Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,71
Fox.”
“Any experience with gardening?” she asked as I slipped on the gloves—perfect fit—and then twirled the pruning scissors.
“Not even a little.”
“Potions?”
I shrugged. “Drinking them, sure.”
“And you’re here because?” She peeled through the rosebush in front of her, on the hunt for the next perfect specimen.
“I dunno—the prison is racist?” Something bright and hot flickered in my chest when she bit back a smile. Amusing the one witch in this whole fucking realm who wasn’t swayed by my charms was a win I’d take any day. “But I no longer care now that I have a beautiful horticulturalist to study under.”
Or on top of. I kept that little bit to myself; overt flirting got me nowhere with Katja Fox. She required a more subtle hand, and sussing out her limits was one of the more enjoyable parts of my day. That and riling up her dragon and vampire bodyguards. They had been so aggressive about asserting their claim on her, stating outright that she wasn’t fair game, that if I intended to sniff around her, I ought to find a new gang. Well, here we were, two weeks into my Xargi sentence, and I sniffed around her whenever I damn well pleased.
Only it was Katja to put me in my place most of the time, not her hulking protectors.
In fact, from the way she exhaled briskly and slammed her clippers down on the table, I suspected I was about to get another tongue-lashing.
“Does this persona usually work on women?” she demanded, facing me with a scowl and an exquisite pink blush. I smirked down at her, then held up my own pair of scissors between us, examining them slowly, dramatically, all for show.
“You know, with the correct amount of force, I could probably drive these through a guard’s eye and into his brain.”
Katja blinked those lovely sapphires up at me, her stern expression flatlining to shock. I got a secret thrill out of surprising her, throwing her off. Unlike all the ladies who had entered my orbit in the past, women who flocked to me in court and in the human realm, it wasn’t physical gratification that drew me to Katja. It wasn’t the opportunity to show her precisely what I could do with my fingers, my tongue, my cock. For once, my words mattered.
They rarely mattered to anyone.
Besides the way my heart did a giddy little jig whenever I stunned the disapproval out of her, I liked providing a distraction from this place. She struggled, this fiery witch, with imprisonment; we all did, in our own ways, and if I could break the monotony even for a moment, it was yet another victory.
My mouth lifted into a handsome smile, the one that wooed and charmed and coaxed women into my bed—not my words, just the smile… and the crown and the money.
“And yes,” I said pleasantly, gripping my clippers’ blades in one gloved hand, “this persona always works, but I think the title usually wins them over before my dashing personality.”
The shock splintered, and her disbelief, that familiar look of incredulity that only made me want to work harder to make it go away, returned full force.
“Right,” she muttered as she grabbed her scissors and dove back into the bush. “Prince Fintan of the Midnight Court… Sure.”
I bit my cheek when she rolled her eyes. Rather annoying that no one believed me; lesser nobles and peasant fae had fucked up my credibility for centuries now. Still, surely I exuded the air of a royal.
“So, how do you think that’s working here?”
I fiddled with a rose’s petals. “What?”
“Your attitude,” she clarified, finally spotting a rose that fit her unknown criteria and snipping its stem with a noisy click. Katja straightened, bloom in hand, and got to work on pruning the thorns. “How do you think it’s working?”
I smirked, tapping my clippers against my gloved palm. “On you, you mean?”
“Duh.” She shot me a look, then hissed when a thorn stabbed at her thumb. Whether it pierced the glove or not remained to be seen; with the quality of goods around this place, it wouldn’t surprise me if these bland, heavy mitts were useless. Usually, I’d scoop up her hand and investigate, brows knit, eyes riddled with false concern. Then I would kiss the wound better, my lips slowly drifting toward whatever I most desired from the woman in question. Her mouth. The underside of her wrist. Her breasts. Down to the cleft of her thighs…