Chapter 41
Zarek
DETEC
Iwake with a start and reach for my dagger. Something hits the window on the other side of the room, coming in gusts.
Rain. I exhale slowly. It’s raining against the window. I close my eyes—
My arm is wrapped around someone soft and warm. Shit. My cock pulses, and I grit my teeth as last night comes back to me in a haze.
Another fucking town. Detec, right? Another village square, this one even smaller and sadder than the last. Some of the villagers looked at the horses as if they were contemplating how many meals they could get out of them.
There was music, yes, and the crier from Vsenrog gave a particularly lengthy spiel about unity.
And there was a sad feast of root vegetables that had probably been in cold storage for months.
But the wine was good.
Damn it. My head throbs, and my mouth tastes like vinegar.
There was so much kissing last night. Lilias leaned toward me again and again, pulling me in like a flower calls to the bee. We kissed, and we danced, and gods, I was so hard it hurt.
So I drank. Sure, I was being polite at first, but eventually I was just trying to ignore the horrible knot of attraction and frustration, the godsdamned pull of her lips, her curves in that dress, the feel of her hair brushing against my neck, the smell of her body.
I’ve never wanted to fuck anyone as badly as I want to fuck her.
Lilias sighs in her sleep, and I realize I’m pulling her closer to my body. I freeze and force myself to breathe. My cock aches inside my pants.
Okay, good. I’m still wearing pants. The last part of the night is a blur. I remember this room, which is tiny. I remember Lilias, her cheeks flushed, her lips red and inviting. I remember peeling off my jacket and my boots.
And then I remember collapsing into bed. In my pants.
Thank the gods. I was drinking all night in the hopes the wine would win out over the screaming need between my legs. And it worked. There are words for men who take advantage of women who’ve been drinking for hours, and those words will never apply to me.
I exhale slowly, then pull my arm away from my wife. My dagger digs into my ribs as I move. Lilias makes another sound, like a little purr, that goes straight to my cock. Gods, my pants are tight.
I ease out of the bed and pace the tiny room.
Rain hits the window in bursts. The eastern sky is already the deep cobalt of early dawn.
My cock throbs, remembering the soft weight of my wife’s body in my arms. This whole room smells like her, that mixture of floral perfume and something deeper, something stronger.
I pause at the window, trying to think about the road outside, or how horrible it’s going to be to travel through the rain, or literally anything other than sex. But my eyes drop to a chair pushed against the wall. It’s covered with something soft and deep red.
Her dress.
My eyes creep across the room, settling on the bed. In the thin gray light filtering through the window, I see Lilias’s dark hair spread across the pillows. A thin, pale blanket lies across her curves, and gods, what if she’s wearing nothing beneath that?
I clench my jaw and turn away before I can groan. Fuck me, I can’t do this. I can’t go on, stuck in this perpetual state of arousal, dragging my rock-hard cock all over the border between Marion and Vsenrog, kissing the gorgeous woman who wants nothing to do with me.
I grab a ratty towel from the washbasin, and then my hands are at my waist before I’ve even made a conscious decision. The knot holding my lacings together comes apart; I shove my pants down over my hips to trace my cock with my fingers.
I shiver as I stare at the darkness beyond the window. Gods, it’s been so long. I don’t dare fuck courtesans in the city. I can’t risk drawing royal attention to women whose lives are already hard enough. I wrap my hand around the base of my cock and stifle another groan.
The army camp outside Aning, by the ocean.
I close my eyes and will myself to remember the woman who took me inside the courtesan’s tent, her dark hair and curves, the way she smiled in the torchlight as she took off her robe.
Outside her tent, the fire hissed and crackled as the ocean drummed against the shore. Her lips—
I close my eyes, but it’s another pair of lips that rises in my memory, slick with wine and swollen with kisses.
My fist tightens around my cock, and the memory of the courtesan vanishes like smoke, replaced by my wife’s laughing eyes, her soft lips, her unbelievably perfect tits straining against the scarlet laces of her dress.
I bite back another groan as my hips start to rock against my fist. I think about kissing her last night, hard and long, the taste of wine on her lips, the heat of her tongue in my mouth, the way she gasped for breath when I pulled away, her tits pushing against my chest, the ache between my legs.
Fuck, I wanted her then. I think about the crowd in the courtyard last night, the rough table covered with a white linen runner.
What if I’d grabbed my wife and bent her over that table?
What if I’d shoved her skirts up to her waist as the band played and I thrust my fingers deep into her sex, pushing hard against her clit until she was dripping down my wrist?
I imagine the band playing, the people dancing, as she comes undone under my hand and I part her thighs, letting the heat of her sex wash over me as I sink into her.
I picture the table rocking beneath her as I thrust hard between her legs, burying myself fully, knocking over the wine bottles, shattering the glasses against the ground, her fists clenching the white table runner until she screams—
I gasp as I picture it, shattered glasses, red wine dripping down the side of the table, Lilias’s face against the white table runner, her sex clenching and her thighs trembling as another orgasm wracks her body and she screams as I bury myself in her, losing everything, in front of everyone.
With a groan, I cover my cock with the towel as the orgasm crashes down on me. My hips rock and my cock pulses, spilling seed into the towel, pulling every muscle in my body tight.
“Fuck,” I whisper under my breath as the fantasy starts to recede.
I open my eyes and see a line of gold against the eastern horizon. My head throbs with the remnants of the orgasm and yet another hangover. I try to shove the fantasy of Lilias bent over the feast table deep, deep down. I toss the towel under the washbasin table and pull my pants back over my hips.
There’s a rustling sound from the bed behind me. My breath catches as Lilias makes a little gasping sound.
“I thought it went away on its own,” my wife says, from the shadows.