Sold To The Cruel Prince

Aveline returned to the carriage to find it empty; not empty in the elegant, peaceful way a room could be empty, but empty in the very rude way of a breakfast that had clearly gone on without her.

She stood there for a moment, blinking at the quiet interior, then settled herself on the carriage step with both hands cupping her cheeks like a scolded child. Theron was nowhere in sight. The knights were nowhere in sight. Even Kael seemed to have evaporated into whatever dark place that man crawled back into when he wanted to be unpleasant.

It was beginning to feel strangely personal.

Where did all of Theron’s people go? Did they simply appear when they wished to intimidate, then vanish when it was time to eat? Were they shadows? Was that the job description?

Aveline sighed and rested her chin on her palms, staring at the trees while her stomach made a delicate, offended noise.

Then she heard it.

A faint rustle behind the trunks.

Not the normal rustle of wind, or leaves, or some poor woodland creature minding its own business. No. This sounded like clothes shifting, water dripping, and the distinct possibility of trouble.

Aveline’s curiosity immediately won.

She rose on silent feet and walked toward the trees, careful, cautious, and only slightly nosy. Parting the cover of the trunks, she peered through the shadows.

And stopped.

Oh...

Oh!!!

It was Theron.

Theron, standing there as if he had just stepped out of a painting made for the express purpose of ruining a woman’s composure.

His shirt was damp and clinging to him in all the wrong and right ways, darkened by water so it traced every line of his chest and shoulders instead of hiding them. His trousers were wet too, and somehow that made the whole thing worse, because now there was no possibility of pretending he looked anything less than devastating.

Absolutely devastating.

Aveline forgot, briefly, how to breathe.

He ran a hand through his wet hair, pushing it back from his forehead, and water slid in lazy trails down the sides of his neck, over his collarbone, and vanished beneath the open line of his shirt.

That was unfair.

That should have been illegal.

No man had the right to look like he had stepped out of a river and into a scandal.

She reached down and picked up a stone from the ground, intending to throw it at him purely to punish his vanity. A small pebble, nothing serious. A warning shot. Then she’d hide and then he’d look around like a fool.

That would suit him. Everything in her wanted to do it, to see him flustered.

But then her fingers stilled.

Something warm and embarrassingly soft stirred inside her instead. She slowly pressed the stone to her chest... and kept watching.

The boy she had known was gone.

In his place stood a man with broad shoulders, a hard waist, long wet lashes, and the kind of body that made one question the fairness of the gods. His muscles shifted when he moved. Water gathered at the edge of his jaw and fell. The light caught on his skin in a way that was almost indecent.

Aveline swallowed.

She had seen him angry, amused, teasing, possessive, and sleeping like a dangerously handsome disaster. But this?

This was something else.

This was a crime.

He turned slightly, and the motion pulled his shirt tighter across his torso. Aveline made a strangled noise and clapped a hand over her mouth. Theron lifted his head.

For one terrifying second, she thought he had heard her and would turn around immediately.

Instead, he merely dragged his fingers through his damp hair again, slower this time, with the infuriating confidence of a man who did not know he was destroying peace—her peace—one wet shoulder at a time.

Aveline stared from behind the trees, scandalized, flustered, and deeply betrayed by her own heartbeat.

There was a quiet power in the way he stood. A carelessness, almost, in how unaware he seemed of what he looked like. As though he had no idea that the simple act of pushing his hair back, of standing there with water tracing down his skin, could undo someone watching from the shadows.

Aveline swallowed.

Her gaze drifted, hesitant at first, then drawn despite herself. The breadth of his shoulders. The strength in his arms. The way his shirt clung just enough to suggest what lay beneath without revealing it fully. And... his lips... glimmering in the early morning light...

I’ve kissed those lips...

Her heart fluttered.

Strange.

This was strange.

She had never... felt this before.

But here... Here, hidden behind trees, watching a man who did not know she was there...

Something shifted inside her, quietly and unmistakably, and far too personally to be ignored.

Aveline drew in a slow breath, but it did nothing to steady her. Her pulse had already turned erratic, her thoughts scattering in every direction like birds startled from a branch. She pressed a hand to her lower abdomen, as though the strange flutter there might settle if she held it still.

It did not.

Instead, that kiss came back to her.

The warmth of it.

The closeness.

The memory of Theron’s body pressed over hers, the hard lines beneath his damp shirt, the strength she had felt without meaning to notice until now. Her fingers remembered it too, almost as if the sensation had imprinted itself on her skin. The solid warmth of him. The tension in his arms. The way he had felt impossibly close, close enough that her breathing had changed without her permission.

Her face grew hot.

What would happen if she walked out there?

What would happen if she dared to touch him again?

Would he step back from her? Would he look at her with that same unbearable composure, that same steady gaze that made her feel seen in ways she did not yet know how to name?

And if he did not step back...

What if he held her?

What would it feel like to be in his arms again, to feel that warm, damp strength surrounding her, to let herself rest there just once without overthinking it?

The thought was so intimate it made her chest tighten.

Aveline swallowed and looked away, only to glance back, helplessly, as her gaze drifted lower.

He was no longer standing still.

And the memory of all those moments when she had been painfully aware of him—every accidental brush, every look that lingered too long, every breath that seemed to change between them—returned all at once and made her heart stutter.

She had never thought about a man like this before.

Never.

Not like this.

Not with heat in her cheeks and a strange ache in her chest and thoughts she did not know what to do with.

Then...

*Plop*

The stone slipped from her fingers and dropped to the ground.

Aveline froze.

Her heart followed after it, falling straight into her stomach.

"Who’s there?"

Theron’s voice cut through the trees.

Aveline’s breath caught. Her eyes widened.

Oh no! He cannot see me like this.