35. Heir Beneath the Veil #2
Her laugh finally bursts out as she mixes the eggs, and the sound may as well be a dagger, what with the way it strikes me.
Something odd blooms in my chest, like heartburn, or perhaps it’s on it like a heat rash— I don’t fucking know —but what I do know is that it’s something I’ve spent the last twenty-four years pretending nobody could pull from me.
Degrees pinned like medals across my ego, and this is what feels like an accomplishment.
I’m smiling like someone who enjoyed high school; what the fuck?
I grab my unopened bottle of water, unscrew it, and I’m halfway through the first sip when I remember last night’s bottle. And unless my father had been sold counterfeit products, I don’t believe the bottles are supposed to come with Latin inscriptions on the base.
My gaze steady on Francesca as she moves around the stove, I say, “The bottle we drank from last night; somebody had it modified.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was an embossing on the base,” I explain. “ ‘Gula III’, to be specific.”
She goes very, very still. Without turning around, she asks, “Gula as in gluttony?”
“Yes, as in gluttony.”
A few seconds of deliberation pass, and I wonder whether she’s going to laugh it off, maybe even make a comment about how I’m too overeducated for my own good. She turns slightly, gnawing at the corner of her lip.
Something in her relents when she meets my gaze, and she continues to explain how four months after she killed Gabriel, his lost cufflink returned to her home.
The same one she tossed into the river upon his death.
Unrusted and unscratched. When she turned it over, she saw ‘Luxuria II’ engraved on the toggle but assumed it was just some designer label wanting to sound hedonistic.
She tells me she believed it was an ugly irony—that word—nothing more, but it’s just another confirmation that her traitor knows what she did that night.
My voice is flat when I finally say something. “Lust on the night Gabriel tried to take, and gluttony at last night’s ball. Those are vices, darling. And if it’s being listed, where’s number one?”
“I dunno, maybe I missed ‘Superbia I’ on my teabag earlier, because God forbid I even think that I make the best rooibos in this family.” I try not to snort at the scathing sarcasm.
Self-defence soon follows as she insists, “And you know what, the lust wasn’t even mine and I didn’t ask for last night’s ball.
It’s tradition; all I had to do was show up and play duchess-heir. ”
I take another sip, more so to have something to do with my hands.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s the truth or not—not to your traitor.
Whoever it is, I don’t think they care about what actually happened, just the story they need to tell about you.
They’re taunting you with vices, perhaps because it makes it easier to justify punishing you. ”
Her face tightens. “ Justify punishing me? What is my traitor—God now?”
I can feel the panic constricting around her, feel how it fills the kitchen.
In retaliation, I push back. “If they are, they’ve chosen the wrong atheist to tangle with.
” The tension cracks a fragment, and her mouth twitches.
Then once more, and she’s suppressing a smile.
“There she is; that’s enough drab talk for this morning.
After breakfast”, I nod towards the window, “we’ll be visiting our relative. There’s something we need to examine.”
The pan sizzles as she turns to pour the eggs into it. “Urgh, can you stop reminding me we’re one dead child away from being cousins?”
I allow myself another smile, capping my bottle and moving it aside. “What, don’t like when I cosplay Edmund?”
Instantly, she whirls around, grabs the closest thing to her and hurls it at me.
I catch the plastic pink egg timer without looking.
“Oh my god, you’re insufferable.” The nose scrunch is back, and she’s half-smiling despite the attempt at a glare.
“I swear, you’ve exhausted all angles of this like two nights ago.
I understand, okay? Fully updated on your theories. ”
I roll the timer in my palm once and place it down, suppressing a yawn against my wrist as I stand.
“Good. Just making sure you don’t forget, baby.
” Her mouth opens to retort, but I’m not finished.
“And while you’re this updated, please consider changing before Edmund inevitably comes crawling with an apology.
I don’t trust whatever shame he possesses to last.”
She holds my stare long enough that I contemplate telling her the eggs will burn. A dimple faintly blinks into existence as she chews on her lower lip. One hand smoothes the hem of those shorts, and the smile she lets slip is a balm to earlier’s heartburn/heat rash.
All she says is, “Go wake Percy, please.”
My future duchess giving orders like she isn’t standing there with still-healing bruises on her throat.
