Chapter 46 #2
At least she could overthink things in comfort, Vera thought as she pushed through the entry.
The camp set by Naiam put the finest glamping to shame.
Lavish rugs carpeted the floor from one end to the other beneath furnishings as fine as any inn could offer.
The bed (and it was a bed, not a cot, with a frame and ornately carved wooden headboard) only took a fraction of the space.
There was a sitting area with wide-armed chairs and even a fireplace (did the tent have a chimney?
She’d have to check in the morning), a desk like back in Camelot—and both hers and Arthur’s bags had been neatly piled by an armoire made from the same cherry oak as the bed’s headboard.
Arthur’s bags. Damn. Whoever delivered them hadn’t gotten the memo that the king and queen kept separate quarters. Vera sighed as she hefted his two saddlebags over her shoulders, partly glad for a reason to go to him, partly dreading another perfectly friendly and all-business encounter.
When she turned around, Arthur was already standing in her entry, framed in the light of the orb.
“Looking for these?” she said, with a cheeriness she didn’t feel. Arthur hurried to her side, taking the bags from her shoulders. Warmth rushed through Vera when he set the bags down rather than leaving immediately.
She seized the opening. “Would you like to sit for a minute?” Vera gestured awkwardly to the sitting area.
Arthur smiled. “I’d love to sit.”
He took the chair across from her, resting his elbows on his knees as Lancelot had done last night. It was funny to know them both so well now. One didn’t bear any resemblance to the other, but they were so similar in mannerisms, kin in a hundred tiny ways.
“How are you?” he asked.
She exhaled a laugh. “I don’t know where to start. Thank God for Gawain.”
Arthur nodded emphatically, his face serious. “Without him, I’m afraid you would have gone ahead with the memory procedure.” He smiled fleetingly and seemed to take an interest in the rug between his feet. “I’m glad it’s not on your shoulders anymore, and we can get you back home soon.”
“Oh,” Vera said. “Right. Yes, that’s good.” Her throat tightened. She willed her chin not to quiver as tears threatened from the back of her eyes.
“I should go … let you enjoy your evening how you wish.” He stood and collected his bags. His words were perfectly cordial, but Vera felt the meaning. Arthur meant Tristan.
“Stop,” she said before he’d made it more than a step. “I don’t—” Her voice caught and broke.
Arthur settled back into his seat and leaned toward her. “What’s wrong?”
Vera shook her head, questing for what to say, for how to cover this moment.
A strange clarity took her. Arthur saw it and sat up straight, bracing himself.
The stone mask slid into place across his features.
Her tears cleared from her throat, and she began speaking before she had a chance to think better of it.
“I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want Tristan. I want you, and it is driving me mad that you can be not fifty feet away and believe that I’m fucking him and be—” she gestured frantically at him, “and be fine with it!”
He listened to her, keeping his eyes trained on her and his face unreadable, barely moving a muscle. She had to watch closely to see his chest rise with his breath.
“Is that what you think?” Arthur asked in a whisper.
Vera nodded.
“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. A tear found the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek. She flinched toward brushing it away or trying to hide it but stopped herself.
Arthur rose and pivoted away from Vera, his hand rubbing hard over his mouth. He turned back to her abruptly, and his face had transformed. No longer were his features the pool of calm. His face grew dark, clouded with an intensity of rage and passion.
“I am not fine with it,” he growled. “I did not sleep the night I thought you might be with him. I paced the room, and it took every ounce of control within me not to burn all that kept me from you to the ground.
“And the next day, I smiled at him when I wanted to rip his throat out for even daring to think of being with you. I promised never to trap you, but I’m a selfish fool, and I cannot let you go.”
Arthur knelt in front of Vera and pinned her forearms to the chair’s arms with his hands. “I want you with every breath that enters my body. I want—”
He stopped, tilting his chin down. Vera turned her arms underneath his hands so that her palms faced upward and clasped his wrists.
“Tell me,” she whispered, hope igniting a spark in the depths of her belly that she hadn’t dared to let herself entertain.
There was fire in his eyes. “I want to untie your dress without pulling my hands away when they touch your skin. I want to rip your gown from your body without looking away. I want to hold you without pretending to be asleep. I want,” he paused and leaned closer, his eyes boring into her, “to please you and to hear your pleasure on your lips. I want to take you right now and throw you on that bed and make love to you until the sun rises.”
Vera’s insides leapt, though she hardly had a thought to spare for her elation.
It all crushed together in a swell of desire.
She freed one of her hands, sliding her fingers up his arm and further along his neck into his hair, delighting in how the bit of curl at its ends twisted around her fingertips.
He closed his eyes at her touch and turned to catch her palm with his lips.
This kiss sent a ripple through Vera’s body.
“Why don’t you?” she asked.
It nicked the tension enough for Arthur to exhale a laugh which, on his features, burning with passion, made him look so young.
“We’ve made it this far and kept your mind intact.
I won’t risk that.” Arthur slid his hands to her waist, dropping his forehead into Vera’s lap.
Her fingers roved back into his hair, massaging his scalp as she pulled him tighter to her legs.
She could just barely feel his hot breath on her thigh through her skirt and swallowed to keep herself from sighing with pleasure. It was Arthur whose sigh emerged as more of a moan. He lifted his head. “Though don’t misunderstand me, Vera. I want to. Very badly.”
A bell chimed from Vera’s tent door. She and Arthur’s eyes both snapped in that direction. She hadn’t realized the tents had doorbells. Who could possibly be coming at this time of—
“Oh. Shit,” Vera said as she remembered the plans they’d made. “It’s Tristan.”
