Chapter 35
Alaric
As dawn steals over the treetops, I cease pacing the courtyard and watch as the gargoyles return to their perches on the walls. And then, ashamed of myself, I creep up to the solar to watch the princess sleep.
Her face is even more beautiful in the filtered morning light, the pink and purple window casting a glow over her cheeks, returning the rosy hue that I took from them.
Her lips are blushing, the only part of her apart from her dark hair that still holds its color.
My hand twitches at my side, longing to touch her.
I move closer to the bedside, convinced if I look long enough I might see her chest rise and fall with breaths she no longer needs. My fingers stretch toward her, longing to stroke that soft skin. Then her eyes flutter open.
She frowns. “Where am I?”
I pull back my hand like a child caught doing something I should not have been. “The ruins.”
She sits, brushing a strand of hair from her face and looking around. “What are you talking about? I have never seen this room before.”
“They built it for you,” I mumble.
Her eyes widen and she twists and goes to stand.
Her legs seem to give out under her, and I have to catch her to stop her from falling.
Gently, I help her find her feet again. I take her to the window and open the latch so she can see where we are.
She looks out in wonder. “They built a whole tower?”
“They did.” My tone is sour.
She turns to me. “What? You do not like it? Are you about to tell me it will topple any moment?”
I shrug, looking away, but she narrows her eyes, ducking into my line of vision so I have no choice but to look at her.
“Once I could have showered you with jewels and pretty trinkets and exotic flowers that would have made a simple tower look like a paltry gift. I owned a palace! I could have offered you the finest rooms and fed you with the finest food. Entertained you with the finest musicians. Now I have nothing.”
She prods me in the chest with an outstretched finger. “Are you jealous?”
“No.”
She laughs. “You are jealous!”
Heat flares in my neck and ears. “I know where I stand with you. Only a fool would be jealous of what he could never—”
She cuts me off by jumping into my arms, wrapping herself around me, demanding access to my mouth. I catch her up, not willing to question if she wants to give this moment to me. If she wants to use and tease me and leave me aching while she takes her pleasure from me, then so be it.
That is the only gift I have to give her. Submission. Obedience. Freely given instead of taken. Given to a queen who deserves it.
I stumble back against the mattress and we fall onto the bed with her on top of me. Her hungry, demanding kisses seek entry to my lips while she grinds against my cock. Her ribbon is still tied around me, and soon it’s straining as I thicken to my full size.
As if reading my mind, she reaches behind her to slip her hand into my trousers and smiles against my lips as she touches it. “Good boy.”
I don’t know if I love or hate the way she phrases that as if I am her dog. After all, do I not sniff at her heels and beg for her attention?
I groan as she squeezes me, thrusting my hips uselessly into her hand.
She laughs. The sound is as light as the sunshine streaming through the stained glass. My chest has never felt more empty.
Then she pulls at her clothing, at the perfect white nightgown the gargoyles must have dressed her in while she slept.
She strips until she is naked on top of me and I stop thinking for a moment.
I stare at her. The perfect curve of her waist and flare of her wide hips.
The swell of small pert breasts and the dark tips of her peaked nipples.
The ugly scar that runs between her breasts makes a jagged stab through the warmth of the moment. Hesitantly, I lift my hand to trace the tough raised line.
She looks down, watching.
“Do you hate me?” I know the answer. Some awful instinct drives me to seek it out from her lips.
“I did.”
A phantom pulse skates around my body, a remnant remembered from when I was alive. She did? “And now?”
She grimaces. “I cannot hate you. I wanted to, but I cannot.”
“You are too generous.”
“Are you telling me how I should feel?”
I let out an exasperated huff of air. “You know I am not.”
She doesn’t argue. We don’t talk for a while. She traces her fingertips over my skin as if memorizing the lines of my chest, my neck, my face.
“I should not have killed you,” I say eventually.
She freezes, her fingers pressed to my lips. “I thought you had to.”
“She ordered me to make certain you did not return. Not to kill you. I realized too late that I could escape the deed but then…”
Her eyes widen. “Then I did it for you. I was the one who pushed myself onto your sword.”
I nod.
“She never ordered you to ruin me.”
I look away. “I do not know what came over me. I knew at the time that it was wrong. I could not seem to stop myself until your words stopped me.”
Placing her hands on either side of my face, she tilts my chin up so I must look at her again. “Is that you admitting you were wrong again? Twice in one day!”
“It is. I should never—” I can’t bring myself to say the words.
Guin slides her hands into my hair and tugs hard. “No, you should not have, but you paid the price, didn’t you?”
My eyes water, but I relish the sting. “I would gladly pay it a hundred times over.”
“Did you love me even then?”
My mouth goes dry. Has she seen through me so easily? Of course she has. I think the princess is the only woman who has ever truly seen me. “No. I wanted you. Badly. I had for a while, but what does a creature like me know about love?”
“Then am I incapable?”
“No—” I break off. She has defeated my self-doubt with a single question. “Perhaps it is just that I am unworthy after all the sins I have committed.”
“Is that why you want to die?” she asks quietly.
She is still sitting on me. The pressure of her pussy over my cock makes it hard to think. Her naked breasts in my face aren’t helping either. “I—do not. Not if you will have me.”
