Chapter 858: Even Teasing Cats Do Get Shy [Bonus - ]
Chapter 858: Even Teasing Cats Do Get Shy [Bonus Chapter]
Her jaw went completely slack.
Her eyes traveled past the small crimson-haired girl marching toward the curb and locked straight onto the tall broad-shouldered young man strolling out onto the drive behind her.
Silas stood in the low golden light with his dark hair tousled by the wind, his dark blue eyes calm and easy with the open collar of his coat showing the clean line of his throat.
He was simply standing there, and the raw magnetic presence rolling off him hit the young officer like a slap across the cheek.
Sharon’s posture shattered instantly.
“Er… erm…”
Her heels clicked together, her spine went so stiff her shoulder blades nearly popped, and her cheeks erupted in a sudden very un-officer-like shade of scarlet.
Her hands fell from behind her back and fidgeted with the seam of her trousers, her amber eyes going wide and trembling with helpless adoration.
’B-By the sacred flames…’ she thought, her mouth opening and closing like a stranded fish. ’Who… what kind of masterpiece is standing in this driveway…?!’
Silas noticed her sudden paralysis and gave her an easy, boyish grin and a relaxed half-wave.
“Evening, Officer,” he said, his deep voice rolling across the gravel. “Thanks for picking up the squirt… She was worried you’d bring a whole regiment to hunt her down.”
“I… ah… w-we… n-no, sir!” Sharon squeaked, her voice jumping two full octaves into a breathy pitch that would’ve gotten her laughed out of any barracks in the south.
“I mean… it’s an honor to meet you, my Lord!” she stammered, bowing so fast from the waist that her red braid whipped over her ear. “The Bloom household guard is… very pleased to see our young mistress in such… remarkably magnificent and secure hands!”
Bridget stopped beside the rear door of the car and slowly turned her head to stare at her household’s senior officer with world-ending embarrassment.
’Sharon has completely lost her mind,’ she thought, dragging a hand down her face beneath her hair. ’She’s fought sea serpents and boarded pirate ships without blinking, and now she’s drooling over a boy in a wool coat… The women of my clan are hopeless.’
She wrenched the car door open herself to escape the horrifying spectacle and climbed into the back seat.
Silas stepped up to the edge of the open gate and rested his palm against the cold iron pillar.
The wind tugged his dark coat around his legs, and the gold ring in his eyes glowed faintly in the fading afternoon.
“Sharon, was it?” he called out.
Sharon snapped back to rigid attention, her face burning brighter than a signal flare. “Y-Yes, my Lord!”
Silas smiled, slow and handsome, fond and a little wicked all at once.
“When your lines reconnect with Sera since she said she was going to hunt Pirates,” Silas said. “pass a message to Seraphina for me. Tell her I miss her… and tell her I’ll be waiting for her when she gets back.”
Sharon’s breath hitched, and her hand flew up in a crisp trembling salute.
“I’ll deliver it word for word, my Lord! Upon my life!”
In the back seat, Bridget leaned her forehead against the tinted glass and watched him standing there in the low golden light.
’He misses her…’ she thought.
He’d said it out loud, to an officer of her family, without a single second of hesitation.
There’d been no calculation in it, no posturing and no political angle she could find… He’d just said it, like it was the simplest thing in the world and a strange quiet warmth bloomed behind her ribs.
Bridget frowned at it and pressed a hand flat against her blazer.
’What is this?’ she wondered, genuinely puzzled. ’Am I catching a cold? Did that soda have something in it?’
She ran back through the entire afternoon in her head, the carrying, the teasing, the seat by the window, the stupid crane napkin, and none of it made any sense.
’I came here to judge him… I was supposed to find his weaknesses so why do I feel like I’m the one who got inspected?’
Sharon scrambled into the driver’s seat, nearly tripping over the door sill in her hurry, and the car’s engine woke with a soft electric hum.
