Page 76 of A Bride for the Winter King
So…normal.
Elio stalks behind me until his chest is pressed against my back. His proximity sets my nerves ablaze, and yet it’s also incredibly soothing. And maddening.
His breath tickles my ear. “Now, do you trust me?”
“No,” I whisper back.
He combs my hair to one side and places a soft kiss on my bare neck. “You better not.” He digs a hand in the flesh of my mid-thigh and drags his fingers up under the hem of my shirt until his palm is flat against my navel. “You look good in my clothes.”
My lids flutter. “Are you sleeping with Elizabeth Snow?”
He presses me harder into him. “Are you jealous, my little spider?”
I choke on false words of denial.
Am I getting territorial over a man I don’t even like? Elio is stubborn, cold, impatient, and totallynotfor me. So what if he’s sleeping with the most famous singer in both the new world and Faerie? Our long soak in the healing springs paved the way fordisaster, and yet our aborted dalliance has left me with more questions—and a terribly unsatiated need.
Every devious promise Elio made, every dark secret he unveiled, still pulses in my blood as he kisses a long, winding path from my shoulder to my ear. “Beth and I have never been involved.”
“Why not? I mean—she’s Elizabeth Snow.”
Cold air washes along my back as Elio walks away.
“You’re right. What was I thinking? I should go and propose to her now,” he says in jest.
I grab his wrist to stop his falsely hurried retreat, and the lighthearted chuckle bubbling up his throat about kills me. It’s an entirely new side of him.
“Stop making fun of me. You’re the Winter King. It would make sense for you to be with her,” I scold.
He prowls forward until my back is pressed up against the glass, and he’s so tall that I have to gaze up at him to see the expression on his face.
“If we were interested in each other, we would have married as teenagers. It’s not like her father wouldn’t have been pleased,” he says on a gruff whisper.
“Unless you didn’t want to risk killing a national treasure.”
Our gazes lock, and he rests his forehead on mine. “There you go again, reminding me about my dead wives.”
I know what we both want, and yet I also know what it will cost me. I blink a few times, my mind struggling more and more to match the reality of Elio to the cruel, heartless portrait of the Winter King the rest of the world painted.
“Do you truly kill them? Your wives?”
“I don’t strangle or stab them, if that’s what you’re asking, but I’m as responsible for their deaths as if I carried out the deed myself.”
“So you’re…cursed?” I think of Damian’s curse and how hard he worked to hide it from everyone. Sounds like Elio is going through something similar.
I hold my breath when he gives a small incline of head. “It’s an endless loop I can’t escape…” With a sad smile, Elio wraps a hand in my hair. “Kiss me.” He bends down, but I hold myself away.
“What about Iris? How did she die?”
Curses don’t just appear out of nowhere.
His eyes darken. “Let’s not talk about Iris.”
If I push him on this, he’s going to pull away. I’m the spitting image of the woman in question, yet the way he holds me drowns out the voice in my head that urges me to run. The magic between us is still powerful, but not as drugging as it was in the hall of mirrors. Not as desperate tocrushus together.
I could turn and walk away. Or ask for answers.
I trace the bend of his brows instead, desperate to see him smile again, and link my arms behind his neck. “I’m done with my questions. For now.” My gaze falls to his lips in invitation.
