Chapter 28
Guinevere
I miss sleep.
It is amazing to me how much I used to take it for granted and how I miss the ability to still my mind for a time.
With no sleep there is no escape from the thoughts which worry away inside me, refusing to be quieted.
The only time I have any respite is when I’m with my gargoyles, exchanging pleasure.
I hate to admit it, but last night, toying with Alaric the way we did, gave me the greatest release I have felt since he turned me into whatever it is I am now.
I spend much of the day thinking back over the way his eyes on me made me wetter than I’ve ever felt and made every touch, every sensation, a thousand times stronger.
By dusk I’m pacing, unable to keep still, mind whirling over all the reasons I have to hate him, body ignoring every single one.
The bucket of water I slosh into Alaric’s face makes his eyes fly open and makes him splutter.
I know he can’t have been sleeping, but it’s still satisfying to have caught him off guard.
I cut him loose before the sun dips below the trees, while the gargoyles still slumber on their pedestals.
“Well, are you going to attack me? Tie me up and take me back to Blackthorn?”
He stands, accepting the cloth I hand him and wiping his face slowly, keeping watch on me as if it’s me who can’t be trusted. “No. You seem restless, princess. Could it be that all those handsome gargoyles could not satisfy you after all?”
I lift my chin and glare at him. “Was once not enough? Would you continue what was started last night?”
His jaw tenses, but I sense the hunger in his gaze and the way it roves over me.
“Once could never be enough. After watching you last night I do not think any number of times would be enough. You made a point to leave me unsatisfied.” Reaching down, he cups the growing bulge in his trousers and I can’t help but look.
I can’t help but be excited at the thought of how much he might endure to have me again.
“What a shame. I might have spared more thought for your pleasure if I thought you capable of giving a woman pleasure in return. From what I remember, you care only for your own.”
A tic jumps in his jaw. “You showed me my place last night, and I have not forgotten. But rest assured I know better how to pleasure a woman than the ones who left you wanting. Have any of them managed to bring you to climax?”
I scoff. “And you think you could?”
“I would make sure of it.”
The arrogance in his expression lights a fire in my belly. Or perhaps it was already lit by lewd thoughts I’ve run over in my mind all day. I want to feel that height of rapture I felt last night again. I want to feel a mouth on my cunt, a face squeezed between my thighs.
“Get on your knees then,” I challenge him, assuming that’s not what he had in mind.
To my surprise, Alaric sinks to his knees, looking up at me from glowing blue eyes. “As you wish.”
Ignoring the way my fingertips tingle with awareness and my chest grows tight at the thought of potentially making myself vulnerable with him, I pull up my skirts, hitching them beneath my belt to bare my snatch for him.
As I approach, he sinks lower onto his heels so that I can sling a leg around his shoulders and bring his face to the place I want him. I take a fistful of his hair and tilt his head to the right angle, looking down at him, waiting for him to fight this. To try to overpower me.
He certainly could. I’m off balance like this, exposed to him. Instead he simply places one hand on either of my hips, keeping me steady. I hold him there, face an inch from my wet slit, waiting.
“You are even more beautiful now than you were,” he confesses suddenly.
I laugh. “Unlikely.”
“It is true. Before you were a pretty girl. Stubborn, but pretty.”
“And now?”
“Now you are a woman, come into your power. You are simply taking what is yours.”
Quickly I pull his face to my cunt to stop myself from being moved by his sweet words and the way he looks at me from between my legs. It’s a look of admiration, of respect. It’s a look I did not know I needed from him until this moment.
It only takes me a second to realize his claim may actually have merit.
As good as Raban’s mouth felt last night, it is nothing to the skillful way Alaric moves the flat of his tongue over the nub of my pleasure.
Where Raban sucked me, Alaric teases and flicks that secret spot with just the right blend of pressure and motion.
I groan and rock my hips against his mouth as much as his grip on me will allow. It’s like another fight, but this time the challenge is to see who can pull the other closer, apply more pressure.
Unlike when I sat on Raban, I don’t care if I hurt Alaric. I’m almost certain I can’t, and even if I could, I would have no regrets. He isn’t careful with me either. His fingers dig painfully into my hips as if his thirst is unquenchable.
He moans against my lower lips when he draws a trickle of moisture from me. There are no manners here. No please and thank you. We are rivals in this as much as we have ever been, only here we strive for the same goal.
When I soar over the edge of pleasure after only a few minutes, I let out a hoarse shout.
Alaric doesn’t stop, only continues his furious onslaught until I’m shaking, completely unable to hold myself up.
I feel myself falling, unable to do anything to stop or catch myself.
At the very last moment, as I’m torn from his grip, I topple into warm waiting arms, sinking into Raban’s embrace as the last of the bliss melts from my limbs.
I sigh.
