Seravyn
“Come to me.”
I’ve replayed Ren’s words over and over, waiting for my moment to slip away from my chambers. The feast ended the moment the last drunken lord stumbled out, the guardsmen locking the palace up tight.
The great hall has been left vacant and silent. But all around, the evidence of a night of folly and debauchery remains. Come morning, it will be cleared away as if it never happened. But there’s still a few hours left before dawn, and no regrets for bad decisions made in folly.
And I rush toward mine.
Ren is waiting.
I walk silently through the long corridor, craving the hot press of his mouth at my throat, the desperation in his voice.
I’m already imagining the library door closing behind me.
The way Ren will look when he sees me. The way his hands will shake, like they did in the garden as he held his fingers to my lips.
When they held me in the alcove, restraint nearly spent.
I turn the corner at the end of the corridor—
And draw to a stop.
The door to the small antechamber is open. The candlelight within flickers, casting shadows onto the stone floor. Sounds echo—a low moaning, gasping—and I’m frozen in place, unable to look away at the scandalous sight.
My heart leaps in my chest. I should turn around right now, walk away. Take the long route through the southern corridor to the north wing. Leave before he sees me…
But some terrible, hedonistic thing in me urges me to step closer, to get a better view. The chamber is lit by two guttering candles. There’s a long oak table in the center of the dim room, and a woman is bent over it.
Her gown is crimson—the same dark crimson as mine.
Cut in the same style, with the same laces that Aldric drew tight.
The high slit of the gown is pushed up to the small of her back.
Her dark hair has been pinned in the same coiled way mine is pinned.
Her face is turned away from me, pressed into the table, and from this angle, in this light, she could be me.
And I know, with a sudden blow to my stomach, she is meant to be me.
Aldric stands behind her, his black doublet parted open.
His breeches are shoved down. His pale hair is wild, his eyes flashing manically, his mouth twisted in a mix of pleasure and something half feral.
He has one hand fisted in the woman’s hair, holding her face down.
His other hand grips her hip as he thrusts inside her in long, slow strokes that make her cry out against the table.
Next to Aldric, a man kneels on the edge of the table beside her.
Lean, dark, his trousers undone, his hand wrapped around himself and stroking.
Aldric’s mouth is on his—open, hungry, kissing him ravenously.
Aldric’s hand leaves the woman’s hip for one second to wrap around the man’s, guiding him closer, and the man moans against Aldric’s mouth.
I can’t move, realization shocking me into place.
Morrishan save me…the dwale.
I realize, as I watch the furious snap of Aldric’s hips, that the dwale I slipped him must have had an adverse effect on him.
The valerian should have slowed his blood, knocked him completely out.
Rather, it’s made him even more brazen, stripping him open.
He’s clearly under its influence, but he’s ruthless in his lust.
The Threnmere herb running through his blood has burned through whatever small civility he held, and what’s left is the man underneath, who wants and wants and wants. And takes.
I stumble a step back. The slipper makes the smallest sound against the stone.
Aldric’s eyes shift—
His gaze locking right onto me.
A menacing flash there in his pale eyes. He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even slow his thrusts. He breaks the kiss with the man and turns his face fully toward me, holding my gaze as he fists the woman’s hair tighter, his hips snapping forward, making the woman cry out into the wood beneath him.
Aldric looks right into my eyes and fucks her harder. A devious grin twists his mouth, as if sending me a promise, a warning for what I will endure from him on our wedding night.
My breath leaves me in a small, broken sound. His mouth twists into a feral grin. He lifts a hand and crooks one finger at me. Beckoning me closer.
I run.
Yet I don’t make it halfway down the corridor when I hear the woman cry out from the chamber, then the fast and hard slap of bare feet on stone.
Aldric gives chase.
Goddess, I’m still in this stupid gown, my laces cinched too tight for me to draw a full breath, and the corridor stretches so long.
“Seravyn—”
His voice is excited, guttural.
“Making me chase you will only ignite my hunger, darling.”
I don’t dare look back. I gather my skirts higher, running for the corner. The corner that leads to the north wing, that leads to the tapestry, that leads to Ren. And I’m almost there—
Aldric’s hand closes around my wrist.
He yanks. Hard. The force of it spins me around, then his strong arm is banding around my waist, lifting my slippered feet from the floor.
His mouth presses to my ear. “Fuck, why’d you have to come down here.”
