Chapter 45 #2
Reagan felt the conviction in her words tug at his chest. “I cannot wait to see,” he said, pulling her closer. “Maybe we should let them watch you divine in an Audience. You did look terrifying then.”
“Were you scared?” she asked, purely curious.
“Shitless,” he said, without humour. Between the bloody tears, the pale eyes, and the thing that had looked back at him through her, he had almost forgotten how to breathe.
A quiet giggle escaped her, then faded too quickly as her focus slipped somewhere else. Reagan felt it happen, the way her thoughts shifted as worries crept back in.
“We have to tell Malory about my father,” she whispered.
All the ease drained from her voice, and he tucked a curl behind her ear. He imagined the same grief he knew running through her now, wishing things could be different. Wishing the love of his life wouldn’t lose her father.
“Not today,” he said. “Today, I tell Malory about us.”
Her watery eyes lifted to his, but Jane seemed at a loss for words. Reagan let his power drift through her skin, softening and warming it.
“I can buy you a few more days,” he said dolefully. “There will be adjustments to his life so he is cared for. You can visit him and speak to him, but he cannot know who you truly are. It isn’t allowed to keep family ties known.”
She took a long inhale, as if gathering herself, and nodded. Her gaze dulled with it.
Reagan reached for their scattered clothes, motioning for her to put on his shirt while he stepped into his drawers. The deep furrow between her brows gnawed at him.
He summoned two mugs of coffee from the kitchens—milk for her, black for himself. Her hands curled around the warm ceramic, steam wafting in the space between them.
It was only a matter of time before someone came looking for him.
“There is a sigil I would like to draw at the house,” she said, fastening the last button.
“It works as a warning for me of ill intent near him.” He was not surprised that she’d already prepared.
“And I wanted to ask you to raise a ward around him, especially now that more people will know about us.”
“Done,” he said immediately, already planning the same.
Jane worried her nails as she thought. “Maybe in the future, I will be able to do it myself.”
Reagan’s mouth curled despite the forced hope in her voice. “Definitely,” he murmured, kissing the corner of her mouth. He lifted her chin so she would meet his unworried expression, her eyes reddened at the edges. “He will be safe and well.”
She gave her assent, stiff but practical. “What happens now?”
“Now,” he breathed, “we have a bonding ceremony, so you are officially and irrevocably mine. And Mountheim’s.”
His tone tried to lighten the mood.
She hummed, wiggling her brows, and studying him. “Do you tell your prospects?”
He frowned. “My what?”
She pursed her mouth, but a smile hid behind it. “The women you were courting.”
“Hm.” He gave her a wicked look. “Would you like to break the news to them?”
She scoffed and feigned pulling away, but he held the shirt. She set her mug on the floor. “You’re ridiculous.”
He finished his coffee and ditched the mug. “Fine. I will break the news today.”
Jane slid closer on the couch and trailed a finger over his chest in the shape of the protection rune. Her voice dropped, hesitant, when she asked, “Did you…”
Her lips opened and closed. She seemed to regret the question before she finished, but he already knew.
“No.”
She exhaled, her voice steadier when she went on. “I want to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
Jane arranged her expression into thoughtful determination. “I want Varian out of the staff and away from the Hall.”
Reagan assented, the corner of his mouth jolting. “Of course. You don’t need to ask me that now. You have the power to simply decide. But”—he held her gaze—“he will be out of our lives after the next Audience, if you can wait a few more days. When I bury him for good.”
Her interest sparked at that, a flush painting her smooth neck pink. “Are you telling me what your plans are?”
He tipped her chin upward and leaned down to nip at her throat.
“I keep no more secrets from you, Jane love.” She hummed, pressing herself into his side.
“Men like Varian hide their tracks well, and they can easily manipulate corrupt courts, like Ashenagth’s.
” Reagan felt his rage surface and pressed his face into her neck.
“They are difficult to detain. And as long as he is considered a possible heir of Mountheim, he will remain a threat. So I have been keeping a cool head and thinking of a way for him not to be considered at all.”
He felt rather than saw her smile.
“Varian understands power, understands Lordship, but he doesn’t understand our principles. Or rather, he disagrees with them. He believes he knows what it means to rule, but he has never walked the tightrope.”
Jane pulled back with a wholly changed expression, as if she understood where he was going with this. It was far too easy to forget his scum of a cousin when she slid off the couch and settled on her knees between his legs.
“Keep going, My Lord,” she murmured in the husky tone he liked so much, her hands roaming over his chest and abdomen.
Reagan tried to recover the train of thought. “He shared his ideas with me in one staff meeting, and I want everyone to hear him. With a little encouragement, his damning will be…” She leaned down and pressed her mouth over the bulge in his drawers. “Hard.”
“Hard?”
His breath deepened. “Inevitable,” he corrected.
“What will be?”
But he forgot what he was talking about when her fingers warmed and curled inside his waistband.
“The…” he started, noticing Jane’s concentration. Before he could ask, his drawers vanished.
He didn’t have the time to praise the successful spell. Jane’s fingers closed around the base of his already-hard cock.
“Curses,” he groaned, his head falling back.
“Maybe I can find it in myself,” she murmured, stroking him slowly, her warm breath driving him to madness, “to wait until the next Audience.”
Maybe she realised he didn’t have a working wit anymore, because she closed her mouth around his shaft.
Reagan hissed out a breath. His cock pulsed. She looked up under heavy lashes, sucking gently. His hands curled into fists.
Jane’s hair fell like a curtain over her face. He gathered the curls in his grip so he could watch her, watch her cheeks fill and hollow. She was his. He could scarcely believe it.
Reagan wanted a proper bed, wanted her flat on her back with all the time in the world to claim her, to ruin her. But he caught the faint light of a familiar waiting beneath the door.
Jane’s pink mouth worked him. His familiar surged through his mind, racing through gravel and branches in search of the reddish-brown bird. Reagan wrapped his fingers tight over hers, groaning at her grip on his cock, feeling the built-up need rise until he grunted hard and came.