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Five hours. Only five hours since I’d last seen Chevalier, but it felt like an eternity.
I mentally scolded myself for being so silly as I approached his office. The honeymoon was over. He and I couldn’t be with each other all the time. And I was certainly not walking faster than normal in my eagerness to see him.
If his brothers realized how much I missed him after five measly hours of being apart, I’d never hear the end of it. My guards would at least keep their mouths shut. But I still didn’t dare look back at Julius and Byron, knowing I’d see a faint smile on at least Byron’s face and a glimmer of amusement in Julius’ gray eyes.
The office door was just ahead. What were the odds Chevalier would be alone?
I took a deep breath and knocked at the door, which flew open almost immediately with an exuberance that dashed my hopes to the ground.
“Hello, Ivetta!” Clavis exclaimed, beaming at me with a smile that meant trouble.
“Hello, Clavis,” I replied, smiling politely back and bracing myself. “It’s almost dinnertime, so I was wondering if you’d all finished work for the day.”
I tried to keep my eyes on him, but they wandered naturally past him to survey the room. The entire faction was here. Luke was leaning against a bookcase with his arms crossed over his chest, as if he’d been talking before I arrived, and Nokto was depositing a neat stack of papers on the enormous white desk where Chevalier sat, bent over a document with a quill in hand. He looked so regal in his normal white, black, and gold attire, framed by the window behind him and a dimming sky of a much darker shade of blue than his eyes. Eyes that made my heart skip a beat when they looked up at me.
Clavis laughed. “What you really want to know is if Chev has finished work for the day. Isn’t that right?”
Was I that obvious?
“Haven’t had enough of him yet?” Nokto teased, flashing me a sly smile.
“We haven’t seen ya for a week,” Luke complained, giving me the same pitiful expression he used when he tried to guilt me into baking him desserts. “Didn’t ya even miss us?”
“Well, of course I—”
“No.”
Chevalier’s cool interruption brought a paradoxical rush of heat to my cheeks. He set his quill down and stood, his face expressionless, but his eyes undeniably set on me as he crossed the office with a few long, easy strides. I swallowed and glanced at his expectant brothers. He wouldn’t kiss me in front of them again, would he? Once was enough, right?
But his hand simply came to the small of my back, and he guided me to the door without a word. I exhaled a breath of relief—and ignored the twinge of disappointment.
“Aw, you’re not even gonna kiss her?” Luke asked, following on our heels. Clavis and Nokto came along my right side, both well out of Chevalier’s reach, I noticed. My guards didn’t follow.
“A gentleman doesn’t normally kiss and tell, but we all saw the longing on her face,” Clavis added. “To leave her hanging like that—”
“I don’t need a kiss right now,” I said quickly.
“Interesting choice of words,” Nokto noted, tilting his head to the side as he studied me with amusement. “‘Need’ instead of ‘want’. Whatever did you do to her while you were gone, King Highness?”
“We know ‘what’ he did,” Clavis replied. “It’s the details we’re missing. How about it, Ivetta? Chev wasn’t very forthcoming, and we had a bet—”
“Enough,” Chevalier said sharply, saving me from having to hear the rest of that statement and bursting into flames from embarrassment.
There was a brief moment of silence, and then Nokto said, “I can probably get it out of Theresa, now that she’s done with Leon.”
A surge of irritation overwhelmed my discomfort, and I shot him a glare. “First, she’s very loyal, and she wouldn’t tell you, and second, she’s sworn off princes for good.” And third, I knew she was hurting more than she let on, and the last thing she needed was Nokto playing with her feelings.
“Mm, so she says,” he replied, a smug assurance in his crimson eyes.
I opened my mouth to warn him to leave her alone, but Luke beat me to it.
“Lay off, ‘less ya wanna get slapped again.”
I threw a curious glance over my shoulder at Luke, who was frowning at his older brother. “Again?”
“There was a minor misunderstanding between Janet and myself after the wedding,” Nokto said dismissively.
“‘Minor’ as in she thought they were together again, but he didn’t even want her to stay for breakfast,” Clavis supplied. “They made quite a scene. It was almost as amusing as that fight between Silvio and Rio.”
Luke sighed. “You two are awful.”
“Fight?” I asked. “Belle didn’t tell me about a fight.”
“Turns out they never got along before, and now that Rio’s getting his memory back, they’re like two dogs fightin’ over a bone,” Luke explained. “It was somethin’ stupid, too. I don’t even remember what, an’ by the time Belle pulled ‘em apart, I don’t think they remembered, either..”
