Chapter 43
Forty-Three
A good brownie doesn’t deliberately destroy someone’s belongings.
Then don’t wear something with an excessive amount of frickin’ buttons. - Arienna
My heart aches as I stare at the monster I love.
I can hear Fabia screaming in my brain, telling me how insanely stupid I’m being, and maybe I am dumb and naive and whatever else she wants to call me. But I am also right in this. I know it in my heart.
I love him.
I cannot kill him. I do not want to kill him.
But of course tonight is the night I somehow managed to convince my best friend to hide in his bedroom with a bottle of poison. A friend who is expecting me to lead Richard up there so we can kill him together.
Oh, bugger. I’ve really messed up.
But I’ll fix it. I’ll keep Richard out of his rooms all night. Then I’ll make a poster like I did with the wasps, and that’ll convince her to let me keep him. This time, I won’t let her get rid of my monster.
My thoughts churning, I start drafting up all the points that will surely sway her.
HERE BE KNOWN:
1. King Morningstar is not a cannibal. He did not eat those children during the Feast of Kulther like you think. He merely burned them. He did not roast them. Nor cook them. Nor barbecue them. He just threw them onto a fire and called it done.
2. I am pretty certain he is not into necrophilia as he really likes it when I rub myself against him. He also seems obsessed with tasting my pussy, and as you remember when we had that famine, even necros don’t like nom-ing on dead vagina.
3. Just because he’s a monster doesn’t make him a monster, you know. He is sweet and kind behind all his grumpiness and killing of things.
4. He saved my wasps. Himself. Anyone who loves animals is a good person.
5. He promised to let me peg him in a month’s –
His hand wraps around my waist. I jump with a little gasp, my thoughts still stuck on that last point.
Chuckling, he pulls me into his arms, flush against his chest. “You seem a bit sensitive, my queen,” he murmurs as his hand explores my back.
But despite the promises laden in his touch, it’s his eyes I’m drawn too. Haunted and guarded, they lack the heat from before Nicholas’ arrival.
How can anyone think he’s a monster? How did I, when he clearly has so much tumultuous emotion inside him? Raising a hand, I cup his face. He leans into my touch. Turning his lips, he kisses my palm.
My breath catches as I stare at him, his cloaked pain, his unsaid words. If a picture is worth a thousand, then this silence is worth them all.
“Nicholas,” my king says, focusing only on me, “tell King Dravr I’ve retired for the night.”
Before I can protest, he drags me through a door I didn’t even know existed.
It closes behind us flawlessly, its edges undetectable in the sudden dark.
No thin trails of light mark where the hall is.
No noise. No laughter. No clink of glasses.
The magic of this place even consumes the soft glow of his wings. Leaving only silence and darkness.
And him.
And me.
I shiver, goosebumps rising across my skin, trailing behind the path his fingers are making. Up my arm. Across my shoulders. My collarbone. Spanning my neck.
I can feel his need in every place he touches. His desire to find comfort from his pain. In me. Because he trusts me to be his place of safety.
Grabbing my throat, he hauls me to him. His lips touch my face, moving down and across my cheek, seeking my mouth.
I kiss him back hard, shoving down all the thoughts rushing through me – the panic about Fabia, the guilt about setting him up to die, the realisation that I don’t want what I thought I wanted, the fear of dying…
the hope that I won’t, that he’ll step in and save me.
The darkness consumes all of it, stripping me bare, and leaving me as naught but a woman in love with a man who is hurting.
My hands roam all over his body. His clothes. Frantically, I tug at them, shoving his jacket off his shoulders. I need his skin against mine. For the gap – all gaps between us to be gone. I undo the button on his waistcoat.
And then another button.
And another.
Oh my gods, how many are there?
My hands roam across his chest, trying to find them all as my breaths come out needy and desperate.
I want him inside me now.
I want to see him.
His piercing.
His cock as it slides into me.
