Gild (The Plated Prisoner, #1)(3)

My gaze travels further down, over a tapered waist and the outline of his softening length that I can still see beneath the silky fabric.

“Getting an eyeful, Auren?”

At the sound of my name, I jerk my attention away from his crotch and up to his smirking face. My cheeks go warm, though I play off my embarrassment. “Well, it is a nice view,” I tell him with a lift of my shoulder and a wry curve of my lips.

He chuckles and then begins strutting over to the bars of my cage at the back of the atrium. I love when he smiles. It gives me the crawling caterpillars in my stomach—not butterflies. I’m jealous of those free-flying bitches.

His eyes run over me from my bare feet all the way to my chest. I’m careful not to move from where I’m seated, even though I want to fidget under his scrutiny, my head tilted up in expectation. I’ve learned to stay still because that’s what he likes.

His gaze runs over my body in a slow stroke. “Mmm. You look good enough to eat tonight.”

I get to my feet fluidly until the fabric of my dress cascades down to skim over the tops of my toes, and then walk over to the bars in front of him. One hand curls around one of the delicate bars that separates us. “You could let me out of this cage and have a taste.” I’m careful to keep my tone playful and my expression sultry, though my gut burns with want.

Let me out. Touch me. Want me.

My king is a complicated man. I know he cares for me, but lately, I’ve just been wanting...more. I know that’s my fault. I shouldn’t want more. I should be happy with what I have, but I can’t help it.

I wish Midas would look at me the way I look at him. I wish his chest would beat with yearning as mine does. But even if he could never give me that, I wish he’d simply spend more time with me.

I know that’s an impractical thing to want. He’s a king. Constantly being pulled in a thousand directions. He has duties that I can’t even fathom. The fact that I get any attention at all should be something I celebrate.

Which is why I bury the want, a shovelful of snow covering the craving with numbing weight to hide in my depths. I distract myself. I flounder. I fill up my hours with whatever I can. But no matter how many people I see every day, I still wake up lonely and go to sleep the same way.

It’s not Midas’s fault, and it’s pointless to pout about it. That would get me nowhere—and I live in a cage, so going nowhere is my expertise.

Midas’s smirk widens into a grin at my cheeky words. He’s playful tonight, a mood I don’t often get to see, but love when I do. It reminds me of how we were when we first became friends. When I was just a lost girl and he swept in to show me a different life, the way he smiled at me and reminded me how to curve my own lips.

Midas takes another sweeping look over my figure, my skin warming in flattery at his pleased attention. I’m shaped like an hourglass, with a generous chest, hips, and butt, yet that’s not what people notice when they first look at me. I’m not even sure he notices it either.

When people look at me, it’s not to appreciate the curve of my shape or to decipher the thoughts in my eyes. No, they’re only preoccupied with one thing, and that’s the luster of my skin.

Because it’s gold.

Not golden. Not tan. Not painted or dipped or dyed. My skin is real, shimmering, satiny, gilded gold.

I look just like everything else in this palace. Even my hair and irises glimmer with a metallic sheen. I’m a walking gold statue, everywhere except for my gleaming white teeth, the whites of my eyes, and cheeky pink tongue.

I’m an oddity, a commodity, a rumor. I’m the king’s favored. His prized saddle. The one he gold-touched and keeps in a cage at the top of his castle, my body bearing the mark of his ownership and favoritism.

The gilded pet.

I’m the darling of King Midas, ruler of Highbell and the Sixth Kingdom of Orea. People flock to see me just as much as they come to look upon his gleaming castle worth more than all the riches in the entire realm.

I’m the gold-plated prisoner.

But what a pretty prison it is.





Chapter Two





My tiredness is forgotten with Midas standing in front of me.

All of my focus is on him, my every nerve aware of his attention. As Midas continues to watch me, I take the opportunity to look over the handsome planes of his smooth face, the determined edge of his eyes.

The longer I look at him, the more I forgive him for bringing me up here tonight. For making me be a bystander of the pleasure I took no part in as he spread the thighs of his saddles.

Midas raises a hand and slips his finger past my bars. “You’re so precious to me, Auren,” he murmurs, voice low, tone tender.

I freeze, my breath contorting in my chest like a stiff, sharp bevel that scrapes my nerves into awareness. He carefully draws closer until a finger trails down my cheek. My skin tingles at the contact, but I continue to hold perfectly still, too nervous to even flutter my eyelids closed in case that tiny movement would make him stop touching me.

Please don’t stop touching me.

I desperately want to lean forward and nuzzle against him, to reach through the bars and touch him back, but I know I shouldn’t. So I stay still, though I can’t keep the eager glint from shining in my gold eyes.

“Did you enjoy watching tonight?” he asks, his fingers carefully trailing down to skim the edge of my plush bottom lip. My mouth parts, breath demanding as it wraps around the pad of his thumb, heat drawing in heat.