CHAPTER FIVE #3
She was down there in the dark, thinking she’d survived the worst of it. She had no idea what was in store for her. The mental punishment. No doubt, he’d disrespect her body just as completely as he would her mind.
Stop.
I set the carafe down too hard, but it didn’t break.
I didn’t know her, not truly. What was more, I owed her nothing. She was a criminal who’d stumbled into Camelot with blood on her hands and lies in her mouth, and she’d gotten exactly what that earned her. Arthur’s mercy, such as it was, was more than she had any right to expect.
Had I been telling her the truth when I told her, were I in his place, I would have already executed her? I didn’t know. I hoped that would have been true, were I in Arthur’s shoes. But I didn’t know if I would have been… strong enough to see it done.
My hands were shaking again.
I went to the door and wrenched it open.
One of the servants was lingering in the corridor, as he so often was at all hours of the day and night.
A boy of perhaps twelve, he was gap-toothed and perpetually underfoot, one of those children who attaches himself to the idea of knights the way ivy attaches to stone.
He was holding that ridiculous wooden stick he was never without, drawing it slow and ceremoniously through the air as though the shadows were enemies requiring defeat.
His lips were moving as he narrated his own heroism to himself, quiet enough that he probably thought no one could hear him.
I told him, Toby I believed was his name, to send up whichever blond servant girl he could find.
I didn’t have to wait long. And just as I’d requested, she was fair-haired, though her hair was of a darker shade than I would have preferred.
She walked into my bedchamber, smoothing her skirt with her palms, and gave me the practiced smile they all gave, the one that meant nothing.
I closed the door behind her, then pointed at the bed, and she went to it without being asked twice.
I told her to put her face down and her ass up.
I didn’t want to look at a face which wasn’t...
hers. The serving girl hesitated for just a moment, half a heartbeat, maybe less, then she did as I asked, and she purred as she did it.
I knew what this meant to her: it was an honor to be called to the First Knight’s room.
An honor to be noticed by me, and an even bigger honor to be rutted by me.
I didn’t care. All I did care about was the fact that the wine was doing a good job of muting anything I might otherwise have felt. Instead, I felt numb. It was a feeling I wished I could hold onto.
I was rough when I thrust up her skirts and even rougher when I ran my finger down the slit of her cunt. I didn’t mean to be, but then I didn’t care that I was. She made a small groan when I touched her, and it was a sound that Guin...
“No, it’s fucking Guinevere,” I growled to myself.
“Sir?”
“Don’t make a sound,” I groaned, feeling the weight of the wine in my head.
“Apologies, my—”
“—I want you to beg for my forgiveness,” I interrupted her as I eyed that slit between her thighs, which was exactly what I needed it to be: the entry to a woman where I could, no doubt, enjoy myself for a few minutes at least.
Yet, it wasn’t her opening. And the light white hair that dusted Guinevere’s cunt was missing from this one. This one was somehow larger, and the hair was more wiry and darker. Almost light brown.
It didn’t fucking matter. This was Guinevere beneath me. No, this was Guin. This was the woman I’d loved. The woman who’d taken everything from me. And I was going to fuck her as hard as I could to make her pay for what she’d done.
“Fucking apologize,” I growled.
“Please,” she said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
But her voice didn’t sound right. And the hair spread across the pillow was the wrong shade of fair, and the hands gripping the sheets were too big, and nothing like—
“Tell me you love me.”
Silence.
“Tell me you fucking love me.”
“I... love you.” But her voice was confused, too careful, and... it was nothing, just sounds in the dark from a girl doing her job.
The wrong girl.
Fuck her anyway. Close your eyes and you won’t know the difference.
But when I looked down at her cunt and I held my cock, ready to penetrate that hole that wasn’t Guinevere’s, my cock was limp.
I stroked my hand over the tip, hoping to feel the beads of moisture I usually did.
But there was nothing. Just my unspent cock in my hand and a woman bent over my bed who wasn’t the woman I wanted.
I rolled away from her.
Nothing. There was nothing there. There had been nothing there from the start, and I’d fucking known it, but I’d gone through the whole ugly performance anyway. I was a fucking fool.
“Leave,” I said.
“But you haven’t...”
Then she made the mistake of looking at me, and something in my expression must have frightened her because she gathered herself quickly, and a moment later she was at the door. She didn’t look at me on her way out, and I was grateful for that.
When the door clicked shut, I stayed where I was, with my elbows on my knees. The room smelled like wine, extinguished candles, and the particular bleak staleness of failure.
My hands had finally stopped shaking.
But I didn’t find that reassuring.