“Now frown and say it,” she said.
And Griffin complied, sending more sensation soaring through her, shooting out from her palm and finding all the places where she was the most feminine, the most entranced by him. Her breasts. Her belly. That slick heat between her legs.
Her voice hardly sounded like hers. “Once more, with a smile.”
And that time, it was as if he said her name directly into the molten core of her.
Melody didn’t know what to do with that kind of storm. That kind of need. The wallop of it that nearly took her knees out from under her—when she had learned how to balance while standing in the Aegean, either maintaining her connection to the shifting sands beneath her or getting tumbled by the waves.
This was far more difficult than that.
“Is that how you learned?” Griffin asked, his tempting, fascinating mouth brushing against her palm and sending impossible licks of flame spiraling into every part of her.
It took Melody longer than it should have to drop her hand.
“People’s words sound different depending on what they’re doing with their faces,” she told him, unable to tell if she sounded fluttery or forthright because of the noise in her head. The pounding of her pulse and worse, the way it streaked all the way through her to lodge in the place she was softest. “And the more you listen for such things, the more you pick up on the subtleties. Calista and I used to hide in our parents’ drawing room, where they would have their strange little parties that were almost always power trips of one sort or another. And afterward, we would parse everything we’d heard and everything she’d seen, so that I could get better at picking up on inflections. I got very good at it.”
She could feel the weight of his stare, then. Probably because the trembling fawn of a charity princess she was meant to be would no doubt faint dead away before she’d indicate that she might have any skills at all. But there was no taking it back.
Deep down, she could admit, she didn’t want to take it back.
You don’t want his pity, do you? a snide voice inside her taunted her, sounding entirely too much like her father. You little fool. You want the most famous Lothario in ten kingdoms to admire you. You.
Melody could fight anything—except the obnoxious voices in her own head. But she could ignore them.
“I think you’re the one who’s fascinating, Melody,” Griffin said, but there was that gallant note in his voice again. So carefully courteous that it bordered on condescending, to her mind. “To have achieved any of the things that you have strikes me as nothing short of a miracle.”
Whatever, Gaston, she thought grumpily.
“It’s not a miracle,” she said, perhaps a little too crossly. “I didn’t have a choice. The more blind I looked, the more it offended my father. It was simple math. The better I got at acting as if I had my sight, the easier it would be all around.”
“And again.” Griffin’s voice was like a shudder in bones. “I do not intend to let that behavior on your father’s part slide.”
“My father has already been amply punished for his sins,” Melody said impatiently. “In the only way he is likely to notice. He’s lost his company. He’s been cast out of the highest circles of power in the land. The daughter he attempted to control defied him, the daughter he preferred to ignore has been elevated to spite him. For my part, I would prefer to pretend as if I don’t know he’s alive. Repayment in kind, if you will.”
“I had no idea you were so... cold.”
Griffin sounded both as if he admired that and was confused by it.
Melody was straying off course, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She could have corrected it then, before he had time to really think about how different she was acting. She could have toppled over into a swoon, or started cowering before him... But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do any of those things.
This character she was playing was beginning to feel like a chokehold.
“Tonight, all those people sat there, thinking they knew you,” she said instead, though she knew better than to indulge herself in this. Why couldn’t she seem to stop? “I assume you must put on a good show. But I could hear you. I heard the way you directed the conversation—a perfect counterpoint to whatever your brother was saying. When you got loud, it was so he could speak quietly with whoever was nearest him. When you were outrageous, or entertaining, it was to allow him to continue discussions he didn’t want the others overhearing. Quite a team, aren’t you?”
Griffin had gone stiff again. “I made a vow long ago to serve my brother’s interests as my own.” His voice was made of steel, much like his arm. “We are all we have.”
“I don’t understand how the whole nation doesn’t realize what a team you are. Instead, article after article witters on about how he is good and you are bad. Light and dark, day and night. As if you could have one without the other.”
“Melody.” And there was a different note in his voice then, something male and warm. She itched to put up her palm and feel the way he said it. “Are you...defending my honor? I must tell you, this is an exercise in futility at best.”
“I vowed to honor you, did I not? There on an altar before the King and all the world. Surely defending that honor is implied.”
“I like this fierceness in you, Princess.” Griffin was shifting, reminding her that they’d stopped on their walk across the courtyard. That they were out in the night, the sea air batting at them,
