Because it’s gold.
Not golden. Not tan. Not painted or dipped or dyed. My skin is real, shimmering, satiny, gilded gold.
I look just like everything else in this palace. Even my hair and irises glimmer with a metallic sheen. I’m a walking gold statue, everywhere except for my gleaming white teeth, the whites of my eyes, and cheeky pink tongue.
I’m an oddity, a commodity, a rumor. I’m the king’s favored. His prized saddle. The one he gold-touched and keeps in a cage at the top of his castle, my body bearing the mark of his ownership and favoritism.
The gilded pet.
I’m the darling of King Midas, ruler of Highbell and the Sixth Kingdom of Orea. People flock to see me just as much as they come to look upon his gleaming castle worth more than all the riches in the entire realm.
I’m the gold-plated prisoner.
But what a pretty prison it is.
Chapter Two
My tiredness is forgotten with Midas standing in front of me.
All of my focus is on him, my every nerve aware of his attention. As Midas continues to watch me, I take the opportunity to look over the handsome planes of his smooth face, the determined edge of his eyes.
The longer I look at him, the more I forgive him for bringing me up here tonight. For making me be a bystander of the pleasure I took no part in as he spread the thighs of his saddles.
Midas raises a hand and slips his finger past my bars. “You’re so precious to me, Auren,” he murmurs, voice low, tone tender.
I freeze, my breath contorting in my chest like a stiff, sharp bevel that scrapes my nerves into awareness. He carefully draws closer until a finger trails down my cheek. My skin tingles at the contact, but I continue to hold perfectly still, too nervous to even flutter my eyelids closed in case that tiny movement would make him stop touching me.
Please don’t stop touching me.
I desperately want to lean forward and nuzzle against him, to reach through the bars and touch him back, but I know I shouldn’t. So I stay still, though I can’t keep the eager glint from shining in my gold eyes.
“Did you enjoy watching tonight?” he asks, his fingers carefully trailing down to skim the edge of my plush bottom lip. My mouth parts, breath demanding as it wraps around the pad of his thumb, heat drawing in heat.
“I would enjoy participating more,” I reply, extremely mindful of how his fingers move with my mouth as I speak.
Midas brings his hand back up so that he can touch a piece of my hair. He rubs the strands together, watching the way they glimmer in the candlelight. “You know you’re too precious to pile you in with the other saddles.”
I give him a tight smile. “Yes, my king.”
Midas drops my hair and taps me on the nose before pulling his hand out of the cage. It takes a lot of self-control to stay still, to not arc my body toward him like a branch bending to the call of the wind. He breezes past me, and I want to bend.
“You’re not like one of the common saddles to be ridden daily, Auren. You’re worth far more than them. Besides, I like you always there, watching me. It makes me hard,” he says with a heated gaze.
It’s funny how he can make me feel both immense desire and crushing disappointment at the same time.
Even though I shouldn’t, I push back. I blame the coiling forlorn want in my stomach. “But the other saddles resent me, and the servants talk. Don’t you think it would be better if you let me participate one night, even if all I do is touch you?” I ask. I know I sound a bit pathetic, but I yearn for him.
His brown eyes narrow on me, and just like that, I know I’ve overstepped. My stomach tightens for an entirely new reason now. I’ve lost him. I’ve torn the playfulness off like a ragged strip of parchment.
Handsome features harden, charm cooling like snow over coals. “You are my royal saddle. My favored. My precious,” he lectures, making my eyes drop down to the edges of my toes. “I don’t give a forged fuck what the servants and saddles say. You are mine to do with as I wish, and if I wish to keep you in your caged quarters where only I can get to you, then that is my right.”
I shake my head at myself. Stupid, stupid. “You’re right. I just thought—”
“You are not here to have thoughts,” Midas snaps, cutting me off in a rare harsh discipline that makes my breath catch. He was in such a good mood, and I ruined it. “Do I not treat you well?” he demands, flinging his arms up as his voice cracks through the vast room. “Do I not bestow every comfort to you?”
“You do—”
“There are whores in the city right now, living in squalor, pissing in buckets and humping in the streets to make a coin with their cunt. And yet, you complain?”