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“Then why did you pick me as your date, Nik?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to show you what I’m like when I’m not having to train you,” he answered.
He was completely calm now. His shadows had disappeared almost completely, except maybe a tendril or two still remaining by his feet.
“What is this, Nik? Another one of your tests?” I barked.
He had pushed me physically until my muscles were so sore that I couldn’t move the next day. He had abandoned me fully clothed in the middle of the ocean. He had tried to startle, surprise, scare, frustrate, tease, and intimidate my magic out of me in any number of ways during our training, but whatever he was doing now felt unlike anything he had tried before.
“Are you trying tocharmmy magic out of me now?” I asked skeptically.
The emotion lingering in his eyes was replaced with the devilish intent I was used to.
“So, you think I’m charming?” he teased, looking up at me like I was dessert he had gladly opted for in lieu of a six-course meal.
He tightened his grasp on me, his thumbs digging into the tender part of the flesh inside of my thigh. Just then, a couple of ladies burst into the hallway outside my room, drunk and speaking much too loudly for the late hour.
I jumped up off the table like it was made of hot coals. I didn’t know what the Prince was angling at, but it was time for him to go. When I turned around to tell him as much, Nik was already gone.
32
Luke
James rushed to Al’s side the moment she walked through my parlor’s door. Al wore a long-sleeved clingy golden cotton maxi dress that nearly swept the floor, and she looked happy.
A smile crept onto my face at the sight of her, even though she was holding hands with Cass. James stuck out her left hand with a pride wholly unique to a new bride-to-be and showed Al the ring she now wore on her third finger. Not that Al would have been able to miss the ruby and diamond ensemble that weighed down James’s left hand now.
“You didn’t!” Al said in disbelief.
She scanned the room until she found Rhett kicked back with his arm thrown over the back of the sofa. He raised his eyebrows at her, pleased with himself.
Cass let out a loud whistle. Hooting and hollering and hugs ensued. I still couldn’t believe it myself. The man who had sunk at least a thousand women had sunk to his knees for a single woman, and I hadn’t even been there to see it.
I’d been out of town at the Silver Court when Rhett had proposed. Rhett had explained apologetically to me that his meeting with James’s parents had gone so well that James’s mother was unable to contain her excitement. Rhett had proposed to James within minutes of getting her parents’ blessing.
We’d been celebrating every minute since I’d gotten the news. I didn’t tell Al the news but had left a message for her to come straight to my place from the Golden Court so that she could join in on the fun.
After the initial excitement was over, Cass shrugged his big shoulders and said apologetically, “I would love to stay and celebrate some more, but I have to head back to House Dumont tonight.”
Cass and Al moved to my foyer, hovering right inside my front door while the rest of us dispersed and took our places back on sofas and overlarge chairs we had been lounging on before Al’s arrival.
In response to a particularly sad look from Al, an attempt, no doubt, to get Cass to stay a little longer, Cass said, “You know I have to head out early in the morning, Mand. But I can walk you back if you are ready to go?” he asked hopefully.
Al looked over the room where the rest of us sat. Rhett sat next to James and was already shuffling a deck of cards. Poker was on the table tonight, and I was thinking about whether I would go easy on my friend since it was his big night.Probably not. James sat with her legs tucked underneath her and was in her own world, staring down at her ring admiringly. Karina sat quietly next to me.
“You in, Al?” Rhett yelled over his shoulder, forming a bridge with the cards in his hands.
“Yeah,” Al replied to Rhett. “I’ll walk back with Rhett,” she said, turning back to Cass.
I tried to purposefully zone out of the rest of their conversation. But Cass made it difficult not to notice his departure. He scooped Al into his big body and embraced her in a kiss that ended with her hands entwined in his green hair. Cass looked up from their passionate goodbye with a roguish, shit-eating grin on his face.
“Bye,” James called out with a wave of her ring hand and a big smile still plastered on her face.
“Congrats, again,” Cass waved over to Rhett and James.
“See ya,” I said at the same time Karina quietly said, “Bye.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Cass said. “You’ll be seeing me a lot more from now on.”
