The Alpha King's Bride novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Four Years of Sundays

The wedding dress had forty buttons down the back, and I could not reach a single one.

The maid who had laced me in had been sent away.

Aldric stood in the doorway of the bedchamber with his coat already off.

"I'll call her back," he said.

"Don't. It's late."

I turned my back to him and held my hair up.

He crossed the room slowly, and I felt him stop an arm's length behind me.

Then his fingers touched the first button at my neck.

His knuckles brushed my skin, and my whole back went hot.

He undid the first button, and the second, and the third.

By the ninth button his hand was not quite steady.

"I'll send for the maid," he said, and his voice had gone rough.

He stepped back so fast that he knocked a chair.

I looked over my shoulder.

His jaw was locked, and his hands were closed into fists at his sides.

He's a king, I told myself. He has done this with a hundred women, and tonight he is only being polite.

"Before you go," I said, "I have terms."

"Say them."

I turned around and held the loose front of the dress to my chest.

"One year. I stay for one year, because I have nowhere else to go. You do not touch me unless I say so. You do not mark me. I keep this room, and I keep the key."

I waited for him to bargain.

I had grown up in the Rooke house, where every favor came with a price.

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