AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We werereallysick,” I chirped.Smooth—not.
Her cheeks, tinted with frustration, matched the red in her velvet gown. She turned to me, eyes shooting daggers. I was lucky she wasn’t Cursed. “Andyou! Do you have any idea what trouble you caused for me?”
Shit. She knows.Harper and I exchanged worried looks, both of us ignoring the warning in our guts—shrieking to cut and run.
“The king’s advisor refuses—herefuses—to see any of my girls,” the madame spat at me, her tone acidic. She clenched the candlestick holder, her knuckles bone white, the dancing firelight illuminating the lines of the angry, bulging veins threatening to explode out of her hand. I noticed a matching vein protruding from the middle of her forehead. I thought she was going to launch the candlestick at my head, but instead, she let out an aggravated groan and pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she felt a nosebleed coming on, induced by stress. “He says he will only see you.”
What?
My stomach flipped and then it flopped. Or perhaps, it was the other way around.
“He has returned every night, demanding to see you. His men traipse around, barge into private rooms, and leave them a terrible mess in their search for you. It is as if the assholes think they own the place,” she scoffed under breath. “I don’t know what you did, but he has threatened to close Thermes de Luxe down should I not produce you by this Thursday.”
The king’s advisor was threatening to shut the bathhouse down? Clearly, I had not just poked the so-called bear—I had harpooned a grizzly.
I swallowed.
“She isn’t well enough,” Harper exclaimed, trying to cover for me, trying to bucket our way out of my sinking plan.
“Well, that’s a shame, isn’t it? The king’s advisor is here tonight, and I will bedamnedif I let years of hard work be for nothing,” the madame hissed at Harper. She turned to me. “You have two choices, Sage dear. You can come with me on your own, or—” She gestured to the bare-chested brutes standing behind her. “—Maximus and Enricho can drag you there.”
Harper took a protective step in front of me, but I caught her clenched fist and squeezed it gently. “It’s okay. I’ll go with them.”
She turned to me, concern weighing her brow.
“I’ll be fine,” I offered, nodding reassuringly. I squeezed her hand one more time before I followed them down the long, quiet corridor.
Exaggerated moans and breathy laughter echoed around me, the sounds changing ever so slightly with each closed door we walked by, but the crescendo was always the same—overdone and fake.
The madame had me stripped, scrubbed, and decorated—a repeat of before. They adorned my curves in sheer fabric, painted my lips a soft, virginal pink, and scented my skin with rose and gardenia.
After, they paraded me through the halls like some prize, unbred mare en route to the mating stalls.
The madame offered me a withering glare before she slammed the door behind me.
I jumped, startled by the abruptness of it. “Hello?” I asked the all-too-quiet room dipped in the essence of sex, jasmine, and must.
No answer came.
My attention shifted to the doorless frame draped in strings of crystals and beads, wondering what waited for me through there. Candles dotted the floor, their light casting the room in a honey, soft glow, their flickering flame mirroring the sensation in my churning gut.
The air shifted. It cracked. And out from the shadows stepped . . .
“Von?” I asked, not understanding how he could suddenly just appear. Perhaps he had been here all along, my logical side reasoned.
Tonight, he wore all black. And when I say he wore it, I mean he fuckingworeit. His tight leather pants showed off his toned, powerful thighs. His hair, an obsidian mane thrown into a messy topknot, a few strands left out, fell around his face, framing his masculine features which were currently set in stone. Cloaked in darkness, he stalked towards me. “I meant what I said. You were not to come back here.”
“It’s not like I have a lot of choices,” I countered as I stepped back towards the door, my movement driven by the carnal way he looked at me.
“I’m not accustomed to being disobeyed, Kitten.” He raised his arm over my head and pressed it against the door, locking me between two exceptionally hard things—one made of oak and the other of steel. “But as infuriating as I find it—it is your most attractive quality.” He whispered, his breath hot against my ear, “It makes me want to fuck you against this door—make you praise my name so loud that all three realms hear you.”
His words, primal and unadulterated, were like a summoning, coaxing my inner self to embrace her sexuality.
I sunk my teeth into my glossy bottom lip, tugged at it, and then I said, without an ounce of shame, “Then do it.”
Then everything was moving.
His demanding mouth delved to my neck, the tip of his sharp canines grazing against it as he kissed the sensitive skin. I tipped my head back, exposing my neck to him—whatever he wanted, I would let him take. His fingers bunched and gathered my hair as he moved his lips up, over my jaw, and then brought them down to my mouth.
