Chapter 43
Chapter Forty-Three
B riony
Turns out Dray Eros wasn’t lying to me. Ten minutes after I drink the enchanted water the room is no longer spinning and I’m feeling my normal self.
I don’t lose any time. I hurry up the stairs and into Beaufort’s study. It was the only room of the three Princes’ I didn’t snoop through last weekend and the one I think may hold answers for me.
Beaufort has a reputation, one I don’t quite understand. Everyone assumes he knows what’s happening across the realm and there must be a reason for that.
When I reach his study, I find I’m not wrong. Across his desk lie scores of tiny little scrolled up notes – notes that judging by their size, must have been brought here by raven. Someone is sending him news. What news?
To one side of the desk stands a magnifying glass. I perch down on his chair and, unraveling one of the tiny notes, hold it up to the glass. The writing is titchy but under the glass it magnifies big enough to read. There are lines of text – one running onto the other. Figures related to the harvest distribution across the realm. Information about a court case in Granite Quarter. Details of troop movements and other meaningless bits and pieces. Nothing I can see Beaufort needs to know or would be interested in. However, among the standard lines of text are meaningless sentences. Ones that make no sense. Pure and utter nonsense.
Code.
I wrinkle my forehead and try to make it out but I’ve never been any good at that. I pick up the next scroll and the next, finding them all much the same.
It’s nothing that will give me answers about Amelia. Not unless I can crack the code. I consider pocketing one of the scrolls and taking it back to Clare to see if she can do it, but I’m worried Beaufort might notice it missing. He’s already accused me of stealing once.
I flop back in the chair and rock it side to side, eyeing the drawers that run down the side of his desk to the floor. I try each one. The first three are locked with magic. Not something my pin skills can overcome. The last is unlocked. I draw it open carefully, half expecting it to be booby-trapped. All I find inside are some sheets of paper stapled together in the corner. I draw them up onto my lap.
It’s a list of all the students at the academy with details of their Quarter and their rooms. I run my eyes down the details. Beaufort has marked a handful of names with different colored symbols. A couple of the shadow weavers as well students from the other Quarters.
My name. Stanley’s. The quieter of the Smyte twins.
Why? What does it mean?
I stare at the names, trying to commit the ones he’s marked to memory. Then I return the list to the drawer, close it and scurry downstairs. There’s no way I want to be caught snooping a second time.
Back in the lounge, I snuggle under the blanket again and open the book. The fire burns warm right by my toes and soon my eyes are drifting closed.
I wake to the sound of the front door clicking open. I peer through the open doorway and watch Beaufort step through into the hallway and halt outside the lounge. His shoulders rise and fall, and even across the distance I can see the tension riding through his body, can feel the crackle of his magic.
I push away the blanket and climb onto my feet as he swings his gaze my way.
His silver eyes have my heart stopping abruptly in my chest. They brim with something indescribable and they are focused entirely on me.
No one has ever looked at me like that before. With such raw longing, with such blazing heat, with such undeniable need.
We stare at each other and we’re back there again, on the platform, the moment our eyes first met. Time sweeping away.
“Enough,” he says lowly, and before I have a chance to wonder what he can mean, he’s closed the distance between us and pulled me into his arms, and then he’s kissing me, pressing his mouth hard against mine, and whipping my breath right away.
I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t understand myself. But I don’t struggle. I don’t slap him. I don’t tell him to leave me alone.
I melt into him like he is a flame and I am nothing more than wax.
No, I do more than that. As he coils his arms around my waist and drags me closer, I wrap my arms around his neck, bury my fingers in his thick brown hair and press his mouth even harder against mine.
Everything in my body is liquid and heat.
I’m no longer thinking, only feeling.
I am just as needy as he is. Just as desperate for it.
He pulls away and I’m so damn dizzy, I hardly notice him twine his fingers through mine and lead me up the staircase and into his bedroom. As he does, my senses snap back into place.
He’s my enemy. They all are. They killed my sister.
