“Daily massage. Forty-five minutes. Shoulders, arms, back, and legs. Maintains muscle tone, promotes circulation, prevents atrophy.” She tapped her clipboard. “The Queen performed this herself before you arrived. She expects the same standard.”
I looked at the Prince lying motionless in his silk sheets. Dark hair against the white pillow. That jaw. Those shoulders.
The memory hit me before I could stop it. Fragments from last night – the pressure of a broad chest, cedar and winter air, a low voice saying stay still, and the devastating slide of fingers that –
Heat rushed to my face so fast my vision blurred.
“Any questions?” the nurse asked.
“No,” I said. Too quickly.
She left. The door clicked shut. I was alone with him again.
I stood over the bed and took a breath. Professional. This was a medical task. Nurses did this every day. There was nothing intimate about maintaining muscle tone in an unconscious patient.
I pushed his sleeve up and started with his right arm.
His skin was warm under my fingers. The same heat I remembered from changing his clothes – alive, present, radiating through muscle and sinew like his body hadn’t received the message about being in a coma. I worked my thumbs along his forearm, pressing into the dense tissue, and tried to focus on technique.
I failed.
Every time my fingers pressed into his skin, my brain supplied an image I didn’t ask for. The weight of his chest against my cheek. The sound of my own breathing – ragged, desperate, shameful. The ache between my legs that had greeted me this morning.
I bit the inside of my cheek and focused on his forearm.
His forearms were corded with muscle. His biceps were solid – not gym-built, battle-built. The kind of arms that had swung swords and pinned enemies. I moved to his shoulders, and the landscape of his upper body spread out under my hands. Broad. Ridged. The faint scars of old wounds mapped across his skin.
My wolf pressed against her walls, straining, and that flutter returned to the pit of my stomach. The same flutter from yesterday when I’d accidentally brushed against his –
I shut that thought down. Moved to his other arm.
But the fragments kept surfacing. The heat of last night. The dream that had felt too real. The low command- stay still that my body remembered even if my mind insisted it was fantasy.
My hands were shaking. I was working down from his shoulder, across his chest, my palms flat against the hard planes of his torso. Up close, his scent filled my lungs – cedar, frost, clean skin. The same scent from last night. The scent I’d buried my face into while I whimpered and begged and pressed myself against him like a cat in heat.
My wolf purred. Actually purred. I wanted to strangle her.
His breathing was even. His face was composed. His lashes lay dark and still against his cheekbones, and his lips were slightly parted, and I was staring at his mouth, and I needed to stop staring at his mouth.
I moved my hands lower. Across his abdomen. Each ridge of muscle shifted under my palms. His hip bones jutted above the waistband of his sleep pants, and the V-line of muscle that pointed downward was –
My hand slipped.
It grazed the waistband of his sleep pants, then lower – across the front of the fabric.
He’s hard. My face was on fire.
Before I jerked my hand back, a hand clamped around my wrist.
That grip. Last night – the hand that had pinned me, the voice that said stay still, the fingers that had
Oh, my, that wasn’t a dream.
GRAYSON
The girl was staring at me like I’d crawled out of a grave.
Her hand was still hovering where I’d grabbed it, fingers trembling, her face cycling through expressions faster than I could catalogue – shock, terror, confusion, and something else underneath that looked a lot like guilt.
Good. She should feel guilty.
The first time she’d climbed into my bed, reeking of aphrodisiac and grinding against me like a bitch in heat, I’d given her the benefit of the doubt. Drugged. Disoriented. Not in control.
But this was twice now.
I let go of her wrist. She stumbled backward, nearly knocking the washbasin off the nightstand.
Here was what I knew: Lillian, Gamma’s daughter from Shadow Creek. The intelligence briefing on the surrogate candidates had been thin- low-ranking pack, no political connections worth noting. But one detail had snagged: she’d been publicly linked to the future Alpha of her pack. Everyone in Shadow Creek expected her to be his Luna.
And then she’d been handed over as a surrogate instead. No protest from the future Alpha. No challenge, no objection, no attempt to claim her back.
That didn’t sit right. Men like that didn’t give up territory without a reason.
Maybe he had sent her. A loyal operative inside the prince’s chamber, reporting back on whether the vegetable was really a vegetable.
Either way, I couldn’t let her leave this room knowing what she knew.
“You’re awake,” she whispered. Her voice cracked on the second word.
I sat up against the headboard. The movement sent a dull ache through my ribs – the old injury, never fully healed. I ignored it.
“I just woke up,” I said, “when you started groping me.”
Her face went scarlet. “I wasn’t that was an accident – I was doing the massage and my hand
“Slipped.”
“Yes.”
“Onto my cock.”
She made a sound like a small animal being stepped on. I almost felt bad. Almost.
“I’m calling a doctor.” She turned for the door.
“No.” The word stopped her. I let the silence sit for three seconds. “No doctors. No servants. Nobody hears about this.”
She turned back. Her eyes were wide and wary.
“You want me to – to just pretend you’re still in a coma?”
“I’m telling you that if anyone in this palace learns I’m awake, the person who leaked it dies first.” I held her
NA gaze. “That’s you.”
The color drained from her face.
She swallowed. I could see her processing it – the fear settling into her bones, replacing the embarrassment.
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