Chapter Nineteen #3
I gritted my teeth. Slowly shook my head. “She’s not.”
He shuddered as he rested his mouth on my collarbone.
“Yes,” he said against my skin. “She is. Marguerite proved it.” His breath was hot and sweet with wine.
One of his hands drew small circles over my hip, and he knew what he was doing to my breasts, to the slickness growing between my legs, as he pressed himself against me.
His tone frayed. “Why? Do you know, Mary?”
In what was only a matter of seconds but felt like a sweep of hours, I warred with myself. I saw Hal. What would he think of this? Would he see us, entwined together, and feel as if we’d been the ones to kill him?
I’d seen Roland in so many pairs of arms, and I’d seen his eyes dancing over whoever he wanted that particular night.
What would that feel like—all that intensity, focused on me?
What would it feel like if I let myself have him, just for a moment?
If I cast off my guilt, cast off my terror of losing someone else I cared for?
Slowly, my disguise unraveled. Roland ran his thumb over my lip, and he watched, tenderly, as my features returned. We stared at each other, breathing hard. He was here, and so was I. He was still alive, and so was I. We were both in so much pain, and we lived despite it.
We did not meet gently. Both of us were desperate—for lips, necks, jaws, anything we could reach.
My hands plunged into his hair. I had sworn not to be a common beast when it came to him, but what were swears said in the daylight compared to the ones he made now, whispered under his breath—the ones I drew from him?
He muttered something about my competitiveness, tipping my head back so he could lick up my throat.
I moaned as he slowly traced the seam of my lips with his tongue, as he murmured, “Not yet, not yet,” and then, finally, his tongue swept in to meet mine.
My eyes rolled back into my head. He kissed with creativity and passion, with subtle, deft movements.
He suddenly pulled back, lips hovering over mine. “Do you like this, Bianca?”
He had every proof—the sounds I made, the wetness between my thighs, the magic that told him exactly what pleasured me most. Yet he still wanted to hear me say it.
Instead, I asked, “Who is Bianca?”
A nip at my earlobe. “Mouse, do you?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Yes? What was it again? Darling?” He kissed the right side of my mouth. “Sweetheart?” The left. “Oswyn?”
I bared my neck to him, waiting, trembling from waiting, his thumb swiping across my lips, parting them.
He finally lunged forward, and we sighed into each other’s mouths.
He pinned me to the wall, the kisses lingering and starved, until I made a wretched sound and rolled my hips and he broke away to drag his mouth back to my ear.
“Let me take you to bed,” he whispered. “Let me fuck you before I die.”
His head fell. Dragging kisses along the ridge of my breasts, he begged to have me, please. My eyes shot open to witness it—his mouth, forming such words.
Instead, I saw Marguerite.
She loomed over his shoulder, the candlelight flickering across her spectacular face, her eyes shining with malice. That look was punishing. I had fought against my guilt, wrestled with it, but I knew it would be there always, for the rest of my life. Guilt was my shadow—a friend to grief.
“Roland,” I managed. “Roland, stop. I must speak with you.”
He raised his head. His pink hair was disturbed by my hands, his lips swollen and bruised by my teeth. He overflowed with lust. “But why must we speak?” he asked, smiling at me in a way that ignited my entire body.
I took a deep breath to clear my head, then twisted out of his arms.
He caught my hip. “Mouse, what did I do?”
“Nothing. It is only that I think you should find someone else. Take Marguerite’s lady to bed. She will be far less trouble for you.”
“I’m aware how much trouble you are.”
Another deep breath. I stared at my slippers, knowing if I faced him, I would soften. “I’m here to help you finish what Prospero began. We save the king, and so we save you. We avenge Hal. That is all.”
“That is all,” he repeated. With his thumb, he drew my gaze back to his. His brow knitted. How I melted when he looked like that.
I knew he was inside my mind. I tried to concentrate on what else I wanted most, besides his touch: to be alone in bed, the fire crackling, far away from him, away from this terror.
Resolved, he nodded to himself and stepped back. Released my waist.
Roland, wait, I should have said. Nearly said. I reached for him, but he’d already turned away.
The last thing I saw was him standing on the table, arms outstretched. A maid of honor opened her mouth, and he poured wine onto her ready tongue. Palms struck against drums. Dancers spun and spun, staring up at him as if he were their god of pleasure, of revelry.
Roland, wait. Long ago, I loved a boy who is now a ghost. You know him well. You loved him, too. Just now, I felt his hands beneath your hands and almost screamed.