The tremors racking my spine wouldn’t stop, vibrating through my bones like the aftermath of a siege.
I leaned heavily against Kaelen’s chest, the solid, unyielding heat of his body the only thing keeping me anchored to the present year.
My mind was spinning out of control, desperately trying to categorize and file away the sudden influx of raw, bloody information.
The memories of the old Evangeline were no longer scattered, broken fragments of a dream.
They were a definitive ledger of blood.
I knew the truth now.
I knew exactly why the High Council had tried to poison my herbal tea every single afternoon, and I knew why my father had kept me locked away in the high stone tower like a shameful secret.
They weren’t afraid of a weak, simple queen who didn’t understand the crown.
They were terrified of the monstrous, ancient beast sleeping inside my veins.
“Evangeline, your eyes,” Kaelen whispered, his voice dangerously low as his large hands tightened around my waist, pulling me so close I could feel the rapid, heavy thudding of his own heart.
“They were glowing.
Like molten gold.
What did you see in that iron chest?
What did the seal do to you?”
“I saw everything,” I managed to choke out, my voice ragged, uneven, and entirely stripped of its usual clinical armor.
I forced myself to draw a long, shaky breath, trying to clear the phantom taste of smoke from my tongue.
“I saw how he died, Kaelen.
It wasn’t a sudden illness as the maesters told the realm.
It wasn’t a weak, failing heart.
She killed him.
I…
I killed him.”
Kaelen didn’t flinch.
He didn’t pull away from me in horror, nor did he loosen his protective hold on a queen who had just confessed to patricide and high treason.
His golden eyes merely darkened into a deep, stormy hue, a primitive, fiercely protective instinct flaring up within his stoic features.
He had served my father faithfully for years, but his true loyalty belonged entirely to the woman in his arms.
“He was a tyrant who would have broken this kingdom and sold you to the slaughter,” Kaelen murmured, his forehead leaning down to touch mine, his hot breath brushing against my cold, pale lips.
“He deserved a far worse death than whatever you gave him in that room.” Get faster updates on novelping.com.
The phantom heat in my veins began to swell again, but it was no longer the destructive, angry fire of the flashback.
It was a restless, frantic energy, an unbearable tide of pure adrenaline born from the sheer terror of the memory and the sudden realization of my own lethality.
My skin felt painfully sensitive, every nerve ending firing at once, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to break its cage.
I needed a distraction.
I needed to drown out the lingering smell of burning flesh, hot iron, and sulfur that still haunted my nose.
I needed to feel alive, to know that I was Melissa, the living woman in the present, and not the ghost of a dead killer trapped in a cycle of violence.
I looked up into Kaelen’s golden eyes, seeing the raw, unspent devotion burning within them, and all my logical restraints dissolved into the wind.
I reached up, my fingers tangling aggressively into the thick dark hair at the nape of his neck, and pulled his face down into mine.
The kiss was not gentle, nor was it a royal favor.
It was a desperate, chaotic collision of hunger, fear, and relief.
Kaelen let out a low, ragged growl from the back of his throat, his iron control fracturing instantly under the sheer force of my demand.
He lifted me completely off my feet, shifting my weight until I was sitting back onto the edge of the state ledger desk, carelessly sending a stack of diplomatic scrolls and inkwells clattering to the floorboards below.
His tongue parted my lips with a fierce, possessive hunger, drinking in my soft gasps as his large hands traveled down my neck, his thumbs tracing the frantic pulse point at my throat.
The heavy, restrictive velvet of my crimson gown felt like a cage, trapping the feverish heat of my skin.
Kaelen’s rough, calloused fingers bunched up the heavy fabric of my skirts, pulling them up over my knees until the cool air of the study hit my bare thighs, providing a sharp, electric contrast to the burning warmth of his palms.
He stepped deeply into the space between my parted thighs, his heavy, leather-and-iron uniform pressing me flat against the desk’s edge.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him as close as physically possible, desperate for the grounding friction of his body to quiet the roaring in my mind.
“Evangeline,” he breathed against my skin, his lips tracing a burning path down my jawline to the sensitive hollow of my neck, his teeth grazing the skin just enough to make me shiver.
“The guards…
the council could return to the hall at any moment.”
“Let them come,” I whispered fiercely, my hands gripping his broad shoulders, my fingernails digging through the heavy leather of his vest until I felt the hard muscle beneath.
“Help me forget, Kaelen.
Just for a moment.”
He didn’t hesitate further, his duty losing the war against his desire.
His hand traveled higher, sliding past my inner thigh, his rough skin sending ripples of intense pleasure straight to my core.
I gasped loudly into the empty room as his fingers slipped beneath the gossamer edge of my silk undergarments, finding the damp, hypersensitive heat hidden between my legs. Find the original chapter at novelping.com.
The touch was electric, a perfect calculus of pleasure that completely overrode the terrifying memories of the fire.
He began to move his hand in a slow, heavy, torturous rhythm, his thumb tracing deliberate circles over my swollen clitoris while two of his long, calloused fingers slid deeply inside me, stretching me, driving a ragged, breathless whimper from my lips.
The sensation was entirely overwhelming, a breathless, heavy pleasure that I couldn’t quantify or control.
My hips rocked helplessly against his hand, instinctively chasing the coil of tension that was tightening like a vice in my lower stomach.
Kaelen watched me through heavy, hooded golden lids, his own breathing coming in ragged, painful pants, his stoic face completely unraveled by the sheer intensity of the hold I had over him.
He was the most dangerous warrior in the realm, and he was entirely at the mercy of my sighs.
The tension broke with a sudden, violent finality.
As his thumb pressed down firmly against my core, a blinding wave of pure white heat crashed through my entire being.
My internal walls clamped down tight around his embedded fingers as a shattering orgasm tore through me, a sharp, gasping release that made my vision tilt and blur into a haze of gold.
I buried my face into the crook of his neck, a muffled, desperate cry escaping my lips as the rhythmic tremors rocked my hips, leaching the last of that terrifying, volatile magical heat right out of my blood and replacing it with a heavy, languid exhaustion.
Kaelen held me fiercely through the aftershocks, his body acting as an anchor while my frame shivered.
His fingers stayed perfectly still inside me, letting the rhythmic contractions of my release pulse against his hand until the waves slowly began to fade into a gentle hum.
Just as I began to catch my breath, Kaelen slowly, agonizingly withdrew his hand from beneath my velvet skirts, his knuckles slick with my dampness.
His own massive frame was trembling with an unspent, agonizing restraint, the muscles in his jaw clamping so hard I could hear the bone click.
He pressed his forehead against mine, his chest heaving like a winded stallion.
“No more,” he rasped, his voice incredibly raw and dark as he pulled his hand completely free, reaching down to pull my heavy crimson skirts back down over my legs to soothe my lingering shivers.
“If we go even a fraction of an inch further, Evangeline, I won’t be able to stop myself.
I will tear that gown off you and ruin us both.
And you are the Queen.
We cannot give the old lords a single weapon to use against you tomorrow morning.”
I blinked up at the vaulted ceiling, the heavy fog of lust slowly clearing to reveal the cold, hard reality of our situation.
He was entirely right.
A scandal of this magnitude, a queen caught debasing herself with her bodyguard on the state ledger desk, would completely liquidate the political authority I had just spent the entire morning fighting to build.
I swallowed hard, smoothing down the crimson velvet over my thighs with shaking hands, forcing my erratic heart rate back down into an acceptable baseline.
“A wise risk-assessment, Commander,” I whispered, a weak, breathless smile returning to my lips as I reached out to straighten the leather trim of his vest.
“But don’t worry.
Our accounts are far from settled.”