Chapter Twenty-Four
“You do have need of my Magic,” spake the Faery Queen.
She drew from her breast a glittering amethyst pendant.
“The dragon must offer his help willingly; to that end I have no power. But take you thou this amulet, and keep it on your person. You will then have everything you need to vanquish evil and realize your heart’s desires!
Just remember: trust in thine own Self, and let the magic follow . . .”
—The Dragon and the Blue Star by Analise Crewe
Ana stared up at the pink silk canopy above her bed, attempting to catch her breath. He’d done it again. Made her come apart into a million pieces, made her scream his name and clutch the bedsheets while she cried out in ecstasy.
He held such power over her. She wasn’t making much progress on her mission to win this tug-of-war between them. He kept himself separate from her, played by his own rules.
During the day he was occupied with restoring order to the estate in the absence of his estate manager. At night he came to her bed. And then he left her. Replete with pleasure, but their marriage unconsummated. His heart still a locked room mystery.
She could feel him readying to leave even now, the tense of his muscles, the air growing colder.
“Dex.” She rolled onto her side and nestled into him.
“You touch me and I feel as though you’re trying to communicate something that you won’t allow your lips to say.
You won’t allow yourself to open to me and tell me what you want.
You will only control, and I like that. I like to surrender, I also want to know you, not only your body, but you. What makes you, you?”
“Very well.” He sat up. “Let’s talk. You introduce a subject and I shall converse upon it for an acceptable length of time. And then we shall resume our bedsport.”
“That’s not how this works. You make the rules for our meeting of bodies.
I shall make the rules for our conversations.
And they are very, very simple. No lies.
No half-truths. Full honesty in all things.
And . . . a striving for honesty, for something deeper than a perfunctory conversation about the weather, or horses, or houses or household staff.
I want you to talk to me about what’s in your mind. What you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking you are lovely by firelight.
That I want to be the flame flickering and casting shadows across you.
I want to lick you with fire, and make you burn.
I’m thinking that this desire I feel for you is rare and something to be treasured.
I’m thinking that I’m lucky. To be in this bed with you. To be allowed to touch you.”
“You seduce me with words. And you think I’ll forget about our bargain.”
“Our bargain was open to interpretation.”
“Then I won’t allow myself to surrender to seduction. A true feeling, one true feeling or one thought about life, and your place in it, for one kiss.”
“You don’t want to know my true thoughts. War left me with a darkness, a wound that will never heal, and you’re always so cheerful. Learning my thoughts might infect you, like a wound not properly washed. You might become morose by association.”
“We’ll have to take that chance. Don’t you understand? Hearing about the war brings me closer to my father, makes me understand what he experienced and perhaps potentially will help me find him.”
“I can’t talk about it. I dream about it often enough. Horrible nightmares. Sometimes I lash out in my sleep, punch the pillows or the headboard.”
She could tell it took a great effort for him to say the words. “Is that why you don’t want to stay the night with me?”
He nodded.
She reached for his face, lightly touching his scars.
He flinched. Pulled away.
Her hand on his scars. Too much.
“Did I say you could touch me?” he asked in a low, warning voice.
She snatched her hand away. “I was only trying to—”
“Comfort me? I don’t require comfort. I require you to follow my rules. You don’t touch me, remember.” He caught her hands behind her back. “I’ll have to discipline you now.”
He pulled her toward him, arranging her over his knees with her head over the side of the bed, her hair tumbling down nearly to the floor. She squirmed against him, her soft belly sliding over his erection.
“I’ll release you if you don’t like it.” He tested the smooth skin of her bottom with his palm, gliding over her curves, before bringing his palm down in exactly the right way to sting but not hurt, to draw the blood to her lower regions.
She squirmed harder but stayed silent. He spanked her again, and again.
“Shall I stop?” he asked.
She shook her head no.
He smiled. He reached around to lightly squeeze her nipples with one hand as he spanked her again.
“Have you learned your lesson?” he asked on a low growl.
“No,” she whispered, her thighs clenching and unclenching. “Spank me again.”
The firm smack and bounce of his palm against her flesh brought all the blood rushing there, and made her squirm, clenching her thighs together.
“Open your thighs,” he ordered.
She complied, lost to everything but the promise of pleasure. He rewarded her by sliding two fingers inside her, gently working them in and out at a pace and depth that soon had her moaning.
“Do you like that?” he asked.
“Yes. Keep going. A little deeper.”
“You’re such a good, brave girl, asking for what you want. What you need.” His fingers sank deeper and her thighs moved to meet his thrusts. “Soon I’ll be inside you with more than my fingers.”
“When?” she asked shakily.
“Soon. When you’re ready.”
She shuddered her release, thinking about taking him deep inside her, wrapping her legs around his hips.
It had taken every ounce of his tattered control to leave Ana’s bed tonight. They were separated by only a door. So easy to open it, go back to her bed, be with her completely. Make her his.
Why was he torturing himself? He couldn’t stop the thoughts spilling out like water overflowing a dam.
He couldn’t stop wanting her, longing for her.
He woke up hard from dreams about her. He went to sleep with the phantom indention of her body next to his, fiercely wrapped in his arms. He woke hugging a pillow, not her. Not warm, sleepy her.
His life had been devoid of laughter, lightness, happiness, sunshine for so long and, like a man dying of thirst, she was his imaginary oasis, a cool wellspring of thirst-quenching happiness.
She was everything he’d denied himself for so long.
The delicate fragile bones beneath her skin, the smallness of her next to his enormous frame.
This fragility coupled with the outsize enormous fierceness of her concentration when she orgasmed.
