Page 17 of The Time Of Queens

However, instead of being concerned with who those hands belonged to, I was more concerned with choking, as the piece ofapple I had been chewing on shot down the wrong way. I started coughing instantly, trying to bring it back up and only achieving this when that same large hand slapped my back.

“Ahem… ack ah!” I shouted as it finally came up in my hand, making me look down at it with mortification. Then my eyes rose to find a pair of dark ones looking down at me with concern.

“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice gentle and anxious. Yet, before I could answer I started coughing again, making him shout to a passing servant,

“You there! Fetch some water at once!”

“Right away, Sir,” the servant replied before racing off to do his master’s bidding.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to hide my embarrassment and looking around for where I could dump the piece of apple. As for Draven, he began rubbing soothing circles on my back as I continued to cough, unable to meet his gaze.

I swear, my cheeks could have melted I was so hot, but then I felt a glass being lifted to my lips and tender command being spoken.

“Drink.”

I did as he asked, unable to stop myself, and my hand covered his as he continued to hold the glass to my lips. My other hand was still concealing the gross, coughed up piece of fruit firmly behind my back.

“Is that better?” he asked once I had finished it off, and I released his hand.

“Much better, I thank you,” I replied, still unable to look at him, instead giving into my impulse to bite my bottom lip. Something I still found myself doing around my husband in my own time. Only, usually, it was for other reasons, like when we were in company, and he wanted to torture me with whispering in my ear. Listing all the bad things he wanted to do to me was a sure way to get us to retire early or leave wherever we were.Sometimes we never even made it home, finding some dark corner somewhere, a bathroom stall, or even in the back seat of the car with nothing but a privacy screen between us and the driver.

However, when I still wouldn’t look up, he spoke my name for the first time and I swear, I couldn’t help but gasp. It was the only small freedom I would allow my bottom lip.

“Keira.”

Then I felt my chin taken hold between his thumb and finger, before he forced my gaze to his. The second our eyes met I became entrapped, the purple hint starting to take hold of the dark brown. The years spent together did nothing to calm our need for each other, which was why looking up at him now was dangerous. Because there were so many times between us, I forgot that I was looking at my husband from the past, easily getting lost in those eyes. Eyes I knew so well,so intimately.They spoke to me and lured me back to a time when he was mine.

But then his gaze slipped down to my lips, and he used his thumb to pull the bottom one free of my teeth. The slight narrowing of his eyes made me wonder what he was thinking. I feared whether he had recognised it from the other night, as my lips were all he had seen.

Had I been biting them then also?

“Are you well?” he asked, and his words broke the spell enough for me to nervously laugh.

“Oh yes… Oops!” I said as I stepped back, bumping into the sideboard enough for the vase of flowers to wobble. So, I turned and grabbed it, taking the opportunity to dispose of the piece of apple inside it.

“I fear I am a liability today,” I said, making him grin down at me as I smoothed out my dress now that I was free to do so, no longer having the piece of chewed apple in my hand. Although itseemed as if I hadn’t been as conspicuous as I had hoped, as he glanced back to the staircase and said,

“A liability, you say, I wouldn’t say that, Miss Williams, although you are something, though I am yet to discover what.”

I swallowed hard and told him,

“I am nothing but a simple lady’s maid, my Lord.”

“I very much doubt that… good day, miss,” he said, and he was about to walk away but paused. Doing so long enough to look back over his shoulder and say, “Oh, and that seemed like a good enough place to hide it.”

He then nodded at the vase, making my cheek turn cherry red as I looked back at the flowers. But then I looked back to him in time to see him smirk. A devastating grin gifted to me before he disappeared up the staircase, leaving me to sag against the sideboard.

That and to mutter hopelessly…

“Oh boy,I’m in trouble now.”

7

QUESTION EVERYTHING

DRAVEN

What was it about her?

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