Page 11 of Chained to the Devil's Daughter

“This is looking familiar,” Ash’ren murmured.

He’d ventured closer without our escorts, close enough his shoulder grazed mine. I gave it a bump. “You recognize it? I thought you’d have to see the broken window.”

“It’s only a little missing paint, and on the wood, not the glass.”

“I wonder how it became so.”

“No need to wonder.” He snaked an arm around my waist and hauled me to him, his breath hot on my neck. “It was me.”

I faked a gasp. “You, in the palace? On what authority?”

“A princess needed fucking. How could I deny her royal cunt?”

A sound came from behind, and I jumped from his arm. Ash instinctively followed my lead. Belatedly I recognized it as the clanging of a pipe.

We hastily made our way in silence from there. We passed my yellow door—another quiet rebellion I waged as a girl—and stopped at the next one, a long wall down.

“Here we are.”

“If I take a bath, will you stay?” he asked as I swung open the door.

“Of course.”

The guest suite was as cozy as could be found in Hell. With an open floor plan the size of my bed chambers, it wasn’t the largest guest apartment in the palace, but it was the only one that shared a wall with mine. By the way he scowled at the furniture in his path to the washroom, I’d chosen poorly.

“It’s. . .” He thumped the mattress with his fist. “Very soft.”

“Is that a pro?” No response. I touched my choker and followed him deeper into the suite, watching the flex of his muscles as he discarded his trousers in the middle of the room. Flames take me! His ass was still the finest in the four territories. “Or a con?”

The tub was already full and only required his magic to heat it. Large enough to fit us both twice, it didn’t have the ledge that encircled the one in my chambers, so I leaned against the doorway.

Head to toe, his body was lacerated with marks of varying sizes and shapes. My gut ached with how much he’d endured. My insides rose to a vigorous boil at the same time as his water. If only I’d convinced my father to match me with a Kindran suitor earlier. Perhaps I would’ve saved him sooner.

Masculine moans of pleasure derailed me from the corner of Self-Loathing Street and Regret Boulevard. I approached his deliciously wet, naked body, snatching a bottle of shampoo from a shelf.

“It’s only temporary.” Still, he wouldn’t look at me, so I rushed on. “At week’s end, my year with Filly will be over. Somenobles would discredit me for sharing a room with someone other than my suitor.”

Oh, flickity-flames. Sizzling droplets scalded my skin as his attention snapped to me.

“You share your bed with them?”

“Ab-so-flaming-lutely not, Ash.” Wide-eyed, I squirted a hefty amount of shampoo into his hair and lathered desperately. “There’s a suite off the side.”

“The golden door.”

“Yes.”

When we were kids, we’d thought the opulent golden door mysterious, as though it held possibilities for more play and discovery. As we grew, it faded into the background. I learned what it was the night my father revealed his plan to fill it with suitors. The same night I escalated our nightly explorations, knowing there was only one person I trusted with my virginity.

Without another word, Ash’ren scrubbed his body. A body I unabashedly ogled while allowing the information to set in. For years, we’d fucked and fought one wall away from the suitor of the year.

“So?” I prompted after an unbearable amount of silence. Ash’ren stood, and I fetched him a towel, trying and failing not to salivate at the ribbed thickness bobbing at his waist.

“So, a body resides in your closet.” He accepted the towel, dabbed at his calves and thighs, then settled it over his shoulders, grinning lecherously at my inability to wrench my stare from his dick. Half-soft and hanging down his thigh, it was glorious. “The same as before.”

“Yes.”

“And if I plan to sneak in any way?”

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