Arthur dropped back onto his heels, creating space between himself and Vera. His eyes flicked from the doorway to her. “It doesn’t matter, and it’s not important,” he said. “And I have no right to ask—”
“I didn’t sleep with him,” Vera said, and she knew from the way he had to work to suppress his relieved smile that she’d correctly assumed what the question would be. “I’ll … tell him to go, shall I?” She squirmed free from her chair to go to the entry.
“No,” Arthur said from behind her. “I’d like to speak to him.”
She glanced back. Vera recognized that blasé tone. She pursed her lips as she held the tent flap back for Tristan to duck inside. He greeted her warmly with a squeeze of her elbow. His head flinched back slightly as he raised an eyebrow. “Were you running? You look flushed.”
Vera must have blushed three shades of red.
“Erm, no.” She glanced at Arthur, who, she realized, matched her appearance with his hair mussed and eyes alight.
Tristan followed Vera’s gaze and had the decency to look embarrassed as he took a quick step away from her.
He wanted to be anywhere except for in this tent right now.
Tristan stared down at the ground. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll—”
“Tristan,” Arthur cut in. He crossed the tent to stand next to Vera. “You’re a good knight. And I need you to go back to Camelot at once.”
Vera and Tristan both gaped at Arthur.
“Sire?” he said.
“I need a trustworthy messenger to ride fast ahead of us and bring word that we’re coming,” Arthur said. Vera released a relieved breath. But then he continued. “But truthfully, it’s because you haven’t done anything wrong, and I might kill you.”
Tristan’s eyes went wide.
“You’re in love with my wife, and you actively want to bed her,” he said with a calm that somehow made it that much more alarming. “So I might end up killing you if you stay.”
Vera’s eyes darted back and forth between Arthur and Tristan in silent shock. She should not find this hot, but she absolutely did.
Tristan retreated another step. “Your Majesty—”
Arthur stopped him with a raised hand. “There’s no need. And we won’t speak of it again.”
Tristan opened and closed his mouth twice before looking at Arthur as if he’d spent the whole time interpreting a language he barely knew and only just understood. Arthur nodded curtly.
Tristan bowed, avoided Vera’s eye, and left quickly.
“Arthur,” she said, letting her mouth hang slack with a laugh barely contained.
His dangerous calm slipped into a sheepish grin. “Would you like to get ready for bed?” he asked.
“I would,” she said, butterflies exploding in her chest. She turned to let him untie the laces of her dress.
“It seems like it’s the body memory of our intimacy that’s been a trigger for whatever curse is on you,” Arthur mused as he worked his fingers through the laces.
He didn’t pull away when he got to the base of her back.
He slipped his hand between the fabric and her skin, wiggling his fingers around her torso to loosen the bodice, and bent his head low, so close to her neck that his breath raised goosebumps down her spine.
He kissed her neck, dragging the inside of his lip across her skin.
Vera closed her eyes and tilted her head back.
“What if there was something your body can’t remember?” he whispered in her ear.
She shivered as a warm ache of need awoke between her thighs. Vera looked at Arthur over her shoulder.
His eyes glowed with hunger. “There is one thing we never did.”
Vera could have cried out as he slid his hands off the skin at her middle, but Arthur took her hand and led her to sit on the edge of the bed.
For the second time tonight, he knelt in front of her.
This time, he lay a hand on each of her ankles and slowly ran them up the length of Vera’s legs, pushing her skirt up until all of it gathered above her waist. Having helped her change out of gowns countless times, it was no surprise to Arthur that she wore knickers.
He made eye contact with Vera and asked the question without breathing a word. She nodded.
Arthur hooked his fingers beneath the elastic waistband and pulled them down in a fluid motion. He took Vera’s hips and pulled her with ease, dragging her closer to the edge of the bed.
Her heart thundered, eager but trembling in her vulnerability. Arthur kissed her knee as he slid one hand into hers and held it tightly. With his mouth, he traced the line of the muscle up her thigh, working slower the closer he came to the top. Vera’s head dropped back.
He paused just shy, the scruff of his chin biting at the tender skin of Vera’s upper thigh. “Shall I stop?”
“No.” She’d barely said the word before his lips plunged onto her, and she fell back onto her elbows with a moan.
Arthur released her hand and held her thighs apart as his tongue dipped inside Vera. Her back arched, pulsing her hips toward him, her mind going blissfully blank as everything save for this disappeared from existence. His lips closed around Vera’s most tender point, and she yelped.
“Is this all right?” Arthur asked, pausing only long enough to utter the phrase.
“A little more pressure,” Vera managed to gasp, anxious he might mistake her direction for displeasure.
But he obliged. “Like this?”
Vera reeled backward. “Yes,” she gasped.
Reality narrowed to only this bed, her body writhing and Arthur’s mouth exploring her.
Vera’s muscles tightened with the building ecstasy.
Her elbows gave out beneath her, and she gripped the blankets in clenched fists as the sensation pulsed at her base, building until even sound dulled in her ears, and the frenzy peaked in the most sensational pinnacle of physical joy. All her tensed muscles released.
“Oh my God,” she panted, covering her face with her hand. Arthur climbed up to lay next to her and kissed her hand. She rolled onto her side to face him, ready to reciprocate, tracing her fingers down his torso, finding the ties of his waistband—but he caught her fingers.
“No,” he said. “It’s not a transaction.” He kissed her softly on the lips, and Vera’s every insecurity melted away.
They fell asleep, enfolded together in bliss. She heard the ethereal words; this time, they were the drumbeat of her dreams through the whole night. One perfect and quiet night.