Chapter 25
Rikard
Who was this magician in his arms who could mend irreparable things? Her dress, her garden. His wings. His heart, though he hadn’t told her that. His family, which she’d made complete. He palmed her belly possessively, and the hatchling squirmed beneath his hand.
“He was so well-behaved while I stitched,” she said, making a face. “I think your purr woke him up.”
The observation landed with the precision of one of her stitches, placed exactly where it would do the most work.
The child heard his purr through her belly.
The child knew his purr before it knew his face.
The sound thickened, rising in his chest like sap in a tree, and Hannalinde’s smile widened, specifically, devastatingly for him.
“When do you have to leave for the Nadir’s office?”
“Soon. An hour, perhaps.”
She leaned back against his chest, resting her head on his shoulder, and stroked her fingers over the twisted, ugly scars on his chest.
“A shame you can’t repair those, too. I’m sorry you have to look at them.”
Her fingers stilled. Then continued, slower, with deliberate attention, like she was assessing fabric for quality. “No, I like them. I want to do something for you,” she said abruptly. “And I need you to tell me if it’s too much.”
“When have I refused you anything?”
“You refuse to let me thank you!” Her laugh was brief and warm, and then her face settled into the slightly worried expression she’d had before. “I’d like to perform for you,” she said.
The purr had gone thick enough to rattle his teeth. He swallowed against it, which was useless. “Hannalinde. You don’t owe me—”
“This isn’t a debt. Debt is what brought me to your office. This is desire, and I’ll thank you for reminding me that I can feel it.”
He bowed his head, defeated by her logic. “I would love to watch you.”
“Not just the way we did before, where you watched and didn’t touch. I think I would like…”
“My hands on you?” he rumbled hoarsely, disbelieving his luck. “Making you feel good?”
Her cheeks bloomed, and she nodded. “Yes, and if you don’t mind, I’d like you to wield your gift as if it were your own.”
His gift. She meant the carved phallus. He felt dizzy with desire. “Anything you want.”
She rose from his lap with the heavy grace of late pregnancy, steadying herself on the furniture, and unlaced her kirtle, letting the dress fall to the floor.
Her shift beneath was cream-colored linen, thin enough that the lamp silhouetted the curve of her belly and the heaviness of her breasts through the fabric.
She stood before him and pulled the shift over her head.
He’d seen her body many times before, usually glimpses as she dressed while he was frozen in daysleep. But this was different. This was generous. Open. He soaked it up, marveling at her beauty and how it had changed.
Her skin gleamed in the lamplight. Fresh pink lines mapped the underside of her belly, where her skin had stretched too quickly to accommodate the growing hatchling. Her breasts were full, pink nipples darkened. Her hips had widened, her thighs thickened, her body reshaping itself around his child.
It was his child. Of all the lies, that was the one he believed the most.
“May I?” he asked, reaching out hesitantly. She grasped his hand and put it on her belly, leaving her hand atop his. Her skin was taut and firm, so soft and smooth. Careful of his claws, he slid his hands up to cup her breasts, watching her face all the while to make sure she welcomed it.
When he thumbed her peaked nipples, her lips parted, and her head tipped back. “No one…no one has touched me like this before. I didn’t know this is what it felt like,” she whispered to the ceiling. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before. I thought it would be like before.”
Of course, she had likely been a virgin before she was treated so badly.
He rose to embrace her, wishing he could undo it.
With his lips pressed to the top of her head, he sighed, heart heavy.
“What you experienced—what you endured—that was not lovemaking or even mating in the most basic sense. It was something else. It was closer to war.”
“Not like you experienced.”
“Much like I did,” he disagreed. “It broke me to pieces, too. Your scars may be less obvious than mine, but they’re real, and there’s no need to apologize for them. You did not put them there.”
“Th-thank you,” she stuttered, and for once he did not correct her. She took his hand and bravely led him to the bed, where she showed him the basket stowed beneath, the bone phallus inside wrapped in a cloth.
“I carried it over myself so the maids wouldn’t touch it,” she confided as she crawled into bed with it.
“Clever wife,” he murmured. “Tell me what you’d like me to do.”
She lay back on cushions and he quickly took his place beside her.
The lamplight pooled in the hollows of her throat and her collarbones and dripped down the rest of her, glazing her body like honey.
