Page 4 of Bride to the Fiend Prince
He sighed heavily. “Believe what you like. And sit on me as long as you like. Now that my shock is fading, I’m becoming very accustomed to your presence.” He shifted his hips slightly under me, and I felt the roll of hard flesh as he moved.
I had done saucy things with the dull stable boy, so I recognized the shape and feel of that hardness in the prince’s trousers—though to be honest, the stable boy’s piece had been rather on the small side, barely enough to close my hand around. This felt likemore, in the best way, and I hated that I was curious what it might look like, feel like—
“Pervert,” I said haughtily, as if my own body weren’t heating at that very moment. I bent closer, shifting the dagger so the edge of its blade lay against his voicebox. He swallowed, his throat flexing beneath my fingers.
“Ah yes, lean in a little more—just like that,” he said. “Such a wonderful view.”
I glanced down, where my chest was spilling out of the corset. “Damn it. This one wasn’t meant to contain so much as to—push everything up.” I straightened, adjusting the corset with one hand, keeping the blade pointed toward him, its tip hovering over his heart this time. His shirt lay unlaced, gaping in a wide V, exposing a thin pale chest. A lean chest, but not a powerful one, not heavily muscled and sculpted like a warrior’s body should be.
“I like your corset,” said the prince contentedly. “But if you need other undergarments, or anything else, I’ll see that you get it.”
“In exchange for what?”
“Well—you’ve made it clear that I’m not supposed to touch you—though it seems you’ll make free touching me wherever and whenever you please. So perhaps we could find some other arrangement. Let’s see—my father wants to know that we’ve consummated our marriage. What if you help me convince him that we have?”
I stare down at his leering masked face. “Lie to the Dreadlord?”
“You were about to murder his only son. A small lie seems far more reasonable, don’t you think?”
“I—”
“Come, wife, help a husband out.”
Instantly I drove the dagger point through his skin—just the tip, just enough to release a few beads of blood. “Don’t ever call mewifeagain.”
“Ow,” he said. “I might have to, in public.”
“What makes you think I will ever agree to appear in public with you? I’m going to kill you and leave your body for your father to find. And then I’ll escape, and go home.”
“How? How will you find your way through the maze that is the Cursed Palace? How will you avoid the guards, and the sorcerers, and the magical wards? How will you traverse the wilderness, cross the mountains, and forge the rivers? Forgive me, Princess, but though you’re a skilled fighter, you don’t seem like the type to have trekked far on foot through strange lands.”
I tried to swallow down the uncertainty that rose with his every question. “Then I will keep you as a hostage, and force someone to give me an escort home.”
He shook his head. “The instant you cleared the palace grounds, they would only recapture you. My people have no honor, and would adhere to no bargain they made with you. Besides, our sorcerers could easily disengage me from your grasp.”
“Could they stuff your blood back into your body once I spilled it?” I retorted.
He shrugged against the sheets. “Maybe. How much do you know of our magic?”
My father’s words echoed in my brain again.Try to uncover the source of their magic.
“I know plenty,” I said boldly.
The prince chuckled, the sound as fiendish as his mask. “You’re very brash and savage and angry. Not what I expected at all.”
“And what did you expect?”
“Not someone who could take out three of my father’s guards.”
“Four.” I slid off him, sitting crosslegged on the bed. But I kept my knife hand on my knee, ready.
“Four,” he agreed. “And you’re far more beautiful than I could have hoped. Not that it matters,” he added quickly, “because I won’t be touching you. There will be nothing between us—except, I hope, a mutual arrangement. A pact, one royal to another.”
“I’m listening,” I said. “What do you want?”
5
With my dagger no longer at his throat, the Fiend Prince sat up. He dabbed a finger to the place on his chest where I’d pierced his skin. “You stabbed me.”
