He saved Tommy from a well, pulled a kitten out of a tree... Seriously, was there any good deed this guy hadn’t done? No wonder the Sionnachans were so loyal to him. It wasn’t just out of fear of his abilities, but apparently out of love. Or maybe some combination of both.

I tried to keep a placid look on my face. This was my future husband Ashken was telling me about, and I was supposed to love him, too. Even more than the Sionnachans did.

“Having a history lesson, are you, bride?”

Ashken and I both spun towards the door. Ashken flattened his ears.

“Welcome home, my lord! Welcome home!”

The old man seemed genuinely happy that Wylfrael was back, which only added to the idea that the Sionnachans really did adore him. I need to look just as excited.

I beamed at Wylfrael, and echoed Ashken’s greeting of, “Welcome home!”

Wylfrael looked at me in astonishment, and my smile took on a slightly wicked slant. See? I can play the good little wife.

He cleared his throat, brows pinching downward for a moment before he smoothed his expression into something that could maybe, very generously, be called pleasant.

This guy said I would have to play my part well, but so far I’m doing way better than him!

This excited me. Made me feel powerful. I was, for once, more in control than Wylfrael. I wanted to hold onto that power. To make Wylfrael see I wasn’t stupid, wasn’t weak, wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

I sauntered over to him, clasping my hands in front of me as if I were completely entranced by what was before me. Like I was praying to the god the Sionnachans considered him to be.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I breathed.

Wylfrael’s nostrils flared, his gaze intensifying with some unnamed emotion.

I halted, standing very, very close to him. I stopped just short of touching him, deciding I wasn’t quite that brave yet, and gazed up at him with cavity-inducing sweetness from beneath my lashes.

His jaw worked, his eyes a bright storm. He didn’t seem capable of speaking at the moment, which would have made me burst into laughter if Ashken weren’t here.

Torrance one, Wylfrael zero.

“The lord is so taken with his bride-to-be that he cannot even speak!” Ashken said happily from nearby. “Ah, my lord, I always heard it was the same with your own father. That he’d grow silent and look at Sashkah just like that.”

My smile turned pinched.

Well, shit. He was actually convincing Ashken with this brooding, silent treatment? I had to turn into a simpering idiot to hold up my end of things, but all he had to do was glare at me?

Whatever. I wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of honouring our agreement. I’d be the most obnoxiously loving human this alien god ever could have imagined.

My annoyance turning into courage, I reached forward, deciding to touch him after all. He was dressed in his usual fashion, with black boots, tight leather trousers, and a dark leather vest. I drew my fingertips gently, like a grazing breath, down the bare strip of skin on his chest that showed between the two sides of his vest. When I got lower, reaching his stomach, his abdominal muscles clenched. Something in my own stomach coiled in response.

Wylfrael’s hand snapped up to grip my wrist. I froze, wrenching my gaze upward in questioning anger. Don’t you fucking dare ruin the illusion of this. I’m only just getting started.

Still, he didn’t speak. He didn’t drop my hand either. Instead, he raised it to his mouth. I thought he was maybe about to plant some kind of chaste, chivalrous kiss on my knuckles, but my breath left my lungs in a hot sigh when instead, he turned it over and brushed his lips over my palm.

Whatever had been already growing warm and tight in my stomach strengthened, my entire core squeezing at the irritatingly exquisite sensation of Wylfrael’s mouth on my palm. He let his eyes fall closed, and I gawked at his face as he began to kiss along my screaming skin. He reached my sensitive inner wrist, and I let out a shameful peep of a sound when the kiss grew wet, his tongue sliding downward in a heated, silky stripe.

At the sound I made, Wylfrael’s eyes snapped open. There was something new in his gaze, something dark and savage, something that made my nipples prickle and my heartrate skyrocket. His mouth was open against my wrist, fangs grazing my skin, a reminder that he could bite down, that he could crush me if he wanted to.

But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Not when he was supposed to love me. Not when he needed me.

Heat flooding my cheeks, I refused to pull away. We were frozen in a tableau, each of us testing the other. His mouth, open against my wrist, his eyes on mine. Trying to steady my suddenly harsh breathing, I held his gaze in silent challenge.

He started to suck. And when a gush of arousal dampened the place between my legs, I learned that I had made a very, very big mistake.

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OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Wylfrael

I have made a gross miscalculation.

It was a brief spark of a thought, quickly extinguished in a tide of hungering sensation.

Curse this woman.

Curse her challenging eyes, now half-closed in a feverish daze. Curse her succulent skin, the fragrant waft of her scent, the little panting sounds she made that went straight to my groin. She’d gone pliable in my hold, under the stroking of my tongue and grazing of my teeth, her pride and daring melting away like the last snows of spring.

I cursed myself, too. Cursed my body for not withstanding this, for not maintaining the cool distance I so badly needed. My cock was hard and urgent and aching, leaving me feeling as out of control as an untried youth.

“I’ll just... I’ll just slip out, then,” Ashken said gruffly from very near to us. I froze, and Torrance’s arm went rigid in my grasp. I hadn’t noticed Ashken getting so close. I was entirely beguiled by Torrance and her ridiculously breakable, absurdly kissable wrist, lost to everything else.

I wanted to drop her arm, like it was something repellant I’d found in my hold quite by mistake. But that wouldn’t exactly look like the act of a loving husband. Instead, I carefully detached my mouth from her skin and lowered her arm. She tugged slightly, but I didn’t let go, instead sliding my grip until I held her hand. She inhaled sharply when my fingers settled around hers.

Oh, no, my little bride. I’m not letting you go that easily.

“It’s alright, Ashken. We are finished here. Aiko and Shoshen have already started bringing everything to my chamber in the Eve Tower. We will go meet them there.”

“Everything? What’s everything?” Torrance asked, her breath shaky.

“You’ll see.”

I pulled my weak-limbed, panting bride out of the library, then upstairs to the closest tunnel leading to the Eve Tower. Neither of us said a word the entire way. As I held her hand, I tried desperately not to notice how small and warm it was, how delicate her fingers, fingers so short I doubted they’d even reach all the way around my –

No.

That was the only internal response I could manage. No.

No, Wylfrael, do not go any further, for that way lies madness you will never claw your way back from.

I could not let this become anything other than exactly what it was – a fake marriage. An arrangement. A deal with a desperate woman who hated me, and whom I was not particularly fond of, either.

But when I’d sucked her pretty skin, she had not looked at me like she’d hated me. She’d looked at me, with those cursedly beautiful snow and honey eyes, like I was on the verge of making her come undone.