The Dragon King’s Substitute Bride
Chapter 8

MIDAS

"Careful dragon King, one would think you were actually concerned about me."

He has half a mind to drop her on her romp.

Instead he ignores her goading him and quietly takes her back into the light and warmth of the palace.

She is small and tiny in his arms, so very breakable.

Granted Dragon folk are of a much bigger build than average humans but she is definitely among the smallest of her kind.

Probably the most exasperating too.

For the second time in two days, Midas pushes back the dark red brocade hangings, pulls back the emerald green coverings and lays her quietly on the silk white sheets of the four poster canopy bed in his chambers.

When the nursing maid arrives led in by Leo, she is still asleep, stirring only slightly when her cuts are dressed and cleaned.

"She is to take this when she wakes My Lord" the maid announces, placing a glass quarter ways filled with some green looking potion on the dressing table beside the bed and with one last bow leaves the room, the chief ryder following closely behind. He should never have sent her down there. Not because he thinks her crime to be any less than before but because he knows she did not deserve it. Not really.

He knew he had a temper.

When his dragon's rage burned brightly with his own, turning his eyes the color of a blood moon, it became even more difficult to control.

To him, it was his one and only flaw.

He opens his drawers and takes off the ripped shirt and breeches stained with dirt and the blood of the inmates who had been foolish enough to charge at him. She stirs awake just as he finishes and her eyes open as she sits up.

Once again he's struck by just how soulful they are until they fall on him and darken slightly with hate and fear.

It's the only way those eyes have every looked at him.

But at this moment, as they hold his, neither one of them saying a word to the other, the silent question hanging thickly in the air is mirrored in them. What now?

Damned if he knows.

He watches her silently as she looks down at her dressed and tended cuts and says the first thing that comes into his head. "What are you wearing?"

Obviously he isn't the only one thinks it is the least intelligent thing he could say because she draws her brows together in a frown of confusion.

"What?"

Never one to be embarrassed, Midas folds his hands across his broad chest. "Has you brief sojourn into the cellar made you hard of hearing? I asked what this... thing you have one is."

She stares at him like he might have lost his head. "Oh I'm sorry my Lord...does my lack of a proper attire offend you? I shall remember to replace something more fetching the next time I am being sent to my death." "You test my patience."

And when she folds her hands too, inadvertently drawing up the already short piece of clothing, causing it to skim up her thighs in a very distracting way, she tests much more than that.

Including his ability to keep his hands to himself.

She shifts uneasily in the bed.

"I take it this means I am not to be publicly executed anymore?"

He can tell she means for it to be sarcastic but her voice comes out small, betraying the uncertainty she's obviously still feeling and so he chooses to ignore her question and instead nods towards the glass beside her. "Drink that."

He can tell she means for it to be sarcastic but her voice comes out small, betraying the uncertainty she's obviously still feeling and so he chooses to ignore her question and instead nods towards the glass beside her. "Drink that." She narrows her eyes at the murky green liquid. "May I ask why my lord?"

Honestly he would be suspicious too but he doesn't tell her that. "No. Drink it."

She makes to reach for the glass but draws back at the last minute "how do I know you haven't decided to poison me instead"

"Why would I do that?"

"Surely you don't think it's that farfetched an idea given how you tried to have me publicly executed only yesterday"

"Tell me; are all slaves in Averia this disrespectful to their king?"

"You are not my King."

Her eyes gaze back at him in defiance.

Hate and fear he was used to. Throw in reverence and awe and you had all the ways people had ever seen him right from childhood but this...

...No one had ever dared to look at him like this.

And by all the gods it excited him as much as it annoyed him so much so that when he speaks again, he can't tell if it's anger or desire that lends the roughness to his tone. "You're right; I'm not that lily livered ruler of yours. I am something much worse, and you would do well to remember that. Now Drink it.""

"Tell me what's in it"

When he scoffs and looks away she scowls. "You have no idea do you my lord? You expect me to get up and drink some suspicious vile looking thing when even you..."

