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Why did he do this with me?She was happy about it, she just wanted to know why.

A small frown creased her brow when he gently settled her to her feet. She almost lost her footing, her legs trembling. He steadied her by her hip with the hand still under her skirt.

She gave a gasp when she felt something almost burningly hot tickle her where his thumb was placed right below her navel. It was gone before she could react properly and then he dropped his hand away.

She lifted her arms so that her ruined dress would roll back up, scraping against her now sensitive nipples. She was relieved that he didn’t pull away completely, that he didn’t just turn and walk away now that they were done.

It made her wonder what the possibility of this meant.

Does he feel something for me?Not love, she didn’t think something like that, but more like care, tenderness, closeness. Was he beginning to mirror the tiny emotions she had already started to feel and had been pushing away?

She had liked this, had enjoyed their moment of intimacy together. He’d also made her come to the point she almost crawled out of her own skin.

“Why did you...?” She couldn’t finish her sentence, having to clear her throat because of how croaked her voice was from screaming out.

“Because you are here, and I could scent your desire,” he answered with a grin.

His face was pleased, his words had been spoken softly, but it felt like he had doused her with cold water within an instant. The warmth she had been feeling in her chest turned into a spike of gut-wrenching regret.

Her eyes didn’t pool with tears, but she could feel them dotting along her eyelashes. With her hand clutching the top of her dress to keep it from falling down, Amalia turned from him to storm in the direction of her room.

His hand grabbed her wrist to stop her and forced her to turn around.

“Why are you angry with-”

He didn’t get to finish.

As he spun her, Amalia let her hand fly, and she purposely slapped him across the face. She wrung her other hand out of his hold.

His shock made him let go.

Before she could even get a step away, he lunged forward and grabbed her hair into a tight fist, pulling her up to her toes by it.

Yet his voice was a menacing kind of quiet as he said, “Do not strike me unless you want to be struck yourself.”

His nose was bunched into the snarl she was used to seeing and could usually make fade. Amalia didn’t care right then, not when she felt the way she did. She managed to get her hair loose by prying his hand away, but she knew she ripped a few strands in the process.

She fell back a step when free.

“I am not some whore that you can use because I am convenient and mistakenly felt desire!” She wasn’t sure if it was a scream, a yell, or a screech, but it sounded like a horrible mixture of all three.

He reared his head back, his snarl turning into a wide-eyed, shocked stare. Probably from how she said it, rather than what she said.

Then she walked to her room, half-running between certain steps.

Amalia wanted distance from him to deal with this terrible feeling that had risen inside her when only a moment before she had felt something wonderful and tender. She wanted to wash herself of this so she could no longer feel its evidence, especially since she could feel semen and her own orgasms trickling between her thighs.

Chapter 18

After her bath, Amalia laid under the furs spread across her bed for a long while. She didn’t feel like reading, or sleeping, or anything for that matter.

She wanted nothing more than to lay there quietly. To hide from him, from the world.

That was until she heard the crack of thunder echoing loudly and then the sudden outburst of heavy pelting rain shortly after.

Like any Witch who was feeling misery, she eventually felt called by it and rose from the bed. She didn’t even care to duck out to see if the Dragon was around when she entered the tunnel. She just walked forward until she could see the sheen of the ward that wouldn’t let her outside to greet the storm.

She sat down a little behind it to watch the rain fall and quickly pool at the entrance of the cave. The spark of lightning filled the sky right before it gave a bellowing roar that would make most shriek in terror at the loudness.