Chapter 23
Lorelei had the unnerving feeling that she might have made a fatal mistake.
As she lay, limp and warm and far too comfortably plastered over Gerard’s big body, with gorgeous waves of pleasure still rippling beneath her skin, she could almost hear Ailana’s skeptical voice and see those elegant dark eyebrows rise in older-sisterly disapproval.
“Is that really how you plan to protect your heart?”
The icy Queen of Nornne had warned her countless times before that Lorelei opened herself to pain with every new lover she recklessly allowed into her bed—but ever since the last betrayal, none had even come close to piercing her diamond-hard emotional shields.
In the past hour, Gerard de Moireul had shattered them completely.
He shifted under her now, nuzzling her disordered hair with an open affection that made her traitorous body melt even more into him. “Do you think it might be safe to release me now?” His voice was rueful, his breath warm against her skin.
“Ha!” Lorelei snorted. “I haven’t lost all of my common sense yet, so, no.
You are never harmless.” Even so, she let the vines slip away from his magnificently splayed arms and legs, making sure to let the blossoms slide like kisses against his skin …
and she couldn’t bring herself to move even when he closed his arms around her in a dangerously tender embrace.
“Liar,” he whispered against her hair. “I’m the only man you do trust. Remember? You already admitted that to me.”
She blinked … and then remembered: oh, yes, he had asked her, the night before, why she hadn’t partnered in the tournament with anyone before him. Somehow, she’d been fool enough to let it slip that, of all the men she’d ever met, she’d trusted only him to fight by her side.
Clearly, that had been yet another mistake on her part … but wait! Lorelei pushed herself up, bracing her hands on his strong shoulders, to look down at him triumphantly. “There is another man I trust not to knife me in the back nowadays—Saskia’s consort, Felix.”
Gerard’s eyebrows rose with interest, but his arms remained relaxed and warm around her. “The Estarian Archduke?”
“Oh, I’ve forgiven him for that part.” She waved away Felix’s title with easy dismissal. “He’ll be the official Kitvarian Prince Consort soon enough. At any rate, I don’t doubt his loyalty to Saskia and the Queens of Villainy anymore.”
“‘Anymore’ … ah, yes.” Gerard’s eyes narrowed. “You did mention, back at our armies’ meeting on the Kitvarian border, that you had something to make up to him. What did you do that was so dreadful even you regretted it?”
“I…” Lorelei winced, her gaze sliding away from his as she plucked uncomfortably at the glitter-covered blue wool of his jacket. “Well, I may just possibly have kidnapped him. Briefly. Almost by accident. Really, it was all just a terrible misunderstanding.”
“I see.” Gerard regarded her for a long, silent moment before shaking his head with grave disappointment. “So, I’m not your first, after all.”
“Wha—? It wasn’t like that, and you know it!
” Letting out a huff of startled laughter, Lorelei crossed her arms on his broad chest and rested her chin on her clasped hands.
She was not gazing adoringly at him, absolutely not.
Still, it was a revelation to see the crinkle of amusement around his eyes and the tiny curve of his stern lips.
“You really do have a sense of humor, don’t you? ”
“I find it’s best to develop one after being brutally kidnapped,” he told her in a philosophical tone. “It helps to bear the trauma.”
“Ha.” Narrowing her eyes, she freed one hand and ran a fingertip experimentally down his side, slipping it beneath the untucked shirt at his waist to venture even farther. “Has it been too, too utterly traumatic, darling?”
His throat flexed convulsively above his stiff uniform collar and cravat as he swallowed. “Utterly. Entirely. Please do feel free to continue everything you’re doing, though. I have been trained to withstand torture.”
“You beast! Just for that, I will stop.” But she was laughing as she raised her hand once more, and her palm somehow ended up cupped around one big shoulder, rubbing affectionate circles with her thumb there instead.
She would get up in a moment. Obviously. Staying here for too long, undeniably cuddling, would give him entirely the wrong idea. But it was hard to summon up any motivation to leave when she felt so very relaxed and at ease … and, clearly, so did he.
