King's Virgin by Adriana Hunter Page A

at her. She wore a shapeless gray dress that draped
loosely on her thin frame, and her head hung forward so that her
curtain of black hair concealed her face. As she was brought before
the throne, Lyon noticed that her entire body was trembling, and
couldn’t quite hide a disgusted sneer. So, they had brought him
a mouse. Well, he would hear her crimes and then chew her up and spit
her out like all the others.
    “ Your
Majesty,” his attendant greeted him, belly jiggling most
unbecomingly as he turned to face the King. “The accused is
Miss Cordova Thomas, companion to Lady Alice Grey. She comes before
you accused of high treason—a letter she wrote to her family
was intercepted, and contained slander and blasphemous things written
about your Majesty.”
    “ I see.”
Lyon turned his attention to the woman, curious rather than
infuriated, as he ought to be. “And what say you to these
accusations, Miss Thomas?”
    The woman tossed her
hair out of her face, raising a pointed chin so she could glare
daggers at him with her garnet eyes. “If speaking the truth…if
warning my family not to come here in order to spare them your
tyranny, is considered to be high treason, then yes, I am guilty.”
    Lyon arched a brow,
sucking in a sharp breath as the exquisite beauty of her features hit
him, full force. Her heart-shaped face was pale but for the spots of
color on her cheeks, her black eyebrows were drawn tightly over
piercing eyes that sparkled with fury, and her lips, the color of
ripe strawberries, were compressed into a tight, thin line. She
looked like a war goddess, or perhaps a Valkyrie, ready to rise up
and strike him down with a vengeance should she be given the chance.
He knew instinctively that the body beneath that gown would be just
as exquisite, and was struck by an overwhelming desire to whip the
offending cloth away so he could see for himself.
    Cordova stood her
ground, holding her head high as she proudly defied the King, but
inside she was confused in a wash of unyielding emotion. Rather than
flying into a rage and ordering her immediate beheading as she’d
rather expected, he simply stared, his eyes roving over her face, his
blue eyes scalding her with a hunger she didn’t understand. Her
body reacted, chills running down her spine, nipples stiffening,
which only confused her more. She couldn’t help but notice that
he was an attractive man—his powerfully built body shown off by
the embroidered doublet and hose he wore over his linen shirt. His
reddish-blond hair curled thickly atop his head, his handsome face
framed with a square jaw dusted with a day’s growth of beard.
His lips were firm, sensual, and curved into… a smile? She
shivered. What sort of hideous punishment could he be thinking of for
him to smile like that?
    “ How dare you
speak to the King that way!” the advisor sputtered after a long
silence in which his beady eyes darted back and forth between the
two. “You should show more respect to the King who so
graciously allows you to live at his court!”
    Cordova sneered at
him, recklessly bold—there was no going back after all; she was
doomed regardless of whether or not she remained silent. “Don’t
patronize me. I doubt the good King even knew I existed before you
brought me to his attention.”
    “ You have an
unusually sharp tongue,” the King remarked before his clearly
affronted advisor could respond. “You do know that with every
traitorous word you speak, I can add to your punishment? That rather
than order a simple beheading, I could have you tortured for days,
weeks, months? That I could have you begging for your life…or
perhaps, your death?”
    Cordova felt the
blood leech from her face at the thought of prolonged torture. Still,
she refused to back down. “I won’t beg you for anything,”
she vowed, nearly spitting out the words.
    His eyes gleamed,
the challenge accepted. “Oh, I think you will,” he said
silkily—oh, did he want her to beg, he thought as