Page 47 of The Alpha's Cursed Queen

“You want us to just stay here?” I look around my room. “Isn’t there anything—”

“There’s nothing I can do.” Darian looks tired. “I just need you to trust me, Alice. Everything I’m doing, I’m doing for you. If my father gives me an order during an event, I can’t disobey him publicly. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

A cold realization forms within me. “He’s not making you spend time with other females, is he?”

His silence pierces me in the heart.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” I breathe, my chest aching. “That’s why you don’t want me there. You don’t want me to see you with other women.”

“My father is trying to humiliate you,” Darian says quietly. “He’ll be very angry with me that I’m not letting you attend these events. If you’re not there, and I accompany another female, it says nothing about you. But if you are there and I do that, it will be seen as an insult to my fated mate. He’s playing politics, Alice. I’m trying to counteract his every move. I don’t want you to become a laughingstock because my father wants to be petty.”

“No disrespect, but I don’t like your father all that much.” I try to hide my hurt under my light tone. At times, I wonder if I’m weak. I should be getting angry. I should be telling Darian that he needs to stand up to his father and not escort anyone other than me. But I can’t say any of that to him. A part of me is worried he may get annoyed by my clinginess.

Aside from the fated mate bond tying the two of us together, if anyone were to ask me why Darian should choose me as his mate, I wouldn’t know how to answer. Deep down, I can’t understand what Darian sees in me. But these are the secrets and questions I hide deep inside my heart.

“I am not a huge fan of his, either, at the moment,” Darian chuckles. I feel him sniff my neck, and then he presses his teeth against me lightly, grazing my skin.

My body trembles. “What are you doing?”

“You smell nice,” he murmurs before pressing a kiss against my nape. He’s holding me to him, his chest against my back, his arms secure around my waist.

“I always smell like this,” I counter, but when I feel his lips trail down the side of my neck to my shoulder, I go still. “Darian?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“W–What’re you doing?” My eyes flutter shut when his teeth press against my shoulder. I feel a stab of pain and realize he’s broken the skin. His tongue laps at the blood from the small wound. This should annoy me, but a breathy moan escapes my lips.

His hand reaches under my shirt, ghosting over my skin.

“I’m very firmly against any hanky-panky,” I whisper, trying to make my voice firm and failing miserably.

I hear him laugh now. “Hanky-panky? I assure you, I’m not planning on any hanky-panky with you.” Before I can say anything, he gets to his feet, and after spinning me around, he pins me against the bed. “I’m planning to drive you crazy. Hanky-panky implies something else.”

“W–What?” Flustered, I try to think, but with his hand under my shirt, it’s not the easiest task. His fingers are leaving a trace of heat across my skin, and everything feels unbearably sensitive. “Darian!”

His hand cups my breast, and my face heats up. But when his thumb brushes against the hardened peak, I let out a wanton sound, and my lower body clenches.

“Look at you,” he murmurs in awe, hunger and desire in his eyes. “It’s like your body knows whom it belongs to. It reacts to my every touch.”

Before I can protest, he pulls down my shirt, revealing my chest, and his mouth descends onto one of my nipples. My back arches as his hot, wet mouth envelops the hard nub.

My fingers dig into his hair as I feel streaks of white-hot heat course through me, all the way down to my pussy. I can feel the wetness forming between my legs. Darian’s other hand begins toying with my other nipple, and all reason escapes me. I can’t form a single coherent thought in my head.

Nobody has ever touched me like this, and I’m dazed and overwhelmed. My legs twist and press together as the desire builds. Someone is whimpering, and I belatedly realize that the sound is coming from me. Darian laps at my nipples, teasing me, making me gasp, and when his teeth sink into the hard flesh, I cry out.

He growls under his breath, and his hand dives into my shorts.

“Open your legs.”

The order is absolute, one I don’t even think of disobeying. I throw my head back in a drawn-out moan when he runs one thick finger against my slit, rubbing back and forth, gathering the juices. His fingertip brushes against the sensitive bundle of nerves, and I whimper at the shock of electricity that shoots through me.

“Darian!” I gasp out his name when I feel that same finger wiggling its way inside my hole. It’s an uncomfortable stretch but not painful. Once he has fully pierced my pussy, he moves the finger around. I moan at the strange sensation, my toes curling at the invasion that’s making me feel all sorts of things.

“Do you like that?” he whispers against my ear, his voice husky. When I don’t reply, he moves his other hand from my chest to my neck and wraps it around it. “Alice, I asked you a question.”

“Yes,” I breathe, feeling his fingers press against my neck in a possessive hold. My mind is foggy with desire. He’s touching me in all sorts of ways, forcing me to experience things that are foreign to me and progressively driving me insane.

The feeling of invasion inside me changes into a devastating form of pleasure as he moves his finger in and out. When he adds another finger, my nails dig into his shoulder desperately, needing to hold onto something to combat this intense pleasure coursing through me.

---