The crimson car backed smoothly out and turned down the long, winding descent of Celestine Heights.
Silas watched the red taillights vanish around the curve of the hedges, then tapped the gate sensor with his thumb, and the huge gates slid shut.
CLANG!
Silas turned and walked back through the quiet evergreen grove toward the glowing windows of the mansion.
The entrance hall was peaceful when he stepped back inside.
Laughter and the clatter of cupboard doors drifted up from the kitchen wing, where Martha was clearly giving the new pantry a very thorough inspection with Lia’s cheerful commentary and Penelope’s loud demands for snacks.
Out on the southern glass terrace, Harper had her phone pressed to her ear, rattling through some updates with the LAB’s directors with her sharp laughter echoing faintly against the glass.
Perched on top of the first landing post, her small black paws tucked neatly under her chest, Nitocris was waiting for him.
When he drew level with her, she gave her back a long luxurious stretch and hopped down to trot beside his boots.
“Your little mortal drama is quite noisy,” she observed, her velvety voice sounding quite lazy and regal. “The tiny red one has the temper of an angry sand wasp, and the soldier at the gate was ready to throw herself on the flagstones to be your footstool, Nyaa~”
“That’s just hospitality, Nito,” Silas teased, stepping into the master corridor on the third floor.
He reached the heavy double doors of the master suite at the end of the hall and pushed them open.
The master bedroom was a huge space of pale oak, charcoal stone and floor-to-ceiling glass looking out over the city, with a king-sized bed in crisp charcoal linens.
…Whitmore Logistics had already unpacked everything with terrifying precision, right down to his favorite pillows fluffed against the headboard.
Silas walked over to the desk, shrugged off his coat and tossed it over the back of the leather chair.
He rolled his sleeves past his forearms and took a deep satisfied breath of the clean scented air.
Nitocris hopped onto the foot of the bed and looked up at him with narrow calculating violet eyes.
Silas leaned his hips against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms, looking at the little black cat with an amused, knowing smirk.
“Alright, Your Majesty,” he said, tilting his head toward the room. “The kids are downstairs, Harper’s busy yelling at her board members, and nobody’s going to walk in here… Why don’t you change back into your human form? Walking around on four paws all day can’t be comfortable for an ancient empress.”
Nitocris lifted her small black chin, her whiskers twitching with haughty amusement.
“Comfort is an illusion of the flesh, mortal,” she purred, though her tail gave a sharp, deliberate flick. “But I’ll admit that two long legs are far better for demanding proper respect, Nyaa~”
She stood up on the comforter.
A dense shimmer of golden-violet mana burst around her small body, humming with the heavy weight of her SSS-Rank core.
The light swelled with a soft warm breeze that stirred the curtains and smelled of wild cinnamon, crushed lotus and hot desert stone.
FWOOM!
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the king-sized bed was Nitocris-Hathor in her full breathtaking human form.
Her skin was a deep warm brown that caught the soft ceiling lights like polished jasper… She had the long lithe build of a desert predator, a flat toned stomach with faint lines of definition sweeping out into generous hips, and a full chest that rose and fell with unhurried confidence.
Her hair poured down her back and pooled across the charcoal duvet around her thighs, a huge midnight-black waterfall streaked with vivid ribbons of violet that fell well past her hips.
Gold drop earrings banded with lapis swayed against her slender neck, and a gold armband hugged the toned curve of her upper arm.
…She was also completely naked.
Nitocris didn’t reach for a pillow to cover herself, and she certainly didn’t blush.
She leaned back on her hands and arched her back with slow, agonizing feline laziness.
Her long black-and-violet hair shifted just enough to keep things barely decent, and her lips curled into a wide shameless smirk.
She tilted her head, her violet eyes burning with ancient, predatory amusement as she fixed them squarely on Silas.
“Well, Silas Graves?” she purred, her rich, honeyed voice sliding through the quiet room like warm velvet. “Does this meet your barbarian standards? You seemed so eager to see me shed my fur. Do my royal dimensions satisfy the Lord of this grand estate, Nyaa~?”