She was going to get this right. She attacked bedsport with the same singularity of focus, the same drive for perfection, that she attacked a blank page with a quill dipped in ink.
She would write her pleasure in bold prose, make it sing, make it memorable.
And he loved that about her. It was a gift.
A lover who wasn’t worried about posing, and making sure that she was always attractive, a woman who let herself feel in a raw, present way, who carried her heart on her negligee, who met him more than halfway and was eager and wholly present.
It drove him toward a dangerous tenderness, a desire to unburden his heart to her, gift her his cold, charred heart and ask her to breathe life into it. An insane notion that she could protect him from himself, that she was a haven, a place to lay his head, to lay down his burden.
And it was thoughts like those that stopped him from consummating the marriage.
He told himself that he was waiting for her to be ready .
. . but really he was the one who needed more time.
It had something to do with the idea that physical consummation with this extraordinary woman might force him to confront his buried emotions, that he might lose the iron control that had sustained him for so long.
What had always been an act of measured control for him—giving pleasure freely but never giving his heart.
But it was Ana. And this was different. Her smile, her incessant questions, the joy with which she attacked life, it disarmed him.
Waiting gave her more power over him. He would consummate this marriage tomorrow.
He’d make sure she was so thoroughly pleasured that she begged him to take her.
Picturing her surrender filled his mind with desire and stiffened his cock.
He’d give her instructions and feel the thrill of having her obey.
Rough, gruff instructions. The dark needy things he would do to her.
Stroking himself, body tensed to the point of pain, moaning into his pillow, close now . . .
“Dex?”
Fuck. He threw the coverlet hastily over his throbbing erection.
“Is this what you do when you leave my room? You pleasure yourself with your own hand.”
“Yes,” he ground out. “This is what I do.”
Her gaze traveled from his lips down his torso to where his cock stood upright, tenting the coverlet. “Could I give you the same pleasure?”
“Go to bed, Ana,” he growled.
“No. I won’t. I’m cold and I want you to warm me.” She slid the covers back and crawled in beside him. It was all he could do to keep from groaning aloud when she curled her body up against his, laying her head on his shoulder and her arm across his chest.
“Now then, as you were, soldier.”
“What?” He bit back a laugh. The cheeky baggage.
“As you were. Keep doing it. I want to watch.” She lifted the covers and stuck her head inside.
No way he could refuse that request. He was too far gone, and her warm, womanly curves pressed against him were only making matters worse.
She wasn’t looking at his face, intent instead on his hand and his cock.
He resumed stroking himself, driven nearly mad by the knowledge that she was watching.
Then . . . dear God—then her hand slid down his chest, over his naval, and joined his, tentatively circling his cock with her small fingers. “May I?”
He grunted.
“Is that a yes?” When he didn’t answer, she lifted her head a little, searching his face in the darkness. “I know you said that I can’t touch you . . . but this isn’t the same situation, is it? You were already touching yourself, I’ll just add another set of hands . . .”
He grunted again, unable to find the words to tell her to go away.
“Say it, Dex.”
He couldn’t refuse. He was too far gone now. He wanted her too much. In the darkness, her soft hand questing, sliding gently over him.
He lay back with a moan. “Please. Touch me.”
She fit her hand around him, her fingers barely clasping together. “Like this?” She moved tentatively up and down. Not hard enough. Not fast enough. But it was enough, more than enough. To feel her touch, her hair silk and feathers, brushing his chest.
Her eyes glowing in the dark as she concentrated on her task.
“Perhaps . . . two hands,” he said through gritted teeth.
She understood, wrapping both her hands around his cock, her grip tighter now. But still so inexpert. The need was growing, he must find release.
“I’m not doing it right . . . show me.”
It was sweet torture, her fingers on him, the pressure so light and soft . . . he had to finish this. He wrapped his hand around hers, showing her the way of it . . . the firmness of the pressure.
Then he lifted his hand and prayed she’d continue. She did. She was nothing if not a quick study. She kissed his neck as she worked her hand up and down. He’d spill soon. He took her other hand and guided it to his ballocks, showed her what he liked.
“I’m nearly there,” he said jerkily, “don’t stop.”
She doubled her efforts and the muscles of his abdomen bunched and tensed until finally he found a shattering release. He flopped back on the bed, panting, riding the last waves of surging sensation. “Ana. That was incredible.”
She handed him a handkerchief after wiping her own hands.
“Good duke,” she said.
He smiled into the darkness. He liked it when she took control, he thought sleepily. Then jolted awake. What were these errant thoughts?
Dangerous. That’s what they were. “Go back to your bed now, Ana.”
“You said you wouldn’t sleep in my bed, but you didn’t tell me not to sleep in yours,” Ana said, trying to make light of his command for her to leave.
“It’s the same thing. I told you why I made that rule. It’s for your protection, so that if I have a night terror, I won’t accidentally harm you.”
“I think it’s for your protection. You’re too comfortable in your silence, in your solitude. You refuse to change or compromise even the slightest bit.”
She’d come to his room to tell him that she’d solved the mystery of the list of names, that she knew he was a good person at heart, but when he said things like that, when he pushed her away, it hurt.
“Good night, Ana.”
Back in her room she lay awake, reliving the evening in her mind.
There was a lingering afterprint from his touch, like a page accidentally printed twice, a ghost script underneath the real words.
It didn’t matter what she said during the day, she was really living for the night, when he was all hers.
His focus completely on her pleasure. On bringing her to ever steeper heights.
Then he became distant again. She touched him but he didn’t reciprocate. He was preoccupied. But tonight she’d commanded him. She’d made him groan and call out her name.
Perhaps this was the key to his heart. Remove the barriers between their bodies, and she might be able to reach his heart.