Without another word, he captured my lips with his own, and we melted together in a beautiful, heart-stopping kiss. I’d kissed this man before, but now, without the threats of the future hanging over us, kissing him was all the sweeter. It tasted like forever.
“So, what happens now? We’re both graduates of the Velking Royal Academy,” I said with a laugh, adopting a mockingly deep, self-important tone at that last part. “Big futures ahead of us. What are we going to do?”
“Well,” he said, with absolutely no modesty. “I am going to ascend to the throne.”
“Yes, I believe I heard that rumor,” I agreed.
There was something about smiling with him, about being in his arms like this, that made laughter and joy contagious. I wanted to bottle this feeling and sell it; I would have made more money with that than by selling any of the magic the Velkin peddled.
His eyes softened. His hands pulled me closer to him. I was helpless to resist either.
“And I’m going to need a queen.”
I balked. Was that…? Did he…? Blinking to clear my head, I tried to tease him when really all I wanted to do was throw my arms around him and scream yes.
“If that was a proposal—”
Once again, that arrogant prince persona returned. I wanted to kiss that smirk right off of his lips. “Oh, don’t worry. When I propose, you’ll know it. But yes. One day, Carolyn Conners, I intend to have you beside me on the Throne of Velkin.” His lips came to whisper the final words against my ear, sending shivers up and down my spine. So perfect. So delicious. He raised an eyebrow, completing the look. “And I’m sure you know that I always get what I want.”
“Insufferable prince,” I muttered.
But even as I said that, my lips were approaching his, readying for another round of heady, desirous kissing.
“Beautiful woman,” he breathed against me.
We didn’t need permission or any more conversation. Just like that, he was on me again, and I was trying my damnedest to pull him closer, tighter, nearer. To feel and have more of him than I’d ever dare to have before. Soon, I found myself pressed between him and the stone wall behind me, and wishing that he would press me even tighter. I loved the way his body felt beneath his uniform, the way it felt against my tight bodice and my skirted legs.
I wondered what how it would feel to have him without the barrier of clothes separating us.
But before I could express that wish to him, the sound of an opening door nearby—in what was supposed to be an abandoned, forgotten corridor—shocked us both apart, where we discovered a blonde woman with a beehive hairdo and oversized glasses gawking at us.
But there was a glint in her eye that made me suspicious that this was not an accident at all, no matter what she claimed.
“Good gracious! My apologies! My most sincere apologies! I didn’t mean to interrupt such anß…” She struggled for the words for a moment, her high-pitched, cultured human voice grating on every one of my last, desperate, sex-starved nerves. Her pause told me everything I needed to know. “Important, private moment.”
I coughed and shuffled away from Anatole as slyly as I could, but he pulled me back into his arms before I could manage it. The slick bastard was enjoying this. I could practically feel his smirk without even looking at him.
“It’s quite alright,” he said, “We were just returning to join the party.”
The old woman nodded, smiling broadly as she waited for us to pass.
“Of course. Yes, of course. You gave a wonderful speech, my dear.”
A flush crept across my cheeks. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”
“But I do have one question, though, miss. If you don’t mind.”
Anatole, whose hand rested on the small of my back, stopped at almost the same moment that I did. Of course she was a reporter. Of course she had an ulterior motive for sniffing us out down here. I shared a brief glance with Anatole, a we’re not getting out of this one look, before turning back with as broad and friendly a smile as I could muster.
“Sure. What is it?”
By the time I’d asked the question, her pen was already at the ready in her notebook, prepared to scribble down whatever it was I said next. Her face was a mixture of grave concern and ruthless, mercenary joy. Like she knew she was about to get the scoop of the century, but didn’t want to look too excited about it.
“What’s going to happen to that dreadful Prince Adric? The humans on Earth are worried about him, you know, getting out and trying to invade us all again.”
Once again, I shared a look with Anatole. There had been much debate about what to do with Adric in the days since our victory at Castle Bloc, debate that often grew heated and tired. Banishment had gotten us into this mess in the first place. Many of his actions hadn’t been his own choosing, but the evil magic puppeteering him. And no one wanted to see him killed, so what was the best thing to do with him?
Our solution was a crude one, but Anatole and I thought it would be effective.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” I assured her as her pen scribbled a mile a minute.
“Why not?”
“Because he is going to be very well taken care of. I don’t think he’s going to ever go back to being the Adric he used to be.”
For one thing, the evil magic was gone. Gone from Adric just as it was now gone from Anatole. There would be no returning to his former power-hungry, imperial self. Now, he was just a regular, run-of-the-mill second royal son with behavioral problems that needed severe ironing out.
The journalist didn’t seem impressed with my explanation, or the secret smile I shared with Anatole.
She sniffed and raised one eyebrow. “How do you propose you’ll manage that?”
“He hated the humans.” Once again, I turned my attention to Anatole, and thought about everything we’d been through together. From that first, electric glance, when he burned with so much hatred, to now, when I couldn’t imagine feeling anything but love from him. “So, in my estimation, there’s only one way to teach him how to love them.”
A Letter from emmeline
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading this fantasy romance duology! If you've enjoyed Carolyn and Anatole's story, please share the love with other readers with an Amazon review and Goodreads review! And, of course, if there are any other stories from Velkin like you'd like to read - maybe Kyra and Tormin? Maybe a redemption for Adric...? - please share that in your review!
Thank you so much for reading!
Emmeline
Magic Captive: A Supernatural Academy Romance (The Velkin Royal Academy Series Book 2) Page 11