“I don’t want–”
“I think the lady doth protest too much,” he whispers, “I think you do want this. I think you’re fighting goddamn hard to deny it.”
Dray’s words from earlier float through my mind – his description of eating me out was fucking graphic, it also stirred something inside me. Something that’s been stirring every time any of them is close, something that’s been stirring since Beaufort caged me on the ground. Something I’ve been trying to repress and control for such a long time.
“I’m not,” I say, denying the truth.
“I think you want this so damn badly. The way you just kissed me – you wouldn’t kiss me like that if you didn’t want this ... I think you’re just longing for me to touch you.”
He tugs me closer and rests his other hand on my waist. It does feel good to be touched. I can’t deny it – even if it’s a betrayal – to her, to me, to everything I believe in.
“You could just … stop fighting. You could surrender.” He lifts our hands to his mouth and kisses the end of each of my fingertips. “You could surrender to me.”
“Never,” I whisper, feebly, weakly.
“Surrender and I’ll take such good care of you. I’ll make you feel so good.”
I shake my head slowly.
“Surrender, little thrall. Get down on your knees and surrender.”
I want to fight.
I want to run away.
I don’t want to feel conflicted this way. I don’t want to betray my sister.
I don’t want to feel this way about him.
I want to … I want to find out what happens if I do give in. If I do as he says. If I stop fighting for just one moment and let go.
If I stop thinking, stop fighting, stop hurting; let myself go and just feel.
Will he destroy me like they did my sister?
Do I care?
My life has been so worthless since she left. So dark and bleak. This sadness has weighed in my heart and for once I want to feel something other than this cold grief.
I want to feel alive. I want to feel Beaufort Lincoln.
And so, I do as the shadow weaver says.
I lower myself down onto my knees, the plush carpet soft against my skin.
He doesn’t smirk in triumph. He simply looks at me in wonder; a heat and a desire – perhaps even a reverence – flickering in his pupils.
He doesn’t say anything, simply unbuckles his belt, unbuttons his pants.
I know what he wants. I didn’t need Fly’s little sex ed lesson this evening to work that out.
I watch as he tugs out his cock; stiff and girthy and magnificent in his hand. His foreskin has been cut away and the head of his cock throbs, a long prominent vein running the length of his shaft.
My heart beats in my throat and something swoops low in my belly. I can’t deny it now, I am turned on.
On my knees, I’m at his mercy. Maybe I always was. He’s stronger than me, more powerful. I’ve struggled and fought and resisted but a part of me has wanted to give myself up to him right from the first moment he pinned me to the ground.
I must be more messed up than I thought.
He runs his fist up and down his shaft
“Do you want to?” he says, his voice distorted with lust.
I don’t answer.
Instead, I cave into that part of me. The part that longs for this, no matter how wrong it is. No matter how dangerous.
I open my mouth, lean forward and take him into my mouth. The taste is salty but not unpleasant, and the skin is soft inside my mouth. I swirl my tongue around his cockhead and he groans above me.
A quiet voice deep within protests at what I’m doing. He’s my enemy. His kind took the most precious thing from my life – the only good thing – and ripped my life apart. I shouldn’t be doing this.
But the other part – the part I’ve repressed and caged for so long – wants this so badly. Wants to feel, wants to be felt in return, wants to throw all caution to the wind and feel something more than misery and pain and loss.
I suck on his cock and his fingers tangle in my hair, yanking out the binds and pins that hold it back, until it falls loose around my face.
“So damn beautiful,” he murmurs. “You’re so damn beautiful.”
My feeble heart flutters, even though I know a boy like Beaufort says that to every girl. That I’m not the first to fall to my knees in front of him and I won’t be the last.
“You should wear it down all the time.”
My eyes flick up to meet his as I suck him some more, moving my head up and down his shaft, taking him in and out of my mouth.
I’ve never done this before – only caught glimpses of others doing it at the back of the tavern, out in the woods. I don’t know exactly how it works. Yet, the way his silver eyes burn hot, the grunts escaping his throat, the way his fingers tighten in my hair, pulling at my scalp, I know it’s good, that I must be doing something right.
