28. Briar
Pretending I’m distraught over a dragon attack becomes actual distress as the evening wears on and there’s no sign of Killian. The maids fuss over my minimal wounds, insisting upon calling in a healer to make the scrape on my knee disappear.
I watch it return to its pristine state with a pang of sadness. I’m not a statue. I earned that scar. I wanted to keep it as a memento. But no, I must be perfect for my big day, even though no one will see my knees beneath that fluffy horror of a wedding gown.
My body already isn’t my own. After tomorrow I’ll be Alistair’s property. Locked in a living nightmare for the rest of my life.
Seducing Killian was an act of rebellion. A reclaiming of my autonomy.
But where is he?
He said he would come, yet it’s nearly midnight and he isn’t here. The maids finally left only after I pretended to fall asleep. Now that they’re gone, I kick back the covers and try the door.
Locked.
The windows are similarly sealed, their shutters nailed closed from the outside. Even if I could unlock the casement, I can’t push it open.
Stymied, I flop back into bed to wait.
Even the history book isn’t enough to lull me to sleep tonight. I’m too upset to sleep. I don’t want to believe that I was some sort of conquest, yet the longer he leaves me trapped in this tower, the harder it is for me to hold onto hope.
I shouldn’t have said I love him.
Outside, wings beat the sky.
Why do they follow me?
I’m not as afraid as I was before today’s encounter with the dragon. Still horrifying that my wedding will provide fodder for them.
A quiet tap at my door brings me bolt upright in a rush of breath. My heart batters my ribs as it cracks slowly open.
Not my maids.
Killian.
I scramble out of bed and run to him on bare feet. He catches me, shutting the door with his back and leaning against it as if to bar any intruders.
Lock him in here with me. I can survive anything with him at my side.
He holds me close for a long time. I’m afraid to speak, and from the way his heart thumps in time with mine, so is he.
“I thought you weren’t coming for me.”
I rise on tiptoe to kiss him, which he indulges for a moment before gently releasing me.
Steely eyes meet mine.
“I will always come for you, Briar. As long as I live, I am yours to command.”
Triumph thrills me, undercut with a tinge of sorrow. I’ve won his loyalty, but hurting him is the last thing I wanted.
“Then take me away from here, Killian. Tonight. Before it’s too late.”
He heaves a long sigh.
An icy boulder lands in my midsection. My heart cleaves in two.
“We have nowhere to go. We have no choice but to see this through.”
I pull back.
“You always have a choice, Killian.”
“No. I don’t,” he says flatly. I hate that he might be right. “I’ve never been one to die nobly on a hill. I’ve survived this long because I look out for my own interests first.” He gives me a tiny shake, gentle but firm. “I’m looking out for you, too, Briar.”
Shivering, I shove my arms through the sleeves of my wrapper. It’s dark inside my room despite the flickering candle I left burning. I never did completely outgrow my childish fear of the dark.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because ever since I laid eyes on you, I’ve been abandoning my common sense left and right.”
He grabs my arm and whirls me around to face him.
“I was planning to take you away tonight, Briar. I would fight for us to the death. Would you? Or are you sitting back waiting for me to rescue you?”
I try to smack his face with my free hand, but he’s too quick and I miss. He manacles my wrists and walks me back a few steps until the backs of my knees collide with the bed, flailing with helpless, seething anger against his iron grip.
He’s right. I have been waiting to be rescued. I hate him for saying it out loud.
“What do you expect me to do, Killian? Pick up a sword and fight my way past the royal guards? I’m untrained in the use of weaponry, unless you count a garden hoe.”
“Speak up. Tell Alistair you don’t want him.”
“What makes you think I haven’t?”
His mouth crashes down on mine in a bruising kiss. I strain against his hold on me to lean into it, wanting to grab him, to tear into him with teeth and nails, need pulsing in my core.
“No one fights for me.” He breaks our kiss long enough to growl against my lips. “Not one person has ever fought for me.”
“I can’t even fight for myself.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” A smirk tucks up one corner of his mouth, but there is no mirth in his eyes. “Don’t you have a choice, too?”
