She’d learned what that meant and there was not going to be any of that.
“I don’t want rough play. I don’t want any play,” she announced and the gold shot forth, obliterating the blue as his hand trailed up her spine.
“Now, that sounded like a challenge.”
Oh no! Now what had she done?
She had to think fast.
She managed it just as his fingers slid in her hair and put pressure there to bring her mouth to his. “It wasn’t a challenge, Callum,” she whispered. “Last night was…” She fought for a word and found it. “Vigorous.” His tawny eyes instantly lit with humor upon hearing her word (and they also lit with something else entirely) and he grinned before she finished, “I ache a little bit.”
At once, the humor swept from his features. His hand in her hair kept putting on the pressure but only to tuck her forehead into his neck.
“Poor baby,” he murmured. “Jetlagged and misused by her king.” His hand slid to her neck and started massaging and she told herself it didn’t feel good (when it did). “I’m sorry, honey,” he went on softly. “After a battle, one like that…” She tensed at his words and he sighed. “Being away from you was not good.”
She wished she could believe him.
She really, really did.
He bent his neck to kiss her forehead and then said, “We’ll give you your medicine, I’ll show you your new home and then I want you to take it easy for the rest of the day. Yes?”
Again she wondered if it was a genuine question or a rhetorical one.
She learned it was rhetorical for he lifted her off his lap and took her to their bedroom. He located her medication and gave her the injection and she found, as much as she hated to admit it, that she missed emerging from the burn in the strong safety of his arms.
He spent some time showing her her new home and it was obvious as he did it, in the pride that was evident in his words and his features, that he loved this castle. Then again, there was a lot to love not only in how it looked and how much there was of it but how it felt.
They went to the library where he ordered her to find a book which she did then he took her back to his study.
He deposited her on the big, fluffy couch which was under a diamond-paned window, just as the snow started to fall outside.
He threw a big, fluffy, warm woolen throw over her body and tucked it tight around her h*ps and legs and arranged a pillow behind her head. After he settled her, he picked up the phone and ordered Maraleena to bring them lunch.
He went to his desk and made calls, went through mail and eventually started writing notes. She set her book aside and stared out at the snow wondering how she managed to find herself trapped in a fairytale castle with a fairytale king when all of it was real but none of it was true (except, of course, the castle).
Callum ate lunch at his desk.
Sonia defied his unspoken command to clean her plate and picked at her food because she was nowhere near finished processing her enormous breakfast.
Callum didn’t have the chance to confront her for she curled up on the fluffy couch under her fluffy woolen throw with her hands under her cheek and fell asleep.
So she was asleep and missed it when her king glanced her way and his face grew soft.
And she missed it when he walked to her on the couch and sat in the crook of her lap.
And she missed it when he slid her hair off her neck but tucked the throw tight around her shoulder so she wouldn’t get a chill.
And she missed his soft kiss at her temple before he dropped his forehead there.
And she missed him whispering in her ear in a voice threaded with an emotion that even Sonia couldn’t have misunderstood, “Fuck, baby doll, I missed you so f**king much.”
Chapter Sixteen
Exposed
Sonia sat on the sofa in Callum’s study, stared out the window at the gray sky, the landscape covered in white snow and tried to find at least a shred of courage to say what she had to say to Callum.
She’d been with Callum at the castle for three days.