CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Charlotte
I’ve never felt anything like his paw caressing my flesh. Decadence such as he provides is something beyond imagination. I’ve been swived by a lout who treated me like a receptacle for his needs, but I’ve never been brushed with a gentle touch.
It’s too much. It’s all too much.
Except, he looks so lost, as if I’ve taken his dreams somehow by demurring. The big, strong demigod has feet of clay when it comes to rejection.
Which only makes me want him more. There’s something about such gentleness, such softness, such acceptance from a dangerous entity, that raises goosebumps across my arms and sends heat to lodge heavy between my legs.
He’s scary and magickal, but the way he gazes at me as if he’s losing something precious fills me with an emotion I can’t possibly name.
I only know it needs to find an outlet in him.
The thought of another man touching me has left me cold since that fateful evening. But a shedu? This shedu?
“My mind must be unhinged,” I murmur, wishing him to turn his head towards me again so I might read his soul in his golden eyes.
“It’s fine, Char.Lot.” He suddenly laughs, but it’s a graceless sound, one edged with self-hatred, the same self-hatred he cautioned me against. “No. Charlotte.” He glances at me from the sides of his eyes.
“I’ve been imagining your name as we would have created it.
However, I read your name on the front of a book.
The letters flow together like a river. Like the way you move, so graceful, like a breeze upon the water. ”
Finally, he looks at me. There’s pity in his eyes. For me. For me, when I just turned him away.
“I don’t understand. Why are you looking at me as you do?”
“I read your words, Charlotte. I’m sorry for what your past has given you.” From around the distant side of him, he draws out my leather journal.
The moment I see it, I want nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die.
The uncomfortable feeling within me spreads.
It feels like an enormous, fat rope is being pulled taut, but at the same time, half of it is spooled in endless disarray, tangled in a messy heap.
I’m tipping towards some yawning chasm, about to fall over the edge if I can’t successfully unravel the line, shut my eyes, and jump.
He's read my confessions. He knows how I yearned for a better life than the one my fate decried. He knows how I sold myself for the price of a dress and a coach ride, and even though I already told him, it’s different to read my words. My soul laid bare.
“How could you?” Tears clog my eyes. From the bliss of thinking I might finally want someone, might finally trust someone, even someone like him, I’m suddenly filled with bitterness and fury. And fear.
I jump to my feet and back away before fleeing the room. I still have Mary. I’m not alone.
But suddenly, she isn’t enough. How do I return to my ordinary life as a second-class person in a second-class gender after being brushed by the paw of a mythological creature? After being gently kissed by him?
Monster. Beast. The words hiss in my mind as I rush to my room and fling myself upon my bed. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone.
I’ve made the library my space over the course of the past years.
With the duke and duchess absent for great stretches of time and Mary preferring watercolors to books, the room has become my escape.
Often, Mary joins me, rather than the other way around, using the desk while I sprawl in a comfortable chair.
Since she can be counted upon to respect my privacy, I never thought to lock my journal within a drawer.
My journal. My dreams. My dashed hopes. How my life proceeded from a promising beginning to end as Mary’s shadow. She’s never made demands, but my position still rankles. And now he understands how I’m merely her servant, even if her friend.
And what of the other entries, the secret ones about how my fingers sometimes release pent-up needs aching low between my thighs?
My head and heart might have been twisted against a union with a man, but my body has always cried for a touch.
Were my words oblique enough so Alad didn’t understand them?
A knock releases me from my thoughts. Quickly, I dash my fingers beneath my eyes, swiping away the inconvenient tears that still flow. “Enter.”
I expect a servant, or even Mary herself, wondering why I’m late to supper. Instead, when the portal opens, Sir Gilead slithers around the frame. He leans against it as he shuts it tight. Even from that distance, the scent of alcohol wafts to me.
“Sir Gilead!” I pop to my feet. “What on earth are you doing here?”
But I know. Of course, I know. His lips might have decried my ruin in public, but his eyes told another tale I should have studied more closely. What a fool I am. What a complete and total fool.
He saunters from the portal to where I stand. Unexpectedly, he strikes. His hand wraps around my waist, drawing me flush against him in one quick motion. I push against his chest, and my back arches away from the lips he nails to the soft spot between my neck and shoulder, to no avail.
“So sweet, Charlotte. The monster didn’t take the full bloom from the rose.” His other hand latches around my breast and squeezes.
