Chapter Nine
I wake up on a gasp, sitting and clutching the bedclothes to my chest. My naked chest. I’m in Lucian’s room, in the center of his gigantic bed. It’s dark outside, and I’m alone.
A sob rises up in my throat, and I lie down, trying to get ahold of myself. There’s no reason to be hysterical.
There is certainly no reason to cry. I chose everything that happened today.
Tears gather in my eyes and I close them. My stomach growls, and I feel so alone. I’m not sure if I’m grateful that he’s left me or…
The door opens. I stay lying like that, not giving any indication that I’m awake.
“Sparrow?”
I stir just slightly.
“I have something for you.”
I open my eyes.
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” I say softly.
“I have something for you to dress in, darling.”
Darling. I hold that close, turn it over, try to examine it. Is it sweet and lovely because it’s not that strange nickname he calls me? Is it personal or is it something he has called every other woman he’s married?
He moves to the bed, wrapping me in the softest robe I’ve ever felt against my skin, and touches my cheek. “You were lovely tonight.”
The simple compliment takes me aback. I blink, trying to catch my breath.
Then I find myself being lifted from the bed. “You don’t have to carry me,” I say.
“I want to,” he says.
He carries me out of the bedroom, and to the elevator. “Oh, come on now. When I’m not walking you don’t take the stairs?”
“I will not gamble with your safety,” he growls, closing the elevator door, still holding me while it descends.
I loop my arms around his neck, hold onto him until it reaches its destination.
The doors open, and he sweeps me out, down the hall into the dining room.
My jaw drops. He sets me gently down, and I move deeper into the room.
The lights are off, but the table is covered in candles.
Held high in golden candelabras, and there is a feast laid out before me.
Dishes that I don’t have names for. Things that look exotic and familiar.
Gourmet foods, and comfort foods. And besides that, behind the banquet table, an entire spread of dessert.
“This is… Are we expecting an army?”
“Only you and I,” he says.
“Then why…why all this?”
“Because you deserve it,” he says. “And I wanted to give it to you.”
I walk down the length of the table, looking at all of the bounty. And I sit down, unsure of where to start. He picks up a large plate. “What can I serve for you?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
And he begins to pile the plate high. With a bit of everything.
He sets it before me, and moves to sit next to me.
He tucks my hair behind my ear, and kisses my neck.
I don’t know what to do with this. With this side of him.
This sweetness and care. Except, something inside of me cautions me.
Lucian does not have a reputation for being kind.
Not in any capacity. Whatever this is, it’s more of the same.
More of him trying to convince me that I am happy in my cage.
I can’t afford to forget that. But I take my first bite of the meal, and it’s so glorious that I do let myself set my worries aside for the moment.
Because they won’t change anything.
I eat ham and mashed potatoes. Pastas with sauces that I can’t identify. Orzo dishes, feta and olives. Roast chicken, steak and the nicest vegetables I’ve ever seen. And then it’s time for desserts.
“Strawberry,” he says. “I owe you a piece of strawberry cake. When you are not mad at me.”
I’m not mad at him now; that is true. Though I do feel lightheaded, and on guard. I’m trying not to feel too satisfied. Or too happy.
Because part of me feels like I have to resist this. Even though I’ve made the choice. Part of me feels like it’s a betrayal of the dreams that I used to have, to allow myself to be happy with him when he’s laid down an edict that I don’t like or accept.
But then, if I’m not a romantic, surely I should be able to separate my feelings from my thoughts. The feelings in my body from emotional feelings. Surely.
Except, he is waging a war, not just on my body, but everything. Because this is nothing if not psychological warfare.
But I eat the strawberry cake anyway, and it’s wonderful.
And then when he leans in close and asks me, “What is your favorite?”
He steals my breath with his beauty. And I let him kiss me, rather than even trying to answer the question.
He strokes my face, my hair, kisses my lips, down my neck.
Then he parts my robe, cupping my breast, right there in the dining room, like we’re in a locked room, like we don’t have the chance of being interrupted at any moment.
He growls, undoing the belt on my robe and opening it entirely, his chair facing mine, as he looks at me, his eyes feral as he takes in the sight of my naked body. I do have power.
That is the truth.
It wasn’t something that I hallucinated up there in our room.
His desire for me is pushing him; it’s making him act like this.
The one thing I don’t know is if he’s always like this. I need to see a crack in his armor. I need to know.
He overwhelmed me upstairs, his lips, his hands making me forget all of my questions. But I have the advantage of having had three orgasms only recently, and as much as I want him again, I am sustained by the recency of my pleasure.
“I need to know,” I say. “Is this your wedding night routine? Have you brought all of your virgin brides to three sobbing climaxes before bringing them to a feast?”
