Page 11

ELINOR

The clock chimes ten as Alex leads me into the empty chamber with the hidden panel. One more hour. Each second bleeds away too quickly, chipping away at my joy.

“Why do you look sad, Sunshine?”

I giggle at his silly nickname. “Why did you call me that?”

“Because you are as warm as a summer day.” He brushes a kiss against my temple. I hold out his jacket and watch him shrug into it, his shoulders moving beneath the fine linen shirt. Part of me mourns seeing him cover up.

Fleetingly, I imagine a world where I don’t wake up alone in a freezing attic every morning. Instead, I’d sleep warm and safe next to him. I’d awaken to see him dress for the day. I can only imagine what he looks like beneath the shirt and waistcoat, and now, the velvet jacket.

My brow pleats as a discordant detail jumps out at me. I’ve spent so many years washing and mending my sisters’ finery that I can recognize quality tailoring when I see it. His blue waistcoat is silk brocade with gold buttons.

Not brass. Gold.

His shirt is the finest cambric I’ve ever seen, with what appear to be carved pearl buttons.

I’ve bought similar ones for my stepsisters.

Alex’s are thin polished discs, so delicate that they must have been very expensive.

A Caldrithonian luxury that few servants could afford.

Perhaps one very high up in the castle hierarchy. But that doesn’t explain the waistcoat.

The jacket’s quality doesn’t match the rest of his clothing. The cut is wrong, a hair too loose in the shoulders and long in the sleeves. The underside of the collar is cheap wool flannel, a cost-saving measure to use less-expensive fabric where it won’t be seen.

“This way,” he says, offering me his hand with a gallant gesture.

I place my palm in his. There’s no reason to ruin tonight’s subterfuge with the truth.

I wanted an evening to feel like a lady, and this has surpassed my expectations.

Miraculously, I’ve met the man I had wondered about since he nearly trampled me in the street.

Alex has been wonderful to me all night.

I can hardly be angry with him for not being truthful about his identity, when I’m being no more straightforward.

My curiosity remains a hungry kitten mewling for its dinner. She’ll have to go hungry. I cannot satisfy her without revealing my own deception.

A shudder works down my spine at the thought of Tremaine finding out what I did this evening. He wouldn’t kill me. He needs me too much. But as bad as my life already is, he could still make it worse.

Alex nods at a pair of guards stationed in the hall. Strains of music tell me we’ve returned to the ballroom. Regret pinches my heart. So little time left.

He shows me into a circular room. The stillness is so profound that no more strains of music reach my ears.

I sense a low thrum of power embedded in the stonework. The magic potion I drank calls to it. The sensation sticks to my skin, cobweb-creepy and full of ghosts.

“We shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” Alex holds his hands out, palms up, and turns in the center of the room. “It’s the safest place in all of Belterre.”

“It’s not ours. We’re trespassing.”

He chuckles and moves toward the dais dominated by two thrones. Until now, he’s been charming, but now, there’s a cocky showiness about him that’s both mesmerizing and a bit off-putting. He turns and rests one hand on each.

“Have you ever wanted to play queen, Elsie? Now is your chance.”

I shake my head. “I have never aspired to power.”

His head tips to one side in confusion. “What do you aspire to, then?”

“Love. Family. Enough food in my belly.” I lift one shoulder and let it fall, feigning indifference. “Warm fires in winter.”

“Surely you cannot lack these things.”

The haunted feeling fades. I make a show of examining the room to avoid responding.

Heavy red velvet curtains trimmed in gold hang over tall windows.

Matching cushions adorn the thrones. One seat is considerably smaller than the other.

Alex throws himself into the larger one and insolently drapes one leg over the arm.

“And you? What do you aspire to?” A red rug with a gold botanical pattern decorates the floor. In the center is a huge dragon coiled and ready to fight a knight. “Do you wish to be king?”

“Doesn’t every man wish to be king?” That lopsided, cheeky smile tucks up one corner of his mouth. I can’t stop the answering grin that comes to mine.

“Stand up, Alex.” I stride over to him and tug his hand. “You’ll get into trouble if you’re caught.”

“We won’t be caught.” He yanks hard enough on my arm to make me stumble forward. Taken off guard, I fall into his lap. His grip doesn’t relax until he shifts his hold to my waist. My heart thrums like a hummingbird’s wings.

Silk rustles as he eases my bottom onto his muscular thighs.

I should protest.

I don’t.

Alex glides the pad of his thumb down the curve of my cheek.

“Pretend with me, Elsie. What would you do as queen?”