“Oh, I will have you.” As she says this, she draws back and unfastens my trousers, pulling them from my legs.
I want to ask if she means forever, but I don’t dare. If she only means she wants this moment, I’ll still take it. I would take anything she was willing to give me.
She tears open my shirt right down the middle. My cock stands straight up at attention, straining against the ribbon still tied there, aching for her touch.
Guin lowers her mouth until her lips are almost touching me, and I nearly come apart. I haven’t cum in decades, but with this woman I could cum at the snap of her fingers if she commanded it.
She turns her head swiftly and sinks her teeth into the skin on my hip and I cry out.
When she pulls back, she gives me a viscous grin before biting me again, lower this time, on my inner thigh.
My hard dick twitches with each dip of her head, though I know it’s pain, not pleasure she’ll give me. I can’t help it.
The next bite she kisses better, I moan at the sensation of softness following the sharp pain.
She does it again, biting and kissing little marks all up my belly and across my chest. The first one on my hip is already fading as she makes more.
A shifting pattern of little flowers blooming and dying on my skin.
I groan as another bite on my lower belly stings. “Harder. I want it to last.”
She lifts her head. “Are you giving me orders?”
The brush of her hand over the tip of my cock is agony. She slings her leg over my waist, and now it’s her cunt stroking me, teasing me.
There’s a wild spark in her eye as she slides her wet slit over me, never letting me inside.
I curse.
I don’t dare tell her to let me inside. I don’t even beg for mercy.
I’m trapped between her thighs, caught helplessly in a loop of desire and denial as the tip of my dick slides past her opening over and over, growing wetter and wetter.
I press my eyes closed when it nudges in, only to slip out again.
Guin laughs. “Would you like my cunt, Alaric?”
I groan. “Please.”
She lifts on her knees, hovering over me, looking down. “Then take what you want.”
Even though I want it badly, I don’t move a muscle. “What I want is to serve you, princess.”
The wild look disappears, replaced with something new, something I’ve not seen there in her eyes when she has looked at me before. “I truly have misjudged you.”
I don’t get a chance to ask what she means.
Reaching behind, she holds me in position so she can sink down and claim my cock, taking me all the way inside herself.
I watch her as she adjusts to my size, the way I fill her all the way up.
She’s still little used to the feeling, and I’m rusty myself.
I am so sensitive I could burst. I won’t. Not without her permission.
Never again without her permission.
She lifts, testing the feel of me inside her, and I can’t help but slide my hand up her thigh to cup her ass and guide her.
She presses her forehead against mine as she takes me inside herself over and over. I’m trapped by the force of it—more intimate than kissing. More piercing than a blade, more powerful than the magic that made us monsters. In her gaze, I’m remade once more into something else.
She’s chosen to see the man underneath. Not the man I used to be. And though he died long ago, today a new man is born, one who lives to serve his queen. A ferocious and dominant queen, but a queen with a soft heart and mercy, even for those who don’t deserve it.
I wish I could put into words how I feel. All I can do is tell her the one thing spinning around in my head. “I am yours, princess. Yours if you will have me. If you want me.”
Unexpectedly, she leans in and kisses me softly, stroking my cheeks, slowing her movements until our coupling feels more like an embrace. “Of course I want you.”
Not of course. There’s nothing predictable about it. It’s a blessing from the heavens. But I’ll take it because for the first time in a long time I believe in this.
I rock her in my lap, making love to her, showing my devotion with my body.
Her gift is the beauty of her orgasm as she digs her nails into my flesh, shudders, and convulses around me.
It is the sweaty tendrils of hair that stick to her forehead, her rosy lips parted on a sigh.
It’s the second and third climax on my tongue, fingers wound into my hair.
And finally it’s the way she takes me in her hand when she’s finished, stroking me to a slow and tender climax I am half expecting her to deny me.
The way she combs her fingers through my hair as we lie in the warm sunlight afterward, tugging at the tangles until it lies smooth and unknotted across my back.
It’s the quiet hum of satisfaction she makes as I gather her against me and hold her close.
We lie like that for a long time, present but drifting in the state closest to sleep we can manage as we are. After a while, the princess stirs. “What happened? At Thornvale?”
“How much do you remember?”
She hesitates. Then her body stiffens in my arms. “The hanging!”
“Hanging?”
“They were hanging an old woman for sedition. In the square.”
“She probably complained about not having enough bread.”
“What?”
“Most of the food from the farms goes to the queen’s table. Surely you knew this?”
She turns to face me, brows knit together. “Of course she would take more from them than they can afford to give. She must be stopped before more people die for her greed.”
“She must,” I agree. But I can’t drag myself from Guin’s bed. Not when doing so could bring an end to the warm glow surrounding us. When leaving the bed and the castle means taking her back into danger for my own selfish reasons. If only we could stay like this forever.
Eventually night falls and the gargoyles join us, and I’m forced to relinquish the moment whether I would or no. The spell is broken.
She leaves the warmth of the bed and they dress her, casting looks between the two of us but never questioning her. Perhaps the looks are imagined and they do not burn with jealousy the way I do.