I close the distance between us, catch her mouth with mine, and kiss her deep enough that her knees buckle.
She’s so fucking pliant when I slide my hand low, squeezing a fistful of her ass, and she gasps against my lips.
Eventually, I pull back, tasting her still, and say, “As you wish. But I’m gonna need to know what Henderson was whispering in your ear last night.”
One dazed blink later, she tries to laugh off the question. “Charlie? The same thing as always—talking about himself and his vape.” I quirk a brow. “You can’t expect me to remember everything he said.”
“Try.”
She exhales and shudders at the memory. “Something dom about how I shouldn’t forget that a prince can’t give me what he can. The capital, apparently, makes men different than they do here in Sheffolk. Weaker. That they dunno how to get their hands dirty the way ours do.”
Can’t believe how often I’m being dragged into cheap fantasies. We’ve barely spoken, and already Charlie’s putting my sexual viability to question. Now I see why he and Edmund are inseparable: they’ve both mistaken their pathos for importance.
“Did he now?” I reach one hand to the side to snap the burner off, and the flame dies with a soft breath.
“He was just being petty. He and Ed were probably trying to get a rise out of you through me—what are you doing?” I lift her onto the counter, and she gasps, a startled laugh slipping past her lips. “C’mon, his delusion’s funny if you think about it.”
“I don’t want to think about it,” I mutter. “Because Charlie’s mouth has given me a theory to disprove.”
Eyes wide, she swallows once before questioning, “So you’re going to… what, perform an experiment?”
“Yes, and you’re going to give me the results.”
Francesca’s saying something about me caring too much about what Charlie thinks, but I’m already grinning as my mouth meets hers.
Everything beyond the space of this kitchen ceases to matter.
Bare thighs part around my hips before tightening and trapping me against the warmth of her.
I nearly die right there. The sounds she makes against my lips leave me completely undone, and I sink my fingers into her hair to angle the kiss just so.
Fuck , she arches enough that I can feel the press of her nipples through thin fabric.
Her heels lock behind my thighs as I thrust my hips against hers, prompting her to whimper into the kiss.
Tongue curling against hers, I rock again, drinking myself drunk on the way she breathes my name on a broken cry.
Her fingers yank at my hair, and her entire body jolts when I rock forward and hold , pressing my want right where she needs it.
As she mumbles against my lips, her breathy gasps drown out the words.
“What was that, hm?” I murmur, rutting another time, and Francesca pulls her mouth from mine to toss her head back as she bites down on another moan. “Say it again for me.”
Her eyes open at that— fuck, those pretty eyes —and the lake-water green has shifted into a forest at dusk.
She looks at me like I’m something agonising to witness yet simultaneously the relief she needs.
And then my gaze drops, noticing that her left hand’s no longer in my hair.
It’s cupping one breast, kneading it, thumb brushing over her nipple in small circles as though she can’t bear whatever ache she feels.
An ache I’ve left her with.
The sight fucking guts me. I can’t stop looking. Can barely breathe.
“Is that where you want me?” I ask, my voice embarrassingly hoarse. She shudders upon feeling my cock twitch against her. It’s my turn to bite down on a groan when she tenses her thighs, holding me there. “ Fuck , need me to take over for you, sweetheart? C’mon, show me what you need from me.”
Without any warning or preamble, she grasps the hem of her sweater and tugs it right over her head.
It hits the floor somewhere behind me. Adopting the pace of a literal tortoise, my gaze decides to savour every bit of skin that it’s been blessed with: the indents of her waist, the swell of her perfect breasts, and then those pebbled nipples, darker than the soft brown of her skin.
This must be what it feels like, that urge to get down on your knees and pray. Bare is the evidence of her need for me, and it drags worship back to the forefront of my mind. My brain short circuits, and my palm is replacing hers before my neurons have even sent the command.
They fit into my hold too easily, too warm. With my thumb trailing over one peak, Francesca makes a soft, “ Ah ”, and I’m done for. I press again just to hear that sound, mentally recording it so I can play it inside my skull until I’ve breathed my last.
“Eric, more ,” she begs, and I’m a slave to her every want. I roll the bud between two fingers, thinking how something this perfect could be surrendering to me, of all people.