“It was about how Rio walks.” Clavis skipped a few steps ahead and pulled open the door to the round table room with a flourish, wearing a wide smile. “He had too much bounce in his step too early in the morning. I, too, have received similar unfair criticism from an unreasonable older brother.”
Chevalier ignored his pointed look as we walked past him. Leon, already there and piling food on his plate along with the rest of his faction, looked up at us with his warm amber eyes and friendly smile.
“Look at that. They all came together,” he announced in his big, booming voice. “How’s it feel to be queen, Ivetta?”
“Not very—”
Clavis darted forward and pulled my chair out before Chevalier reached it.
“—different so far,” I said slowly, watching the silent battle taking place between them. The frigid blue glare on my left was enough to freeze everybody in the room in place for a moment, but Clavis’ wide smile on my right didn’t even falter.
“Don’t be stupid,” Luke muttered, grabbing Clavis by the back of his collar with one huge hand and dragging him away. The look of surprise on Clavis’ face was priceless. Leon burst into hearty laughter, joined by the rest of his brothers as Luke dropped Clavis into a chair like a doll.
I smiled and took my seat. “Not different at all.”
“This is what I had to put up with while you two were gone,” Jin said, shaking his head at his younger brothers’ antics. “Undisciplined brats.”
“Oh? And whose idea was it to spike Ivetta’s drink with an aphrodisiac tonight?” Nokto asked, his crimson eyes flicking meaningfully from me to the glass in my hand, frozen halfway to my lips.
“He didn’t do it,” Licht reassured me in his typical flat monotone. He was the only one not smiling, but the corners of his eyes were soft and relaxed.
“If it weren’t for Licht and me, nothing would have gotten done,” Yves interjected, shooting Jin a clear look of disapproval. “Some people seemed to think this past week was a vacation for everybody.”
Jin laughed. “Yeah? And whose idea was it to not do any work at all yesterday so he could perfect a new dessert recipe for tonight?”
“Save room for that, by the way,” Leon added.
“W-well,” Yves stammered, his haughty expression crumbling as a blush colored his fair cheeks. “It’s not every day that someone comes back from a honeymoon! A-and Ivetta probably needs a pick-me-up after having to deal with Chevalier on her own for so long!”
“Yeah, especially if he took my advice,” Jin said, his burgundy eyes shifting from me to Chevalier and back again. “Guess we’ll find out in a few months, right?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks all over again. Luke, who had a mouthful of food, snorted out laughter and promptly began choking. Leon thumped his back, his amber eyes twinkling with the laughter he held in as Luke coughed, until Luke swatted his hand away and shoved an elbow in Leon’s ribs. Then Leon’s laughter broke free, as did a minor scuffle between him and Luke on the other side of the table.
“If it was anything like the advice you’ve given me, then we may not find out in our lifetime,” Clavis remarked.
“I’ve never used a single thing you said,” Yves added. “Except as a guide for what not to do.”
“If you wanted advice, you should have come to me,” Nokto said smoothly. “There’s a reason Jin’s one-night-stand policy works so well, while I have trouble getting rid of women.”
“That’s because you lead them on,” Yves muttered.
Jin waved all the comments off. “None of you have heard my special pre-wedding talk.”
Leon laughed. “You’re not even married!”
“Everything still works the same,” Jin said nonchalantly. “And for the first time, I shared all my best-kept secrets for maximum enjoyment. Right, Chevalier?”
I swallowed, almost afraid to look at Chevalier, trying not to imagine what Jin could have told him. He had been eating in silence without even acknowledging his brothers’ presence, let alone their conversation, and when Jin posed his question, his fork had been almost to his lips with a piece of steak. He took it the rest of the way to his mouth, biting down on the fork, sliding it out of his mouth, chewing, and swallowing unhurriedly; then he picked up his wine glass, took a sip, set it down on the table; and then he cut another piece from his steak.
His lips had no right to look that delicious.
He glanced sideways at me, just briefly, but his lip turned up slightly, and I felt certain he’d read that thought. And then he opened his mouth to speak, and I knew he had.
“I neither wanted nor needed advice.”
At least my face couldn’t possibly get any redder.
Luke burst out laughing again, and this time, his mouth was empty, leaving Leon free to laugh, too, without having to worry about his choking brother.
“You mean you didn’t use a single thing I told you?” Jin asked, smiling a one-sided smile.
“No.”
Clavis joined the laughter, too, and Yves hid his mouth behind his hand suspiciously.
