Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
“Before what?”
The sassy, bratty question slips out before I can contain it.
He does not answer me directly. He gives me that intimidating bright green stare and I feel like I’m starting to melt beneath it.
“I’ve never gotten naked for a man before.”
“Of course not,” he says, as if it is absolutely expected I be virginal.
“Well, then, you know and understand how hard this is for me.”
“It being hard is part of the point,” he says. “You need to understand that you belong to me. Every part of you. The sight of you is also something I desire to posses.”
What choice do I have? The king commands and I must obey — at least when the obedience brings me into naked contact with him. I hope we will both be disrobing.
“Fine,” I say. “Take this as a show of good faith.”
What madness am I embarking on now? I have to wonder what my plan is here. To get laid? To avoid another painful punishment by seducing the king? I think that is what I am trying to do, and I am kind of shocked I have the nerve.
Charming takes a seat in one of the armchairs near the bed, crossing one leg over the other to take a casually dominant position.
“Proceed,” he says. I have the urge to stick my tongue out at him, but I don’t, because I’m trying to be sensual, not bratty.
I begin to undress, feeling his eyes roaming over me slowly. The gown slides from my shoulders and promptly becomes stuck around my midsection, because I did not put a gown on this morning and I do not know how to take it off. It’s nothing like the clothing I am accustomed to. It has all sorts of bits and things and…
“There’s… something… a tie or something?”
“Let me help you.” King Charming relents, standing up again.
He crosses the room to me and turns me around with his hands at my waist. They are large and strong and they feel very comforting and invigorating at the same time. His adept fingers work at the lacing of the bodice or whatever it is one calls this garment that is almost a corset but not quite.
With the laces freed, the gown slips down over my hips, leaving me standing in a light nightgown. No. Not nightgown. It is a petticoat.
“Shouldn’t a princess have ladies-in-waiting to help her undress?”
“Of course,” Charming drawls behind me. “Would you like me to summon a girl to help get you ready to be spanked?”
“No!” I gasp, my face flaming immediately at the very idea.
“Then you will have to tolerate my rougher touch,” he says. His actions belie his words however, because he is not being rough with me at all. If anything his touch is careful and reverent. I feel his fingertips graze lightly down my back, separated from my skin only by the sheer garment.
“I have searched for you for such a long time,” he says. “I had begun to think I would not ever find you, and then I heard you speaking my name, telling my story, drawing me from my chamber to my ship, and thence to your mundane world. You may not understand this. I may not even truly understand it, but we were meant to be together in a way few people will ever experience. You are more than my soulmate, Emmaline. You are simply mine, through and through, my wife to be, my salvation, the end of my suffering.”
There is great emotion in his voice, and I sense that he is making reference to events I have absolutely no knowledge of. There is an edge of, as he says, suffering to this world. There is a dragon that sweeps the skies, and a populace who cowers in fear of it. There is a king obsessed with domination and with me. I sense an undercurrent of something quite dark here, something that has been papered over, something that is finding the cracks.
Before I can ask anything more, he slides the lacy straps of my petticoat from my shoulders and lets the entire garment fall to my feet, the silken material caressing me even as it abandons me.
I am naked. The modern underwear I donned this morning is no longer there, transformed into these fancier garments designed to allow the access of a king.
Charming turns me around to face him, and up this close, completely bare, I feel how much smaller than him I am. He is not merely a big, scaled, alien king. He is all of those things, and he is a male force of nature, pure masculinity standing directly before me, still clothed.
He put one finger beneath my chin when my gaze attempts to escape his.
“Go lie down on the bed,” he says. “Face down. Present yourself for punishment.”