Chapter 27 Chapter Twenty-Seven
Isla got to her knees so she was at the same eye level as the prince. She squared her shoulders, narrowed her eyes and sneered out, “No.”
“Don’t make me do this,” he warned, his silver eyes swirling with black.
She’d never seen eyes do that before. Perhaps she wasn’t used to seeing a man fight with his wolf. The men she knew were always quick to let over control, trusting their instincts over reason. The Mate Killer, however, seemed to constantly be at war with it. She watched as the black spread along his eyes like ink dropped into a glass of water.
“No one keeps you from doing anything, do they?” she hissed. “You treat me like a sack of flour, throwing me here and there, careless of the contents inside. The problem is I have a mind, sharp and attuned and I will not…” Isla gasped as he grabbed her by her upper arm and hauled her off the bed. “Let go!”
“No one keeps me from doing anything, remember?” he growled.
The prince grasped the back of her neck and spun her around before plowing her head into the soft mattress of the bed. Her palms dug into the blanket as she tried to keep him from pinning her completely. She attempted to push upward, to break his hold, but even one-handed, her strength was no match for the prince’s. Her ass was exposed to the cool air, and then his palm landed sharply against one cheek. Isla stilled, crying out in shock.
“What the hell did you just…”
“Continue to move, and I’ll do it again,” he warned. “Behave, and I’ll allow you to cover up.”
“Let me up and I’ll slit your fucking throat, Mate Killer!”
Another sharp slap, and she felt her face heat in embarrassment.
“I am eager to learn your true identity, Isla, for every day I gain another reason to believe a maid is one thing you are not. Instead, you seem to be a spoiled child, never taught any discipline,” he observed.
“And you’re a misguided prince who clearly never learned the difference from right and wrong!”
“I was disciplined plenty as a child, I assure you,” he told her. “I wasn’t spanked, though. I was strapped to a pole in the town square and lashed to show my father’s people that no one was above the law.”
This statement finally made her stop struggling. Her breath came out in ragged gasps.
“What?” she asked, sure he hadn’t heard. She had seen the scars along his back but had only assumed they were from the various battles he’d fought. She was shocked to find they were delivered by his father.
“Hmm,” he hummed as he ran his free hand up her side, close to, but not touching, the raw marks along her back. “I’ve suffered enough lashings before I received my wolf to know how to properly care for them without. If you would stop struggling, I will show you.”
“Just call Delilah, she helped perfectly fine last night,” Isla said, trying futilely one last time to break free before stopping her struggles altogether.
Silence stretched on, and she wondered what he could be doing. A moment passed before she felt a cool, wet rag run over her back, and she shivered. Her fists constricted into the blanket beneath them. His fingers smoothed featherlight against her skin as they inspected each of the deep wounds without the poultice covering them. He drew his hand away only for it to return with the medicine at his fingertips. Isla’s eyes fluttered shut on a moan that she had to bite her lip to keep from escaping. His fingers worked up through the cuts in long, slow, sweeping motions.
Isla wondered absently why his fingers felt so much better than when Eloise had administered the same medication. Was it that his fingers were larger, more calloused, more certain? Could it be his own experience that made the firmness with which he applied the medication dull her nerve endings? She opened her eyes and looked back as he withdrew his hand from her cuts, stuck two of his fingers in his mouth, sucked, and then lowered them again to her wounds.
“What…” Her eyes were becoming heavy-lidded. Had she just imagined him doing that? “What are you doing?”
His eyes flicked up, more of the black infecting the whites of them. “I’m tending to your wounds.”
“You…” Her eyes closed of their own accord, and when they reopened, he was taking his fingers from his mouth again. “You’re not using the poultice.”
“No,” he confirmed.
“What are you…”
“It’s my venom…” he said, though his eyes glanced away so she couldn’t read them.
“Only mates can… can heal each other like that,” she protested.
“It’s… a trait in my family. Something in the genes. We can treat people with our venom. It’s not a bond thing, I assure you,” he whispered, his eyes still on her back.
“No wonder your army is so powerful. Do they keep vials of your spit in the medical tent?” she asked with a smirk, feeling as she did the one time her father came home to visit during the war and allowed her to drink from his wine collection.
“Is that a jest, Isla?” Prince Sylvan asked. Her blurry vision thought she’d noticed the whites of his teeth.
“No,” she said, fighting against the fog of her brain.
“How did you earn these lashings, Isla?” he asked, clearly wishing to change the subject.
“Must I have done something to earn them?”
“I would hope my staff wasn’t so malicious as to use this as an arrival ritual to teach discipline.”
“If so, it wouldn’t work with me.”
“Certainly not. Tell me,” he ordered.
The combination of the medication he was administering, his venom in her veins, and the velvety smoothness of his voice had the same effect as when she’d confessed her name when they first met. She found herself speaking without recalling formulating the words.
“A young girl spilled food on a guard’s foot.”
“And that earned you a lashing down to the bone?”
“No, pouring a pot of boiling porridge over his head to keep him from breaking the girl’s arm did.”
The prince’s efforts to treat her stopped. As if his touch had been what was making her drunk, her mind slowly began to clear. Then the anger at what he’d just done, essentially sedating her against her will, settled in her gut. She opened her eyes as a low rumble, like a growl, sounded behind her. She looked over her shoulder to find his blackened gaze set on the scars along her back.
“What’s the matter, Mate Killer? Jealous that someone else took the job of ripping a woman’s flesh off her back?” Isla taunted.
“Sylvan.” His voice was deep; it reverberated through the air like a physical thing, and she realized it wasn’t him speaking, but his wolf. Gooseflesh rose over her entire body, and the rumbling intensified. His dark eyes flicked up to meet her gaze. “I want you to call me Sylvan.”
Isla stared into the dark abyss that was his gaze. She tumbled down into their depths, but rather than fearing what would happen when she hit bottom, she felt weightless, secure in her downfall. Then her senses returned.
“I’ll call you what you are,” Isla said.
The hand at the back of her neck pulled her to her feet and turned her to face him. His other hand shot out and grasped her chin in a punishing vice. He leaned forward, crowding her as he snarled. “Why must you defy me? In what way have I wronged you so abhorrently that you won’t give in and simply let me take care of you?”
“You took my…” Isla ground her teeth together. “You took my queen from me.”
He shook his head. “It’s more than that. Who are you, Isla of Tridea? You are no maid. If you were, your spirit would be broken. You would want me to crave you. Who are you that makes you believe you can speak to me the way you do? Behave the way you do? To fight what is clearly between us? The queen, was she more to you than just a ruler?”
“As your colleague so eloquently put it, the women of Tridea are fearsome creatures. The magic of the fae runs through our waters. We do not bend or break to the forces that threaten to tear us down. You will not break me, Mate Killer.”
The black of the prince’s eyes slowly evaporated until molten silver stared back at her. He brought her closer to him so that his breath fanned her face. His eyes dipped to her parted lips and back.
“A moment ago I had you bent over in front of me, moaning at the touch of my fingertips along your bare skin,” he reminded her, making her face flush with color. He licked his lips as if remembering her taste upon them. “You are fighting this, me, for now. But soon enough you’ll find yourself in the same position you just were, but you’ll have done so willingly, and you’ll be moaning for more than just the tip.”