my temple as he rasped, “There is no part of you I have not yet seen, sensed, or stirred. Whenever you consider disobeying me, know that I can make you. And nothing,nothing, bores me more than to make you.”
I braced myself to face him. Life had stripped most of my pride. Nobody would take the bit that was left, not even him.
I turned…
…and regretted it.
The King radiated hard-edged beauty that made me gasp, his tall physique sculpted into one of virility and strength. Dark lashes crowned gray eyes, something dark flickering in them as they slithered over where I hid my breasts. His roaming gaze left a trail of pebbled skin down my belly, lower, until he lifted his hand—
I sucked in a sharp breath.
His fingers settled on mine, luring my hand from my crotch, holding it up in support as I climbed out. “Who sent you?”
My throat tightened. “Nobody sent me.”
“Do you think me a fool?”
I thought him a rude bastard. “My foot tangled in the mule’s harness, and the beast dragged me from Hemdale. I swear by Helfa the Allfather—”
He gripped my hair, yanking my face so close to his that I could taste the bite of drink that clung to his breath. “Who?”
“Helfa…” I whispered through trembling lips. “The god we pray to.”
“Mortals and their stories.” Liquor mingled with the scent of ash and snow as he peeled back his lips enough to bare white teeth. “You betray the god you were given and burn him at the stake, then you conjure up one of your own? If you need to swear, mortal, swear it on me. Swear it by your skin, your sweat, your scars.”
I nodded as much as his grip allowed, my scalp searing. “I swear it on all that.”
“Mortals swear a great many things, but few prove true.” He released his grip on my hair, only to let his fingers comb down along a strand. “Who do you think stands before you, little mortal?”
My chest curled when his thumb trailed along the swell of my breast. “The King of Flesh and Bone.”
A loud chuckle burst from his lungs. “Ah… am I a king now? Prove it.”
My eyes flicked up to him. “I don’t under—”
“Bow before your king, my little mortal. How about a curtsy? Did the mortal kings banish them from their courts, or am I undeserving of such etiquette?”
My veins heated under the scrutiny of his stare as I curtsied for the first time in my life. Naked.
