“Are you all right?” Calista asked in an undertone, when the gift-giving had finished and there was nothing left but the eating. And then more eating. The royal brothers were off in the far corner of the room, talking to each other near the windows that let in the sea air, already warmer and sweeter than before. “Did anything happen last night?”
“Many things happened last night, Calista. I was bartered off to a playboy prince as a kind of Christmas offering to the nation. Perhaps you heard.”
“I don’t mean the wedding. It was a glorious ceremony, you know. Christmas lights everywhere and you shining in the middle of it all.” She sighed a little. Happily, Melody thought. “I meant after that, when he took you home.”
Melody liked the idea of shining brighter than Christmas. It seemed to connect with that new, shivery electricity she could still feel low in her belly. She wanted to press her hands against her own abdomen to feel it, the way she’d experimented with electric things when she’d been young. To feel that hum. That buzz.
Then the burn.
And now, because of Griffin, it was inside her.
Waiting, she thought.
“Are you asking if my husband hauled me back to my brand-new home and plundered his newly acquired bounty?” Melody asked her sister dryly. “I think you’ll find he’s entitled to do precisely that, according to ancient Idyllian law. Fen looked it up to make sure.”
Calista gripped her wrist. “He didn’t...?”
“Of course not.”
Melody went to lounge back against the settee where they sat, but stopped quickly when the dress she was wearing made that entirely too uncomfortable. Not if she wanted to also breathe. So she stayed where she was, straight-backed and formal, and after a moment, thought that was just as well. Talking with Calista, it was too easy to forget herself. And she shouldn’t assume Griffin wasn’t paying attention.
There was more to him than he pretended there was. She could feel it.
She reminded herself to keep her voice low.
“If he’d tried I would have maimed him,” she said cheerfully.
“I think it’s easy to assume that you might act a certain way in a certain situation when you imagine it from a distance,” Calista said carefully. “But then, when the situation actually arises in real life, it might prove to be far more overwhelming than you expect.”
That got Melody’s attention. “I’m now a little more worried about your wedding night.”
“I know you can take care of yourself,” her big sister said, in a fierce undertone. “I’m hoping you didn’t have to, that’s all. Griffin has never struck me as the kind of man who would take something that wasn’t offered to him, but you never know, do you?”
Melody’s experience with men had almost exclusively been with her father. As Griffin was nothing like Aristotle, praise the heavens, she had personally been struck by...that, really. What he wasn’t. Who he wasn’t.
When she instead considered who he was, everything went electric.
“He was a perfect gentleman,” Melody told Calista, and didn’t quite manage to keep the note of complaint out of her voice. “What did you expect, with me playing this role? He thinks I might blow away in the faintest breeze. He would have to literally be a monster to force himself upon a creature he believes is so fragile.”
Beside her, her sister made a funny noise. “Do you sound...unhappy about that? Or have I had too much sugar?”
“He has no intention of touching me,” Melody said, as if she was making a proclamation. A quiet proclamation. She listened for a moment, making sure she could hear the low rumble of two male voices, still far enough away from the couch where she and Calista sat that there was no chance she’d be overheard. “I asked how we would produce heirs if there was no touching, and he didn’t seem concerned about bulking up his part of the line of succession.”
“Good,” Calista retorted. “You hardly know him. No reason to rush into anything. You have your entire marriage for that.”
“I’m sure we’ll develop a beautiful friendship,” Melody muttered. “But to be honest, I’m really much more interested in sex.”
She heard Calista choke. “Excellent news on that front, then. You happen to be married to perhaps the most sexually experienced man in the whole of Europe.”
“Sad, then, that he has decided he will never insult me with his touch.” Melody sighed. “I have graduated from my own, personal, lifelong convent at last to discover that I’ve been sent to carry on more of the same in Prince Griffin’s private monastery. It doesn’t really seem fair.”
“Our parents’ house is many things, but I wouldn’t call it a convent.”
“That is likely because you were allowed to leave it. As you wished. Without any fears that you might put off the neighbors with your imperfections.”
There was a small silence, and Melody instantly felt guilty. It wasn’t Calista’s fault that her father was who he was or that he’d always treated Melody so appallingly. And yet she knew full well her sister felt somehow responsible for it. For her.
“That wasn’t meant to be an attack,” she said. “Just a statement of fact.”
Calista coughed, delicately. “Well. The thing is, Griffin is a man.”
“I’m aware of that.” Melody frowned. “Wait. What do you mean, exactly?”
“I mean that you’ve been particularly adept at using your body since you were a kid. And not to generalize hideously about my new brother-in-law, but he has always freely admitted that he’s drawn to women who know how to use their bodies. Just...in a different way than you’re used to using it.”
It took her a moment. “Seduce him, you mean.”
“Why not?” Calista asked. Across the room, the male voices got louder. And began moving closer. Calista leaned closer to Melody, speaking quickly. “What do you have to lose? If he gets overly