“Or perhaps…” she drawled, her voice dropping to a husky, scandalized whisper, “…the great Lord of Blessed Land is finding the room a little too warm again, Nyaa~?”
Silas’s easy smile stayed exactly where it was.
He leaned against his desk and let his dark blue eyes sweep over her with calm appreciation.
He knew she was gorgeous… Silas also knew she was a dramatic ancient monarch who got ninety percent of her daily fun out of trying to make him squirm like a schoolboy, and he had zero intention of playing along.
“You look great, Nito,” he said smoothly, as if they were talking about the weather. “But if you’re trying to give me a heart attack, you’ll have to try a lot harder than that…”
He pulled one of his oversized black training shirts off a closet shelf as he balled it up and casually tossed it right at her face.
FLUMP!
The soft cotton hit her squarely between the eyes and slid down into her lap.
“Put that on and cover up,” Silas said, rolling his sleeves another turn. “This is a family house, Your Majesty… Lia and the girls are going to be running up and down these stairs any minute, and I don’t feel like explaining to an eleven-year-old why there’s a naked empress lounging on my bed.”
Nitocris pulled the shirt off her face, her brows knitting together in genuine startled confusion.
She looked down at the black cotton in her lap, then up at Silas, who’d already turned his attention to a glowing layout of the estate’s ward lines on his desk tablet, completely unbothered by the naked goddess on his mattress.
’Not a single stutter,’ she thought, honestly stunned. ’Not even a twitch… What kind of ridiculous boy is this…?’
She let out an annoyed little click of her tongue and pulled the shirt over her head.
The heavy fabric slid down over her skin, the hem falling well past her thighs and the broad shoulders swallowing her frame.
She shook her long hair free, and the black-and-violet waves spilled over the dark fabric like a royal mantle.
“Such crude hospitality,” she grumbled, tugging at the wide collar sliding off her left shoulder. “In Khemet, a visiting queen is given robes of spun gold and fragrant oils, not the cast-off exercise rags of a common soldier, Nyaa~”
Silas didn’t look up from his tablet.
He tapped a line on the glowing display, rubbed his chin, and spoke in a completely level tone.
“Do you need panties too?”
The bedroom went dead silent.
Nitocris froze with her hands stopping on the fabric of the shirt.
Silas tilted his head toward the door, his expression looking helpful and without a trace of mockery.
“Because I’m pretty sure you don’t have any clothes besides my shirt right now. If you need some, I can run down to the shops before dinner and grab a few packs, or I can just ask Harper to order some in your size. Just tell me what style you like…”
Nitocris sat on the bed with her mouth hanging open.
’Panties…?’
He was asking her, the First Per-aa of Khemet, who had commanded armies whether she needed underwear, in exactly the same tone a man would use to ask if she wanted butter on her toast.
A sudden scorching wave of heat exploded in the center of her chest.
The blush roared across her deep brown skin like a solar flare, flooding up her neck, flaming across her cheeks and turning the tips of her ears so hot she felt like her earrings might melt.
Two thousand years of royal dignity and her carefully crafted persona of shameless seduction evaporated in a single instant.
“Y-Y-You…!” she stammered, her voice jumping into a frantic, mortified shriek, her knuckles clutching the hem of the shirt like a shield. “You shameless, insolent, unspeakable barbarian, Nyaa~!”
Before Silas could even blink, her long legs hit the carpet.
She hitched the shirt down over her thighs with both hands, spun on her bare heels and sprinted out of the master bedroom as fast as her SSS-Rank legs could carry her with her heavy hair whipping behind her like a battle banner as her bare feet slapped wildly down the corridor.
PAT-PAT-PAT-PAT!
Silas stood frozen beside his desk, his finger still hovering over the tablet.
Silas blinked at the empty doorway.
’Was she… shy just now?’