Page 11 of The Nightmare Bride

“The next part. Which is?”

But Kyven had already tossed the book aside. He crawled across the mattress and swung a leg over me, bracketing my hips with his knees, pinning me to the bed.

A cold thrill shivered through me. This was it, then. It had to be. I slid a hand beneath my pillow, curling my fingers around the hilt of my dagger.

“The fun part,” he crooned. “The part that makes all this absurdity worthwhile.”

My breathing accelerated. I would let him get close, I decided. As close as he liked. Then, the moment the pain began, he’d find a knife in his back for his trouble. “You mean the part where you make me scream?”

“If I do things properly, yes.” He grinned. “May I?”

Sweat broke out on my palms. Was he really asking permission to hurt me? Whatever. I was done playing. “Go ahead.” My voice rang with challenge. “Do your worst.”

His eyes went hot and hooded. “How about my best?” He reached up and flicked his shirt buttons open, one by one.

An involuntary breath sliced from my lungs. I should have looked away. I really, really should have. Instead, I lay transfixed, like a snake beguiled by the charmer, or maybe a hapless rabbit, snared by the gaze of the lynx.

Kyven peeled off his shirt and tossed it aside.

Fucking hell, but he was all lines and angles, sketched with an unforgiving sharpness that filtered straight into my bloodstream.

And in that moment, I’d never envied Amryssa her imperviousness to temptation more, because this man had the kind of beauty that could make me forget myself.

He was all chiseled savagery, flesh stripped to its barest essentials, malice gloved in the thinnest of satin.

Revulsion and excitement clashed in my belly. My dagger awoke, humming a question, but I couldn’t bring myself to respond.

Kyven leaned down. When I didn’t recoil, he angled his head to nuzzle at my neck, and the moment his mouth found my throat, my spine bowed. Everything in me rioted.

Gods among us, that didn’t hurt. At all. It felt...fucking divine .

I closed my eyes and tried to think past the rush. Because this was all part of my plan, wasn’t it? Yes, yes, the plan. Now I only had to decide where to sink my blade. Maybe into his kidney, or the back of his neck, or...

Or...

Oh shit, that made my toes curl.

Kyven’s tongue painted languid strokes against my skin. One of his hands slid past my ear while he rucked up my nightgown with the other, his fingers trailing a caress along my thigh. The room shrank to an airless puddle, just heat and velvet and candlelight.

I whimpered. Seven hells, I should just stab this asshole and be done with it, but my willpower had receded. Probably because I’d never killed anyone before, and now the possibility immobilized me. Or maybe that was the russet-haired prince pinning me down.

The wet heat at my neck became insistent. Kyven sucked and teased and panted soft sounds against my ear. My stomach clenched, a million fluttering ribbons unspooling within.

Damn it. Maybe there was something worse than marrying a gorgeous psychopath who thought he was clever—marrying a gorgeous psychopath with whom I had blistering physical chemistry. And who, for some inexplicable reason, had decided to be passionate with me.

Kyven’s efforts increased. The dagger sizzled in my hand, but I rammed my eyes shut and blocked it out.

As awful as it was, as horrific a person as it made me—and it did, it really did—no part of me wanted this to stop.

That thing he was doing with his tongue was intoxicating.

And the more I thought about it, didn’t he owe me some kind of compensation for putting me to all this trouble of killing him?

Yes, I decided. Absolutely yes.

“Touch me, lioness.” His breath was a lick of fire against my skin. “ Wife. ”

Heat flooded my cheeks. My free hand leapt to obey, skimming down hard planes of muscle before settling at the small of his back.

Kyven’s hand roamed under my nightgown, dipping into the curve of my waist. His palm was unexpectedly rough, but that hardly mattered when it felt like someone had plunged me into a vat of my own yearning, then dumped me out on the bed again, flushed and slippery and panting.

An unchecked moan worked free of my throat. Kyven responded with a sound that made my thighs clench, and then he was pulling my legs apart, settling between them, rocking his hips into mine.

