Spare Princess

Little Jokes

Geneva

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumble, my eyes darting between Victor, who looks everywhere but me, and this Demir Aslan guy who stares at me like a cat who’s just trapped the mouse and is ready to play with it before snapping its neck. A very sexy, very forbidden, and angry cat who’s getting harder and harder to ignore. He’s changed the official suit he wore earlier for jeans and a black button-down, but the fancy-ass coat is still on his shoulders. And his hair is no longer sleek to perfection, it’s ruffled, like someone else besides him has played with it. All that makes me sick for some reason.

He still hates me though. The coldness coming from him is so damn visceral it could freeze someone to death if he let it go. And because that’s the only way I know how to respond to these kinds of things, I harden myself too. His coldness is my coldness, his hatred is my hatred. And it’s not like I don’t have a reason for it. I hate how tall he is, and how strong he looks. I hate his dark f*ucking tan and the gray strands in his otherwise perfectly black hair. I hate that someone else touched it and made it appear so ruffled. And I definitely hate the evil gleam in his eyes. It definitely does not make my stupid imagination run wild. Nope. Not in the slightest.

“Gen, it’s going to be just for a few days. We will figure out who stands behind the attack and disarm them…” Victor’s voice brings me back to reality. A reality in which I was just attacked by something evil and in which my asshole of a brother wants to assign the guy who hates my guts as my own personal bodyguard. Thank you the f*uck not.

“I don’t care. I don’t want him… it, I don’t want it,” I correct myself quickly, my damn cheeks burning with humiliation as I look away from both of them. Only for my eyes to land on Ian, who is leaning on the kitchen island, nonchalantly sipping on a beer, his hazel eyes sparkling with mischief in my direction. Little s*hit.

Aslan only stands taller, a sound reverberating in his throat, like a purr, but angry? Is that even a thing? And how is it that he suddenly seems even taller, larger than before? My eyes snap back to him and I wonder what the f*uck is wrong with him, besides the giant stick up his firm a*ss I mean. Yeah, I looked, sue me. It’s not like I looked in a perverted way, more like in an appreciating-nature’s-work kind of way.

“Well, Demir is the only person who can keep you safe for now, so it is not negotiable,” Victor replies, completely oblivious to my turmoil or because of it.

I can feel his alpha strength tugging at the corners of my mind, but this time I am too emotionally exhausted and my b*utt hurts, so I let him use it to command my submission. For tonight at least. All I want is to go back home, pop a painkiller, and forget this day ever happened. But no, my overbearing brother won’t let me have it, will he? Right now, I kind of miss the time he didn’t speak to me and hated my guts. Especially when he opens his mouth and seals my fate for the unforeseeable future.

“Yeah, whatever,” I give in finally and actually want to crumble on the floor. If I make myself small enough would they all leave me alone? It didn’t work with my captors before, but these here are supposed to be the good guys, so maybe?

“It’s effective immediately,” Victor informs me like, of course it is, what was I even thinking?

I roll my eyes at him and he scoffs but doesn’t say another word. So, that’s a no to my unspoken plea to leave me the f*uck alone.

The bodyguard, I refuse to use his real name, smirks at me and I don’t like the challenge in his dark eyes - it reminds me of all the times my Ruffles stares me with a dare as he’s about to knock something off a shelf. And why did I think his eyes were black? They are more like golden brown, with specks of yellow and his pupils seem like they are vertical but they are not really? Like is that even a thing? Maybe that’s just the evil in him and nothing more. Whatever. I hate him.

I turn my back on both of them, intentionally avoiding Ian’s amused gaze, and storm out of the room. I am halfway through the front porch stairs when I realize two things - one, I forgot my coat and bag inside, and two, that man is following me closely behind.

He stands on the last step, looming like a doom over me, refusing to move away. A part of me wants to kick him in the shins just for the fun of it, but then I decide that’s not how my grandmother raised me, plus it was her funeral today, so I should be respectful to the old lady’s lessons, right? So, with raised head, I circle around him. Ian is waiting at the door for me and hands me the coat with a smug expression.

“Have fun, babe,” he smirks at me and then closes the door in my face. I can hear his voice trailing off inside the house as he tells Victor that forcing this bodyguard on me was his best idea ever. Little s*hit. As I turn back to storm off down the stairs, words like ‘amusing’ and ‘be put in place’ reach me and I want to strangle him.

Instead, I move around that man and head towards the main road. All the time I can feel his eyes on my back, shooting daggers at me, but he remains silent as he follows me a few steps away. The show continues until the moment he realises I have full intent on walking all the way back to town instead of driving in some fancy-ass car like it suits the supervillain he damned me to be.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” He asks with his grumpy, not hot-and-raspy-at-all, voice, but I ignore him.

I manage to make a few more steps until he hurries to me and grabs my arm, forcing me to turn and face him. In the moonless night I feel too f*ucking aware of his closeness, of the way he’s slightly looming over me exactly like the hellish thing that attacked me earlier. Maybe they are best buddies. Maybe he called it here. Wouldn’t that be a blast?

“You are not walking back to town,” the man hisses at me, his eyes gleaming just like a cat’s in the darkness, reflecting even the faintest hint of light right back at its source.

“Watch me,” I challenge him and pull my arm away from him.

But right before I manage to make even another step, he grabs me again, both of his hands on me this time.

“It’s not safe. Are you intentionally trying to get yourself in danger?” He asks, his tone this time reminding me of a teacher scolding a petulant child in the kindergarten. Oh, am I getting on his nerves then? Good. Choke on it, f*ucking spitter.

“Like you care,” I roll my eyes and try to shake him off again but his grip on me only tightens. His long fingers, wrapped in those annoying leather gloves he had on earlier, dig into my flesh and my skin almost stings.

He hums at me. Like, he doesn’t say a word anymore, just hums, and it sounds also like a grunt? Like he’s so done with my s*hit. Brace it, angry man, I haven’t even started.

“I don’t,” he finally admits with a tired sigh. I pretend I don’t care about the sting in my chest at his admission. “But the king gave me orders and I intend to follow them.”

“Too bad for you,” I shrug.

And then I do something I haven’t done since last year. I dip into the magic that runs through my veins and send a little bolt of energy against him. He hisses in pain and pushes me away, breaking in half as he tries to suck air in his lungs through a downpour of curses which are so damn creative there is no way he’s just as refined as he pretends to be.

“Oh, watch your language, grandpa,” I mock him as I run away from him.