Page 13 of Fae-King It (Mystical Matchmakers #5)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The next morning, Dominique woke to sunlight streaming through the window…and a naked man in her bed. She stared at the ornate ceiling, painted to resemble a bright blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds.

Her eyes wanted to wander over to Ronan, but she forced herself to shut them. Last night was a mistake. A huge mistake.

She’d let someone under her skin, something she hadn’t done in decades.

Their relationship was supposed to be in name-only. They weren’t even married yet and she’d already fallen into bed with him.

As she lay there, castigating herself, the door to her room flew open, smacking against the wall. Dominique jerked upright in the bed, her eyes wide. She clutched the sheet to her chest because she was as naked as Ronan. An obnoxious feminine cackle accompanied a swirl of silks and perfume as her sisters, Monique and Frederique, swept into her room.

“You’ve been holding out on us, sister!” Monique all but shrieked.

Her sisters stopped moving abruptly, their eyes bugging out in their heads as they stared at the bed. If she wasn’t so appalled by their entry, Dominique would have been amused at the expressions on their faces. She looked over at Ronan, noticing that most of his body was on display. The sheet pooled in his lap, hiding his dick, but one leg and hip were completely bare. His abdomen flexed as he propped himself up on one elbow and glared at the two females.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he roared.

When the two women just stood in silence, staring at him, he jerked the blanket over his leg and reached out one long arm for his pants.

“Get the fuck out!”

Her sisters still didn’t move. Instead, they stood there, still silent, and blinked rapidly. Dominique could relate. The sight of a mostly naked Ronan left her speechless as well.

“Get the fuck out now , or I swear I will have you stripped to the skin and whipped in the courtyard for your insolence!” His bellow echoed throughout the room and likely this entire wing of the castle.

That got her sisters moving. Monique and Frederique squeaked, scurried out of the room, practically tripping over their own feet, and slammed the door shut behind them.

Ronan threw the blanket back, turned so his legs were over the side of the bed, and yanked his pants up his legs. Then, he stalked over to the door and locked it with a flick of his wrist.

Dominique collapsed back on the pillows, closed her eyes, and flung an arm over her face. She focused on taking deep breaths and remaining calm. It had begun. Her family had arrived, and they were going to do everything they could to get her under their thumb again. She could see all her hard work to escape them being flushed down the toilet right in front of her eyes.

It was difficult to corral her surging emotions. This was why she despised losing her grip on her control. It was almost impossible to stuff all those feelings back into the box where she kept them.

“I’ll handle them.” Ronan’s words were quiet, but they were as heavy and hard as granite.

“You’ll try. And so will I, but even after knowing them for over four decades, they still manage to surprise me with the depth of their depravity and the cruelty of their schemes.”

“I’ll handle them,” he repeated, his tone more gravelly than before.

Dominique could hear her mother’s voice coming from the hall. She sighed again, climbing out of bed. “Do me a favor. Don’t eat or drink anything that you don’t prepare yourself or watch its preparation. And don’t let them catch you alone. If you do, immediately go somewhere with witnesses.”

He cocked his head. “I’ll watch my back. And yours.”

Ronan turned, his head swiveling as he looked for his shirt. Dominique could see the faint shimmer of white scar tissue between his shoulder blades and on his lower back.

“What happened to your back?” she asked. It had to have been something horrible to leave scarring like that. Fae healed quickly and rarely developed scars unless it was from a traumatic injury.

He froze, his body facing the door that led to his bedroom. “Nothing.”

She walked closer, ignoring the fact that she was still naked, and lifted a hand to trace one of the thin lines of pale skin. “It looks like scarring,” she murmured. “What happened?”

Ronan turned to face her, his expression utterly cold and devoid of emotion. “I was whipped with an iron-tipped crop.”

She gaped up at him. He was the crown prince and the heir to the throne. Surely no one would whip him, much less intentionally scar him with iron. Wounds caused by iron weapons weren’t lethal to fae, but they were more effective than any other material.

“Who whipped you? And why in the hell would they whip you?” she asked, feeling anger rising in her chest. She didn’t want to care, but she did.

“My father whipped me.” His tone was wooden and frigid as ice. “It was my punishment for angering an enchantress enough to curse me and the little girl who was with me.”

Dominique jerked back, watching as he caught sight of his shirt and headed toward it, putting his back to her again. She stared at the scars in horror. This close to him, she could see how they crisscrossed over his shoulders and lower back. He must have sustained twenty or thirty lashes of the crop that were hard enough to break his skin and cut deep into the muscle. She wanted to count them, but the idea of doing it made her stomach turn.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry that happened to you because of me.”

He tugged his shirt over his head. “It wasn’t your fault,” he finally said, his back still to her. His voice was gruff but quiet. “We were both children. How could we have understood the consequences of our actions?”

As he said the words, it sounded as if he meant them. Considering his anger at her had gotten her into this mess, she had difficulty believing it.

“Still, if I hadn’t?—”

Ronan approached her and pulled her into his arms. “All you did was ask to see the forest around the castle. It’s something other guests have requested numerous times when they come here for the first time. It wasn’t your fault. I blamed you for years, but I can’t any longer.”

She took a shuddering breath, her body shivering against his. “You’re not the only one with scars from that day,” she admitted. “The only difference is that mine aren’t visible.”

He stiffened, his arms tightening around her. “What do you mean?”

She looked up at him, preparing to tell him the truth. To let him even deeper beneath her guard. It would be just as big of a mistake as sleeping with him, but he’d made himself vulnerable with her. She knew how difficult that was for a man like Ronan to lower his shields.

Before she could speak, her sisters lost what little patience they had and began banging on the door.

“We’ll talk about this later,” she said.

He opened his mouth as though he wanted to argue, but her mother’s voice rang out, as her knuckles cracked against the door. “Dominique Jeanne Proxa, open the door this instant. We need to talk.”

Ronan glared at the door and magic sparked in his irises. Shadows seeped from his skin, twisting and writhing down his arms and hands. He looked back at her and Dominique could see that he didn’t want to agree, but he finally relented.

He released her. “Do not leave this room without me. I’m going to shower, and I’ll be back in a half hour.”

“I won’t leave without you.”

“And let me handle your mother and sisters right now.”

Dominique watched as he strode over to the door, opening it halfway and planting himself between the edge of the door and the frame. “Cease your noise.” While he wasn’t yelling any longer, his voice was still loud enough to drown them all out.

“Dominique is getting ready for breakfast. She will meet you in the dining room in an hour.”

Her mother sputtered for a moment, but Ronan didn’t give her a chance to find her words. “You will go to the dining room to wait, or I will have you escorted off the grounds. Have I made myself clear?”

After a long pause, Dominique heard her mother’s voice. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Ronan didn’t wait for her sisters’ agreement. He shut the door with a bang and locked it again.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said, stalking back toward her. “We’ll shower together in here.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust your mother or sisters not to barge in here despite the fact that I issued a directive. And I’m not giving them a chance to snoop in your room.”

Dominique wanted to roll her eyes at his show of high-handedness, but she also appreciated that his first action upon her family’s arrival was to shield her. Just like he promised he would.

She followed him into her adjoining bathroom, wondering how long he would try to act as her protector. While no one had ever bothered before, she doubted he would last long.

Not against the steamroller that was her family.