“I’m going to relish every moment of this,” he said thickly. “There’s something captivating about you. Like if I’m not careful, you’ll bite.”

Oh, he had no clue. “Maybe I will.” I ground my hips upward, mirroring his movements.

“Mmm. Promise?”

When I didn’t respond, he pulled away, taking that gift of a tongue with him. For long moments, he stared down. Only it wasn’t staring , really. More like peering into my soul. His pupils were huge and black and bottomless, his irises little more than frosty haloes.

I stared back, my heart thudding a frantic rhythm. Had Merron ever looked at me like this? I didn’t think so. He’d never kissed my neck that way, either, or sent me spinning through space with nothing to grab hold of. He’d never melted me to a red-hot glow. No, Merron was steady. Safe. He was...

Oh, goddess. Merron .

His name sliced through the haze. I’d had him on top of me mere hours ago, just like this. I’d had him inside me, for Zephyrine’s sake. Right in this very spot.

What the hell was I doing?

Kyven bent, clearly aiming for a kiss this time. I managed to wrench my dagger free and angle it toward his throat. The blade stopped just short, the sharp edge kissing his skin, the flattened spine braced against my forearm.

Nothing moved. Harsh breaths invaded the quiet—mine? His?

Kyven’s gaze flicked downward, then back up. “Is that a knife in your hand,” he said slowly, “or are you just happy to see me?”

“Get off.”

He jerked up into a sit, palms raised. I chased his retreat with my blade, never breaking contact with his skin.

“I’m...confused,” he said.

“Really? What part of having a knife to your throat isn’t clear?”

“That part’s rather crystal. It’s only...I thought you said you wanted this. That you wanted me .”

Dead , I told myself. That was how I wanted him. I eyed the soft, vulnerable flesh of his throat, where his pulse shimmered against the bright line of my dagger. Just a flick of my wrist, and his life would escape onto the floor.

Kyven studied me. “Lioness?”

I raised my eyes, searching his for some kind of tell. Surely a man who harbored horrors upon horrors couldn’t contain them completely—some hint would have to leak through, like light from beneath a barred door.

But no matter how deeply I looked, I couldn’t find an edge in him. Only confusion and the banked blue burn of desire.

A growl piled in my throat. Goddess, if only he’d hurt me, or let me peek beneath the facade, I wouldn’t have hesitated. But he hadn’t.

I lowered my blade, disgusted with both of us.

Kyven scooted away. He stretched out along the bed’s far edge, his head propped on a hand, looking far more relaxed than a man who’d just rubbed elbows with death had any right to.

“Apologies,” he said. “I thought... Well, when you said you wanted this, I took that to mean we’d both decided to enjoy ourselves.”

“No.” My voice sounded hollow. Ground down. As if he’d held a knife to my airway instead of the other way around. “This is about duty for me. That’s all.”

“Ah. My mistake, then.” His tone was light, enough that I wondered if he was even capable of having a serious conversation. It didn’t seem that way. “Though you didn’t have to make your point quite so emphatically.”

“Would you have stopped, if I hadn’t?”

He scoffed. “If you’re suggesting I would ever force a woman, I would suggest you don’t know me at all.”

“Of course I don’t,” I snapped. “I just met you this morning.”

He inclined his head in apparent surrender, then flopped onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head. He slung one ankle over the other, the very picture of a man at leisure.

I blinked, perplexed. Then again, if last night’s storm hadn’t rattled his composure, why should attempted murder be any different?

“So, now what?” he said. “What do you do in this place?”

I scrambled to follow the latest of his capricious subject changes. “Do? As in...for fun?”

“Yes, for fun. Besides reading, that is. I haven’t the patience for that.”

“What do you have the patience for?” I said, then caught myself. Why was I even engaging in this?

“Not much, I’ll admit. I would’ve liked to find out what kind of noises you make when a man touches you properly, but if that’s off the table, I’m open to other suggestions.

I mean, this is our life now, isn’t it? I’d rather not lie here night after night, talking about our feelings.

Not if there’s something more interesting to be explored. ”

“I never talk about feelings,” I growled.