But it is pitch black.
Soundless except for our breaths and the pounding of our hearts.
Having nothing but touch to hold on to, I touch.
Grabbing the sides of his waistcoat, I rip them away.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Thank the bloody gods. But when my hands land back on his chest – his supposedly naked chest, I groan.
Another flippin’ shirt blocks my path.
With a dozen flippin’ buttons.
Chuckling against my mouth, he grabs my hands. “Such an impatient little slut, my wife.”
A bolt of electricity shoots through me.
“You’re so fucking wet for me, you can’t wait, can you?”
His words make me flush. A good, delicious flush I feel all the way down to my toes.
Panting against his lips, I moan, “Make me your cum bucket.”
He freezes.
Then lifts his head.
I lean forward to kiss him, to find him in the darkness, but he evades my mouth with ease.
Just as frustration starts to build inside me, it’s shoved to the side by horror. What if my breath stinks? What if he’s no longer kissing me because it smells like ass?
Oh my gods, my breath smells like ass.
Which is ironic because his lips were the ones that were on my ass.
Subtly, I try to exhale strong enough for me to smell my breath, but all I can smell is him.
“Say that again,” he says, humour colouring his words and making me blush for an all together different reason than before.
Oh my gods.
That’s what it is.
I did it wrong.
This is so embarrassing. And now I’ve taken us out of the mood. And now he won’t fuck me, and –
“Arienna,” he pulls my name out, making it sexy, making me shudder in anticipation. Leaning down to my ear, he nips it in between his teeth. His breath fans across my neck; his words rumble against my skin. “Did you just ask me to turn you into my cum bucket?”
My pussy quivers.
My body relaxes.
I most definitely did not say that wrong because those words are flippin’ sexy coming from him. “Yes?”
His laugh shocks me. Stings just a bit.
But then his lips are on me again.
And his hands are undoing the lace of my corset.
Shoving it down.
Pushing up my breasts.
Lowering his head, he burrows his tongue in between them. “Your wish is my command.”
He kisses his way across one breast. Licking around the nipple, he kneads his fingers into my flesh, massaging me, building me up until I am gasping and moaning and waiting for him to put his freaking mouth on my flippin’ sensitive bud.
“Richard,” I moan.
“Yes, my queen?”
“Play with my nipples.”
His chuckle leaves me quaking. “I am playing with them, my queen.”
Exhaling in frustration, I snap, “No, not like that. Like –”
My head falls back.
My back arches.
As his lips close around my nipple, I dig my fingers into his thick curly hair and moan. Dear flippin’ gods. His mouth should be immortalised. There should be a business for this. Making moulds out of mouths and then casting them with a spell so they can move with such heat and grace.
It would bring an end to necrophilia, that’s for sure. The slogan could be: Don’t let their kicking off stop you from getting off.
Oh, no, wait, that sounds more like an advertisement for necrophilia.
I jerk beneath his sucking, nibbling lips. My thoughts scatter. If he’d just stop for a second, I can think of a better slogan.
But when I open my mouth, all that escapes is a moan.
Releasing my breast, he moves his attention to the other one. His hand trails down my stomach. Through the slit in my dress. Arching back as his fingers touch me, I writhe against the wall. Or door. Or whatever it is pressing against my back.
“Who knew my queen was such a naughty little slut?”
His words increase the heat inside of me. My hips buck from his caress.
“Did you like being played with in front of everybody? Looking in their eyes and wondering if they knew you had a toy going off inside you? Did you touch yourself when I wasn’t looking?” He presses a finger against my lips, slips it right between them.
I shudder, the pressure inside me building towards an eruption. “Yes.” My breath hitches. “I liked it.”
“And did you touch yourself?”
I shake my head. Realising he can’t see me in the dark, I say, “No.”
“Good girl. Because it’s mine, isn’t it?”