“Aw, sorry about that, Ivetta,” Jin said, turning his gaze on me. “I wanted you to have fun.”
I swallowed again. “Um, I…did have fun,” I said shyly. “What dessert did you make, Yves?”
“Very cute,” Nokto teased. “But very transparent. You can’t change the topic that easily, especially when your face says you’re thinking all sorts of naughty things.”
“Okay, lay off,” Leon intervened. “We keep this up, and Ivetta will never bake anything for us again, even if Chevalier lets us live.”
“Hey, you did all the cookin' while you were gone, right?" Luke asked. "Make anythin' special?”
My mind immediately jumped to beignets, and I had to stop myself from squirming uncomfortably in my seat.
Nokto chuckled. "You really can't hide anything, Ivetta.”
“Or maybe she’s just flustered because everybody keeps teasing her,” Yves defended me.
“True. You’re blushing, and you weren’t up to anything last night,” Jin said.
Yves’ blue eyes shot wide open, and his entire face turned bright red. “I—you—”
Licht sighed. “None of us were. We were all in the kitchen, eating cake.”
Jin shrugged. “Well, you don’t know what I did afterwards.”
“You mean, after you passed out and Luke and I carried you to your room?” Leon asked, laughing.
It was a relief when Chevalier and I finally finished dinner and left his teasing brothers and the round table room behind. I'd known it was coming, and I knew they meant well, but the awkwardness had been almost unbearable at times. Even though it had been fun to see them laughing and talking like usual after a week of not seeing them at all.
“You could have been a little more helpful,” I chided Chevalier, although I couldn’t hide my smile. We’d left the busier hallways behind, and the closer we got to our room, the more the nervous anticipation fluttered in my stomach. Especially when he pulled his gloves off and took my hand in his.
“I intervened when I felt it was necessary,” he replied, smirking that incorrigible smirk that always made my stomach flip.
“Well, it was necessary more often than you intervened," I retorted. "You know, I'll have a busy day tomorrow, so maybe I'd better go to bed early tonight and get some rest—”
He scooped me up at the door, a move that sent the butterflies into a flurry, even though I’d expected it.
“Don’t you dare.”
I giggled and wrapped my arms around his neck as he opened the door. “What?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.
He pressed me into the blankets and captured my lips in a heady kiss, his knee digging into the mattress beside me and the roses wrapping around me. I combed my fingers through his bangs and through his hair to the back of his neck, kissing him back as he cupped my cheeks in his hands. The sound of our lips moving together blended with the heartbeat in my ears, pounding harder with every passing second.
“Mm, Chevalier…”
“You missed me,” he murmured, pulling back to take a breath.
I licked my lips, resisting the urge to grab his lapels and drag him back down to me. “I did not.”
He chuckled. “It was readily apparent.”
“You were imagining things. Now, I’m really tired—”
He cut me off with another kiss, even more intense than the last, his tongue reaching in deep to pull a moan from my throat as his hands traced my curves. I gave up the game and grabbed his shirt, pulling him down to me, craving the feel of his weight on top of me. His heart was racing, too, and his body radiated the same heat I felt smoldering in my core.
And his sword hilt was digging into my thigh.
“New rule,” I gasped, fumbling with the buckle of his belt. “No swords in bed.”
“Whatever you say.” He trailed kisses along my jawline to my ear, his breath as ragged as mine. “Do you want to know what Jin told me?”
“Mm…” I tilted my head back and to the side to give him more room to work, my fingers tearing through the fastenings of his cloak, jacket, and shirt in quick succession while he continued to tease me through my dress. “Later.”
He chuckled again and nipped at my earlobe, drawing a gasp from me. “I’d rather undo you in my own way.”
“Chevalier…”
His breath against my skin warned me of his next nip, his next kiss, the next swipe of his tongue, and I dug my fingers into his back, wanting more—needing more. His low, husky voice and intentional caresses were driving me wild.
“You don’t know how hard it was to have you in here all the time.”
“Well, that was your own fault…mm…”
“All this time,” he purred, his hands sliding around to my back and tugging at the laces of my dress, “and I finally have you right where I want you.”
“Chevalier, please…”
Panted breaths filled the air, thick with roses and sweat, sheets clutched between my fingers and heavy kisses coating my skin, and when I called his name, he spoke mine, his voice pitched low and just for my ears to hear. I was drowning in his crystal blue eyes, drowning in the ecstasy of just being with him, and I knew he was drowning, too. He told me as much with every touch and every murmured word.
Silly me, thinking the honeymoon was over.15Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSMwJqKiQVy
