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“That’s okay. I don’t like ‘em that sweet, anyway,” he crooned.
He had traveled directly behind me, whispering over my shoulder. And it had been exactly what I had been waiting for. Waiting for him to get close enough for me to push him back with the shielding power we had been working on. I seductively snaked my leg in between his, my bare skin rubbing against the silkiness of his suit pants. He didn’t move. He didn’t say anything.
And then I hooked my leg across his ankle at the same time that I pushed at him with my power. He tripped, landing on his ass, and I noted that even when I caught him off guard, he still managed to make it seem like it had been his idea to simply take a relaxing seat on the ground for a moment.
Before he hit the ground, he was laughing. It was the first time I had ever heard him laugh. His laugh was deep like his voice, and it felt like it was reverberating through me, breaking through my frustration. I looked down at him, the satisfaction on my face plain.
And then he swiped my legs from under me. I fell with much less grace than he had, directly on top of him. I grunted on impact. It was like falling into a solid brick wall.
The next thing I knew, I was under him, caged by his arms and legs. He wasn’t touching me, but I felt that familiar feeling of his darkness pressing against me. Black tendrils of shadows rolled off him. His tanned face hovered over mine. I licked my bottom lip.
“Gloating will get you killed,” he said, his tone indicating that playtime was over and my training for the day had begun.
He popped off me and then pulled me up after him. Then his hands began to work the buttons of his dress shirt. I stared at his bare chest. Not just his muscles, although his abs were so defined it looked as if they had been individually chiseled. But it was the tattoos that covered his body that caught my eye. He was covered in as much ink as Cass, maybe more.
He stood in front of me, his deep green shirt unbuttoned and exposing his entire torso. And then he reached for his belt, his large hand grasping the end of the leather and tugging it to the side. He pulled the belt through the loops of his pants in one solid motion and then threw it to his side like he was throwing it to the ground, but it disappeared into darkness instead.
“How do you do that?” I asked.
I had seen him put things away and bring them out from nowhere, but I didn’t know how.
“I don’t have to travel my entire body to a place,” he explained, taking off his shirt and suit coat together. He reached into the darkness, disposing of them. His tattoos continued down his left arm, all the way to his wrist. The tattoos on his right arm stopped around his sculpted biceps. He flipped open the button on his pants with a single hand, his hand going to the zipper. I should have looked away, but I didn’t. He stepped out of his pants one leg at a time. There was a large tattoo covering the top of his right thigh.
“It’s like folding these pants,” he continued, standing in nothing but his boxer briefs.
I noticed those, too, were a dark emerald green, like almost everything he wore. I tried not to notice the dip in his hips and how the muscles of his lower abs formed little channels leading straight into his waistband. But he was holding the pants he was using to demonstrate the concept of traveling right in front of himself.
“I can bring the two ends together and then I can just reach right in and take what I need. This is from my closet downstairs,” he said.
He turned around and reached into his closet again. Hopefully for some clothing to puton. He was out of items of clothing that could be taken off. His back was so muscular, he looked like an upside-down pear, his broad shoulders tapering down to a narrower waist. His back wasn’t as covered in tattoos as the front of his torso; instead, he had a tattoo that went down almost the entirety of his spine and then his tattoos from the front looped around his ribs and his sides.
He pulled a plain white t-shirt over his head and turned back to me, running his hand through his dark hair.
“I didn’t peg you for the type to be covered in ink,” I said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, princess,” he retorted.
He worked me hard for the rest of the afternoon, running through hand-to-hand drills. He didn’t push me to try my magic again. I found myself dripping in sweat at the end of the day, the hair around my face wet and clinging to my skin. I was already dreaming about a shower when he called an end to our day.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked. He didn’t offer me his hand like he always did when we were about to travel.
I ran my thumb across my bottom lip, thinking. I was trying to resolve my internal conflict over having made an issue out of him touching me when we traveled and not wanting to feel sick again from traveling without his touch. I took a deep breath, steeling myself to ask him for his hand, or an arm, or anything to keep me tethered to him when we disappeared into the darkness once more.
He reached his hand out to me before I had to ask. He pulled me to his side, wrapping his arm around my lower back, his hand resting on my hip. His hand was so big that his thumb wrapped around my lower back, almost matching up with one of the dimples I had there, and his fingers curled around my side and to my front. We popped out of existence, and for the short time that we were consumed by the darkness, it was comforting and cool. It pressed at the edges of our interlocked bodies and then we were back in my room at House Rein.
25
Alarie
Nik showed up on my balcony like he had done every couple of days for the last month or so to pick me up for my lesson. It was the most consistency I’d had since I had shown up at the High Court. His reliability and the repetition of it all was almost comforting now.
He was in training clothes, which meant that he’d only come to the High Court to retrieve me. He was wearing a pair of forest green shorts, which was different for him.
The tattoo on the top of his right thigh peeked out from the bottom of his shorts. It had grown and now spread down, wrapping around the back of his calf. The new addition was a kind of pattern that reminded me of the shadows that often unfurled at the Prince’s feet. Except the tattoo was green and blue, instead of black, which made me think of ocean waves crashing into and splashing up his muscular legs.
I was dressed and ready for training as well. I wore a pair of dark, textured green leggings and a white sports bra with a loose white tank tied in the back. I’d grown fond of the supportive yet comfortable clothes I wore for training and would sometimes wear them even on days when I was not expecting Nik to pop onto my balcony.
“Ready, princess?” he asked, his hand held out for mine.
