Page 68 of Golden Queen (Idrigard #1)

"We had been so distracted by our frolicking that we didn't even realize it snowed,” Britaxia said, giving Aben an arch look. “That was the day I decided to stop frolicking with the idiot cousin of my lord.”

"Ha!" Aben said. "You might have decided it then, but you kept coming back for more than a year."

"Did not," she argued. "That was the last time!"

He gave her a lascivious smile. "Remember solstice, Taxia?" he asked, his voice deep and suggestive.

Britaxia's nostrils flared as a grin threatened to raise the corners of her mouth. "Ah, yes, solstice," she agreed, holding Aben’s gaze for a heartbeat. She turned to me. "So, he is right—this one single time. You will never see it happen again," she teased.

The two of them left shortly after, claiming at separate intervals that they were tired and needed to get a good night's rest.

When they had gone up the stairs, I turned to Io questioningly.

"They don't think I know," he said with a grin.

"Are they...a couple?" I asked, finding it hard to puzzle out their relationship.

"Gods no. They fight too much for that. But they frolic often enough," he said.

"Maybe that’s the perfect relationship," I said, thinking about a friendship so close you could even sleep together when you felt like it.

Io huffed a laugh. "Maybe."

We sat in relative silence while I attempted to not be obvious as I drank one after another tankard of ale. I was attempting to preemptively dull the thoughts and memories that would flood me as soon as I was alone in my room.

Io finally narrowed his eyes at me as I signaled the barmaid for yet another refill. "It doesn't help in the long run, you know. And it gets to be a habit that can be hard to break."

I slid my eyes to him and then away, attempting to hide from his discerning dark stare. It annoyed me that he said it even if I knew it was true.

When my cup was refilled, I raised it. "To necromancers," I said irreverently. The ale sloshed around my cup, spilling over onto my hand.

Io didn't laugh. His jaw went tight, eyes darkening with anger. I didn't need to ask if that anger was directed at me. I knew it wasn't.

"I'm fine, really," I said, hoping to soothe that wrathful look on his face. I didn't want to ruin the good mood we had just been enjoying. And I didn't want to see the pity in his eyes that would follow that anger. "I barely remember what they did. I was unconscious for most of it, you know."

He didn't refute my words, but I knew he didn't believe them.

I had already told them enough of the peripheral details of what happened to me to prove the lie.

And even though I left out the specifics of what they had done—and certainly the things they did between my legs, he had seen the evidence of most of it.

He saw my broken body, and he had been there when I sank into that river in abject despair.

When he still did not speak, I pushed my chair back, pasting on a cheerful smile as I faked a convincing yawn. "I'm going to bed," I said. "Otherwise, I'll not make it across the room before I fall asleep."

I started to move away from the table, but he grabbed my wrist. He looked up at me, silent for so long that I narrowed my eyes.

And then he rose. "Come on. Let's go to sleep," he said.

Some kind of wild relief washed through me as he led me from the taproom.

I knew he meant only sleep. I wasn't sure what I would have done if he had not—not in my broken state.

He knew I struggled to sleep alone, and he was giving me what I needed. He did that so often that I sometimes wondered if he had a line of sight directly into my thoughts.

He loaned me a soft white undershirt to sleep in, promising to buy clothes for me in the city the following day.

When I came out of the bathing chamber with the shirt hanging almost to my knees, I found him dressed in a matching one, along with the same style of sleep pants he'd worn that first night when I went to him in the castle.

I expected the memory of that night—and the ones that followed—to bring back some of that dark, wanton desire.

But it only made my heart ache to remember how close we were—how easy it had been to touch him, how it had felt as he ran his thumb across my bottom lip, the calloused ridges rough on the sensitive skin.

I climbed onto the soft mattress of the big bed that had looked so threatening when I had been in the room to bathe, and I waited for him.

He extinguished the lantern with a flick of his finger, and the room fell into shadows.

I felt the mattress sink in under his weight, and then he was beside me, warm and solid. He slid his arm under my head, gathering me to him with the other around my waist.

It was all I ever wanted—to feel that unyielding body behind me. I didn't care about anything else in all the world.

I reached out in the darkness and found his hand—at the end of the strong arm under my head. He curled his long fingers around mine, and I fell asleep.

The dream came, the press of fingers from some unknown assailant, the heat and fire building low in my belly, but then Io curled his arm around me tighter, pressing me into the solid wall of his body, and I was awake. He was there, and the dream did not feel like so much.

I fell back asleep in moments and did not dream again.