Chapter 16 #3
When I kiss him, he tastes like coppery blood, vanilla soap, and salt. But there’s his usual flavor as well, the delicious, warm flavor that belongs only to his mouth, the scent that is his alone.
We don’t fuck in the bath, but he touches me all over, his fingers sliding against the wet curves of my body.
I devour him with my hands—the sweeping width of his back, the bones of his wrists, the curves of his shoulders.
I wash his hair for him, and when we’re both clean, we climb out of the tub and dry each other with fluffy towels.
Neither of us make a plan, but somehow we both have the same idea—to spread towels on the rug in front of our fireplace and stretch out there naked, our bodies tangled up, bare and warm.
He lies beneath me, and I kneel over him, teasing my pussy with his cock until I’m slippery enough to take all of him.
He watches my cunt slide down on his cock with nothing less than worship in his eyes.
He lets me control the pace, the angle. As I ride him, with my fingers massaging my clit and my thighs working me up and down on his length, I imagine that this act is cleansing us both—washing away the bitter aftertaste of his deceit, rinsing away the results of my foolishness in the woods.
I pretend that it’s all over, that it doesn’t matter, that none of it can touch us now.
Beresford’s eyes are glazing over, his flush heightened by the oncoming orgasm. But he grabs my waist and stops me, lifting me off him. “You’re not going to be able to come like that, are you?”
I’ve been trying to get there, but he’s right—even though it’s pleasurable, this position doesn’t provide enough friction or penetration for me. “It’s easier when you’re on top.”
“So you’re saying you want me to fuck you into the rug,” he growls.
I give him a wicked grin. “Now there’s the man I married.”
There is nothing better than being scooped up by a powerful man, as if you weigh next to nothing, and being thrown around like a willing doll.
Next thing I know, I’m on my back amid the soft towels on the plush rug, and Beresford’s bulk is above me, blocking out everything else.
I love this view of him, this sensation of my vulnerability to his strength, the delicious violence of his need to be inside my body.
He knows the brutality I crave. I want to be fucked within an inch of my life until I orgasm in spite of myself, because I can’t help it.
He pushes my leg farther out of his way and wedges his cock inside me again. Roughly, grunting with every thrust, he fucks me.
“No more doors between us.” Words punctuate each thrust. “No more keys or locks.”
“No more secrets,” I gasp out. “Please, harder, harder—hold me down, Beresford, please!”
With a snarl he gathers my wrists right above my head and pins them there while he thrusts with punishing speed. The heat builds at my core, higher, higher, buzzing at my center, nearly there—
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I whimper. “Yes, yes, yes—”
“Fucking come,” he commands, and I shriek softly as my body obeys him.
My husband curses as his orgasm joins mine.
He crushes me under him just the way I need him to, flattens himself against my cunt in a deep press so that every bit of his cum flows into me.
That pulsing fullness, matching the flutters of my own pleasure, is perfection.
It’s everything I will ever need, because having him like this, being joined with him this way, means that he and I are synchronized. At peace.
“I love you,” I breathe. “I love the fuck out of you, you gorgeous soul.”
His breath hitches at my choice of words, and with a half laugh, half sob he kisses me. In that kiss I sense his gratitude, his relief, and his love.
We don’t emerge from our room for the rest of the day. Instead we talk, we snuggle, we fuck, and we rest. Near dinnertime, Beresford rings for a servant and requests that trays be brought up and left outside our door when the food is ready.
While we eat dinner, he reveals his plan. Around midnight, he’ll carry most of the bodies outside. Then he’ll transform into the wolf and dig a pit where he can bury them, along with the skeleton.
“I would like to keep two of the bodies,” he says. “One was a thief and a musician. The other was the old gardener. I need their knowledge.”
He’s giving up most of his collection for me, so I don’t protest. “The gardener may have been a piece of shit, but he was a magnificent artist.”
“An artist, yes, but a bad man.” Beresford winces.
“You know that incense I burn at the orgies, to lower inhibitions and suppress fertility? I learned how to make it from the gardener’s memories—except his original version was a far more potent kind.
He and the former Beresford would sometimes use it on the captives.
He also produced the sleeping potions they used to drug women and bring them to the estate. ”
I shudder, feeling even less inclined to be sorry about the fate of the old man’s corpse.
