Chapter 87: Dick-Punched Into Map Dysfunction
Two days. Six sightings. Zero approaches.
Women were Maddox’s native language. Beautiful fell into his bed the way rain falls on a roof. Naturally. Consistently.
She was staying in his Keep and hadn’t approached him, which would be considered rude by most kings. Normally he wouldn’t have noticed or cared. But this woman broke his record and apparently had been flying with his men.
This was a war summit. She was foreign. Realistically she probably thought he was too busy. She wouldn’t be wrong. He was, in fact, catastrophically busy. That had never stopped him before and it wasn’t going to start now.
By the afternoon of day two, every other woman in this camp had found an excuse to enter his tent or approach him.
One had brought a broken compass and asked if he could "help her find north." He could. North was wherever he was standing.
There was no way she hadn’t seen the other women approaching him. If she was unsure on protocol, that would have tipped her off and she would have corrected by now. But she hadn’t, which meant she was choosing to avoid him.
Playing a game. The game was making him come to her, and it was working. Fine. Cute. He could respect the strategy.
Playing hard-to-get with Maddox Drakencrest was like building a sandcastle in front of a tide. Admirable effort. Beautiful craftsmanship. Same ending every time.
It always ended with the woman in question deciding she was done pretending to ignore him and with Maddox pretending he hadn’t noticed the pretending.
Maddox crossed the summit field towards Blair.
His sister was standing beside the white-haired woman at the edge of the diplomatic row between the Thornvale and Greymarch tents.
Then he noticed every single male in the vicinity angled towards them. None were stupid enough to approach his sister. Smart men.
"Blair." His hand touched her arm, the greeting familiar, warm. The greeting of a brother who had been raised alongside his sister and loved her in the uncomplicated way that siblings love each other when the complicated parts are directed at everyone else.
"Maddox." Blair kissed his cheek. "You smell nice. Did you put on cologne for the summit, or..."
She let the ’or’ hang in the air like a knife balanced on its point, and looked at him with an expression so innocent it circled all the way back around to criminal.
"What brings you to diplomat row? You never come find me during summits. This is sweet. Really. I’m touched."
She was not touched. She was loading ammunition.
He swallowed the comeback. It was a good comeback. It died inside him and he mourned it briefly and moved on.
He turned to Guinevere seeing her up close for the first time. Green eyes. White hair in loose waves that fell past her waist, catching the light in a way that made the gold at the edges look like the sun had left a signature. The crown. The Drakencrest sigil on her zip suit.
He had a type. His type was beautiful. His type had shown up at his door, in his tent, in his bathing chamber, and once memorably in Sterling’s office, on Sterling’s desk, and he had never turned his type away because he was a generous king and generosity was a virtue. He was practically a saint. A deeply attractive, morally flexible saint, but a saint nonetheless.
This woman was his type, and he planned on being very generous with her.
The universe had delivered her directly into his Keep, wearing his sigil, and breaking his records. If that wasn’t an invitation, the gods needed to work on their communication skills.
She dipped. Respectful, formal, the incline precise to the degree that court etiquette demanded for a visiting dignitary greeting a sovereign.
Textbook. Which meant she knew the rules. Which meant when she broke one for him later, it would be on purpose.
Maddox flashed her a smile. Confident. Self-aware. Touched with the faintest suggestion that he found his own charm mildly amusing, which had historically been the detail that finished the job.
"Guinevere Lunaris." He said her name the way he said everything, like it already belonged to him and he was doing her the favor of returning it. "I hear you set a record on my training field, which means I owe you a drink, because the last person to hold that time was me and I’ve been looking for an excuse to retire gracefully."
He leaned against a tent post.
Her green eyes moved across his face. The scan was quiet. Thorough.
She did not speak. The kind of listener who made a man feel heard and foolish at the same time.
He adjusted. "Nyros is a long crossing. The sunset from my balcony makes the journey worth it. Say the word."
Her eyes stayed on his. The silence that followed lasted three seconds. He held his ground. Most women looked away blushing by now.
"Thank you, Commander."
He waited for more. None came. Bold. Showing zero cards.
"You broke my record. You’re wearing my sigil. You haven’t said more than three words to me." He waited. Let the silence do the work. "Join me for a drink tonight and I’ll let you break another one."
The ’break another’ line was versatile to many situations. It had worked on a duchess, a high priestess, and a woman who had explicitly told him she hated him.
Something shifted behind her eyes where sadness lived. It was brief. If he had blinked, he would have missed it.
She gave a small smile. "The sigil suits me. So I’m keeping it."
He waited for the rest. None came.
"Please excuse me." She dipped, then walked away, towards diplomat row.
That was it. There was no attitude or ego. That he could have handled with his eyes closed.
He stood beside a tent post with his smile still in place and every line he had prepared still loaded and the woman they were aimed at walking away from him.
His brain attempted to process. The processing failed. He restarted it. It failed again.
’The sigil suits me’ was her throwing him a bone so he could save face. So he didn’t have to stand there with his dick in his hand in front of the entire war summit. She tossed him a lifeline on her way out.
Bitter women he understood. Angry women he understood. Women who’d been screwed over by some lord with a title and a wandering dick, he could work with. Those women don’t let you keep your balls in public.
She had let him keep his, which meant she felt sorry for him. But he was the Dragon King, so that wouldn’t make sense. So there was something else going on.
Whatever her issue was, her strategy was flawless. He would have appreciated it more if his pride wasn’t bleeding out on diplomat row.
He looked at Blair.
Blair was watching him with an expression that contained layers. Amusement lived on top. Beneath that, something fiercely protective, aimed at the woman walking away and shielding her from the man standing here. The layers were organized by priority, and the priority was Guinevere.
"Does she have a mate?" he asked, genuinely perplexed. It was the only logical explanation, but even if she had a mate, he was still the Dragon King.
"I say this with sisterly affection, but, she’s not your type. Go find an Emma." The sentence left Blair’s mouth fully dressed, armed, and pointed directly at his chest.
"Who?"
"I love you." She patted his shoulder once, the way a person pats a large dog that has tried very hard and failed adorably. "Don’t worry. Your person is out there somewhere."
She turned and walked after Guinevere, leaving Maddox at the tent post.
Alone.
Maddox kept his eyes on the wolf princess. Waited. She gave zero backwards glances to see if he was watching.
Unbelievable. She was seriously going to hold.
His dragon was now pacing behind his ribs so aggressively the vibration was reaching his fingertips.
Go after her.
He wasn’t going to go after her. Going after a woman who had just excused herself was the behavior of a man who couldn’t accept a result, and Maddox Drakencrest always accepted results.
He accepted this result by walking back to the command tent and staring at a map for six minutes without reading a single word on it.
His dragon was still pacing.
Mine.
There were other beautiful women he could easily sleep with right now.
Most women broke by the second approach. Very rare did they make it to the third. She was going to make him do it again. A fourth attempt.
The hardest hard-to-get he had ever encountered.
Was all of this worth it just to get her into bed? Yes. The answer was yes. Get her into his bed, get her out of his system, move on. Simple. Clean. He had done it a thousand times.
"Maddox." Sterling’s voice came from the map table. "The Greymarch garrison numbers."
"I’m reading them."
"You’re reading them upside down."
Maddox flipped the parchment. Said nothing. His ears were warm, which was a physiological event that had never occurred in his adult life and was going to remain unacknowledged.
