Page 61 of Princess For All

What she said hit me and I cleared my throat. “I’m not here about that.”

“Oh? Really?”

“No.” She stood, and that was the moment I saw what most didn’t see in her. Or willfully ignored.

Maybe they couldn’t recognize it because they didn’t know what it was or their lives had been so blessed that they had never been touched by something traumatic and exceedingly dark. A list of reasons.

But I knew the truth that few knew.

The truth I wasn’t sure even Inez knew or accepted.

Inez had a monster of her own inside of her and I was seeing it in her eyes at that moment. Her monster studied me and delight filled her eyes. “No, you have something good to tell me and want thereward.” She clucked her tongue when I opened her mouth. “Don’t lie to your princess, Tian.” She ran her fingers along my neck and down my chest. “You love your blow jobs.”

“I do,” I agreed, already learning that I could trust her with praise and she wouldn’t turn it around. That it was rewarded and what she needed. “I wouldn’t risk them.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“But my mind is trying to figure out what I learned still, so I didn’t think about the reward yet,” I confessed, telling her the truth. I realized something and adjusted my neck. “You’ve trained me to come directly to you and tell you immediately.”

She chuckled darkly, leaning in and pressing her lips against my ear. “So I suck my well-trained dog’s cock almost every day? Does that make me your bitch?”

“You’re my princess,” I whispered, unsure of how to handle that minefield.

She hummed. “Tell me what you know, my trained man, and let’s see what reward you get today.”

Today? I needed to circle back to that but focused on what she wanted. I leaned back so we were almost kissing. “Eddie flew a drone so I could get eyes on Keres’s coven.” I swallowed when anger filled Inez’s eyes. “I’ll accept your punishment. Don’t blame Eddie. I promised him that it was worth it because my gut told me it was needed.”

“Were you right?” She snorted before I could answer. “You’re my paranoid partner in plans. Of course you were.” Just to make her point about being paranoid, she opened my jacket and ran her hands over all the weapons I carried even to come see her.

I didn’t care as long as she kept touching me.

“What did you find?” she breathed against my lips.

“The noble killed himself,” I told her, nodding when her eyes went too wide. “I put a very visible line of land mines just at the doors, My Princess. I wasn’t trying to kill or risk those trapped.”

The monster was pleased, licking her lips, but her tongue brushed against my lips as well. “It was a warning.”

“It was,” I confirmed.

“Tell me,” she ordered. “I want to get to your reward.”

Me too. Gods help me… Me too.

“One land mine didn’t go off,” I explained. “And we could survive that. Even at your age, you could survive it. Lose a leg probably, yes, but survive it. Especially with others right there to help? It didn’t make sense.”

She frowned. “No, it doesn’t, and why didn’t others think of that?”

“Because they probably assumed there was more to it like I put a bunch down and he fell into them or—they were just happy I got one.” I gave a half shrug, trying to swallow a moan when she moved her fingers down my pants. “I thought maybe he fell onto the others in the line, but that made no sense either unless he was Eddie’s age.”

“How can you tell he didn’t?” she hedged. Because she was so smart, understanding almost immediately filled her eyes. “You can tell the blasts were all at the same time.”

“Yes, with Eddie’s different lenses and how the blasts—things look different when one blast after another. Different angles because the dirt under moves or whatever. No, this was all three at once.”

“About the height of a person who threw himself on them,” she whispered.

“That’s what I think, yes. He noticed them and saw them as his wayoutof being tied to Keres.”

A flash of pity filled her eyes for the briefest of seconds before it was gone. She realized I’d seen it though and gave a half shrug as she pulled away. “From the recordings, she seemed to truly love him, thought he loved her.”

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