Chapter 20 Thessia #2
It nearly stripped her raw. Thess. Like in his carriage. More memories, rending her soul with miserable, unbearable need.
“I thought when we made our arrangement, I would be content with never knowing,” she went on. Every word was a step over sharp
crystals, but the queen of Mythria kept going. This conversation was its own quest, its own perilous journey to something
Thessia could only begin to imagine. “But now . . .” she said, staring right into Hugh’s glorious dark eyes. “Now I know what
I’m losing.”
She wanted to reach out. She wanted to touch him. She wanted. But she would not surrender to wanton impulses. She needed him to know she meant everything she said.
“You said you don’t pursue physical relationships because you know you cannot give all of yourself,” she went on. “Well, there’s
no danger of me asking for all of you, is there?”
His free hand rose to her elbow. Then rose higher, until he was caressing her arm. Something strained his gentle grip. Sympathy
warring with want. “It wouldn’t make this easier,” he said.
“No.” Thessia shook her head, not giving up. “Not easier. But we don’t always do things because they’re easier.”
She stepped closer to him, his hand still on her.
“We do them because they’re worth doing. Because one night can be . . . everything. Even if we’re like doomed players in a
Chestlewitt play.”
The reference made Hugh smile his same sad smile.
Then his gaze met hers. Thessia watched the moment something in him changed.
His smile turned subtler, more slyly determined.
This was the dauntless, world-ready Hugh Mavaris she knew.
The man she was—oh, fuck it, why deny it—falling for, deeply.
Irrevocably, she feared. Even if he didn’t feel the same for her, even if he never could.
He wanted her. That was enough. That was something to hold on to forever.
“One night,” he repeated in a low rumble.
Thessia nodded.
Hugh’s eyes dropped, then raked up her body on the way back to her face. Her waiting mouth.
Thessia practically shivered, for she no longer just felt want. She felt wanted. It lit her up like magic.
“Best make the most of it, then,” Hugh said.
When Thessia threw herself at him, he caught her. He lifted her easily, pulling them close, consuming her with kisses.
“I thought,” Hugh said when their lips parted for a fragile moment, “you said you didn’t like being carried.”
Thessia grinned into his mouth, remembering her foolish, futile words on their ship of passage.
“I liked it too much,” she confessed. “Even then.”
In wordless reply, Hugh tossed her onto the bed, then followed, climbing slowly up her body, trailing his nose up every one
of her curves.
He kissed her passionately, hard, on the mouth. Now his caresses didn’t fill only her with music. Now they were a duet.
Hugh clasped her thigh, pulling her knee upward while he clenched her ass. She plunged her hand down, feeling the hard length
of him through the fabric of his pants. He moaned. She sighed into his mouth.
When she grabbed his hand, relocating it exactly where she wanted under her skirts, Hugh didn’t miss a note. With the finesse
she remembered from his fingers on his harp, he delved into her with perfect dexterous intensity.
Gasping, Thessia started to undress him.
She felt like a queen often. Until now, she’d never felt like a woman who had everything.
As she ripped off his shirt, Hugh returned the favor, peeling off her skirts, her corset, her underclothes, until she lay
naked beneath him.
Exposed under his gaze, she felt as if her skin were pure moonlight. She heard sounds she hardly recognized, sobs of joy,
waiting in her throat. Waiting for him.
His eyes roved over her like he was starving.
“Please,” he managed, “permit me a moment just to look at you. It’s been . . . years since I—”
Thessia sat up, shocked. Had he not been with a woman since Zaralie died? “I—didn’t know,” she said, fumbling for the right
words. “I know you haven’t loved since her, but I figured you had . . . other desires.”
His eyes rose from her body to meet her gaze. Their intensity silenced every concern, indeed every thought in her head, entirely.
The insistent rhythm of the pounding of her heart filled her ears.
“Not like this, Thess,” he said quietly. “Nothing like this.”
Nothing like this.
Nothing like this.
“With you, I—I feel like I’m out of my mind sometimes with how much I want you,” he confessed. The words conjured deep, powerful
magic in Thessia. Hugh hesitated, then spoke gently. “Have you ever . . . ?”
