Page 9 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

“Yes, Duke Ivrael. I verified it, just as you requested, Your Lordship.”

Ivrael reached out and touched his forefinger to Roland’s hand where it held me. My stepfather’s bruising grip on my arm suddenly loosened as one finger after another peeled away from my bicep. Roland stared at his hand as if he had no control over it.

The duke then took my arm in his own hand and slid his fingers down to my wrist, clasping it lightly. Pinpricks of awareness shivered across my skin everywhere he touched, leaving behind an odd heat. His thumb traced small circles against my pulse point, and I tried to tell myself my racing heartbeat was from fear alone.

As if we were performing some strange ritual dance I didn’t know the steps to, he spun me around, his gaze moving up and down my body, assessing me. His other hand came to rest at the small of my back, and even through my jacket I could feel the strange contrast of his cool touch and the heat it sparked under my skin.

At the end of my slow twirl, I wound up facing him, and he pulled me up against him. The scent of him, like vanilla and ice with some kind of spicy overlay, overwhelmed me as he molded his body to mine.

The duke reached out and brushed my hairout of my eyes, then smiled a little when it instantly fell back down. The next time, he pushed the whole mass of curls back behind my shoulder, his fingers trailing along my neck. I stood immobile, staring at his otherworldly beauty and already hating how my body responded to his touch.

“She’s lovely.” He glanced at the vendor, but his hand remained curved around the nape of my neck. “And you are absolutely certain of her bloodline?”

“Of course, Your Lordship.” The ugly little man with the ledger spoke obsequiously, all but bowing as he responded.

Then the duke dropped his hands away from me and took a step back. For all that the air around us had been chilly, I hadn’t felt it. Not until he was no longer touching me, and I was left feeling bereft, as if by denying me contact with him, he was literally leaving me out in the cold.

I blinked rapidly, my mind reeling in a haze of confusion and unwanted attraction.

“I’ll take her,” Ivrael said, turning to look at Roland.

Take me?

What the hell did that mean?

Avarice flashed across Roland’s face, the same look he got every month when the Social Security checks arrived. Despite the chill in the air, beads of sweat popped out around his hairline. “I’ll get what we agreed on, right?”

The duke’s nostrils flared as if he smelled something unpleasant. “I promise you’ll get more than you bargained for.”

Even then, I knew his words portended something awful. I would have warned Roland he shouldn’t have made a deal with this man, this duke—whoever he was—who touched me like I was precious and spoke of me as if I weren’t there. But I didn’t care what happened to Roland.

The toad-like vendor began muttering to himself as he opened the ledger, running through calculations and jotting down notations in the book.

“What is the chattel’s name?” he asked, looking at me expectantly.

Chattel. I had heard the word before, but I didn’t know where. Icouldn’t remember what it meant, but it still hit me like a punch in the stomach, knocking all the breath from my lungs. “Are you talking about me?”

“Yes, child. What is your name?”

“Lara. Lara Evans.”

He dipped the feather quill in the inkpot and began writing. As his pen scritched across the page of the journal, I glanced back and forth among the three men, the fog that had clouded my mind since we arrived in the marketplace finally clearing entirely.

The beautiful man had said he would take me.

Oh, holy hell.

Roland was about tosellme.

“This isn’t legal,” I blurted out.

And I wasn’t about to stick around for it. I spun away from them and marched away from the table, realizing as I did so I had no idea where the exit was or how to get there. But I had to find my way out eventually, right? There was only so far a market could stretch across a single field.

“Stop.” As the duke spoke, the word echoed around me like a thunderclap, ringing in my ears long after it had faded away.

I had absolutely no intention of following any command issued by any of those three, and yet I found myself freezing in place, my limbs tingling painfully as if they’d been encased in ice. My breath puffed out in front of me, mist swirling out of my mouth as I tried to speak, to protest, to scream that I could not be so cold.

Slowly, against my will, I turned, moving stiffly back toward the vendor’s table.

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