Who could have imagined Gerard de Moireul having a secret well of playfulness hidden behind that famously stoic demeanor?
Was this what he might have been like all along if he’d only had a different kind of upbringing?
If he’d acted like this when they’d first met …
oh, it would have been impossible to resist him for so long!
She would have been forced to kidnap him years ago.
But the idea of any other woman discovering what this man was really like in bed …
“Is there a reason why you suddenly look ready to commit murder?” he inquired with unruffled interest.
“I’m just … considering the future.” From now on, she would have to order her ladies-in-waiting never, ever to pass on any newspaper articles or gossip about the Empire’s Golden Beacon.
Lorelei had never approved of jealousy …
but she had to confess, in the privacy of her own twisted heart, that she wouldn’t trust herself not to set a thornbush growing directly from the heart of the next woman lucky and clever enough to maneuver herself into Gerard’s arms.
Unlike him, she truly was a villain.
It took her a moment to realize that she’d stopped rubbing circles against Gerard’s shoulder and was digging her nails into it instead. She jerked her hand back—and found Gerard watching her with far too much comprehension.
“Panicking again, my darling?”
How dare he take her meaningless endearment and turn it into something entirely different? When he called her his darling in that deep, rumbling voice …
No. Suddenly reinvigorated, Lorelei pushed herself upwards, and he—of course—immediately let her go.
She did not regret the loss of that warm hold one bit as she jumped to her feet and adjusted her gown back into a semblance of discretion.
She didn’t want to be persuaded into staying, deceptively safe and dangerously happy, in the comfort of his arms. It was excellent that he wasn’t wasting his breath trying to change her mind about that.
So she gifted him with her most dazzling smile as she tossed back her hair over one shoulder.
“Well! That was certainly a very pleasant diversion”—Sylvana knew, if it had been any more pleasant, she wouldn’t be able to walk now—“but we do have a final day of trials left tomorrow, so we had better both get some sleep.”
“Very sensible.” He didn’t move from his comfortably prone position, but there was a subtle tinge of amusement in his tone that made her instincts tingle in warning.
Lowering her eyelashes, she regarded him suspiciously. “Then I’ll see you again in the morning.”
“As you say.” Rising with the fluid ease of a man who did calisthenics every single morning by choice, he removed his uniform jacket.
Lorelei truly didn’t mean to lick her lips at the sight.
It was just … remarkably pleasurable to watch those objectively impressive muscles flex through his white cotton shirt.
When he pulled that shirt over his head to reveal his bare, hair-dusted shoulders and strong arms—and oh, the dangerous temptation of his broad, golden-furred chest, calling out for her hands to carefully shape every ridge and tangle her fingers in that short, curling hair!
—she had to bite down hard on her lower lip to hold back a whimper of pure hunger.
Damn it. She was supposed to be done with him now!
Digging her nails into her palms to stop herself from reaching out for what she could not keep, Lorelei spun around and stalked onto her official bed without allowing herself to look back.
Behind her, as she descended with perfectly queenly grace onto her own, individual resting place, she heard the unmistakable sounds of his thick woolen trousers and belt slipping to the ground.
Lorelei dropped the last half a foot onto her bed of leaves with an embarrassingly awkward thump, but did not whimper.
Willpower. Self-control, she reminded herself and signaled the will-o’-the-wisps above them to fade out of sight and let darkness fall before she could lose both qualities entirely.
The new darkness should have provided a respite, but even as she lay in that lovely, leafy hollow that had felt so comfortable last night, her senses remained attuned with agonizing acuteness to the soft whispers of sound nearby that signaled Gerard settling into the neighboring bed of grass that she had created for them earlier.
He wasn’t even trying to join her. Of course not. Safely hidden by the darkness, her features drew into a mutinous scowl. Even after they’d made lo—no, shared a diversion—he was still too much of a gentleman to enter her bed without an explicit invitation.
… Which was excellent. Exactly what she wanted and what made most sense for both of them, regardless of all that sentimental nonsense he’d spouted earlier under the influence of his first diversion.
