Chapter 27 #2
She chuckles. “You said I could ravish you.” Isabeau caresses my cheek. “After I saw you fight that first time in the park, I decided I would dance with each noblewoman until I found you. I thought I finally found someone to replace you in my heart . . . only to find you again.”
“Isa.”
“Imagine my surprise. My mystery woman was still you, the same woman I’ve craved for a decade.” Isabeau kisses the edge of my mouth. “You are the only one. No matter how many women I kissed, they were not the one I needed. They weren’t you.”
For a moment I say nothing. Then, I admit, “I hated them. I hated you sometimes.”
“I am sorry I didn’t fight for us. I never felt like I was enough for you, and when your father said you told him to send me away . . .”
“I wept that you never offered for me.”
“But I did. I am. I always will be here, a supplicant hoping for your love.” Isabeau drops to her haunches and begins to unwrap the leather that curls around my legs. She pauses to press kisses to my skin. When she reaches the top, she brushes her knuckles over the juncture of my thighs.
“You have it. My love. My body. My heart.”
“Do I?” Isabeau straightens. “I want you to hold on to these straps, love. If you can’t obey, I cannot please you.” She directs my hands over my head. “Look how your breasts stand up to greet me.”
“Isabeau . . .”
“I want you to know that you belong to me, as much as I belong to you,” Isabeau says, voice louder now. She leans down and drags her teeth over my nipples.
I gasp.
Isabeau nips the curve of my breast, my throat, the other breast. Each scrape of teeth makes me squirm and arch. “Did Girard make you sound like that, Gabrielle? He spoke to you so familiarly. It was him, was it not? You admitted to a lover . . .”
“An unsatisfactory one,” I remind her.
“Did he make you sound desperate?”
“No.”
“Good.” Isabeau looks proud. “Do you like my teeth on you?”
“Yes. Do you like that, too?”
“Later, if you want, you can find out.” Isabeau holds my gaze as she lowers her hand to slip under my skirt. My eyes roll back as Isabeau slides her fingertips over the now wet flesh between my legs.
“You will not evade me again. Tell me, love. Do you like the feel of my hand here? Did you want this even when you left me after refusing my vow?”
“Perhaps,” I confess in a trembling voice.
“I’ve only just begun to show you how much you mean to me.
It will take a lifetime to fully explain, love.
A woman requires time, attention, patience,” Isabeau explains, before leaning in to tease first one and then the other nipple with her teeth and tongue again.
At the same time, she presses her soaking fingers against the spot that made me whimper when we were together in the city.
Slowly at first and then faster, she circles until I bite my lip to hold in noises.
Then Isabeau stops.
I whimper, leaning toward her.
Isabeau brushes a tender kiss over my mouth, and I release my grip on the straps overhead. As soon as I lower my arms, she stops kissing me.
“These hands are to stay where I put them.” She takes my wrists in her hands and raises my arms.
Once I grip the leather armor again, Isabeau’s hands trail over my arms, my breasts, my sides, and she orders, “Tell me that you will marry me, love. Admit you are mine.”
“You are rushing me.”
“I’ve waited a decade, thinking you rejected me,” Isabeau reminds me. “Yet you were always mine, weren’t you?”
“I am no one’s possession.” A part of me wants to belong to Isabeau. A part of me has always wanted that, from our first meeting to our dance at the ball, to the moment I held her letter to the Hunter in hand.
“Mine,” she repeats.
“I am only possessed by someone I can possess in return,” I whisper in a voice that’s barely there. I want this. I want forever. I am afraid, though, and she knows it.
“There has never been a time I was not yours,” Isabeau swears.
Then after a wicked smirk, the Duke of Maudite leans in and sniffs my body, like a hunting dog savoring a scent.
In the next moment, her mouth is pressed to that already sensitive place, and her tongue, chin, and whole mouth seem intent on making me feel like I am racing toward a cliff inside my own body, as if a pressure is building, and then . . . stops.
Isabeau stops.
She waits until my breathing calms, and then she leans in again.
