Page 98 of Emperor of Wrath

I lift a brow. “How elitist of you.”

She purses her lips. “I mean I’m surprised you don’t have servants. Or slaves, or whatever.”

“You have quite the low opinion of me, don’t you?”

“I’m sure there’s room for it to go lower, don’t you worry.”

I chuckle to myself as I open the front doors and step inside. Annika follows, and when I glance back, I grin at her failure to hide her stunned expression.

“I’m assuming Sota gave you this place?”

“What makes you think I didn’t buy it myself?”

She eyes me doubtfully. “Did you?”

“No.”

She rolls her eyes and makes her way slowly through the double-height front entryway.

“I stole it, actually.” I grin at her shocked expression, then walk past her into the house. “Hungry?”

She shakes her head, still mostly avoiding my eyes.

It pisses me off. Because it’s not just since I made her come on the plane. It started earlier, in the conference room, when I called her a whore.

The thing is, I wasn’t literally calling her a whore. Not like that. I meant it as in “you’re my little whore.”

“Bad girl” and “slut” seemed to turn her into a fucking puddle when I called her those. But the W word was too much.

Violently so. Alarmingly so.

Tellingly so.

And that’s what’s pissing me off. Not that she’s refusing to look me in the eye. But that there’s something in that word that holds a dark, painful power over her. And I fucking want to know what it is.

“Not hungry at all?”

She shakes her head. “Honestly, I’m just tired.”

“I’ll show you to the bedroom.”

Annika follows me through the house, gawking at the gorgeous views of Lake Biwa. You can even see the ruins of the 16th century Sakamoto Castle.

Upstairs, I lead her to the master suite. Her brow furrows.

“All of this is my bedroom?”

I smile. “Our bedroom.”

Her eyes snap to mine and her jaw sets as her face heats. “Um, what? Hey?—!”

My hand reaches up to cup her chin, lifting her defiant eyes to mine.

“You’re still not really grasping this whole ‘marriage’ thing, are you?”

“Oh, I grasp it just fine,” she mutters. “I just like my privacy.”

“What’s mine is yours, princess,” I quip. “In sickness and in health?—”

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