Page 23 of Fated to the Wicked King

Did I even want to know?

Taking a deep breath, I advanced my supporting pawn and took his piece in return, the capture clean, deliberate, aggressive—shifting the balance between us. “Check,” I mumbled softly.

That did it.

The Wicked King loosed a deep, long groan in his throat.

I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t stop looking at him.

With a sheen of sweat on his brow, he panted through his release. His eyes closed for a moment, his head tilting back ever so slightly, that purely male scent wafted faintly in the air. When those steel blue eyes clamped on me again, a wave of heat flushed exactly right between my legs.

I still wanted him.

Dammit. I still wanted him.

Utterly panicked by my own realization, I shot out of my chair to bolt out of the room, but shadows slammed the door shut. I spun around just as the king caught up with me. His forbidding figure cornered me by the door. Not touching me at all, but effectively caging me in—with his warmth, with his closeness.

I tried not to meet his eyes, tried to breathe. “Why are you doing this?”

His tone was lazy, sated. “Why am I doing…what?”

My gaze pinned on his ridiculously built bare chest, if only so I didn’t need to look at his face. “I don’t understand.” My hand felt around for the doorknob behind me. “Who even are you? Are you still Rabb?”

“I always have been. To what are you referring?”

I flinched at the late realization. “S-Sorry, I know nobody is allowed to say your name.”

Still desperately sweeping the surface of the door with my hand, I was panting like a mindless idiot. The king’s powerful aura had too much sway over me. I had to get away immediately.

His voice lowered even further. “I will allow you, Allie. Only you,” he rasped close to my cheek—too close.

My entire body thrummed with a restless, electric heat, every nerve alive and sparking with a fierce, aching hunger that coiled low and deep, a pulse of want so consuming it felt as though it might burn me from the inside out.

Finally finding the doorknob, I turned it, quickly ducking out of his bodily cage, and slipped away into the darkened halls before my heart could explode out of my chest.

Eight

MYSTERY UNSOLVED

I’d lost count of how many nights I hadn’t slept.

Early morning sunlight streaked through the heavy brocade curtains of my castle chambers. As usual, tea had been magically set up in the sitting area. Behind the privacy screen, washing implements had been prepared. By all other accounts, it could have been considered luxurious living.

Moaning, I stretched my strained back as I got up to get ready for another torturous day.

I spent most nights pacing the room. When I did lie down in bed, I only tossed and turned.

My brain was overwhelmed with confusing theories, frustrating conclusions.

For several months, I had managed to go on, successfully convinced that I wanted nothing more to do with the man who was king. I had been doing so well on my own in my clock tower. And now this.

Of course, part of me—a small irrational part—had already predicted this. How arrogant of me to assume that I would be the statistical exception, the only woman on Wünder able to resist His Majesty in all his glory?

I shook my head in an attempt to clear it, but the sight would forever be burned into my mind. The king’s expression, the way his hair fell across his forehead, those heavy-lidded eyes, the unmistakable need that darkened in the deep blue of them, the way those full lips parted when he groaned⁠—

My insides ached.

Ah, dammit.