He points his knife at me again, “Your cape. Take it off.”
My soft laugh dies. He is serious, after all.
“And what if I say no? Your Highness.”
Or My Lord. Whatever.
“I’ll take you anyway. You are my wife.”
He kind of has a point about us being married, but the way he delivered the message doesn’t sit well with me.
“It would be a rape, and you know that.”
“I don’t care if it’s rape or not. I’ll do what I want.”
I stand up, shaken.
“Wait, time out. You don’t really mean that, do you?” I ask with a firm tone.
Hebursts out laughing, putting his knife away, and I almost can’t help but smile at his lit-up face.
“You didn’t just ‘time out’ me like I was some naughty schoolboy…” he says, amused and for the first time, not at all angry.
His laugh stops suddenly as if he realized it got weirdly intimate between us, and not in the way he hoped. It got intimate in a goddess-forbid friendly way.
Ugh, I couldn’t tell which of us hates this unwanted accident more!
This night is not going as I thought it would, and I can’t help but feel slightly disappointed.
Like… being ridiculously hot is his only positive quality, and this whole conversation completely killed my mood. He should have tried to take me immediately after returning from the wedding. It was still salvageable even after he pushed me onto the bed like that. Now? I don’t want it to be like this.
No, wait. I don’t want any of this. This day was too long, and the wedding was too perfect to tarnish like this.
“I need to take a shower,” I murmur more to myself.
“Go on,” he points to a bathtub with his chin.
“Don’t be ridiculous, my lord,” I say, going straight to the wooden door near the dresser.
I don’t know why he laughs until I open the door. It’s not a master bathroom. It’s… a restroom. Probably. Way below my standards. Way below anyone's standards. What the fuck? It truly is a medieval castle.
I close the door and stride to the bathtub with Rogue Prince laughing at me.
“You didn’t hear a word at our fathers’ meeting today, did you? Not the part about our problem with the school system and lack of higher education or engineers, for that matter. You were too occupied with staring at me and—” His statement abruptly stops with my white cape falling with a thud to the floor.
Who’s staring now, you prick?
I look at him over my shoulders, standing tall, not ashamed of my toned body. I am used to being naked after the shifts in front of all the warriors back home, and he already saw almost all of it before we shifted earlier.
He stands a few steps away from me with his arms crossed over his gorgeous, tanned torso. He stopped talking, but his face is still cold, emotionless. Surprisingly, he looks into my eyes.
I bring my focus back to the bathtub. I touch the surface of the water that is already inside. It’s very warm. Hot almost. So, I step inside, immersing my tired body in the hope of relief. I sit, leaning my back over the bathtub wall, water reaching over my chest. I close my eyes and try to relax.
When I open them again, I see Rogue Prince sitting on the floor in front of me. Still shirtless. Leaning casually on the wall near a big wooden chest behind the bed. His legs are crossed, and black sweatpants show his bare feet and ankles. And he stares. Stares at me.
“The wedding was beautiful. Your Highness,” I chose to say, closing my eyes again, letting him observe me. I don’t mind, not really.
“All of our weddings look like this.”