Raban presses a kiss to my forehead, and from beside him there’s a low hum of appreciation. “You need to teach us how to do that,” whispers Corvin.
I blink open my eyes to see Alaric smirking at me like he has just been crowned king. Despite the pleasure which lingers still in the slow, languorous throb of my cunt, that smirk makes me angry. I should have known not to let him free.
I struggle to my feet and pull down my skirt. “Do not just stand there staring. Tie him back up again and wash him down. He is a mess.” I could thank him. Could cede the victory and admit he was right.
I do neither. Instead, I turn my back on him and stalk away to toss bones for the hounds to fetch and sulk like the petty child who got what she wanted and isn’t sure what to do with it.
After some time, the hounds grow bored and run off to find better game in the rats that nest among the castle debris.
I feel évandre’s calm presence before I hear him. I’m not surprised when I turn to see him sit down next to me on the fallen stone slab. “Did you give him the right to touch you, princess?”
He sounds surprised and frankly I’m surprised at myself. “Yes.”
évandre is quiet for a time.
I pick at a loose thread in my ruined skirt. “Are you upset with me?”
His golden brows lift. “No. Why would I be upset? We were worried he had forced himself on you.”
“No. Nothing like that.” I sigh. “I thought you might feel jealous. Or left out.”
He seems to consider. “I feel grateful to be included in whatever you need me for, princess. To be of use to you. It has been a long time since we have been of use to anyone, and that is what we were made for.”
“But you are not made of stone, at least not during the night! You have feelings, wants, desires.”
“And you fulfill them. I only want more of what we have all shared together, but you letting the hunter taste you does not stop me from having that. I only want you to be happy, and I think that you are not.”
He’s right, but it’s complex. “I am happy with you and Corvin and Raban,” I say eventually. “I don’t know what Alaric wants from me. I cannot read him. I am worried that he will betray me, but there is no way to know for sure.”
évandre nods. “That is true. If it’s any help, I don’t believe he could have simulated the way he looked at you just now.”
I frown. “What look was that?”
évandre laughs softly. “The same look I am certain you get from every one of us, only his is more desperate because he does not believe he is entitled to it.”
“He is not,” I say sulkily.
évandre hums. “Nor is anyone. What you offer is a gift, freely given every time. I meant that he does not believe in himself.”
I’m quiet for a while, thinking about what évandre said. My gaze follows a vine clinging to the moss-covered stone of the wall, twisting and trailing to the top where a broken figure stands.
évandre follows my gaze. “That is all that is left of our brother. The seventh of us.”
The figure once would have been a mirror image of évandre.
He’s tall, and from what’s left I can see he would have had two proud wings stretching out wide on either side of his muscled body.
Now, though, one wing is broken off, leaving only a stony stump, and his face is badly cracked and part of his left arm missing.
“What happened?” I whisper, saddened.
“Time.” évandre shrugs. “It is the enemy of us all in one way or another.”
I think about what he says for a while, staring up at the chipped face of the frozen gargoyle.
If I truly am undead—immortal—what will that mean for me as time goes on?
I may not have to worry about aging or sickness any longer, but will there come a time when I wish I could end things as Alaric seems to wish to do?
The thought disturbs me so much I can’t sit any longer.
I stand, judge the distance and leap, gripping the rough surface and pulling myself up onto a crumbling balcony.
I climb from there up to the roof and launch myself onto the highest remaining part of the wall, balancing along the broken surface with my arms outstretched.
I stop only when I reach the frozen gargoyle.
évandre alights beside me a moment later, folding his wings away. “He has not stirred in years.”
Despite what évandre says, I still run my hand over the statue’s shoulder softly. Of course the statue doesn’t move. The stone is cold under my touch, and my own skin does nothing to warm it. “Maybe time turns us all to stone,” I murmur, more to myself than to évandre.
My eyes sting, but tears refuse to fall. So I sit on the cold stone beside the statue and tuck my arms around my legs and stare into the distance across the treetops.
When évandre sits beside me and wraps an arm around me, tucking his wing around to shield me from the chill breeze, a little of the numb feeling inside me recedes. I lean my head on his shoulder and shut my eyes and try to remember what sleep feels like. How did it used to come so easily?
évandre strokes my hair softly. “You won’t end that way, princess.”
“Will I not? I do not like the person—the creature I am turning into. It feels like there is ice where my heart used to be.”
“It does not seem that way to me,” he says gently. “To me you seem full of fire and passion and sweetness.”
“You flatter me.”
“I only speak the truth.”
I nuzzle closer, appreciating the warmth of his body, the feel of his arm around me. “Do you think I should let Alaric go?”
A hum rumbles through évandre’s chest. “Is it helping to hold him here?”
“No!” I say quickly. All it does is confuse my thoughts and stir emotions to the surface I would rather bury.
“Then perhaps the risk is worth taking.”