Page 106 of Autumn Queens & Shadows

“I would have rather remained lied to.”

“Is guilt that tough, huh?”

Spinning towards the sink, I said, “I don’t know, you tell me.”

He chuckled, wrapping his arms around my body. “Little shit.”

“What are you doing?”

“Hugging this idiot I used to call my best friend. Because she needs it.” He buried his face in my hair. “Because I need it. But gods, bending all this way down is killing my back, Tiny. You didn’t grow into that damn quarter of an inch at all.”

I elbowed his stomach hard, and that had him chuckling even more. “I did.”

His eyes dropped to my breasts. “I meant vertically.”

Spinning back to him, I snipped, “You absolute pig.”

He snorted and then hauled me up by my waist, lifting me above his head like I was a pillow.

“Put me down, Malik!”

The idiot carried me like that to my bed and then gently lowered me down. And instead of walking around to his side, he climbed over me, and so very slowly, got himself on his side while I stood there under him, frozen in shock. He rolled to the bedside table, pulling the drawers open. “Got any of those inappropriate bedtime stories your sister reads?”

He went quiet for a moment and then began pulling a long roll of black silk ribbons. Once he’d gotten all of the six feet of it out, he gave me a look full of questions. “What are you wrapping with this?”

Shit.

I took it from his hand and then climbed on top of him, catching him by surprise this time—myself, too. Taking one of his hands, I wrapped the end of one ribbon around his wrist and then his other, binding them together and then pulling both of his arms above his head and securing them on the bed post. After I had him all tied to the bed, I leaned over the bedside table and pulled a shorter and thicker strip of black ribbon. “This one is for your eyes,” I said. “Got another for your mouth, but I’m not sure how you’d feel about that.”

Malik had gone the stillest I’d ever seen him be. His eyes dropped from my face to where I was straddling his stomach. Then back up to my face and back and forth his tied wrists.

“A lesson,” I repeated his words from last night, leaning over to untie him, “to never touch things that don’t belong to you without permission.”

“Is that why you tie them to the bed? Because you don’t want them touching what doesn’t belong to them?” His mouth pulled into a slow grin. “Lie. Say yes.”

“No.”

“What if that had been my very last wish?”

“I fulfilled it. You told me to lie.”

He liked that because that silly little look was back in his face. The look that made me shiver in my own skin. He knew the power he had over me. At least over my body. “Who do you belong to, my liege?”

Undoing the ribbon from the headboard, I pulled his hands to me so I could undo the ties from his wrists. “Should I lie again?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether I’d prefer to be lied to or not.”

“I belong to you,” I said, feeling my ears heat up. “We’re married. Fake or not, I belong to you until this ends.”

“Until what ends?”

I scowled. “The marriage.”

“Oh, that. Yes,” he said, grinning again. “Comfy up there?”