Page 50 of Prince of Masks
I keep a distance between our two bodies, a wedge of space that only exists because my hands are firm on his shoulders, and my arms locked.
My jaw is as locked as his grip around me.
All he does is smile, a relaxed, teasing grin that speaks volumes more than his words. “Nice suit.”
My bathing suit is modest, but it isn’t dated or ugly. I have the sudden urge to shield myself. But the water does that for me.
I’m swept back to the corridor in the Faculty Quarter, his mouth hard on mine, bruising me, swelling my lips, his desire firm against my pelvis.
My insides constrict.
“Have you lost your voice in the time we’ve been apart?” he asks, that crooked smile still relaxed on his face, slight, but a victorious gesture all the same.
“How dare I speak to you,” I say, soft, a whisper, “like we are equals.”
His lashes flutter.
His own words returned to him, twisted, a reminder of what he taught me—don’t speak to him.
And so I don’t.
Not more than I have to.
It’s my new resolve.
I decide it now with his hand too splayed, too firm, too low on the small of my back; his hold too tight and so our bodies too close, pressed together if it wasn’t for my locked arms.
Hands braced on his shoulders, I push out of his hold and swim the short distance to the lounger.
Dray lets me go.
He has to.
Too many eyes, too many witnesses, too many parents.
I climb up on the lounger, not gracefully, either, then flop onto my back. I fix my shades and fight the urge to look back at Dray, to smirk at his molten expression aimed at me.
Funny that he’s the one who warns me off speaking to him, but now that I don’t react the way he’s accustomed to, that I don’t answer his questions, that he has to fight to hook my attention, he’s in a fucking tizzy about it.
I stick to my strategy.
Strategy for what goal, I don’t know. If there’s an end to it, I don’t see it on the horizon—I don’t see the day that Dray drops his weapons against me in this one-sided battle and walks away.
Not until the day I am married.
Off-limits.
Protected.
If anyone will ever fucking marry me.
The mood souring in my heart is enough to lift my hand for the attendant and call for a drink. The lounger has a little floating table attached to it, enough for two drinks, and—as I order—a small fruit plate.
Dray returns to swimming.
Laps and laps and laps. And when my lounger floats into his path, he dives deeper to swim under it. Doesn’t break a stride.
No wonder he looks like he’s chiselled from stone.
