His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,8
would choke.
“Welcome back,” he said.
She looked around the space, and she felt decidedly...
It was a strange feeling. It wasn’t bad or good.
“Charis,” he said, as a woman entered the room. “Please show Tinley to her room.”
The momentary relief that she felt over being out of Alex’s presence was completely replaced by the disquiet that she felt moving through the once familiar hallways.
She could see her father everywhere. She could see King Darius.
She looked up at the walls, and she saw portraits of the family. Hanging on those marble walls.
She had never known Lazarus. He had died long before she was born.
But oh, she remembered the rest of them.
The Queen had been beautiful, but frail. And everyone said that she wasn’t the same after Lazarus disappeared.
They had also said that it was a blessing she had died before her youngest son.
Before her husband.
Because the grief would have just been a cruelty she could never have borne.
As she moved down the hallway, looking at all the portraits, her gaze kept landing on those of Alexius. He was intense. Dark and brooding, even in these depictions. He was so different than Dionysus. And she had never really felt like...
Not that either of them had ever been her playmates, or anything of the sort. She had been an inconvenience, underfoot to them. Dionysus had been kind to her, likely because he knew that she would be his wife someday. Kind, a bit indulgent.
Alexius had always been...remote. Distant.
In fact, he reminded her of the wood.
And it seemed fitting, because it was the wood that had consumed the man that she was meant to marry.
And it was the man who seemed like a personification of that dark, demonic place that had brought her here.
The room had a familiar feel to it, but she couldn’t quite be certain that she had ever stayed in it before. But it had a massive canopy bed. And it overlooked the lake, not the forest. For which she was grateful.
“Charis,” she said to the woman, as she retreated. “Can you please make sure that my... That my other animals are brought to me.” She paused for a moment. “And my yarn.”
“Of course,” she said.
When the woman retreated, Tinley put the cat carrier down on the bed and opened the door.
Algie did not come out. In fact, he seemed peevish over the change in scenery. “This is a palace,” she said, keeping her voice soft. “You’re supposed to like it better than the cottage.”
He meowed plaintively.
“I know,” she said softly. “I don’t either.”
When her things were brought to her, she was all ready to settle in for the evening. But before Charis left her with Nancy, Alton and Peregrine, she paused at the door. “I’ll be back in a moment with your dress. We are going to have to get you ready for dinner.”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE WAS LATE. And Alexius did not like to be kept waiting. At least, he didn’t think he liked to be kept waiting.
No one had ever dared do it before.
If he were not so angry, he might find it extraordinary.
Of course for Tinley it was par for the course.
She always dared.
His mind flashed back to her pushing him. Her hand on his chest...
The door to the dining room opened, and the creature that appeared there was nearly unrecognizable. That cloud of carrot hair had been tamed into something sleek. He could not see her freckles, smoothed by some sort of makeup. Her lips were painted a pink color that should have clashed with her hair, but somehow didn’t.
Her gown was much the same. A daring shade that went off the shoulder and revealed far more creamy skin than he was comfortable seeing on her.
He hated it.
It was not Tinley. And yet it was. Her voluptuous figure on display, her full lips dewy from some gloss that verged on pornographic.
She was a nightmare. Tinley made visually acceptable as if to mock the fact he found her attractive even when she didn’t. And to present to him a vision of her as the sort of sleek trophy he was seeking in a queen.
She couldn’t know, and yet there was a light in her green eyes that spoke to him. That said: Where are your excuses now?
Not a girl.
Not dizzy.
Not frizzy.
“Good evening,” she said, edging slowly into the room and taking a seat a comical ten chairs away from him.
His body relaxed into the relief of the distance and he tightened his fist. Unwilling to cede that he needed her to