Page 50 of Promised to the Alpha Prince

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t answer that.” He let go of me and got off the bed. He struggled to zip away his erection, which was pulsing and huge and still wet with my slick. Then he wrapped me up in one of my soft blankets and picked me up bride style.

I latched my arms around his neck. “What about my pillows?”

“There are pillows in the nest,” he said.

“Enough pillows, though?” I said, reaching for the ones on my bed. “Need some of these in case.”

He sighed, shaking his head at me, but there was some look in his eyes, something indulgent, something affectionate, something right. He seized two of the pillows, tucked them in against me, tightened his grip on my body, and then swung me out into the hallway.

I clung to him.

He went down the hallway.

“If we’re going to a nest, does that mean you’re going to knot me?” I said.

“As if I could stop myself,” he said, his voice threaded with desire.

“Are you going to… bite me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, sweet girl, that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter when, not in the end. We can be bonded before the wedding.”

“But tradition,” I said.

“Fuck tradition,” he said. “It’ll be whatever you need, got it?”

I liked the idea of that, but I didn’t believe him. Thus far, it had really not been about whatever I needed, that was the thing. It had been about whatever he thought was the way it was supposed to be. I was nervous.

But it was better that he was here, and I wanted a nest, and I wanted his knot. Compared to just a short time ago, everything was much, much better.

“If I do,” he said, “we should have a discussion while we’re still relatively in our right minds about where you want it.”

“Where I want what?”

“The bite, baby girl,” he said softly.

“Well, it’s tradition for it to be on the neck, isn’t it?”

“Cole wanted his bite elsewhere,” said Dmitri. “It’s where you want it.”

“Where did Cole want it?”

“I understand he has two on his inner thighs, one from the king and one from Ilse,” said Dmitri.

“Oh,” I said softly, stretching the word out, thinking of Nikolai’s mouth on my inner thigh as he had gone down on me earlier that day. “Inner thighs.”

“It’s where you want it, though, sweet girl,” he said.

“Well, I always just figured it would be on my neck,” I said.

“Because tradition,” he said.

“Well, you’re very traditional,” I said.

“You must have some opinion about the permanent mating mark I’m going to put on your body,” he said.

I hesitated. Why hadn’t I thought about this? It was my body, after all. “Do you have somewhere you want to put it?”

“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” he said gruffly. We were climbing up a set of stairs and he had to move his arm to tuck my head in against his chest so that I didn’t bump it.

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