And for the first time, I feel like I’m the one in control. That I am the one with all the power – a power that soars through my body. He’s at my mercy. He’s at my whim. Look what I’ve reduced him to.
“I’m gonna come,” he groans. “Can I come in your mouth, little thrall?”
I wouldn’t have expected a man like Beaufort Lincoln to ask. I hold his gaze in mine, my veins singing with desire.
“Hmmm,” I moan around his cock and then it’s jerking on my tongue, warm liquid hitting the back of my throat. Salty again and earthy.
I choke a little, swallow some, some spilling over my lips and down my chin.
“Shit,” he grunts, “shit that looks so …”
And then he’s dragging me up onto my feet and walking us both backwards, back towards the chest of drawers until my back hits the solid piece of furniture. Then, before I know what’s happening both his hands are on my waist and he’s lifting me to sit on the top of the chest.
“Wh-wh-what are you doing?” I say.
“Returning the favor.”
He opens my legs and steps between them. He’s no longer hard and I can’t understand what he intends to do until his hand is on my leg, stroking the inside of my thigh, making me gasp.
“Hmmm, so soft,” he whispers, stroking higher and higher, impossibly slowly, so slowly I realize I’m holding my breath, waiting.
His fingertips hit the gusset of my panties and I jolt. There’s an electricity in his touch and it’s divine.
I clutch the edge of the chest of drawers, my eyes drifting shut as he leans in, his magic engulfing me, his mouth brushing over the shell of my ear.
“Are you wet?”
His fingers slip inside my panties, along the seam of my pussy lips. My core swoops and a needy pulse beats right there where he’s gliding his fingertips teasingly over me. Touching me.
Except he’s not touching me. I guess I had no concept of what touching really was. Two years ago with Stanley it had been quick fumbles out in the forest, down in the leaves, against a tree. It had been more for him than me. He’d barely touched me.
“So fucking wet,” he groans.
I didn’t know what touching was until Beaufort touches me. His thumb circling my clit, his magic sparking against it.
It feels so good, I cry out, my head falling backward.
I grip the wood more tightly as he circles achingly slowly, slowly and slowly and slowly, a pressure building in my core, my legs beginning to shake, knocking against him.
“Like this,” he says, his mouth on my throat. “Come like this, little thrall. Fall apart for me.”
I bite on my lip, tears pooling in my eyes.
It’s been such a long time, such a long, long time. Nothing in my life has been good or right. I’ve not wanted to, not desired it. And now I want it so badly.
“Pleeeease,” I whine, hating myself for begging but unable to help myself.
“You want a little more, do you?”
He vibrates his thumb over my clit and everything I’ve been holding back, repressing, caging, hiding, comes flooding from somewhere deep down inside me to the surface, electricity, and pleasure, and heavenly sensations racing in my blood and through my limbs and over my skin.
I feel like I’m somewhere else completely, high above the skies, up with the moon and the stars, soaring in the heavens.
“So … fucking … beautiful,” he murmurs as I hang there, suspended.
Then I start to tumble back to earth, my body jolting and bucking as I’m hit by waves of pleasure.
I think he’ll pull his hand away now. Instead, he’s sliding his fingers through my folds and plunging two inside my pussy.
I cry out again, bucking on his fingers, and he fucks me with them, firm and hard. So firm, so hard, I lose control of my senses, my hands leaving the chest of drawers and coming to grip his shoulders instead, my nails sinking into his flesh, wild little noises bubbling in my throat. I rock my hips in desperation, riding his fingers.
I never came when Stanley and I did stuff. He was too impatient and clumsy with his fingers and I’ve never made myself come this way either. I didn’t think it was possible.
It is.
And Beaufort proves it because, within a couple of minutes, I fall apart again.
“See,” he whispers in my ear, withdrawing his fingers from me and bringing them up to his mouth. “See how good it is when you surrender.”
And then he’s sucking all my mess from his fingers.
“Your virgin pussy tastes so good.”