Chapter 36
Gwendolynne
He throws me on the bed—actually throws me onto the bed—and stands over me, looking like some sort of shirtless Greek god.
His hair is all mussed up from where my fingers have tangled through it, his pupils are dilated, the defined ridges of his abs bracketed by the sharp edges of his narrow hips.
Molten heat pools deep in my core; at the same time, my heart is hammering, beating against my ribs.
I lick my lips, suddenly nervous. Yes, I wanted this—I mean, I’d practically begged him for it.
But now we’re in my room, with the Hello Kitty bedspread that I’ve had since I was eight, and this all feels too risky.
I can’t afford to lose my head, to forget that only days ago Harrisford had been chatting up some nurse from the London General Magical Hospital.
And while he might find it easy to change his lovers as often as he changes his sheets, I know from past experience that it’s not at all how I function.
I’m strictly a one-boyfriend-at-a-time type girl, and I tend to fall too hard, too fast.
And I’m pretty sure that if I let Harrisford Briggs get too far inside my head, then I’m in very real danger of losing my heart.
“Are you sure you want this?” I’m embarrassed by how breathy I sound. “Don’t you want to go back to Lucy?”
He frowns, confused. “Who’s Lucy?” Before I can answer, he’s already crawling up the bed, caging me in with his warmth and his weight, the full length of his body pressing me down into the bed.
Grabbing my face again, he pulls me to him, and we’re kissing again—frantically, frenetically—all muffled moans and jagged breaths.
He breaks contact for a second, then starts to kiss down my neck and chest, stopping briefly to close his mouth around my nipple, right through my thin cotton T-shirt. I cry out, my body bowing off the bed, as he continues to make his way farther down.
I’m already panting, writhing under the overwhelming intensity of his touch. “Do you want me to…take off my shirt?”
He raises himself up on an elbow for a moment, staring at the cheesy Twilight cast photo emblazoned across my rapidly rising and falling chest. Then he shoots me a small half grin. “No. Keep it on. I think judgy Carlisle will help keep me in check.”
I scramble up onto my elbows and glare at him indignantly. “You said you didn’t know Twilight!”
His grin only spreads wider, and good god his smile is perfect. “I never said that, Gwendolynne.”
I shiver. Whenever he says my name, it almost rolls across his tongue, as though he’s savoring an exceptionally fine whiskey.
Dropping back onto the pillow, I try to get out of my head.
To let the whirlwind of sensations—Harrisford’s hands on my hips, his lips on my skin, the tongue he’s now running up one of my bare legs—take over.
He kisses up my calf, my knee, pushing up my T-shirt until it bunches at my waist, and then I remember, too late, what he’s going to find when he reaches my thigh—
“Gwendolynne.” This time, my name doesn’t sound sensual. It sounds…choked. He skims his thumb across the labyrinth of old scars marring my inner thighs. “What is this?”
I scrunch my eyes shut, wishing I’d never come in here. Wishing I’d never allowed him in my bedroom, in my bed…Wishing I’d never allowed him to come into my parents’ flat at all. I’m sure he’s slept with dozens of women who aren’t permanently disfigured between their legs.
Everything inside me seizes up, and I snap at him. “You’re so fucking ignorant, Briggs.” But the words lack bite. I sound almost…fatalistic.
My eyes are still closed, so I don’t see him move, but I feel him shift a little so that he’s looking at my face. “What do you mean?” His tone is unexpectedly gentle.
“How do you think I’ve survived all these years?” Tears are starting to prick at my inner eyelids, and I clench my jaw, willing them to go away. “How do you think I’ve managed to…afford…all the fucking magic I needed to get through vet school?”
“I—I don’t understand.”
My eyelids spring open, and fuck, now there really are tears, and I really don’t want to cry while Harrisford Briggs is lying between my ugly, spread-eagled legs.
I try to wriggle out from under him and clamp my thighs shut, but he’s got one of my knees secured against the bed, his thumb still caressing circles across my skin.
“It’s a rationing spell.” I don’t even know why I’m bothering to explain.
