Page 43 of Christmas in the King's Bed
Melody quailed as if the idea floored her. “If you say so, Your Royal Highness.”
“Call me Griffin,” he said, his attention on her younger sister in a way Calista could not say she liked. At all. It made the tiny waist of her gown seem even tighter. Especially when he kept going in that silken voice of his. “After all, we are practically family, are we not?”
Calista knew her sister well enough to see that description didn’t sit well with her, even as she...fluttered. But if she wanted to play this game of hers, pretending she was a helpless creature at every opportunity when she wasn’t, Calista was more than happy to go along with it. Particularly if it also slapped at Prince Griffin and hiswarnings.
“Hush now,” she murmured soothingly. “This is part of why I’m marrying, Melody. To give you these wonderful new brothers.”
And it was worth it when Melody forgot herself for a moment, focusing her whole body in Calista’s direction with what seemed like obvious fury to her.
But Griffin was none the wiser. That was what mattered.
He was far too busy looking from Melody to Calista as if the wordbrotherwas a vile curse.
“I cannot wait,” he murmured, all silk and seduction.
But Calista thought there was something else in his gaze as he took himself out of the room.
And for a moment, the sisters stayed where they were.
“It really is like a fairy tale,” Calista said merrily. “Your very own Prince Charming cannot wait to welcome you to the family, Melody, despite your simpering.”
“I really ought to kill you. You know I can, right?” Melody was no longer assuming her Little Match Girl persona. She looked like herself again, capable and intent. “With my own two hands.”
“Yes, yes,” Calista said and sighed. “But then what would become of either one of us?”
Melody laughed, settling back against her chair. As if it was all a joke.
But Calista knew better.
Her father was calling her bluff in this game she’d never wanted to play. She had six days left before she could make her move and she had no doubt that if she didn’t throw him a bone, he would cart Melody off to some horrible prison of an institution somewhere. He’d call it a wedding present.
How could she live with that? Calista knew she couldn’t. She had to make a decision, soon. And it shouldn’t have been a hard one.
Of course she would protect her sister. The way she always had.
And she would do it at the expense of the man she’d never wanted to marry and shouldn’t have let herself care for.
Even if it killed her.
CHAPTER TEN
TWOWEEKSLATER, Orion still could not explain why it was he’d chosen to tell Calista that she was his first.
His only.
Or better yet, why she was the only thing on this planet that could make him break a vow he’d kept even when he was half-mad with adolescent hormones.
He’d rationalized it away, of course. He had always said he wouldn’t touch a woman unless he married her, and he was going to marry her. He would be making new and better vows in a week’s time, come Christmas Eve. But he was entirely too aware that he was excusing himself in a way he would not excuse anyone else had they been in the same position.
The trouble was, hypocrisy was entirely too delicious.
A notion that forced him to reassess the judgments he’d so happily levied on every other human alive. Like his father.
It was a particularly shattering thing indeed, to find himself feeling even vaguely compassionate about King Max. He hardly knew what to do with it.
Maybe it was easier to concentrate on his own sins, in the form of the woman he should not have touched—but he had.
Every morning for the past two weeks, he had woken with Calista. Tangled up in her bed, eyes gritty from lack of sleep, because after holding himself back from the pleasures of the flesh for so long, he was insatiable.