My back hits the cold stone of the corridor wall hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Aldric’s body slams against mine a half-second later, pinning me, his breath ragged at my neck, his hands now gripping my wrists and dragging them up. He pins my arms above my head against the stone.
“Let me go—” I yank against his iron hold.
“Impossible,” he murmurs into my hair. “There will be no more games between us, my sullen, tasing bride.” His mouth grazes my temple.
“Not when you watched me fuck into her, your eyes aflame with desire, and you forced me to chase you down…and I cannot for the life of me decide which of those two things has me harder.”
His hips cant forward, grinding his solid length against me to prove his point. I can feel him through the layers of silk, pressing into the space between my hips. His breeches are unfastened, slung low on his hips.
When he pulls back a measure, his pupils are blown so wide his eyes look black.
He is all wrong. Something in him is wrong. He’s too brash, too unruly, the careful court mask he wears entirely stripped back, and the thing underneath is untamed, feral.
“Aldric, please—”
“Oh Princess, beg for me.” His smile is cutting. “The gods know how I’ve desired to have you begging beneath me, love.”
He drops his forehead to mine. His hand at my pinned wrist tightens, fingers digging in hard enough that I gasp. “Aldric, you’re hurting me.”
“No, not yet.” His voice drops low, almost tender beneath the abraded caress of it. “But I promise you will enjoy every second when I do.” His chuckle is a dark rumble in his chest, vibrating against mine.
I seal my eyes shut.
Ren is waiting.
The thought hits me with a force that nearly buckles me. Ren is in the library right now, pacing in front of the bookshelves, waiting for me.
And I’m not coming.
“Open your eyes, love,” Aldric commands.
When I refuse him, his hand drops from my wrist. And for a wild, hopeful second I think I’m being released—then his fingers grab my jaw and force my head up.
“Look at me.”
My eyes snap open.
He’s so close. Wine, sweat, the cologne of vetiver and cardamom, and underneath it all something herbal and acrid I recognize with a fresh stab of horror as the dwale.
“You owe me a taste,” he whispers across my lips. “That’s all I want, what you teased me with, Seravyn. Or were you only playing me as an actual fool before?”
I turn my head to the side, internally scolding myself for how I tried to seduce him so I could lace the wine, just to end up right here in his vile grasp.
“I would never mislead you, My Lord.”
“Is that so.” His thumb drags slowly across my lower lip. “You did tell me how curious you are to my talents. So…” His mouth grazes the corner of mine. “Let me sate your curiosity, love.”
“Aldric—”
“Touch yourself for me.” It leaves him in a broken rasp.
My stomach dips. “No.”
“Mm,” he hums. His hand moves from my jaw to my wrist, hauling it down, pressing my hand against my thigh through the high slit of the skirt.
“Yes, my tempting Threnmere girl. Either you show me here, in this corridor with my hand guiding yours, how you like to take your pleasure—” his fingers press mine up against my sex, wrenching a soft sound from me “—or I haul you over my shoulder and take you into that chamber, where I show you how I like to take mine.”
The wall is so cold against my back, and he’s burning against my body. His pupils are so blown.
“All I’m asking for is a taste, Seravyn.”
I’m shaking, and he licks his lips, tightening his hold on my wrist against the wall until I can feel bruises blooming under his grip.
With the smallest surrender of my breath, I let his hand guide mine beneath my skirt, his fingers directing my fingers, moving, swirling over the thin material.
“Fuck,” he murmurs, his eyes squeezing shut. “Spread your legs.” But he doesn’t give me the chance to obey as his bare foot slides between my slippers and forces my feet apart, my thighs opening to him.
My breath hitches.
A small, traitorous sound escapes me.
Aldric groans, a sound of appreciation rumbling from his chest as his fingers guide mine beneath the fabric of my undergarments, and I’m mortified to find how wet I am. The swirl of my finger makes a scandalous sound, and Aldric thrusts his erection against my hip.
“Realms of hell,” he grates out, his voice wrecked. “I can hear how soaking wet you are… Fuck, I’m dying to feel you, to taste you. If you just command me, I’ll fall to my knees for you, Seravyn Morvaine. Take you in my mouth.”
A deep pulse of traitorous heat throbs in my core, my body responding to the sensation as my back arches against the stone wall.
As his hand moves with mine over me, his other has dropped between us. He doesn’t have to strain hard to take himself out, and I can feel him working himself, fast, hard, his knuckles brushing my hip with every stroke.