“It’s the only way I can make the little bits of magic I can afford to buy last the entire year.
It takes blood, Briggs. Without a familiar, I can’t channel magic from the Void, so unless I ration it with the spell, it runs out too quickly.
And performing the spell means I have to sacrifice some of my qì—my life force—just to have enough.
” I release a deep, tremulous sob, and shake my head.
“It’s okay. I understand. You can leave if you want.
” You don’t need to stay with a mess like me, I want to add.
You can go back to pretty, perfect, scarless Lucy.
But he makes no move to leave. Instead, he runs the tip of his index finger—gently, so gently—along the fresh cut I’d made right before he’d arrived.
And when I finally realize what he’s doing, why there’s a sensation of warmth spreading languidly along the wound, more tears spill from my eyes and run down my face onto the pillow.
He’s…He’s healing me. He’s fucking healing me. In a way I never bother to do myself because I can never spare the magic.
And where his finger goes, his lips soon follow, kissing me softly along the just-healed cut until he’s dangerously close to the edge of my knickers.
“Gwendolynne.” Resting his cheek on my inner thigh for a moment, he closes his eyes, just briefly. “Gwendolynne.”
It’s like he can’t get enough of my name. His voice is so soft, it makes me weep harder. He looks up at me, blue-and-brown gaze penetrating. “Why are you crying?”
I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t really know how to explain that the cutting started out as a necessity, but now it’s also something like…security. So instead I just sob out, “Because I’m hideous.”
“Gwendolynne,” he says, murmuring my name for the third time in just as many minutes. He shakes his head. “You’re not hideous.” He plants another kiss, gently, on my scars. “You’re perfect.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, willing my tears to stop. This scene is a fantasy that’s played on loop in my head for ages—and here I am ruining it by sniveling like a baby.
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes. You are. See?” He bends his head and drops another kiss on my other, equally scarred thigh. “This is perfect.”
He shifts a little, kissing me softly on my lower belly. “And this…is perfect.”
I squirm, my eyes squeezed shut, the stillness only fractured by my broken breaths.
“And this?” Harrisford whispers, running his lips gently across my underwear until his mouth is positioned right at the apex of my thighs. I feel the scorching heat of his breath as he leans down and kisses me—right there. “Perfect.” It sounds like a prayer. A confession.
A…question.
All I can manage in response is “Please…” I breathe the word out on an exhale.
And with that, Harrisford reaches up, and I lift my hips reflexively as he eases my already sodden underwear down and down, until they’re completely off.
Throwing them to one side, he settles himself back between my legs, his large hands wrapped around each of my thighs.
“I think, Gwendolynne,” he says, his voice dropping low. “That perhaps you need a distraction.”
“What…sort of distraction?”
He looks at me very seriously. “I’m going to make you come, now.”
A small whimper escapes from my lips. I’ve never had a man tell me that, so simply and directly…and it’s hot.
I’m a failure. A disappointment. My whole life is falling apart. But this?
Yes—this is exactly the sort of distraction I need.
“You seem…very confident about that.” I’m speaking with bravado, but with the way he’s looking at me, I’m already teetering right on the edge. Every inch of my skin is thrumming with unspent need, and I’m weak and shivery, mere putty beneath his hands.
He gives a low chuckle and says, his voice rough, “It’s a challenge I’m willing to accept.” And then he lowers his head again, and gives me a long and languorous lick.
I react instantly, my legs clamping around his ears.
Any residual rational thoughts I might’ve had are immediately chased from my brain.
I’m writhing, moaning, twisting my hands through his hair to keep him pinned in place; he keeps going, relentless, even as my body does its best to buck him off.
At some point, he lets go of my thigh and pushes a finger inside me, quickly followed by a second.
And the sensation—of his mouth on me, his fingers in me—is so overwhelming, the pleasure so heated, that I immediately go over the edge, screaming out his name.
He continues working on me as I come, riding me through my release, and it’s only when I’m sated, legs shivering with the aftershocks, that he crawls back up my body and kisses me deeply. I can taste myself on his tongue, and it nearly makes me come apart once more.
