The Queen's Line (Inheritance of Hunger #1) - Kathryn Moon Page 0,26

took me a moment to realize it was a favorite of mine.

"The Lovers of Invernette!" I scrambled for the bed, tangling my legs in my robe and skirt as I wormed my way to the headboard in the middle, peeking over Owen's shoulder to see where he was.

"It's making me blush," he said. "If this was the kind of reading I'd done in school, I would've been a more enthusiastic student."

"It's utter trash," I said, grinning. "I adore it. Will you read to me?"

If Owen hadn't been blushing before, he certainly was now, cheeks rosy and hair rumpled, his shirt half undone to reveal those appealing dark curls on his chest. "I'm not a very good reader."

"You have a nice voice. And I'm so tired, I think my eyes would cross if I tried to read so much as a sentence. Just until I fall asleep? It won't take long, I promise," I said, and I leaned into Owen's side, cuddling to his shoulder and resting my chin there to gaze up at him with a coaxing smile.

His throat cleared as his eyes scanned my face, that lovely color growing even deeper by the candlelight. "All right, Your Highness."

I pinched his side and caught his eye before it turned to the page. "Bryony. Please."

"Bryony," he said with a nod, and I almost shivered with the sound of my name on his tongue.

Very few people had the right to call me by my name, and mostly I'd heard it from my Grandmother. It sounded much sweeter on Owen's tongue, all low and a little gravelly and clumsy with his shyness.

"His hand on her waist was feather light, no more than a graze. But Amelia felt the touch as if it were a brand against her skin," Owen read, his words slow but very careful. He didn't read with a great deal of feeling, but he took care with the words and there was a kind of melody to his rhythm that was soothing as he continued.

It was one of my favorite scenes in the book, full of the kind of romantic tension that made my chest ache and my sex throb. Even with Owen's almost clumsy delivery, the words raised heat under my skin. I untied my robe, distracting Owen from the page momentarily as I slid out of the silk and then under the sheets on the bed, nestling into the pillows at my back and smiling at him. He was very pretty, coarse stubble on his jaw and full lips, a brow that furrowed as he troubled over a word. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat, and my hand raised of its own accord as if I'd been about to reach out and touch the spot. I curled onto my side and rested my hand on his chest, closing my eyes to enjoy the vibration of his voice in his chest, pretending I didn't feel the echo of it between my thighs.

This was just…this was normal desire, wasn't it? A young woman's crush, and not the Hunger? I wished briefly that it'd made itself known the night of my choosing, instead of waiting until I was hundreds of miles away from home.

"Her lips tingled with the imagined kiss, and the back of her hand burned where his lips had rested."

My own lips were tingling, and I tried to imagine kissing Owen. It came easily. I knew how he kissed, except instead of the anxiety I'd felt at that moment, I now had an aching throb in my core. If I'd been alone, I would've reached down between my legs to dull the ache. But I'd brought these men with me under the assumption that they wouldn't be playing a real role as my Chosen. And anyway, I wasn't even sure things had changed so much. Maybe this was only a reaction to Owen reading to me, some mix of my feelings for the hero in the book and the availability of the man at my side.

The pulsing heat grew steady and lulling, my hands fisting in the fabric of Owen's shirt and breaths puffing a little more intensely than normal, as his sweet and droning voice coaxed me into a hazy kind of drowse. At some point, when I was too deep at the edge of sleep, Cosmo returned and the men traded places, Owen untangling my fingers from his shirt and passing the book to Cosmo.

The artist was a better reader, and after his bath he smelled