Thessia nodded. “Only fumbling one-night stands with visiting royals. Nothing that ever satisfied me,” she said honestly.
When Hugh’s expression flickered, she looked at him more keenly. “Does it bother you I’ve been with others? I suppose you
probably assumed—”
His laughter made her cheeks heat, but she knew not entirely why. Was it more embarrassing if he thought her too experienced
or not experienced enough? Why was nothing ever uncomplicated?
“Ghosts no,” Hugh replied. “I just hope I live up to expectations. Satisfying a queen is tough work.”
The tension left Thessia immediately. The rush—relief combined with sweet prelude—emboldened her. She rose to her knees to
kiss him deeply, pressing her breasts into the hard plane of his chest, feeling the thrill in her stomach when her nipples
met his unyielding musculature.
“Is it?” she whispered when she withdrew from the kiss. “I think satisfying royalty is fairly easy.”
She lowered her lips to his neck and reached down slowly to grasp the length of him. He bowed his head with a shuddering exhale.
“Simply,” Thessia instructed, “do as I say.”
She felt Hugh’s smirk. “You’d like to give me orders?”
“Only if you’d like to follow them,” she replied.
Slowly, teasingly, he drew his hands up to her breasts, sparking rough pleasure in her with his calloused fingertips. His
eyes were dark with desire. “I’m your willing subject, my queen,” he promised.
It was everything—everything—Thessia wanted.
She wordlessly directed him to lie beneath her, repositioning them so she was on top. Straddling him, she sank down onto him
so slowly that Hugh’s breath escaped in a moan that sounded like a hum. Desire shot through her. Whether from his gift or
simply from the sound itself, she would never know.
With Hugh deep inside her, she moved slowly, finding their new rhythm, pleasure mounting in her. Hugh’s hands roamed over
her incessantly like he was desperate to experience every part of her. Heroically, he held out until she’d found her crescendo,
then lost himself within her.
In the darkness, everything vanished into the echo, the consuming embrace of their one night, ringing in her ears like whole
symphonies of shattering joy.
When Thessia woke, he was gone.
Fighting the tears in her throat, Thessia reminded herself she knew this was coming. As with her sham marriage to Hugh, she
knew the terms. She knew what one night would mean. It meant tomorrow would come without mercy.
On her pillowcase was a folded parchment. Opening the scrap, she found Hugh’s handwriting.
You will always be the song of my heart I cannot sing.
Tears filled her eyes. Was it possible he felt more than desire for her? She would never know for certain, she supposed. Clamping
her quivering lips together, Thessia held the note close, memorizing every facet of Hugh’s handwriting. She knew she could
not add the note to her box of keepsakes for fear of discovery, which would dash her entire plan and doom Galwell’s life.
She went to her fireplace, waving her hand over a rune in the wall to conjure purple flames. When they leapt to life, she
tossed the note in, then quenched the fire when Hugh’s words were nothing but ashes.
Miserable, she continued into the bathing chambers. She checked on Benjamin, who did somewhat manage to ease her heartache.
He’d consumed three of the flowers and was presently making vigorous work on the fourth. When Thessia opened her palm, he
readily scooted on. She found herself smiling, starting to understand why Ario cherished the gastropod’s silent, slimy company.
It was then, incidentally, that the queen realized something was very wrong.
Benjamin.
Why was the snail here in the royal palace? Why had Ario not requested him?
Even if he were injured—which he couldn’t be—he would not forget his snail. If the prince were merely “recovering slowly,”
like the guards had reassured her, he would have demanded his pet immediately.
Unless he truly could not.
Cold possibilities presented themselves in the shadow of her reasoning. Was Ario dead, too? Had the mimic assassin, or whoever sent him, somehow managed to finish off the job? Were the royal family covering
up the killings of their princes to maintain some semblance of strength? Or was he safe in the Pale Palace but cut off from
the world? A poet silenced.
Thessia needed to know. If Ario was in danger, or worse, she needed to find him. For her own struggling heart, for Vestriya,
and for Benjamin the snail.