“Say it again,” he says huskily, his lips grazing the curve of my ear. His breath fans my skin, and I shiver.
I’m still panting. “Say what?”
“My name, Gwendolynne.” He nips me on the earlobe. “Say my name.”
I wind my arms around his shoulders, letting out a little moan as he sucks on my neck. “Harrisford,” I breathe out, wrapping my legs around his waist. “Harrisford. Harrisford. Harrisford.”
He shudders and kisses his way back up my throat until our lips find each other again. This time, when we kiss, it’s no longer feverish—it’s tender, like the sweetest-tasting honey; like the warmth of a setting sun; like the first scent of spring dissolving a frozen winter.
He called me perfect. He called me perfect. My heart is full to bursting, and as I kiss him back, I realize, in half a heartbeat: I am truly, deeply in trouble.
Because how many other women has he said those exact same words to?
“Harrisford,” I whisper. My tone has changed sufficiently that it’s enough for him to pull back slightly and give me a quizzical look. “This is just a…onetime thing, isn’t it? Just for tonight.”
He stills for a moment, gazing at me, one hand still twined in my hair. Then he gives the most minuscule of nods. “Sure,” he says, lowering his mouth to my neck. “Just tonight.”
I let out a sigh, relieved. This is just a transient moment; just something to purge him from my system.
The kiss at the gala…was just an appetizer.
This, what we just did, was a full and satisfying meal.
And I should be satisfied—how many times have I imagined him joining me in this very bed?
How many times have I come on my own, clenching around my own fingers that I desperately wished were his?
Perhaps now, since the real-life Harrisford has given me what is arguably the best orgasm of my life, I can finally put to rest the ridiculous thoughts I’ve been having about him and our nonexistent future.
We have no future, Harrisford and me. In just over a week, he’ll be graduating first at Seamere, and I’ll be nothing but a vet school dropout.
And we’ll go our separate ways, and never see each other again, and he can bed as many nurses named Lucy as he wants without having to bear witness to my jealousy.
Perhaps, if I can’t graduate, I can devote my life to figuring out the cause of the surges—and stop them. Harrisford can have his illustrious Ministry career, while I’ll just carry on quietly in the background, trying to save the world.
I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed Harrisford had moved, easing himself behind me.
Both of his arms are wrapped around my waist, his nose and lips buried in my hair, my backside nestled snugly against the still-present evidence of his arousal.
I give my butt an experimental wiggle, and his grip tightens.
“Chan,” he growls warningly, his voice low at my ear. “Go to sleep.”
I stop moving, deep, bone-rending fatigue making my limbs all heavy. I’m sated, I’m spent, and Harrisford’s warmth is surrounding me, enveloping me like a cocoon…Yet somewhere deep in my chest, the tiniest crack appears, all empty and hollow inside.
The tears are back. I close my eyes, my heart fracturing, all too aware that now—post-orgasm—Harrisford and I are no longer on a first-name basis.
When I wake, sunlight is already streaming through the window, and Harrisford is gone…because of course he is. I curl up into a ball, my body going cold, the absence of his touch conspicuous.
Yes, I’ve been trying to convince myself that Harrisford Briggs means nothing to me. That after one night of mind-blowing oral sex, I’d be satisfied enough not to miss him. But I know now: I’ve been fooling myself.
I’m such a fucking loser.
It takes me a long time to roll over and face the empty space in the bed beside me, the rumpled bedsheets that still smell faintly like his cologne. But when I finally do, there’s a slip of parchment neatly folded upon his pillow. Could it be…a note? From Harrisford?
My heart is racing as I unfold it with stiff, shaky fingers. The paper is heavy, almost as thick as cardboard.
It’s not a note. The words on it are printed, not handwritten, except for a messily scrawled XX in the lower right-hand corner. And there’s an address listed for somewhere in London.
I squint at it harder, my bleary, swollen eyes struggling to focus on the words, until finally, finally, my brain registers what I’m seeing.
License for a Familiar, the card reads.
Then, on the next line: For Lord Percival the Second.