Page 11 of Caress of Fire
“So?” Marielle cocked her head and her thunder blazed in her eyes, dark and gray as they reduced to slits. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to my personal quarters.”
She lifted her curved brows halfway to her hairline and he felt the unfamiliar bite of embarrassment take hold of him. He could clearly see what she assumed at his words. And what with the thoughts he had been entertaining since first laying eyes on her, she was right to think that way. Fedryc passed a hand through his hair, watching as she followed his every movement with wary eyes.
“It will be for your own safety.”
“Right.” Marielle looked around at the hallway like she was expecting some kind of answer from the sandstone walls. Then she looked back at him, her stare direct and unflinching. “Why? Why are you protecting me?”
“You don’t like it?” he answered, taking a step closer, not bothering to soften his tone. “We can go back to the dungeon if you prefer.”
“I’m not complaining.” Marielle shook her head, and he saw the fear etched on her features, making her already fair skin look as pale as moonlight. “I just don’t understand why you’re suddenly believing me. And I certainly don’t understand why you’re helping me.”
Yes, you wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand it myself.
Fedryc shook his head, then looked down the far end of the hallway, where two guards were walking toward them. He didn’t have time to explain to her how dangerous his position was as the new High Lord, how her own life was hanging by a thread. Someone in his father’s house was an assassin. Someone close enough to trick Nissar into drinking something spiked withVenemum Ardere.Now that the murderer’s plan to place the blame on Marielle had been uncovered, she was his obvious next in line.
“We can’t talk here.” Fedryc bent closer to her and he inhaled her scent, female and lush, layered with fear. Something shifted inside him, and he had to clench his hands into fists at his sides to prevent himself from grasping a fistful of that flaming red hair and inhaling its scent long enough to imprint it on his very soul. It was only his years of training that allowed him to stifle the impulse. “Someone murdered Lord Aymond Haal, and that someone wanted to put the blame on you. You’re the only one who can help me find out who did this to my father, and that’s why whoever killed him will do his best to silence you.”
“I’m the next target. Whoever killed the High Lord—your father—planned everything. Everything except you believing me.” Marielle nodded, then seemed lost in thought for a while. When she focused on him again, her eyes were the angry dark gray of a stormy night. “Okay. I’ll help you any way I can. Tell me what to do.”
“For now, follow me until we’re in a safe room.”
Fedryc didn’t understand how he managed to turn away from her, but he did. He walked through the maze of sandstone hallways, led by his memory of the plans Henron had sent, all the way to his own personal quarters, the only rooms in the entire castle he had secured prior to visiting the girl in the dungeon.
His father’s old rooms.
A few minutes later, after passing a group of Aalstad guards who nodded to him with affected obedience and wary eyes, Fedryc opened the door to the unfamiliar decor, and watched as Marielle Jansen entered, her slim, womanly body brushing past him.
He blinked, and in the second his eyes were closed, he saw it: Marielle’s body, naked and milky white, her nipples pink and hard, the flat expanse of her stomach, and the hair below as fiery red as on her head, but a shade darker. Her dark eyes, responding to him, glazing over with the hold of passion as he lay on top of her. His body responded and his cock pulsed in his pants with longing for that woman who could not be his.
Fedryc shook the images away. These were a dangerous times he was navigating in. And Marielle Jansen could prove to be the most dangerous distraction of them all.
“Stay in these rooms. Open the door for no one.”
“For how long?”
“As long as it takes!” He didn’t mean to answer so harshly, but he knew his time was short. If he didn’t move away from Marielle Jansen soon, he would reach a point from which he could not return.
“Stay. Please,” he added in a softer tone.
Marielle hugged herself, looking around uncertainly, and a growling noise came from her stomach. Fedryc’s eyes went to the hand clenched around her middle and he instantly hated himself for not having considered this. Isobel must not have put feeding the condemned prisoners high on her priority list. Anger flared inside him at the thought that Marielle had been left to starve in the dungeon.
Pain suddenly twisted her delicate features, and her stomach grumbled loudly.
Following an animal instinct, Fedryc reached for her, his hand wrapping around her slender neck, and he pulled her closer. She resisted at first, her eyes flashing with defiance, her mouth opening in protest, but she didn’t speak. All she did was watch him with those eyes as gray as fog in the morning.
Emotions coiled and rose inside him, dark and dangerous, filled with lust and hunger and all the forbidden things he wanted to do with her. All the forbidden things he wanted to dotoher.
His thumb caressed the silky skin of her cheek, all the way to her mouth. He slid it along her bottom lip and she opened her jaw a little, just enough for him to see the pink of her tongue, the wetness of her mouth. He stared at it until his lungs burned, then realized he had been holding his breath. His cock pulsed and throbbed, ready to take the woman and make her his.
He exhaled slowly, unable to shake his fascination with that warm, sweet mouth. His thumb entered her parted lips, felt the hardness of her small, white teeth, then the hot wet of her tongue.
Then he lifted his gaze to stare at Marielle Jansen’s eyes. They were gray and dark, cloudy with passion. His cock ached and pushed against the confines of his pants, and he knew. He knew that if he looked at her for one more second, he was going to take her, here on the floor of his father’s old room, as rough and as wild as he was, whether she wanted him to or not.
And he would lose her before she was even his.
Fedryc pulled his hand to his side, then turned away. He opened the door and paused just before going out. “I will send food for you.” Then he stepped into the hallway and closed the door on the most desirable woman he’d ever met.