“Queen?” I laugh. “Me?”

“Why not you?”

“I’m no one.” Less than no one. The last daughter of an extinct line of nobility. With no male heir, the Scinder name is all but lost to history.

“You’re someone to me.”

Tears burn my eyes. He settles one hand high on my waist, his fingers splayed across my belly. His thumb is barely an inch beneath the curve of my breast. I sip air.

It feels so good to be held. His arms around me. His hard thighs beneath me. His chin resting on my shoulder with his nose near my ear. Breathing. He is calm. I am not. Being this near to him is a torment.

“Alex, we are strangers. I don’t know any more about you than you do me.”

“I know your name. That you kiss like a goddess.”

He brushes his lips against my temple. I close my eyes. He doesn’t know my name. Not really. The tight, sharp feeling in my chest squeezes tears to my eyes.

“I know you’re the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

“That’s the magic,” I protest. “I’m nothing special.”

“I first encountered you without it,” he reminds me, and nuzzles my throat. “You don’t need silk and jewels to shine, princess.”

“I’m not a princess.”

“You will be.”

I gasp raggedly as he strokes his thumb along the underside of my breast. Even with several layers of silk and fine cotton between our skin, his hand is blazing hot.

I laugh and tip my face to his. Tension ratchets higher. I cup his cheek and bring his lips to meet mine. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“I’m not being nice, Elsie. I am not a nice man.”

Confusion bumps rudely into the moment, but he slides his hand higher, rolling my aching breast through all that fabric, and claims my lips again in a scorching kiss.

I strain to meet him, wanting more. Cool air skims up my calves. I squirm as he inches my skirt higher. A molten pulse between my legs erases any lingering resistance.

“You’re being very nice to me right now.” My words come out in a breathless purr that I don’t recognize as my own voice. I sound like the kind of woman who would be worthy of wearing this gown. Brazen. Seductive. Confident.

The kind of woman who makes strangers fall in love with her without needing a magic potion and assistance from a witch.

Not me, Elinor Scinder, the last daughter of a defunct noble house.

Blunt fingers skim past the hem of my skirt and up my thighs.

Alex trails open-mouth kisses down my throat, each one hotter and wetter than the last. His tongue on my skin feels indescribably filthy and amazingly good at the same time.

I’ve been touch-starved for so long that I’m drowning in the physical contact.

When he presses into the gap between my thighs, I moan. He drags his hand upward in mimicry of penetration, though he’s barely reached the tops of my stockings. My body clenches around a hollow ache low in my belly.

A hard ridge digs into my bottom. I shift impatiently. Alex grunts.

“Keep moving like that, and this will be over before I’ve had a chance to enjoy you,” he says in a rough voice that prompts another delicious pulse of anticipation. Wetness drenches my most secret place. I wriggle again.

“Minx,” he chides with a nip to my earlobe.

“Don’t stop now,” I whine.

Slowly, torturously, he brings his hand higher in the gap between my thighs. Unbidden, my hips tip upward, seeking pleasure I know only he could give me.

“Fuuuck,” he exhales when he reaches the last barrier, the thin layer of silk over my sex. His jutting cock twitches against my hip.

“Please,” I whisper. He captures my lips in a hard kiss, invading with his tongue at the same moment he shoves aside my panties. Still not enough. He drags his fingertips through my wet folds.

“Tell me what you want from me, Elsie.”

The cursed man gently circles my tight nub. Not nearly enough. I wiggle my hips but it’s no use. He won’t give me what I need.

I’ve never felt like this before. I might die if I don’t have him inside me. Right now. Dimly, I’m aware that time is passing. I don’t have much longer.

“Inside,” I whisper. “I want you inside me.”

He stills.

“Forward, for a girl who’s never been kissed.”

I swallow, hard. If I tell him the truth, he won’t desire me anymore. I’ll be devastated if he shoves me away in disgust. I can’t let him think he’s deflowering me, though. I only wanted one night to experience everything I’ve been denied. I’m not trying to trap him into marriage.

He doesn’t know my true name. As long as we’re not caught in this forbidden place, no one will ever know what we’ve done. Not even Tremaine. This will be my secret to hold close for warmth every night in my cold bed.

“I’m not a virgin,” I force myself to say. “It’s all right, you can do…that. I’m not innocent.”

For a terrifying moment, Alex goes still.

“Not a virgin, yet you’ve never been kissed.”

“Forget I said that.”

He erupts beneath me, rising despite my weight pinning him to the huge chair, and flips me onto the red cushion.