On her skin.
“Excuse you,” I snapped, darting my hand between the two. The shock of my touch must have confused her, because she stumbled back one step, her dark eyes wide, her lips parted as she gaped at me. “Don’t touch things that aren’t yours.” The words were like ice from my lips, and I bared my teeth at her, an instinct roiling up inside me like a pot about to boil over.
“Lyric,” Alek’s voice was a warning tone, but I ignored him, my eyes only for the tramp who’d had her hands all over my mate.
The thought brought me up short, cleared my mind. She had a tattoo too, maybe I wasn’t—
“Your Highness,” she said, her voice sickly sweet. “With all due respect, you should really learn to control your playthings.”
I hissed at her, but Alek was already tugging me the opposite direction. I jerked my arm out of his touch, not caring for a second that every set of eyes in the room were on us. Alek growled, low and brutal, and I felt it along every inch of my skin.
Traitorous body, reacting to him, wanting him, my heart already clenching at the idea that he’d wanted her, wanted Cassandra. Stupid. I’d been so stupid—
“Do you want to die?” he growled as he pushed us into a darkened room just off the ballroom. A wall of windows allowed silver moonlight inside, illuminating his blue-gray eyes like stars.
Bastard.
“Not particularly, no,” I snapped, folding my arms over my chest. His eyes tracked the movement, then slid over my body as he took in my dress. “Why? Are you offering?”
Another warning growl. He towered over me. “Cassandra is one of the oldest noble bloodlines—”
“I don’t give a shit who she is! She had her hands all over you. Baring her neck like—” I cut myself off, blinking out of my red anger haze. I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Tears welled in my eyes, and in that moment, I hated my emotions, the way they were so out of control around him. What happened to the girl who didn’t care about anything outside her thesis? Her research? Her book?
Alek happened.
I held up my wrist, and his eyes flared at the sight of the tattoo. As if it would burn him if I got too close.
So I did.
I took a step, and he retreated.
Something about that submission—to me—made me all sorts of hot and slick and downright crackly with need.
“Does every person who wants you get branded with your crest?” I hissed. “Does it mean nothing?”
“It means everything,” Alek said, his tone low and gravely. He stopped retreating, his hands on my shoulders, and I knew I should pull away, but I didn’t. Couldn’t. Not when he was looking at me like that—like I was the answer to every question he never knew he had. “Females get the tattoos of my crest and others in an attempt to win our affections,” he continued, his breathing rushed. “Cassandra doesn’t want me.” I rolled my eyes. “She wants my throne.”
I scrunched my nose. “Trash.”
The smallest of smiles cracked on his lips, something so rare and so beautiful I melted in his embrace. That easily, my anger turned to compassion, to the protective instincts roaring at me to put Cassandra in her place.
“Do you disagree?” he challenged. “A pairing with me comes with power, prestige, wealth—”
“I don’t care about any of those things,” I cut him off, and from the shock and amusement in his eyes, I doubted it was something that happened often. But I couldn’t control my mouth or my body around him, it seemed.
“What do you care about, Lyric?” His words were a whisper between us.
I held his gaze, searching for the right words. Words I’d come to terms with in the days he’d refused to return to me. “You,” I admitted on a breath. “I care about you. I can feel you every waking second, and even in my sleep, you’re there. I want to…protect you,” I said, biting my lower lip, so sure he’d laugh at the notion of a weak human protecting him.
But he didn’t. His eyes guttered as he hung on my every word.
“I wanted to kill her for touching you,” I said. “For offering to feed you.”
Another rare smile, one that made my heart skip. He smoothed a finger over my jaw and down the seam of my neck.
The breath in my lungs grew tight, my heart racing a wild rhythm that begged me to move, to crush my mouth against his—
“Lyric,” he sighed my name, spinning us as he backed me against the nearest wall.
I trembled, my body a livewire everywhere he touched. Still, he kept his mouth an inch from mine, so I planted him with a serious gaze. “Me,” I said, forcing power I didn’t feel into my voice. “You only feed from me,” I said as a command. The logical side of my mind knew it was likely an open invitation for death, demanding anything from the king. But I did it anyway.