I nod, then lean my head back against the wall on a gasp. His finger slides up and down the length of my pussy. Gods, I am close. I just need him inside me. Need him to touch me like I’ve wanted to touch myself all evening. “Yes.”
“Say it. Say, ‘My pussy is yours, my king’.”
A beautiful heat races through me. His lips suck on my breast. His finger strokes. Clutching at his hair, I say, “My pussy… is yours…” Moaning, I squirm against the door as his finger rams inside me.
“My king,” he growls.
Whimpering, I buck my hips. “My king.”
He shoves another finger inside. Lowering his other hand, he rubs my clit. “Good girl,” he says, his mouth full of my breast.
Riding his hand, I tug on his hair, pulling him up, pulling his lips to mine.
He kisses me with the same pacing as his fingers.
Long slow licks match his thrusts. My body comes alive in the darkness, growing too sensitive under his touch.
I grab his hands to stop them. I squeeze my pussy around his fingers, trying to fight the waves of pleasure begging to be released.
“Stop,” I pant. “I want you inside me when I come.”
His fingers still.
Drawing them out, with my hand still clutched around his wrist, he lifts his fingertips to my breast. A wet slickness spreads across my skin. Shivering, I wait for what I know is going to come next.
Bending his head, he licks my chest clean. “Guide me in then,” he says as his tongue laps at me, tasting me on my chest because he knows if he licked my pussy, I would have come.
Reaching for his trousers, I yank on the crisscrossing belts. I’m too close. His kisses are slow and leisurely, but I’m already on the edge. My hands tremble. My pussy clenches.
The flippin’ belts aren’t coming undone.
My cry of frustration is covered up by his rumble of laughter. His hands pushing mine out of the way, he undoes his buckles. A soft cry of relief escapes me. He licks his way up my breasts to my neck. Biting my ear, he says, “Pick a number higher than three.”
“Sixteen,” I gasp, not really paying attention to his words anymore. I just want his cock out of his pants. Want it deep inside of me.
Shoving down his trousers and boxers, I reach for him. A shudder of pleasure sweeps through me as I grip his hard, thick cock in my hand.
I pump up and down his length. Once, twice as he grabs my waist and lifts me up the wall. I wrap my legs around his hips. Guide his cock to my pussy’s entrance. Moaning, I rub my finger across his piercing, causing him to hiss. Then he finally pushes inside of me.
His groans match mine.
His thrusts.
His pulse.
His need to come.
With my hand over his chest, feeling the quick beating of his heart, I ride him hard. His piercing hits me in the most pleasurable of spots. Lightning seems to flash behind my eyes, charging the air. Charging me.
My breaths come out harder.
My thighs quiver.
My stomach clenches.
My every nerve ending flooded with heat, I beg, “Harder. Please.”
And fuck me, he actually does it.
Not faster.
Not more frantic.
But harder.
With each strong thrust, he fills me.
With each pull back, he leaves me empty.
Only to slam in with a strength that leaves me shaken.
Bruised.
On the beautiful flippin’ edge of ecstasy.
Again.
And again.
And a-fucking-gain.
Grabbing the back of his neck, I arch to meet his thrusts. His fingers dig into my waist. His cock pounds into me, the metal of his piercing a heavy weight inside me.
Reaching between us, I rub my clit.
Close my eyes and scream.
As I clench around him, gasping, moaning and begging, he slows his thrusts. His mouth covers mine, swallowing each and every noise I make. His hands cup my face as he kisses me deeply.
Pulling out most of the way, leaving in only the tip, he murmurs, “That’s one.”
With a slow, hard thrust he fills me again.
In…
My pulse skips around in my chest.
…and out.
My pussy clenches around him.
In…
Digging my fingers in his hair, I arch against him as I push his mouth down to my breasts.
…and out.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he builds me back up again.
And it doesn’t matter this time when I beg him to go faster. When I cry for him to rail me harder.
He takes it slow.
In…
…and out…
…and in again…