“Can I see Ana?” Clutching my hips, I attempt to look older and more serious than my height and stature could ever really pull off. “She might need a friend. I could read to her.”

“She has requested no visitors.”

“Well”—I shuffle— “will you please tell her that I would like to. That I’ll just sit with her.”

The sound of metal groaning draws my eyes to the far side of the courtyard, to a great gate as it opens. My heart leaps into my head and bounces from left to right when he appears. A monster of a man, seven feet at least, carrying a stack of dead animals over his shoulders like a collar.

He stares at me.

The courtyard shrinks.

For a moment, it is only us.

I consider this to be a stolen moment, over too soon, but then he walks toward me, huge, powerful legs taking him faster than I can match my shallow breaths to his predatory stride. His every footfall is a statement, his intent warning the grass beneath his boots.

Breathing nervously, I back up until I hit the courtyard wall. He crowds me against it, uninterested in the others.

The girls are watching.

“My king,” I curtsy, unsure what to do, and the corner of his lip twitches with a smile.

“Did you just curtsy? It is a bit late for formalities.”

Suddenly, Odio’s hovering black shadow captures my attention. As he lands with a thud on the grass behind the king, the weight of nervous gasps rustle even the flowers.

I search behind him, checking the girls, but they are cowering together. The Watchers have the Silk Girls tucked behind them, like I did with Ana the day of the carnival. They would give up their lives for us…

“This isn’t the way it’s done. They will know,” I say, returning my gaze to the king.

“Do you trust your Collective?”

Iris’s face crashes into my mind, then a hallucination of the Silk Wardeness hanging by a broken neck.

No. The word halts on my tongue because Iris can be almost bearable to be around at times and she’s my oldest companion. I don’t want to condemn her this way.

I peer up at him, but our height difference and his close proximity to me make it a hard angle for my neck. My gaze locks on the frozen jowls of a dead beast leaking blood that slides down Rome’s leather armours.

My eyes widen, and I mutter, “Yes. I trust them.”

“Let them suspect, then.” His deep voice draws my gaze up to his heated blue eyes. “I have been thinking about you, little creature.”

Odio begins to pull at his feathers, making a spectacle that blocks the king and me from the girls in the courtyard. I wonder if the beautiful, winged god is trained in securing private moments for the king or if he simply caught a whiff of the gamey, dead animals.

Either way, I decide to revel in the stolen time we have in the lighter hours of the day. “You have?”

“Your moans echo in my mind.”

The heat from his words fire beneath my cheeks, illuminating them with the glow of arousal.

He runs his knuckles down my blushing cheek. “Is that pretty colour for me?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, he slumps the beasts from his shoulders, dropping them to the floor, and I cannot help but notice the contrast between the lush greenery, white flowers, and the bloodied mass.

Behind Rome, Odio halts his pruning at the soft thudding sound. His keen gaze snaps to the gory heap.

Rome clicks his fingers to the side, snatching Odio’s attention. “Not for you. Wait your turn.”

Odio almost sulks, narrowing his beady eyes at Rome in angry defeat while he sharpens his beak on the thin bones between his black feathers.

Rome watches me.

Free from the dead animals, he leans on the stone above my head and dips, his mouth pressing to my forehead. Lips caress my skin, the words they expel stirring the warm pool inside me. “And how do you feel between your pretty thighs now that I have opened you?”

I press my palms to the stone by my thighs, flattened to the wall, cloaked by him, fingers flexing on the rough surface. The stone’s coarse skin reminds me of his rough abdominals pulsing as he thrust. “Swollen, my king.

“I was gentle.”

I know he was.

I could tell in the way he vibrated with restraint as he moved, using energy to control himself, and as his hands pawed at my thighs, idling on the right pressure.

My body is suddenly a furnace.

I reach up and touch the divot at his throat, wiping a crimson smear down the thick column with my thumb. “You're covered in blood.”

He lets me touch him, but my arm shakes as I hold it above my head to continue touching the sweat on his neck, feel the bob of his throat, so utterly virile, it’s dizzying.

“Not mine,” he assures. “Don't worry yourself. The only thing you need to be concerned with is growing my heir. You'll look so pretty swollen and flushed. Pregnancy makes a Silk Girl particularly needy. I imagine you'll spend many hours sitting on my face while I tend to you.”

“You'll tend to me?”

His smirk rattles my heart. “I'm as shocked as you are by my choice of wording, but yes. I feel tasting you will become an addiction of mine. I'll start tonight while you're too sore to take my cock. How does that sound?”

I lower my hand and smile. “Lovely.”

“Show your king where you want his tongue.”

What? My cheeks burn from pink to red.

I lean past him again and deduce that, as I cannot see the others, they cannot see me.

“Do as you’re told.”

With my heart thumping, my fingers trembling, and my core a warm pool of desire, I lift my dress to cup myself over my knickers. “Here, my king.”

His eyes lick over me, darkening in an instant. “You know I need my cum inside you,” he states, his deep timbre, bottomless and dangerous, rumbling behind a bar of teeth that cage his needy bite.

I press harder between my thighs; the lovely pressure squeezes a whimper from me. “Yes.”

His tongue runs along his lower lip, while his eyes scream his intent. “I'll put it there with my fingers tonight, nice and deep between your swollen folds. That is a kindness. But tomorrow, you will take me again.”

“I understand.”

He leans down and lifts the beasts from the grass as though they weigh no more than the white flowers they have crushed. “Behave.”

As Rome strides from the courtyard, Odio takes to the air, leaving me alone, pressed to the wall while the others huddle together in shock.

OceanofPDF.com

Chapter Seventeen

Aster

There is no denying his effect over me. My body wakes way before my mind, warmth flooding my core, my back arching into a greedy mouth, and I’m dreaming, but then…

I’m not.

Batting my lashes open to the back of the veil, a meshed vision greets me at the same time as my consciousness.

He is here.

Between my legs.

I reach down and grip his dark hair, curling my fingers in as his tongue licks up the side of my thigh.

“What happened here,” he asks, a tone as rough as the words spoken. “How, rather, when you’re kept so safe.”

He means the little scars from the branch.

I don’t want to think about Iris.

Not while his breath strokes my skin to prickles of attention, not while his lips approach my core, while the incline of his dangerous kiss arouses me to a wet, wanting mess. I don’t want to answer, but I do. “I don’t remember.”

Condemning my Silk Wardeness further for her carelessness with Iris and me. Had she been a Sired Mother, and Iris and I, babes instead of Silk Girls, and they were injured under her watch, would I feel as angry and vengeful as Rome. I don’t know.

His hand traces my leg, from ankle to the back of my knee, a strangely erogenous sensation. This, paired with his tongue as it climbs, causes me to squirm underneath his body. I feel so small whenever he is near, not just physically, but his presence is vast and concrete.