Goddess, but his arms had felt so warm and right around her.
Had she made a horrible mistake tonight?
Sleep didn’t arrive for hours.
She knew immediately that she was trapped in no ordinary dream.
Lorelei had lived with the breath of a goddess brushing the nape of her neck since the day she’d been born. She knew all too well the disorienting, overwhelming sensations that came with the glow of a divine being’s attention.
This time, though, it wasn’t her own, familiar goddess who had summoned her in her sleep. Any visit with Sylvana came with the vibrant scents of green, growing things all around her, warm wind caressing Lorelei’s face and new life coursing through her veins like liquid sunshine.
Now, she stood dwarfed by monumental grey statues in a vast stone hall with a hard, bright light shining down on her to pin her in place.
Each flagstone was at least ten times the length of her bare feet; each giant statue portrayed a grim-faced warrior holding a shield and sword, bayonet or musket, in a seemingly endless line that marched far past the limits of her vision.
Their styles of armor shifted along the way, along with the types of weapons that they bore, from the sleek modern weaponry of those closest to her to bows and arrows, lances, and then rough knives and clubs in the far distance, combined with wild, waist-length beards caught in stone.
But every face, no matter its surroundings, showed the same expression of noble determination as each warrior faced a terrible end without flinching, making themselves into walls between the innocent and injustice without any complaint—and when she turned slowly in place to look behind her, at the statues marching on into the future, the first one she saw lanced her with instant recognition.
“No!” Lorelei leapt forward.
Gerard did not—would never!—belong here, trapped in stone.
Yes, he projected an image of impenetrability to the world.
That shield was all that most people would ever be allowed to see: the carefully built illusion that was the Golden Beacon.
But she had seen the man beneath smiling and teasing her—and scorching her with his passion.
He was no frozen object. He felt, deeply and undeniably.
There was so much more to him than the terrible, blank-faced statue that rose before her now, pinned forever on a platform of cold stone.
But oh, the uniform he wore on that statue was only too painfully familiar.
She recognized the carefully recreated smudge that was a grass stain, not from tonight, but from a battle earlier that day.
He clasped his own sword against his stone chest, along with the familiar shield he’d won in a tournament trial.
And his eyes …
Oh, goddess! Lorelei bit back a cry.
The rest of his expression might be blank, but his eyes held the bone-deep resignation of a man who knew his certain doom and had surrendered to it without complaint.
Lorelei had not—and she was done listening to common sense over the screaming of her instincts!
Homicidal fury billowed up within her as she spun around in that vast, echoing stone chamber.
Thorn-tipped green vines erupted at her command from the slim cracks between the flagstones, ready to take on even the most powerful of opponents.
She knew exactly which god had brought her here to warn her off His chosen champion. But Lorelei had been chosen by a different divine being, and she would not be intimidated.
“I don’t care if You think You own him,” she gritted through her teeth to the acknowledged head of the Imperial pantheon and the stern Divine Father of Justice and War. “I worship Sylvana, not You, and I will never let him go.”
She had made a nearly fatal mistake, after all—but it wasn’t in letting herself take such soul-shattering pleasure from the gorgeous, aggravating man who slept in her tent now.
No, her mistake had lain in allowing either of them to believe that she would ever stand back and let Gerard walk away from her to certain death, no matter how glorious or noble it might be.
They’d struck a binding bargain when they’d first arrived in Efaelen: She would have to return him to the mortal realm in exchange for his participation in the tournament …
But she’d never said where in the mortal realm she’d take him.
Gerard had only assumed that return would mean his freedom.
Even Lorelei had spent long enough in the mortal realm, by now, that by the end of their second day of trials, she had decided to provide that freedom rather than lose her partner’s trust.
Not anymore.
Divine Jovar might well crave another stone martyr for His gallery of heroes, but Lorelei was a Queen of Villainy with urgent, personal needs of her own.
No matter what her high-minded lover might imagine—or any gods or goddesses demand of her from this moment forward—she had no intention of releasing her captive ever again.