My mouth opens to scream. He darts to cover my lips with his, but I evade him.
“Get away from me! Leave right now, or I’ll scream.”
He laughs, mirth deepening the lines around his eyes. “If you do, you’ll be dismissed, for I won’t marry you. And no one would expect me to, Charlotte. You’ve been with a beast, after all. You’re damaged goods.”
My hand moves to his chin. I shove his face away. He grabs my hands in his and backs me against the bedframe. The post digs into my spin.
“Spitfire. You’ll do nicely.”
“Get the hell out of this room,” I swear. “Or I promise you, you’ll be the one ruined.”
“Lady Mary won’t save you, not if she finds us together.
I’ve been pressing my advantage, and she’s been receptive.
I’m going to marry her. And what do you think she’ll think of the woman who tries to steal my honor within the walls of her very home?
Hmm?” He laughs as I stop fighting. “That’s right, darling.
Be nice, and if you’re as good as I think you’re going to be, I’ll set you up in a nice little apartment.
Not in Mayfair, of course, but someone like you shouldn’t be living amongst gentry. ”
He swoops in again, his lips planting against my neck, sucking like a leach. How could I have ever thought him handsome and interesting? He’s just a man, like all men.
Rage, swift and furious, washes through me. If Gilead had happened upon me even a day ago, I probably would have suffered his assault and his assessment of me. But now, Alad’s words circle through my head.
You evaluated the situation, much like a general does on the battlefield, and followed the best path to victory.
Others in your position might have lain down in the gutters to die.
Or taken up thievery. Or murder. Or suicide.
How can you despise the very thing that saved you—the very part of you that I so admire?
I understand now what he meant. If I don’t forgive myself for the choices I made in the past, I’ll allow my future to become a repetition of them.
I’ll think I deserve nothing better, and then I’ll be the thing I most despise, relegated past the fringes of polite Society.
I’ll only become more grasping, not less, as step by step, all that I have, all that I am, is taken from me.
I struggle to lift my skirts, draw back my leg, and knee the baronet in his manhood. He releases me on a strangled cry just as the door between Mary’s rooms and mine flings wide. Alad strides in… and stops.
His nostrils flare. His eyes narrow. His tail swishes from side to side like a whip, beating at the doorframe beside him. For just a moment, his wings begin to unfurl before they snap shut. “What’s going on, Charlotte?”
His growl releases me from the strange stasis I’ve fallen into. With a small cry, I run to him. Burying my face against his chest, I let his fur sop my tears as I sob into his secure hold.
“What did you do?” he growls. I feel the pressure of the words rumble under his hide, like a geyser rushing into eruption.
“I didn’t. I don’t want him. H-he at-tacked me.”
“I meant him.” Alad transforms. One moment, fur brushes my cheek. In the next, I’m pressed against hot, rippled male flesh. When I look up, he’s in his human form. “Frightening enough?” he asks softly.
I nod. I wouldn’t wish to be Sir Gilead now, even against the least of Alad’s forms.
Sir Gilead apparently feels likewise. Though hobbled over, he’s attempting to flee through the hallway door.
Alad moves so fast, he’s wind. He wraps his hand around Gilead’s neck and hoists him into the air before shaking him like a dog shakes prey. “How dare you touch what is mine, you slithering piece of excrement?”
Gilead’s feet cycle in the air, failing to gain purchase. Alad’s arm doesn’t even tremble, though he holds the baronet with one hand. It’s only when the baronet’s boots stop moving that Alad gruffs and tosses the man into a crumpled heap in the corner. Gilead doesn’t move.
“Did you kill him?” I whisper as the pile of clothing and sandy hair remains still.
“I can hear his heartbeat.” Alad turns to me. “Tell me what you wish, Charlotte. He laid hands upon you. It would be my greatest privilege to rid the earth of his vile scent.”
“I swear, I didn’t want him to touch me.” Because it’s more important to me that Alad knows I didn’t want Gilead than whether or not he kills him.
My shedu’s fierce expression gentles. He returns to me and strokes my cheek, his touch soft and comforting. “Given the connection I witnessed between your knee and his i?arum, I assumed as much. I doubt lovemaking has changed so much over the years.”
A small snort leaves me as I swipe my remaining tears away. “No, not so much, I suppose.”