Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The village reeked of wood smoke, sweat, and ale. Mud slicked the narrow stone paths between the soldiers’ quarters, half-frozen in the chill dusk air. The clamor of laughter, tankards clanking, and celebratory boasts echoed around her. Raveena moved through it all like a blade slicing silk.
Men caught sight of her and looked away. Some bowed low, others stiffened with the reflex of discipline. None met her gaze. None dared speak.
She wore no crown tonight. No ceremonial robes. Only a deep plum cloak lined in sable and a simple gown that clung to her hips and moved like shadow. Still, she was unmistakably a queen. The queen.
Queen Raveena didn’t spare the men a glance.
She found Corwin tucked into the crook of a stone archway, lips deep in a kiss with a wide-eyed noble girl who looked young enough to still believe in ballads. The girl gasped at Raveena’s approach. She scrambled to smooth her skirts and disappeared into the background like a frightened rabbit.
“Where is he?”
Corwin cleared his throat. He reached for his tankard with one hand and jerked his thumb with the other toward the far end of the hall. “Last door on the right.”
Raveena didn’t thank him. She strode to the closed wooden door. Without bothering to knock, she pushed it open.
Graham stood inside, shirtless, the fire low in the hearth behind him. He was angled toward a small mirror, dabbing at the dark bloom spreading across his jawline. Her fingers twitched at her sides at the sight of the bruise.
He didn’t look surprised to see her. Just glanced up. Then went back to examining the damage like she wasn’t even there.
Raveena crossed the room in two strides. She snatched the cloth from his hand, tossed it away, and pressed her fingers to his jaw.
Graham caught her wrist before she could apply the healing spell. “I’ll keep my bruises, thank you.”
“Fool,” she hissed.
He didn’t deny it. “I gave you what you wanted. Your prince bested your beast. That should make him worthy of you.”
Raveena curled her fingers into the palms of her hands.
"That is what you wanted, isn't it, Your Majesty?"
Graham's bruise was starting to darken. Rich violet spread like spilled ink beneath his skin. She grabbed another cloth from a side table, dipped it in the bowl of water, and pressed it gently to the swelling, dabbing instead of healing.
He let her. But his words didn’t stop.
“Or is that if he marries Snow, the whole realm will see the truth? That the prince and princess are weak. While the true queen and the wolf stand cast aside… yet still stronger than either of them. Is that what you want, Ray?”
Her gaze caught his. Ice blue met coal black. And there it was again—that mind she loved. That brutal logic. That ability to think two, three, four moves ahead. Raveena had thought she played the game best. But Graham had seen the board more clearly; her wolf had lost the fight to win the war.
“I’ll have my reward now,” he said, voice low, eyes locked to hers.
Not a question. Not a request. A claim. And gods, she wanted to be claimed.
"You didn't win," she said.
"Didn't I?"
Graham’s eyes burned into hers—dark, sure, unrelenting. For a breathless second, Raveena wondered if he would speak again. Demand more, demand everything.
Instead, he kissed her.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn't even a claiming. Because she was already his. No, this kiss was an assertion. A period at the end of a declarative statement.
Graham's mouth crushed against hers with a hunger so fierce it felt like flame erupting through her chest. Raveena gasped into it, then melted.
She pressed back, matching his fire with ice of her own.
She tangled her fingers in his hair, dragged him closer, opened her mouth, and devoured him like she had been dying of thirst for the last three years.
Because she had.
Every night without him had been airless, dry, aching. Every kiss before him had tasted like ash. But this—This was everything.
She pulled him deeper, angling her mouth to take more, to taste him fully, as if she could swallow his breath and fuse him back into her skin.
Graham let her ravage him—let her be greedy, wild, reckless—and then he gave it right back.
Teeth, tongue, lips—his kiss was savage and merciless and utterly him.
He gripped her waist, turned, and shoved her back. The mattress caught her.
She bounced. Her hair fanned around her face. Her lips parted from the kiss that hadn’t ended so much as detonated.
Raveena gasped—and then smiled. That slow, dangerous smile she only gave him. Because Graham knew. He knew how to touch her, how to push her. How to take all the cold iron she wore like armor and heat it.
She’d trusted no one—not with her body, not with her crown, not with her soul.
Except him.
Because he knew what she needed.
To hurt. Just a little.
Not to be punished. But to feel. For a woman born of winter and crowned in frost, pain was the only thing sharp enough to pierce the numbness.
Her legs fell open in invitation, gown tangled at her thighs. She met his gaze with fire licking at the edges of her smile.
“Take me,” she said, voice rough with breath and need.
"You're nowhere near wet enough for me. Fix that. Now."
She knew what he wanted. She reached under her dress and hooked her thumbs in the band of her panties. She didn't give him a show, didn't pull them down slow and seductively. Raveena was too impatient to get her prize.
She ripped the panties off. Discarded the fabric onto the floor. Then she touched herself.
Around and around her index and middle finger went. Circling her clit. Tugging at her labials. Dipping into the center of her sex.
She didn't need finesse to make herself come. She just needed his gaze on her. The command in his eyes was enough to push her over the edge. Raveena came in under five minutes.
"Good girl. Do it again."
She whimpered, but she didn't argue. She knew her Graham. He would not be moved until he was satisfied. And he was a big boy. It was a fair point that she needed to be good and wet when he took her.
"If you add your tongue, I'll be ready faster."
"Did I ask for your opinion, Ray? Get those lazy fingers back to work. If I take you now, I'll hurt you."
"I want it to hurt a little."
Graham cupped the big tent in his pants. "It'll hurt a lot."
She grinned, throwing her head back as she pumped her fingers in and out of herself as rough as she could make it.
It wasn't rough enough. "I've been using my fingers for three years, pretending they were yours.
But they're not thick enough. Not blunt enough.
There are no calluses. Just the thought of you crooking your index finger is enough to get me off.
I'd be sitting on my throne, with my court assembled around me, and I'd imagine I'd see you in the shadows of the halls, beckoning me with that finger, and I'd have to press my thighs to—ah! "
The rough hands she had been dreaming about grabbed her thighs. Graham turned her over. Her front bounced once on the mattress. The palm of his hand came to her back and pressed her roughly into the bedding. Her dress was rucked up, her ass exposed to him.
Raveena heard the rustle of fabric. She felt the heat of his thick cock against her ass cheeks. If he took her in her rear entrance without any preparation, that would surely hurt. But she'd take it. She'd take him any way she could get him.
Graham didn't press his cock into her ass. He spread her core apart, aimed for her entrance, and struck true.
They both cried out as he bottomed out inside her.
He'd been right. She wasn't wet enough for him.
The burn was so good Raveena pressed her fists into the mattress to raise her ass higher, to press herself back and get more of him into her.
He could never be deep enough. She had him where she wanted him, where he belonged, buried inside her so deep that she couldn't tell where he ended and she began.
His hand went around her throat. Those calluses pressed into her neck, constricting her air supply.
"Tell me you're mine," he growled.
"Yours," she gasped. "Always." She tried to inhale but barely got a whisper of air. Still, she managed. "Forever."
Graham roared in her ear as they both came.
Raveena's intimate muscles clamped down on him as he poured his seed into her womb.
When she returned to her rooms later, she would take no tinctures to avoid the possibility of what might come from their coupling.
Before she passed out from the pleasure and the lack of oxygen, she prayed to the God Mothers that his seed would take root.