CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #3
His jaw went tight, and he fucked me even harder. But he didn’t cum, so there was that.
“A rescue,” I said, “is the wrong frame.” I kept my voice even. This was the part I needed him to absorb, not just hear. “Rescue implies we extract Guinevere, and the problem is solved. The problem isn’t solved by extraction.”
He was listening. I could feel it even through the distraction of his body; such was what the tether I’d just woven between us did. It let him feel what I wanted him to feel.
“Arthur controls Logres. The rebellion has a few hundred fighters against thousands. Rescuing Guinevere addresses a symptom. We need to think about the disease.”
“Then what do you propose?” He was digging his fingers into my hips so hard, I was definitely going to bruise.
“Three concurrent operations.” I watched his face. He’d gone taut, the tell of a man about to lose a battle against himself, and I pulled away from him cleanly, sitting back on the bed as I looked at him.
“Not yet.”
He exhaled through his nose, and his expression was somewhere between fury and amusement. I looked at him deliberately, then down to his cock, which was covered in my slick and raging hard. “Calm down.”
“Christ,” he said. Then he laughed. “I’ve never fucked a woman like you before.”
“I know.”
I lay back against the bed and spread my legs as I said, “Remember that while you lick me.”
He moved down without argument. The man had good instincts for the shape of a negotiation.
“First,” I said to the stone ceiling, one hand resting loosely in his hair, “intelligence. We need eyes inside Camelot immediately, not to rescue Guinevere, but to understand the current landscape. How has Camelot’s security shifted since her exposure? What is Mordred working on?
What is Arthur’s state of mind? Where are the fractures?” I let a beat pass. “Leave that to me.”
He pressed closer, rolling his tongue so he could fuck me with it.
“Second. While I gather intelligence, the rebellion needs to make some noise. Not an assault.”
I felt him listening, felt his attention sharpening beneath the warmth of what he was doing.
“A demonstration. Show Arthur that losing Guinevere and Corvin didn’t cripple the movement. Show the people of Logres that opposition exists and it’s growing. And, strategically, force Arthur to deploy resources outward. Thin Camelot’s internal defenses for whatever operation comes next.”
Carlisle’s rhythm changed. I could feel the moment he caught the current of it, the tactical logic clicking into place the way it always did for men like him when the conversation finally arrived at something they could shoot at.
“Supply caravans on the King’s Road,” I said. “Hit them. Take the weapons. Release the drivers with a message. Iron Hound patrols in the borderlands, warn their quarry before the Hounds arrive. Prove the rebellion has penetrated Arthur’s communication network.” I looked down at him. “Fuck me.”
He entered me in one thrust and then fucked me hard. Then he went even harder. Faster. That was Carlisle coming alive: not from the sex, not from the power game, but from the targets. The operations. The sense of something finally moving.
I let him fuck me hard for another few minutes. I watched him and thought: yes. Give him the campaign. Give him ownership of it. Redirect the fury that had been driving him toward reckless rescue attempts into something that would actually function.
Men were so much easier to manage when you gave them something to kill.
Third was the veil. But I kept this point to myself. The thinning membrane between the living world and whatever pressed against it from the other side was a concern I didn’t fully understand yet, so I would keep it to myself.
“What do you need from me?” Carlisle barely managed. He was close.
“First, you need to stop acting on your own. You don’t make decisions. You bring those decisions to me.”
I waited for that to register. He just grunted as he thrust into me as hard as he could.
“Next, I need time. One week. You run the campaign. I’ll tell Vaelen to work on positioning an agent near Camelot, not inside the walls, but close enough to serve as a physical relay point for intelligence I gather.”
Carlisle was quiet for a moment, then I could see calculation moving behind his eyes. “Vaelen won’t like it that I’m fucking you.”
“Vaelen doesn’t need to know.”
A short silence. “I want you more than once.”
“If you do as you’re told,” I said, “you might find yourself inside me again.”
I met his eyes.
“Speaking of.”
I arched my back against the worn linen and let the warmth of the magic I’d already woven settle into him, into his blood, into the particular stubborn architecture of his pride, and thought about everything I hadn’t said.
The veil.
The things pressing against it.
What they might want when they finally got through.
“Harder,” I said.
He gave it to me harder.
“Deeper.”
He gave me that too.
I put the rest of it away for later. For Vaelen. For the dark hours when I could think clearly again.
“Cum,” I said. “Fill me up with it.”
He shuddered and groaned. Then he did exactly as he was told.
.