Page 36 of Golden Queen
"Fates, Sera. Stop that."
"Stop what?" I asked innocently, taking my bottom lip between my teeth and biting it as Barrett had coached me to do.
He closed his eyes and groaned.
My heart did a somersault.
"Where are you taking me, Io?" I asked again.
"Dinner, apparently. But you need to stop looking at me like that," he said.
"Why?"
"Because you're drunk, Sera."
"I'm not that drunk, Io." I ran my hand down and across the embroidered overlay of my bodice and rested it in my lap, letting my fingertips push into the material of the skirt where it dipped between my thighs.
"You're drunk enough to make it completely inappropriate for me to look at you the way I'm looking at you."
"Well then why are you?" I asked as my hand fisted in the material of my skirt, tightly.
I noticed his fingertips drumming against his outer thigh, but he abruptly stopped at my look, and clenched his fist until his knuckles popped.
"I find it rather difficult to take my eyes off of you in that fucking dress," he said, his gaze running down over the yards of black lace.
That delicious heat rolled through me. He had never seen me in a dress before. The fact that the form-fitted, lacy gown had the exact effect that Igraine had promised when she pulled it out of the wardrobe and offered it to me, was gratifying.
"Then don't," I breathed. "Don't take your eyes off me."
He didn't. His dark, heated gaze moved from my lips to my eyes and back.
The carriage rolled to a halt, and a few words were exchanged outside. I heard the creak and clatter of a gate, and I couldn't stop myself from sliding to the end of the bench seat and looking outside as the carriage continued again.
We were rolling into Albiyn's Mercury District. I had never been through the gate since the district was nearly a city unto itself. Albiyn's wealthiest merchants, their fortunes far exceeding those of even the most influential nobles, paid a hefty price to the crown for the privilege of ruling themselves. They even managed their own city gate.
The Royal Guard, of course, maintained control of the gate leading into Albiyn proper, so it surprised me that Io's carriage simply rolled past with no more than a few words passed between the guards and the driver.
Gold, I realized as I glanced back at him. I had not missed his expensive, well-tailored clothes on our first meeting. As I considered, I wondered for the first time if I had been wrong when I assumed he was not part of the Radune emissaries.
"Are you here for the Trade Summit?" I asked, as I continued to stare out the window at the darkened tree-lined street beyond. The air from the open carriage window seemed to have cleared my mind of some of the effects of the whiskey and wine.
I slid back into my seat. I could see very little in the moonlit darkness, aside from the many tall stone walls that surrounded the merchant's houses. Walls inside walls inside walls—as though they were afraid of something even though the world as we knew it had seen peace for thousands of years.
"Among other things," he said, straightening his already very neat lapel.
"What other things?" I asked, a bit rudely.
He smiled. "You are full of questions aren't you?"
I shrugged, but my curiosity had been stoked to life. The possibility...the suitors...could he be here for that? "So you're with the emissaries from Radune then?" I asked carefully.
"Not exactly."
I gave him a frustrated look.
"I came ahead with a few of my friends. To take care of some business in the city."
I tried to decide if he might be some lord of Nightfall, but that seemed unlikely. He had no guards trailing him, no retinue of servants standing by to be at his beck and call. And Nightfall never sent their nobles to Windemere for the Trade Summit. Betrothal though? It was a wild thought, and I knew it might only be the alcohol that allowed the possibility to enter my mind.