Over and over, she urges me toward the joy that follows that precipice, and each time, she stops.
I am trembling, whimpering, and she is relentless.
“Promise me, love.” Isabeau’s tongue lashes out against me. “That’s all you need to do to keep me from stopping the next time. Admit you want to be my wife as much as I want to be yours.”
“Please, Maudite. Please don’t stop,” I gasp. “Not this time.”
Isabeau looks up at me questioningly. Her fingers are curled inside me, and her face is glistening with wetness.
“Damn you. Please. Please don’t stop, Isabeau. I will agree to court you.” I know that a courtship with the duke is the same as a promise of marriage, but I cannot start planning a future until I know if I can survive the hunt for the Beast of Brimmond.
The already fast pace of Isabeau’s tongue and hand speed to a frenetic one, and when I reach that precipice this time, the world explodes inside me. Every muscle in my legs gives out, and if not for the straps that I clutch like a lifeline, I would surely crush Isabeau under my falling body.
“Let go of the straps, love. I have you.” Isabeau wraps her arms around me.
I do so, unsure if I can hold on longer anyhow. I feel boneless. As I curl into Isabeau’s arms, I am surprised to hear a deep noise, like a particularly content cat.
“Are you purring?”
“It happens occasionally,” Isabeau says gruffly.
“Do you like when people—”
“Women. Only women,” Isabeau corrects. “Now, though, only you.”
“When women do that to you?” I stretch, feeling like I need to either nap or touch Isabeau. “Could I do that to—”
“Others? No.” Isabeau’s words end with a deep growl.
“To you, Isa. I want to make you feel this way, no one else, Your Grace. Only you, Isabeau.”
The Duke of Maudite smiles. “I like my name on your lips.”
“I like your lips on my body.”
Isabeau stares at me in seeming shock for a moment, and then she barks a laugh. “I will ask the countess for your hand, Gabrielle Fleuriste. I will ask the queen. I will—”
“Ask me, perhaps?”
“Fine. I’ll ask you again and again, too. And if you try to say no, I will seduce you over and over until you cannot refuse me.” Isabeau stares at me with a still hungry gaze.
I roll my eyes. “Oh no. How awful for me!”
Isabeau’s eyes darken with a familiar glint. “I will seduce you either way. Every way. You will never want to leave me.”
“I never have wanted to leave you. I was trying to protect you from worry, from lacking an heir, from being a widow too young,” I try to explain. “I was afraid you wouldn’t want me if you knew my future.”
“Protect my heart, love, by letting me love you. That’s all I need.” Isabeau stares at me with the intensity that makes others think she is dangerous.
“Love me, then. I am yours.”
“I do love you,” Isabeau says.
“I know.” I feel my cheeks burn. “You’ve said as much to me, but the Hunter has better hearing than regular people. I heard you tell my mother. You would not lie to her.”
I stand and scoop up a blanket from the stack nearest Clatterbuck. We could go into the house, but I want to stay right where we are, exist in this small bubble. The monsters are asleep, and I am dressed enough for anyone who would come into the stable.
I feel Isabeau’s gaze locked on me as I spread a blanket over a few broken bales of hay. I pat it.
“I am not tired,” Isabeau objects. “I will stand guard and—”
“My home is safe, Isabeau. This is the Hunter’s home, and it has been for generations.” I stretch out. “Come stay with me.”
Isabeau stands for a moment before awkwardly reclining.
After a moment I ease closer and rest my head on her chest.
“I have not done this.” Isabeau’s voice is barely more than a whisper. “Held someone to sleep after . . .”
“I will expect more of this,” I say sleepily. “I like it.”
“I like it, too,” Isabeau whispers.
“Then we will do this after I touch you, too,” I announce, and then I close my eyes in her arms as I rest. The monster is still out there. Isabeau is still cursed—or being drugged or sick somehow. I don’t know, but I will.
Despite that, everything seems easier now that I have told her my secret. Nothing can tear me away from her. Not now. Not this time.