Gild (The Plated Prisoner #1) - Raven Kennedy Page 0,45

can sense the directions of my thoughts, Midas’s arm pulls me up until I’m lying on top of him, our faces in front of each other.

“It’s just me and you when I’m here,” he reminds me. “Nothing else exists outside of this cage.”

I nod slowly. “I know.”

His brown eyes fall to the mark on my neck before his hands come up to grip my waist. “You’re mine.”

I know that too.

His gaze flicks down my body, his grip tightening as lust simmers between us, and my breath catches. So long. It’s been so long.

I’ve waited to see this look from him again. For him to have time to give me more than just a passing caress, a distracted smile. For him not to be a king that has to behave like one, but to just be Midas. My Midas.

“You’re mine,” he says again, and his hands move, one to hold the back of my head, the other to skim down to my ass and squeeze.

“I’ve missed you,” he says, his lips poised at the hollow of my throat, right below the blade’s mark. “You looked beautiful tonight. So damned sexy.”

His fingers pull up the side of my nightgown, until his hand can dip beneath, bare palm against thigh. My breathing quickens, and I sigh into his mouth as he kisses me in quick, angled bursts.

“I missed you too,” I reply.

He sits us up, keeping me on his lap, my hands coming up to his shoulders to steady myself. With hunger in his eyes, he pulls off my dress, lets me undo the laces at his pants. “So pretty, Precious. So damned pretty.”

My heart beats fast, my stomach knotting and unknotting as his lips once again caress my throat, travel up my jaw. And then his hard length is pushing into me, his groan a taste in my mouth that I swallow down and try to keep.

He possesses me like this, hips pushing up, driving himself deeper, even as his arms tighten around me, squeezing, telling me he won’t ever let me go. And when I moan, my eyes fluttering closed, his tongue comes in to claim me, to rule me. He takes and takes, and I give. I give it all.

My heart swells when he sucks at my tongue and plunges deeper into my core, and I move with him, my spine like a wave as I work to bring him pleasure, to give him what he needs. To make him happy.

And when he pulls from my body and spills his seed against my stomach with a groan, I lie back down against his sweat-slicked chest with a sigh and a soft smile.

But the traitorous tear that falls from my eye tells a different story as it lands on my lip. It brines my happiness and rinses the smile away, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

Midas leaves before dawn with a kiss, but his lips don’t take the taste away. And there in the dark, alone, I cry.

And that, that secret sob I let drain into my pillow, is an ugly truth. But it’s not one I’m ready to face yet.

So I let the satin soak it up, and then I fall asleep, the candor hidden beneath my head and shoved away by the time the morning dawns.

Chapter Fifteen

I watch the guards amble around my bedroom, carrying out the last of the trunks that I filled earlier.

My space looks emptier than usual, my dressing room with noticeable gaps from where some of the gowns and shoes have been taken and packed away. Outside, dusk has fallen.

It’s nearly time to leave.

It doesn’t appear to be snowing out right now, but snow never stays away for very long here, which is why I’m dressed in a heavy woolen gown, complete with fur trim and sheepskin-lined boots. Everything is shiny gold, of course, right down to my thick leather gloves.

My hair is coiled tightly against my head in countless braids so that the wind won’t thrash it around, kept out of the way so that my hood can conceal both my hair and my face.

“It’s time.”

I turn away from the window to see Digby standing ready on the other side of my cage. He looks gruff and quiet as usual, no hint of the man who ran a sword through a foreign king. No expression of worry, like when he carried me up six flights of stairs while covered in blood. But then, I appreciate that about him. His complete unruffled manner, his