He remained silent, then slapped my ass when I struggled further. “Stop your flailing or I’ll drop you.”
Heat flamed my face. “Did you just spank me?”
“Was that too hard?” he asked, shutting the doors behind him. “You’ll need to let me know if I’m being too rough. Humans are terribly fragile.” In an instant, the sharp bite of the cold vanished.
My fingers throbbed and I ran my breath over them to force more warmth into the tips. “Whatever,” I mumbled over his shoulder. “Just put me down, we’re back inside now.” Instead of letting me slide off him, Dante locked an arm around my legs keeping me in place. His shoulder dug into my gut as he made his way up the stairs and into the library where I had been relaxing before.
The pitter-patter of tiny paws raced toward us until a tiny white kitten appeared and wrapped itself around Dante’s feet. He cursed under his breath and nudged the cat away from him. Undeterred, the cat followed close behind, yowling as Dante approached the liquor cabinet.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’ve come to the realization that your shenanigans are going to cause me a lot of stress. The drink is for my fortitude.” He reached back to hand me the bottle of whiskey. “Hold this.”
Obeying, I grabbed hold of the bottle and debated whether I should try hitting him over the head with it. “You were a lot nicer back in the tower.”
“My patience tends to wane after someone drugs me to use me as a beast of burden,” he said, sardonically.
“Alright, I deserve that one.”
He waved a hand at something in the corner. One of the fluffy butler weasels peeked out from a door that was disguised as a painting. Its little head tilted up at its master, waiting for instructions. “Start a fire, please.”
Without a word, the weasel bolted past us to fetch wood from a cabinet next to the fireplace before setting to work. In a few quick moments, the kindling caught and the tiny demon fanned the flames into existence. Then as quickly as it appeared, the creature vanished back into the painting from which it had come. Dante carried me over to the sitting area then placed the drinks on the table next to the bottle of wine I had pulled out earlier. “I see you made yourself at home,” he remarked.
“Well, I couldn’t find your front door in this labyrinth of a castle. So I took a break.”
He hummed. “Princess, if I put you down are you going to run?”
A tempting thought. “No, and stop calling me princess.”
He hesitated, as if unsure whether to trust my answer, then deposited me on the couch. He took a seat next to me and handed me a glass of whiskey. I placed it back on the table in favor of popping the wine open and filling up my old glass. “I can’t drink that stuff.”
He shrugged and downed his glass before picking up the one I had discarded. “So, what did you choose to read?” he asked.
I slid further away from him and drew my knees up to my chest. “Are we going to ignore what just happened?”
He leaned back in his seat, getting comfortable. “We can. If it were up to me we’d skip to the part where we’re madly in love with each other. Go on dates, watch a thunderstorm with a steaming cup of tea, overthrow a reasonably sized kingdom and bend it to our liking, then get a dog,” he mused, swirling his glass.
I took a sip of my wine, letting the smooth taste ease down my frozen throat. “You want to run the second to last one by me again?”
“That was a joke.” Dante shrugged and cocked his head. “Unless you want to. Know that we have options. I’m just over the moon that you’re here.”
“Even though I almost died trying to get away from you?”
“What’s a relationship without a few trials and tribulations?”
“Isn’t this your kingdom?” I asked, motioning to the surrounding castle.
He took in the room with indifference, as if displeased with the surrounding opulence. “Yes, but I’ve been trapped in Volsog long enough. That’s why I had planned to rebuild my castle after I claimed whichever land my mate hailed from. Where is that, exactly?”
I ignored his question with one of my own. “Don’t you have to rule over the local populace or something?”
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’d sooner abandon this castle and all its treasures than be burdened by the mundane trials of their everyday lives.”
“Then why do they let you rule over them?”
“They don’tletme rule over them. I allowed them to live here.” With a sweep of his hand, the map disk sprang to life. The map grew when he tapped a region in the northwest corner of Volsog, revealing a mountain range with a river running through its bottom half, “This region is absolutely devoid of other titan beasts,” he began. “Those who reside here need not fear giants trampling their crops or rocs destroying their communities. Do you know why?”
“No.”