“No,” he says.
“Did you want them all like you want me?”
“Never,” he says. “I have wanted no woman the way that I want you.”
That doesn’t feel true. It doesn’t feel like it can be.
But if he feels that way now, that I’m willing to suspend my disbelief.
Because if that’s what he thinks, then what does the truth matter?
If he doesn’t remember how strongly he wanted the other women, then that’s just as good, isn’t it?
At least, that’s what I want to believe.
Even while I’m frustrated with myself that I need it.
But the truth is, the need he creates in me has overtaken me to such a degree, has turned me into such a stranger to my own self, that I need to know he’s suffering from it too. I need to know that I’m not alone.
The light in his eyes, like a fire, tells me that I’m right. He wants this. In a way that renders him powerless.
With a shaking breath, I roll my shoulders back, thrusting my breasts up, letting the robe fall down just slightly. Then I part my thighs before I can talk myself out of it. His gaze lowers, the expression on his face one of hunger.
He unbuckles his belt, undoes his pants and frees himself, standing stiff and tall against his stomach.
He curves his hand around his manhood, and begins to stroke himself.
I lick my lips, and I reach out, wrapping my own hand around him.
His breath hisses through his teeth, and he claps his hand over mine.
“Careful,” he growls.
I stroke him, from base to tip, reveling in the feel of him. And how it makes me feel to touch him like this. Powerful and like the sort of goddess I have never fancied myself to be.
I’ve never thought about the foods that I liked. I’ve never thought about feeling beautiful. I’ve never thought about desire.
And now I feel like I’m satiating myself on it. Like I’m a glutton for these things that feel so good. These things that I’ve ignored entirely out of fear that I could never really have them.
It’s a frightening, out-of-control feeling, but at least, holding him in my hand like this, I know that he is out of control too.
He reaches around me, lifts me up out of my chair and draws me onto his lap, kissing me, lowering his head and taking one of my breasts into his mouth. He sucks my nipple in deep, until the pleasure is so great that I have to cry out.
I feel my power slipping away, but it’s such a glorious surrender. He turns me into this creature of overwhelming need, and I welcome it. All the resistance from a moment before is gone. He lifts his hand, pinches my nipple hard, the pleasure-pain combination brutal and glorious.
In the candlelight, he is fearsome. I put my hand on his bare chest, run my fingers down the dips and hollows on his body. His muscles. His scars. It is a privilege to be so close to a man like him. One who is so terrifying to everyone else. But when he came apart before, he trembled. Inside of me.
I cup his face, and I kiss him. On the smooth side of his face, and then I move to kiss his scars.
He groans beneath my mouth. I kiss down his neck, learning the texture of those scars.
He moves his hands down my back, down to my hips, lifts me up and positions me over his cock, lowering me slowly, so that I can take him inch by inch, into my tender body.
I’m sore, but it’s more than worth it. He grips the back of my head, fingers pushed through my hair, and he closes his fist as he seats me on him completely, tugging hard as he thrusts up inside me.
And then I’m lost. In the primal nature of it. The rhythm of it.
The glow of the candles, the feel of him, the sounds that he makes.
The sounds that I make. Whatever I was before, whoever I was before, maybe I’m simply not her now.
I told him that a man didn’t have the power to change a woman with sex.
But my head is swimming, and I think that I might’ve been wrong about everything.
Because how has he done this to me? How has he taken me—sensible, cerebral—and turned me into a creature made entirely of my own desire?
I would beg him for anything. There’s not a single thing he could ask of me, demand of my body, that I would find distasteful, not in this moment.
Everything feels more than reasonable. It feels desirable.
It feels wonderful. When he leans in and kisses me, then bites my neck, and soothes the sting away with his tongue, licking me, I only want more.
He cups my face, his forehead pressed against mine as he thrusts up within me, growling each and every time.
His fingers digging into me as he roars his completion, sending me over the edge into my own pleasure spiral.
We hold each other. Breathing hard. I forgot that we were in the dining room. I forgot that anyone could walk in.
I forgot everything. Even my own name.
But I didn’t forget his.
“Come,” he says. “Let us go to bed, my queen.”
He takes me naked from the room, and if there were any staff lingering, they dissipate.
As though they sense that the king needs privacy.
I find myself deeply unconcerned with the logistics of it.
Especially when he takes me back to his room, lays me down in the center of the bed and tucks us both beneath the covers.
When he strokes my face and kisses me lightly on the forehead as I begin to lose consciousness.
King Lucian, the Sea Serpent of the Mediterranean, the dragon in the cave, is my husband now.
I’m his prisoner.
I’m his wife.
Both of those things are true. Both of them are heavy.
But even holding them there at the center of my chest, I fall asleep in his arms.