“Just talk to me at first,” she said, placing the phallus between her legs, nudging it into her folds.
Her arousal was evident, beading on the tuft of pale fur she had there. “I like the sound of your voice.”
She pushed the tip of it inside her, and he could not tear his eyes away from the sight of her stretched open and speared on a gargoyle cock.
Wield it as if it were your own. Well, then.
“There,” he said in a low voice, as her breath caught. “That’s the angle. I can see it on your face. Stay there. Don’t rush.”
She obeyed, slowing, and the flush crept from her chest up the line of her throat. He watched it travel from there to her cheeks and temples.
“You’re blushing everywhere.” His voice had roughened, but he hoped she still liked the sound. “You’re as pink as a petal. I want you to keep your hand exactly where it is and let me look at you a moment longer.”
Her fingers tightened on the polished bone, and her thighs shook.
“Yes. Like that. I love to see you take your pleasure.” A purr started under his words.
“You’re so brave. You’ve always been brave, even when you were afraid of me.
” He stopped, found the thread again. “Take a little more now. Slowly. There’s no one in the world but us, and I have all night to admire you. ”
She made a sound, small and broken-open.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Tell me when you’re close. I want to hear it. I want to watch your face when you reach your peak.”
She quivered and arched into the bone, and her soft, involuntary exhalation meant she’d surrendered to her pleasure. His chest ached with a strange warmth, like an echo of what she was feeling. Her free hand grasped for his, their fingers twisting together until her body stopped shaking.
“Rikard. I’d like to see you.”
“I’m right here.”
“No.” She opened her eyes, revealing the begging depths of her blown pupils. He could see his reflection in them. “I want to see your body the way you’re seeing mine.” She bit her lip before blurting, “Take off your breeches. Please?”
The warm feeling that had suffused him vanished in an instant, like a candle blown out.
“There is nothing to see,” he said flatly.
“That isn’t true.”
“Hannalinde. My body isn’t like yours. It’s…what it is. What it has to be. But it’s far from ideal.” He blew out a breath, frustrated. “What I’m saying is that I have nothing to offer you! Nothing pretty to look at, nothing even functional. I wish I did, but I don’t.”
She sat up, her face pink and earnest. “I’ve spent months learning that bodies don’t have to be perfect to be desired.
Look at me! Fat and swollen and covered in stretch marks.
And you still look at me like I’m the only thing worth seeing.
That’s not my body you’re seeing. It’s me.
You’re attracted to my existence. And I am attracted to yours.
All of it. Not to the form or function of any particular part. ”
He kissed her to give himself time to gather the courage.
Her lips parted for him, eager and sweet, as she rubbed her ripe body against him.
In another life, he’d pin her down and rut her.
But this was the life he’d been handed by fate or bad fortune, one where his cock didn’t work and his wife didn’t want it inside her anyway.
“It won’t respond to anything,” he said, pulling back. “It’s soft, and it stays soft, and there is no amount of touching or looking or wanting you that will change it.”
“I know. I understand.”
He unfastened his breeches, fumbling with the leather ties.
He pushed them down and held his breath, waiting for her expression to change.
For the pity, or the careful blankness, or the polite avoidance that he’d catalogued in every mason who’d examined him since the reconstruction.
No one else had seen it, not one of the hired harlots or eligible gargoyle females his mother thrust upon him.
Hanna’s frank gaze moved from his face to his chest, down his belly to the rough seam along his hip, and then lingered on his cock. It lolled on one of his scarred thighs, heavy and charcoal-gray.
“I like it,” she said.
He barked a laugh. “Do you?”
“Yes.” She studied it, tilting her head thoughtfully. “The texture looks very pleasant, almost like velvet. And the color is a little darker than the rest of your skin, a lovely smoky shade.”
“I’ve been acquainted with my own cock for some years, yes.”
“But you haven’t seen it the way I see it.
” She sat up on her knees in front of him.
“It’s beautiful to me because I have nothing to fear from it.
Do you understand? A soft cock is a safe one.
It can’t scare me. It can’t hurt me. It can’t do anything I haven’t consented to.
And best of all, it’s part of you, and I like every part of you that I know. ”
The words traveled down his spine, straight into his gut. Hanna didn’t pity him. She wasn’t pretending. She genuinely liked his cock the way it was.
“May I touch you?” she asked.