Page 42 of Red Queen

“Eleanna, stop.” He takes my chin, moving closer, and lifting it so I have to look him in the eye. Where he touches tingles like he’s the one with magic. “You came to me for help, protection, a partnership.”

“I didn’t ask for a partnership.”

“You might think you didn’t, but you did. There are others who’d help. Perhaps not as good as me at warcraft, but I’m not the only general. I’m not the only skilled fighter. But you don’t have a history with those men and women. Come to me and you’re offering some kind of partnership.”

“That was all you, Alexandru. You pushed.”

“The Red Queen is so weak she’d let a man set the rules,” he mocks.

“I had no choice.”

He moves in close, lips almost brushing mine. “There’s always a choice. Like now.”

Alexandru releases me, and in that moment, something shifts between us—a newfound understanding, a shared burden that binds us more tightly than any alliance before.

Because he’s right. I could have kept walking. Told him this tomorrow. Or kept it to myself. Instead, I came into his bedchamber and woke him.

Everything in me shifts.

We stare each other down.

“Like it or not, you want me like I want you. Beyond the physical.” There’s a dare there, for me to defy him.

I can’t.

And a slow fire builds in his eyes. I can’t stifle the heated response pooling low in my belly. It’s a familiar sensation and somehow new.

He grips my chin again, tipping my face up to meet his gaze. His silver eyes blaze with an intensity I’ve never seen before.

“Tonight, Eleanna,” he says in a voice laced with dark tone, “I’ll remind you why we’re meant to rule jointly.”

“You say that like you want to remind me why you’re meant to be king.”

He laughs, and slides his hand down to grip my throat, causing me being to throb and ache, and my pulse leaps with pure excitement. “Maybe that’s wishful thinking on your part. Once you were mine.”

“You pushed me away.”

His grip tightens, cutting off my air, my words, opening up all the urges in me, sullied and sordid and exquisitely erotic.

“I broke the engagement because I saw what you were becoming, what your father made you. A cruel creature with a heart that locked itself tight,” he says. “Time’s passed, and thattyrant’s gone and still you’ve been marching down that road he put you on, ignoring all the others, because everyone’s too fucking scared to tell you differently.”

I try and speak but he squeezes and runs his tongue over my lips.

“What?” he asks, faintly mocking, “are you going to say I did the same? Truth is, I didn’t want to despise my queen. And if you wouldn’t listen, I’d keep away, and watch. But he’s gone and you’re still stuck. You need someone who isn’t scared. You need me by your side. In your bed.”

I grab at his hand, but he doesn’t budge and when I go to kick him, he drags me to the bed and in one motion slams me down, his body landing on me, hand still choking me, just enough to make that panicked, erotic excitement bubble.

“You need an equal. Someone you need to answer to. Someone who’ll tell you when you’re wrong. You need me. And, like it or not, you want me.” He drops his mouth to my ear, his breath hot against me. “And I don’t mean physical want. You want more than the sex and desire. You want what I offer, you want the partnership.”

He lets go, just enough that I can speak. “You lie. I don’t?—”

“Want that partnership?” His hand slides down now, over my breasts, down to beneath my skirts and my clit starts to throb, my pussy ache, even though he rests his fingers on my thigh. “You do.”

He dances his fingers up, cruel how he skims and doesn’t really touch. All he’s doing is fanning desire into an inferno.

“You, my queen, don’t want a consort. You want an equal.”

“And that’s you?”

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