To pass the time, Beresford and I play dice in the game room. At midnight, we return to our room and don cloaks and boots. Once we’re protected against the cold of the night, we walk, hand in hand, to the room with the blue door.
“If I unlocked it, would the key show bloodstains again?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“And it resets if you do it?”
He nods.
“What a clever piece of magic.”
“Designed, I’m afraid, by someone who was also complicit in a great many terrible things.”
“Says the man who ate himself.”
Beresford chuckles. “Fair enough. And yet I believe there are some things that are unforgivable in any realm. Personally, the imprisonment and repeated torture of a living, thinking creature is among them.” He kisses my forehead and enters the room.
I step inside after him, holding the lamp high and casting a sidelong glance at the symbols on the door. “These symbols… you placed them here and cast the charm on this room?”
“Yes. It’s old magic, passed down through generations of my kind.” He trudges out of the darkness, carrying a body over each shoulder.
I follow him down the hallway of the south wing. “Can you do other magic?”
“No. Our powers have a very limited scope, directly related to our way of life. You already know all the powers I possess, except one.” He reaches the bottom of the stairs and pauses to shift the bodies on his shoulders.
“A matagot has the power to transfer a single soul they have swallowed into an empty body, once in a lifetime.”
I precede him into the kitchen and open the back door for him. “And have you ever done that?”
“No.”
“So you still could.”
He casts me a sidelong look. “Is there someone in particular on your mind? Grandmother Riquet, perhaps?”
I chew my lip as I walk alongside him across the dark yard, toward the back fields. My breath creates wispy ghosts in the cold air. The night overhead is frosty with stars, and the forest lies like a black scarf along the edge of the world.
“She was at the end of her days,” I say at last. “Her mind was fracturing and her body was giving out. Even if you could return her soul to her body, I don’t think that’s what she would want.”
“I thought of restoring her to her body, so her protective influence could continue,” he admits. “But for all the reasons you listed, I did not. Even if I had, I believe she would have died soon after.”
“We should let her rest. But I don’t want to bury her with the others. She needs her own separate grave. A place of honor. We fought many times, and she wasn’t the kindest soul, but I have respect for her, especially now that I know her presence kept us safe.”
“It shall be done exactly as you wish,” my husband replies.
I walk with him, back and forth, carrying the lamp and holding the doors, until all the bodies except for the gardener and the thief have been transported to the back field.
Most of the corpses lie naked in a pile of limbs and torsos, but Grandmother Riquet is laid neatly nearby, on her own, wrapped in a blanket.
Last of all, Beresford fetches the skeleton of his other self from the berry bushes and tumbles the bones onto the heap of corpses.
“Step back, wife. I need to shift.” He glances around, as if he’s checking for any observers. There’s no one out here, and despite our proximity to the edge of Wormsloe, I don’t sense the Barrow-Man’s malevolent presence. Perhaps he has given up and withdrawn back into his lair.
Beresford strips naked in the faint moonlight. Arousal flutters between my legs at the sight of him. Will he always affect me this way, I wonder?
“Will you age?” I say suddenly.
He looks at me over his shoulder, frowning slightly.
“In this form, will you age?”
“Since this form is a part of me now, if I remain in it long enough without shifting to another form, yes, I will begin to age. It will be far more gradual than a human’s aging process.”
“So I’ll get old faster than you.”
“Perhaps not. There are linking charms that can be cast so we both age at the same rate. It won’t stop the process for you, but it will slow it down.”
“And you know where to find a mage who can do this?”
“Thanks to Beresford, I do. He had plans to capture a younger man and link their lives together. In fact, he was eyeing Henry Partridge. He was going to orchestrate the young man’s disappearance once the elder Partridge passed away, and he planned to absorb their fortune into his own.”
“Henry? He’s not that much younger than Beresford.”
“Beresford was thirty-four. Henry is twenty.”
“So you’re twelve years older than me.”
“More or less.” The twinkle in his eye sparks suspicion in my mind.
“Wait.” I step forward. “How old are you in your true form?”
“You don’t want to know.” He shivers and rubs his arms. “If you’re finished with your questions, I’ll shift now. It’s too cold to be naked in this form.”
“Very well, but later you’re telling me your true age.”
“Only if you beat me at Conqueror’s Creed.”
“You’re on, Beresford.”