Royal Wolf Box Set by Haley Weir
Chapter Seven
When Rubius laid Cassandra down on her bed, her eyes opened.
“Where’s Theo?” she asked groggily.
“He’s fine,” Rubius reassured her. “He’s in his room now, and one of your attendants is in with him and working on a puzzle or something. I told the woman to stay with Theo until his father got home, just to avoid any more unexpected wandering.”
“Thank you,” Cassandra smiled.
She looked up at Rubius standing over her bed as she laid there on her back, still with the arrow protruding from her chest. She didn’t need to be delirious to see how attractive he was. Locks of his messy hair fell down against his shoulders while the rest of it was gathered in a low ponytail behind his head. His black eyes felt like they did more than just see her; they felt as if they could look into her, and the feeling disarmed her and made her feel naked even while fully clothed. She knew that she should be angry at Theo for causing trouble, and she should be worried about whether Aeron would be able to mitigate the rumors that the humans were surely already spreading. Instead of those things, Cassandra found herself feeling unexpectedly excited that she was here alone in her bedroom—with Rubius.
“I didn’t pull the arrow out in the woods because you would have lost too much blood for me to carry you here. But now, and I can bandage you. He I need to pull it out.”
Cassandra didn’t say anything. She was too distracted by the way that his lips curled around his words as he spoke and the way that his mouth moved. She could catch a glimpse of his tongue inside his parted lips when he talked, and she wanted to taste him more than she had ever tasted anything in her life.
“It’s going to hurt,” he said with a grimace.
It already hurt. “Okay,” she responded.
Cassandra laid both of her hands on the mattress at her sides, with her palms facing down against the blankets. She stared up at Rubius and waited. Rubius wrapped his fingers around the shaft of the arrow, and with one swift, strong pull, he yanked it from her flesh. Cassandra winced and let out a small cry as the tip of the arrow tore open a slightly bigger hole than the one it made going in. She felt the scrape of the metal against the bone of her rib, and it sent a reverberating ache throughout her body. Rubius pressed his hand against the bottom of her ribcage.
As soon as his hands touched her body, she didn’t feel the pain anymore. She didn’t feel anything aside from his touch.
Rubius cleaned the wound and helped Cassandra lean forward. Every time he touched her, she forgot about the burning of the alcohol that he dressed the wound with to clean it or the splintering sound of her cracked rib. Every time he touched her, she wanted him to touch her more.
“You’ll need to take off the bodice of your dress,” he said. His voice was heavy with angst, and the sexual tension in the air was so palpable that it was nearly too thick to breathe. “I need to wrap the bandage around your whole torso to get it tight enough to stay and stop the bleeding.”
Cassandra sat there and looked at him without moving. She loved her husband, and she suspected Rubius also had no desire to hurt Aeron, and they both knew that if she took off her dress, there would be one less barrier keeping their struggling bodies apart. But not only did she need the injury bandaged, she also wanted to take the dress off. She lifted her other arm and tried to pull the sleeve of the dress down over her shoulder, but the motion pulled against her ribs and tore away more of the broken flesh. She made the unintentional small sound of pain, and Rubius reached forward to her without thinking to stay her hand. Without speaking, he lowered her hand to her side again and worked gently to remove the dress for her himself. He carefully untied the strings of the bodice and then let the corset fall against the mattress. Then he gently slid the sleeves down over her shoulders and pushed the rest of the fabric down around her waist. Her breasts fell free as the fabric rolled off of them the, and Rubius was so aroused that it hurt.
He tried desperately to focus only on her wound, on wrapping the bandage tightly around her torso as she lifted her arm to make room for him to pass the gauze around and behind her back. But with every time he wound the bandage around her body, he was met with her soft, creamy skin, and the lush buoyancy of her breasts. He fought against the urge to bend down and put his mouth on the tip of her breast. His hands shook as he tied off the end of the bandage and then reached to pull her dress back up around her nude chest. As he leaned in to find the edge of the, his face came too close to hers as she turned to look at him. For a moment, they were so close that their noses almost touched, and she could almost taste the proximity of his lips. Neither of them moved away. Neither of them wanted to.
“Cassandra,” Rubius whispered to her as if it was a prayer that only she was meant to hear. “I am trying to resist you, but I am failing.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t try,” she said as her eyes darted back and forth between the darkened storm that was brewing in his eyes.
But just as he was leaning forward toward her lips, Rubius heard the sound of Aeron’s voice bellowing through the corridor.
Cassandra’s eyes flashed with panic, and Rubius managed to pull her dress haphazardly around her, enough that she was covered before Aeron arrived in the doorway. Rubius took a few quick steps backward and stood at the foot of the bed, his hands draped casually across the front of his pants to hide the prominent bulge that pushed out from between his thighs.
“Cassandra,” Aeron said as he rushed to her bedside to sit down beside her. “How are you feeling?”
She was flushed and breathing heavily, and neither thing was because of her injury, although she could certainly blame it on that.
“I am fine,” she answered with a smile. “Rubius took good care of me.”
Aeron turned and stood to face Rubius. He extended his hand out to him in a gesture of heartfelt appreciation for taking care of his wife.
“Thank you, Rubius,” he said as he took his hand. “Thank you yet again for looking out for my wife. We are grateful to you.”
“It was my pleasure and my honor,” Rubius said with a deep nod of his head. His eyes glanced upward at Cassandra before he lifted his head back fully to meet Aeron’s face. “How did it go with the humans and the hunting party after we left?”
“It will be fine,” Aeron assured them both. He sat back down on the bed with Cassandra.
“The humans were undoubtedly perplexed about why a queen would risk her life to save a wolf. They also seemed suspicious about why the wolf didn’t immediately run. But I think that the other pack leaders and I were able to convince them enough to paint the picture of it being an innocent gesture and a comedy of errors.”
“And the hunter who struck Cassandra?” Rubius asked.
Aeron looked at him curiously before answering.
“He seemed as convinced as the rest,” Aeron said. “Why do you ask? You make it seem as if it wasn’t an accident that he hit Cassandra with his arrow.”
“I don’t like the way that he looked at her,” Rubius said.
Cassandra tensed in the bed. Rubius might give away his attraction to her if he acted too protectively in front of her husband.
“What look was that?” Aeron asked. He seemed intrigued but not yet suspicious.
“That man was watching Cassandra throughout the morning. I saw him because I was bringing up the tail of the hunting party with some of the other pack leaders. He kept glancing at her with a look that seemed disdainful.”
Aeron puckered his chin and furrowed his brows. He hadn’t seen the man looking at Cassandra, and maybe he needed to start paying closer attention. As Rubius turned to leave to go back to the forest, Aeron saw him give Cassandra the slightest glance before he had completely cleared the doorway.