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I forget my questions as soon as she settles her sweet ass on my thigh as though sitting on my lap is the most natural thing in the world for her to do. She leans back against my chest and wing, trailing her teasing touch up the inside of my other leg.
Perhaps my obsession with her has made me insane, and I’m imagining all this. If so, please let me keep dreaming.
“If you had trusted me to make my own decisions,” she says, “instead of taking that power away, I could’ve told you that I’ve already made my choice. I don’t need a crown to know who I want. I only need it to hold my position here with Jace…”
I die inside. She tears out my heart while it’s still stone. Hell, she might as well shatter me now.
“You know, for such a smart gargoyle, you can be so stupid sometimes.”
Great, she insults me on top of not choosing me. The women in the paperbacks didn’t bother to pour salt in the wound once they left the man. Or to refuse him while he’s powerless to leave for the rest of her rejection.
Not that it matters now. A queen’s choice of mates is her divinely-gifted right, and it’s my duty to defer to her decision.
She lets out a deep sigh, the kind she gives when her body’s relaxed after I’ve made her come. No, I can’t think about the pure passion on her face when she orgasms. I need to forget all that instead of dwelling on the missed opportunities when she’d begged me to take her as she was out of her mind with pleasure.
It’s better this way. I can put aside my one-sided feelings and concentrate on securing her throne for Jace’s sake.
“Except if you’d had any faith in me as your queen,” she says, “you would’ve accepted my choice of mates.”
Mates. Did she say mates as in more than one? I want to ask her, to watch her lips move as she says the word, but I’m useless while frozen in this form.
Rosemarie slides her fingers up my thigh to press the flat of her hand against my dick.
Fuck.
I tear myself apart inside trying to move. My people-pleasing queen can’t know how excruciating her touch is when I can’t respond. Yet she simply twists her mouth into a wicked, naughty smirk that tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. She rubs, and the screaming in my head takes over—a battle cry of a warrior ready to conquer realms. Conquering a queen might be a more insidious, harrowing way to go.
Magic finally ripples across my muscles, and I snatch her into my arms. “Oh, little queen, you will pay for that torture. I should punish you right now as payback.”
Her dark gaze gleams. “What kind of punishment?”
Grabbing her chin, I tip her face up to mine. “The kind that puts you on your knees, my queen, to kneel before me in a reminder of who would really be in control in our bed. As I have been those blessed nights while Jace and I brought you to climax again and again until your body couldn’t take another. We’d stretch you out for punishment and pleasure on the stone floor between our bedrooms, in the great hall, on the stairs.” I tighten my grip on her waist, pressing her soft breasts against me. “On your throne. Here on this roof.”
Her dark pupils swallow her gaze. My woman wants that—all of that.
“Yes,” she whispers and pushes against my hold, grabbing the waist of my pants and kneeling as if she’ll play the servant to me. Gods, the visual of her plump lips wrapped around my cock sends lightning bolts through my veins and has my shadow magic shooting in every direction. She licks her lips, and I groan, lost in the fantasy.
I snap back to the present. “But not tonight.”
“No?” Her voice comes out breathy, hot and tempting, and I can only imagine how her warm, wet mouth would feel sucking me down.
Forcing myself to muster all my discipline and control, I push aside the filthy fantasies. “Later.” A growl slips from me, and her shiver rewards me. My little queen likes when I take charge of our time together, and what she wants, she’ll get.
All of it.
All of me.
Pulling her into my arms, I stand. Hudyakis remains on his perch. The soul guardian has the decency to sweep a feathered wing over his eyes and pretend he hasn’t been watching. The little perv.
“What’s coming is not for you,” I tell him. “I’ll guard her soul this night.” Even as I corrupt the rest of her in ways that we can only begin in the next few hours. Acting out all the dirty things I’ve wanted to do to Rosemarie will take decades, centuries.
She nuzzles my neck, licking the warrior’s ink there, and I rush to carry her downstairs to my bedroom. This first time, she deserves a bed. I want to see her splayed over my sheets, in my space, naked with her gorgeous black hair spilling across the white—a chessboard of hedonistic dreams come to life, ready for me to make my move and play her body like a sinful grandmaster.
“Hurry, Atticus,” she whispers against my throat. “I need you.”
“Not until we’re behind a closed and locked door,” I tell her, going faster. If the stairs and hallway below stretched wider, I’d unfurl my wings and fly.
She whimpers a protest.