A low growl comes from somewhere deep in his throat and his control snaps.

She doesn't get to finish the sentence.

In one long stride he walks up to the bed, pours the contents of the glass into his mouth and dragging her by the arm so she falls on top of him does the one thing he's been dying to do since the first time she opened her eyes.

The liquid has no taste of its own, which is just as well because when the tip of his tongue touches hers, and she lets out a small sound of satisfaction, she is all he can taste and it sets his blood on fire.

He tells himself he merely meant to make her take the damn medicine, but even when the liquid is gone, forced down her throat, he is unable to stop.

He can't even say if he wants to.

The silk softness of her lips against his drives him to the brink of his control and his mouth claims and devours, stroking her tongue with his and swallowing her moans of protest.

His hands have a mind of their own and when he runs them, splayed down her back, she arches it, pushing her chest with their stiffened peaks against him in a way that sends his head spinning with pure liquid desire.

Somehow, she's straddling him now and his fist is in that flaming orange hair, the full wildness of it spilling over and through his fingers. He wraps it around his hands and tugs sharply telling her exactly who is in control and when she gasps against his mouth...gods above, he instantly goes hard.

His fingers itch to feel the smoothness of her skin beneath his palm, to touch every inch of her till she is a trembling incoherent mass unaware of anything but the pleasure he gives her.

But just as his hands slip beneath the hem of her tunic to brush against the taut skin of the small of her back, she suddenly pulls away from him.

It's so unexpected the way one moment she's in his arms, clouding his thoughts and making it hard to think straight, and the next she's not, knocking him back to reality so instantly that he doesn't even react fast enough to stop her.

She stands a foot away, skin flushed and breathless from his kisses. Her lips are swollen and her hair is a mess.

Absolutely f*****g breathtaking.

He narrows his eyes at what he now knows is almost certainly a tunic belonging to a male who is not him and replaces he does not like it. Not one bit.

"Take it off"

She shrinks away from him. "No."

"No?" He gets up steps towards her and as expected she steps back.

"I.."

He reaches behind her slowly, enjoying the way her breath quickens when he's near and takes a shirt from his own already open drawers to toss it at her.

"Calm yourself, it was a mere kiss and I have no desire to see you naked at the moment."

Good, now she was turning him into a liar as well.

"But you are my wife and it is unbecoming for you to be seen sporting a guard's tunic. Now take... it off."

Her tone is even drier than his but there's no mistaking the relief in her eyes. "I guess it's no use asking you to turn away?"

He doesn't think that deserves an answer so he gives her none and she in turn, turns her back to him

When she slips the ugly brown cloth over her head, leaving her completely undressed Midas meant to look away.

He truly did.

And not because he wanted to help her retain whatever ridiculous modesty she thought was necessary but because he didn't need any more images of her trespassing around in his head.

Yet when she does take it off, accidentally lifting up her transparent chemise in the process and for a split frozen moment revealing the skin underneath, he replaces he is unable to look away.

And it isn't just the sensual way her back arches with the movement that makes him unable to tear his eyes from her.

She quickly puts on the new shirt but it's too late. He's seen them.

"Who did that to you?"

He did not intend for it to come out in the growly possessive way it did, but the tingly sensation that had started at his tips of his fingers is spreading to the rest of his body and without even knowing it, he closes his hands in fists. She doesn't answer, doesn't even turn to look at him but he sees the way her body freezes and he knows she's heard him.

"Hera, when I ask a question I expect... no I demand an answer. Who gave you those scars?"

Her silence only serves to further infuriate him and he spins her around by the arm, forcing her to face him.

Tilting her chin upwards so she can look at him, he prepares to issue a final warning but the look of utter loathing in her luminescent blue eyes is so unexpected, that for one brief second Midas replaces himself taken aback. But it's her words that manage to send him reeling.

"You. You did this to me."