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With his free hand, he grasped my neck and yanked. I whipped the dagger aside moments before his soft, warm lips slammed into mine, delivering a bruising kiss. All thoughts emptied from my head. All but one: need. His tongue thrust in, demanding mine, but I pulled, and with the knife returned to his throat, he had no choice but to wait. Who was this prince that he could so thoroughly brand himself on my body and mind without my permission? I should have known he’d do something so un-princely he’d leave me speechless; it was, after all, his preferred method of distraction.
Real or fake, I no longer cared.
I nudged his mouth, skimmed his lips with mine, and when he tried to bite, I pulled back, eliciting a moan. He wanted this, me, all of it. I dropped the dagger with a clatter, and he lunged. His hand—the one not clamped on the back of my neck—twisted in my hair. He hooked a leg around mine, trapping me close, and pulled me into a devastating kiss. His tongue lured mine, hips grinding, and it was all I could do to meet his ferocious attack with my own unhinged response. Shock, hatred, fear, desperate lust burned the truth of me—of us—away. We were two men again, two strangers, whose bodies sang for the other.
He writhed, tore from the kiss, and tilted his head back. I skimmed my tongue down his offered throat, over where I’d held the blade moments before. He shivered, moaned, and his hips bucked, rubbing his stiff cock against my thigh.
“Yes…” I moaned. Needing this, needing him so much I couldn’t think. Arin, under me, in me, I wanted that more than I’d wanted anything.
Just as I began to think I might get my hands on that princely cock soon, he thrust his hands between us and shoved, driving us apart.
Breathless, ablaze, painfully erect, I wiped a thumb over my lips and looked up at the riddle that was the Prince of Love.
Blood dribbled from a cut in his cheek. When he’d lunged for the kiss, I hadn’t moved the dagger away fast enough.
I swept my fingers under the cut, collecting a scarlet drop, and licked it clean. Arin stared, eyes wide, breathing hard. Whatever was going on in that pretty head of his, he couldn’t deny his desperate need to fuck me. He’d been the one to begin this between us, not I.
Heat flushed his face and with a flutter of lashes, he glanced away. He’d be even more beautiful on his back, legs spread around my hips. That startling image stole my breath. I needed space to clear my head of his sweet scent. He knew who I was, knew why I was here. Yet he’d offered help, or at least to use me to find the imposter. Such a thing was… unexpected.
“What do you truly want from me?” I whispered.
“Just your help. And I’ll keep you safe, here, in my court.”
“So sweet, those princely lies.” I scooped up his dagger, tossed it in the air, and caught it by the handle, then tucked it up my sleeve. “I’m keeping this. Call it a promise, from you to me.” I had to leave, to get some distance between us, before these emotions churning inside became a weakness.
Walking away from all he offered, from a man who’d made me want to forget who I was… It was the hardest thing I had to do. But he’d already proven he could not be trusted. I couldn’t fall into this trap, because that was surely what it was. Princes made of honey and sunshine did not want creatures with darkness in their heart.
“Lark?”
I glanced back. His hair and clothes were a mess, his face cut up, and his cock hard. “This did not happen. You and I, it doesn’t exist outside of this beach. If we’re to catch the Court of Pain’s imposter, this must be our secret.”
I remained unconvinced there even was an imposter, besides me, but someone had killed the queen. “Of course there is no us. In what world does a fool fuck a prince? It was all a dream, Your Highness.” I bowed a farewell and stumbled back along the tunnel, convincing myself over and over that I couldn’t go back there, take him back to the beach, and kiss him, stroke him, make him quiver and moan and beg.
The time would come, and when it did, I would savor him like a fine wine. Because he knew almost everything about me, held all the cards, but one. He wanted me, more than he’d wanted anything in his life. He always had, even knowing what I was. In his honest heart, the man he truly was believed he could save me, and save his court.
We didn’t have long. When the Court of Pain came for me—which they would—the Prince of Love’s fantasy would be over, and so would his court.
CHAPTER9
Iwas supposed to dance and lie and distract for Arin to help expose the imposter, those had been his demands in exchange for himkeeping me safe.
But Arin didn’t attend dinner that night—not unusual, for him. Nobody spoke of the queen, as though she’d never existed. It was easier to live in denial. The king grumbled on, his gaze on the serving girls. And the courtly dance continued without the prince.
But as my final night in the palace came around, and Arin continued to be elusive, I wondered if I’d dreamed the beach, the moonlight, his desperate kiss, and our prickly truce.
If I was going to be his distraction while he searched for the imposter, then I’d need more from him than his absence.
But it wasn’t just our apparent deal that had me questioning what I’d agreed to in that tunnel. Hope was a dangerous thing.
I’d done without hope for a long time. But Arin, the real Arin, not the icy, aloof, beat-me-to-prove-a-point Arin, had sparked a tiny fragment of hope in my heart. What if we could do the impossible, and somehow work together to stop the imposter, or perhaps go so far as to stop the Court of Pain from undermining the Court of Love? I’d never hung my hopes on anyone but myself. And now the prince had seeded hope inside me, like a weed.
What if this silence was his plan? What if his game was to give me hope and then forget me? Perhaps he was as cruel as he’d had me believe?
Done with waiting, I swept through the royal wing, to Arin’s chamber door, and slipped a written poem beneath.
I was needed back in the ballroom, to spin and dance and charm anyone who cared to listen. But the riddle of the Prince Behind the Door had sunk its claws into me. And so I lingered, like a kicked puppy. Eager for its master’s love, no matter the shape it took. As time ticked on, I paced, then leaned against the wall and picked at my nails.
This was my final night. Tomorrow, I’d leave. Or not. That decision hinged on one infuriating prince.