He kisses me hard before I can answer, as if he’s afraid I’ll confirm what he already suspects. He bends my arms behind the small of my back, forcing my breasts up to press against his chest. With no uniform or armor to shield him, only a couple of thin layers of fabric stand between my bare skin and his. An attempt to writhe free only gets me locked more firmly against his front.
His cock juts into my belly. I tip my hips trying to put pressure there, but Killian shoves his knee between mine, forcing me to straddle his thigh. Trapped, I rock against his muscular leg.
“You don’t like it sweet, do you, Briar?”
I shake my head.
“Everyone wants you to be a pretty little princess, but you’re not.” His breath is hot against my ear. Panting, I grind on him, seeking release. My cruel knight won’t give it to me. He has me right where he wants me: completely under his control.
A peculiar feeling wells inside me, an unvoiced scream that wants to burst forth but sticks in my throat.
“What are you, Briar?”
“A girl,” I blurt thoughtlessly. Pulsing tremors vibrate down my inner thighs.
“Not even close, my sweet.” He deftly switches my wrists to one hand and brings the other to my bottom, dragging me higher on his leg.
“A woman. I’m only a woman.” I gasp, moving faster, so wet I can feel myself soaking his pant leg.
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
“Show me.”
He palms my rear in time with my frantic movements, bracing me as I rut unashamedly on his thigh. It’s an awkward position but I like the way he’s holding me, the way he’s encouraging me to let go. Princes expect me to bend to their will, contorting myself into something safe for them to handle.
But I’m not tame. I’m as wild as the wind. Killian isn’t afraid of what I am.
He should be.
“I want to you to come, Briar. Right here. That’s it. Use me. Take what you need.”
“Want you inside me,” I whimper. I’m so close, but so achingly empty.
“You’ll get my cock when I’m good and ready, Princess. Give me this first.”
He shifts, and my next frantic movement against his leg ricochets through my body. I sink my teeth into his shoulder, tasting cloth, moaning.
Finally, he releases my arms and slides his palm up my spine, tangling in my long hair, my rock in a receding storm. He cradles the back of my head and kisses me.
“Take off your clothes, Briar.”
My eyes fly open. I shrug out of the wrapper and strip my nightdress off over my head, heedless of where they land. His eyes burn, twin steel rings around pools of black. They scorch my skin as his gaze rakes appreciatively down my naked body.
We haven’t resolved anything, but there’s no stopping this. We’ll fight it out with teeth and tongues. Sink our talons into one another’s skin. Just as I wanted.
Emboldened, I sink onto the bed and unfasten his belt. Leather slaps softly. My ears fill with silence and the sound of his breath.
I catalog the slight hitch each time I wrestle a sturdy button free. Slowly his fly parts, framing the ridge of his cock tenting his trousers. My mouth waters.
“Your turn.” I tug the hem of his shirt. “Off.”
He obliges me.
By all the ancient fae gods, he’s gorgeous. I didn’t really get to appreciate him in the forest earlier. I look my fill now, taking in the ridges of his abdomen bathed in flickering candlelight. The smooth planes of his chest with small, flat nipples dusted with hair. Shoulders sculpted with muscle and arms corded with veins…
“What’s this?” I frown at the dark mark on his forearm. It’s changed since I saw it this afternoon.
“How is it possible that you don’t know, Briar?”
Killian tucks one finger beneath my chin, bringing my gaze to his. I hate the conflicted wariness I find there. “It happened today after we were together in the woods.”
I shake my head. The implications are too terrifying to contemplate. I am not the queen of fae beasts. I can’t be.
His grip on my chin tightens.
“Killian, my foster family purposely kept in the dark about my curse. Whatever it was, my birth parents were so afraid of it that they sent me to a foreign country to be raised by strangers.”
I trap his wrist and turn it, examining the raised, puckered flesh. I kiss the base of the scar. He flinches beneath my lips. I press my tongue to it. I’m not sure why, but part of me likes the way he’s tied to me now.
When Alistair tried to shove him aside and take what wasn’t his, the monsters made sure Killian would never be able to leave me.
My knight fists my hair and drags my head back, forcing me to look up at him.
“That’s not where I want your mouth, Princess.”