“Wonderful. And I don’t have any, so that takes care of that.”

My thoughts rolled around in my skull like loose marbles. None of this made sense—not the half-naked stranger in my bed, not the quips that kept leaping from his mouth, not the many ways in which Eliana’s foreboding letter failed to match the reality.

Harlowe, he will fool even you .

She’d warned me, but still, I couldn’t escape the sense that I was one step behind this man, struggling to catch up but never actually making it. Moreover, I felt like I’d missed something. Something crucial.

“I know.” He thrust a forefinger into the air. “Why don’t we go into town?”

“To...town?”

“Yes. Oceansgate proper is only a stone’s throw away. We could go to the theatre. We could go out drinking. We could do whatever we want.”

“You want to go to the theatre,” I said flatly. There was that feeling again.

“Well, why not?”

“I don’t know, maybe because you just married someone who then tried to kill you?”

He waved an airy hand. “Oh, you didn’t actually try . If you had, I’d be gasping about on the floor right now.” He cinched two hands around his neck and pantomimed dying horribly.

I watched his performance to its conclusion. “You are absolutely the strangest man I’ve ever met.”

“You must have led a very boring life, then.”

Wow. That was rich—the pampered prince accusing the handmaid of being sheltered.

“Look,” I said. “You can go into Oceansgate, if you want. But I’m not. Half the people there hate me, for one, and two, I’m tired.”

“Come on, where’s the fun in that?”

“We just married each other out of obligation. This isn’t supposed to be fun.”

He held my eyes for a beat, then pouted. “Well, town sounds much less enticing if you’re not going to come along and let me loosen you up a bit.”

My whole body went taut. “I never loosen up.”

“Clearly.”

I slitted my eyes. “I definitely should’ve stabbed you.”

He laughed. “You’ll have plenty more chances, I’m sure.”

The offhand remark sent me down a rabbit-hole of what ifs. Would I have more chances? Was I squandering my best shot at protecting Amryssa? What would happen when Olivian— and Kyven himself, no less—discovered he’d married the wrong woman?

Something burbled in my stomach, then sprang from my lips in the form of a hysterical laugh.

Kyven cocked an eyebrow, but soon joined in. When our laughter died, we stared at one another.

“What was that about?” he said.

“This.” I gestured between us. I had the distinct impression that tomorrow, when he found me out, it would be the first and only time I would manage to best him. “This whole thing is absurd. So...I’m just going to go to sleep now. With my knife.”

“That sounds uncomfortable. But very well. I’ll leave you to it. If you need me, I’ll be over here, dying of boredom.” He chuckled. “See? You won’t have to stab me after all. Just ignore me, and the problem will take care of itself.”

I shook a disbelieving head and settled into the mattress. I wouldn’t make the mistake of turning my back; I didn’t trust him for a second.

Kyven closed his eyes. Despite his protestations, he fell asleep almost immediately. Or at least, I thought he had. The moment I drifted off, he murmured.

“My Lady Amryssa. I never would’ve touched you if I’d known you didn’t want me to.”

I prised my eyes open, wondering when I’d closed them. Had I dreamt that?

Apparently. Kyven looked far, far gone. His chest rose and fell, the stark lines of his body ebbing and swelling in the candlelight.

I battled the sleep weighting my eyelids. Zephyrine help me, who was this man? I’d caught no sign of the emptiness Eliana had described, but this tenacious cheerfulness was just a smokescreen, right? What if he woke while I slept? What if I jolted awake to his hands wrapped around my throat?

The dagger must have sensed my ruminations, because it sighed in my grip. What do you need?

After a moment’s contemplation, I told it, Sleep. Make him sleep. Don’t let him wake until I do .

The dagger hummed and sizzled, then went quiet—the sign of a bargain accepted.

I waited another minute, watching Kyven breathe, but fatigue dragged at me, more insistent than a millstone tied to my ankle. I’d barely slept in two days and couldn’t hold out much longer.

At last, I let go, praying my enchantment would hold until morning.