“I said it was okay with me for you to negotiate the election, not for you to spend the night alone. I came to stay with my wife.”
I chuckle. “Okay, but good luck fitting into this tiny bed with me.”
“Oh, I’ll fit, little bird, even if I need to slide inside you to do so.” He removes Dawnbreaker and then the rest of his clothing. Cool shadows wrap around my body, and my inner darkness seems torespond, my shadows fitting inside his. Somehow, we both end up in the small space, me mostly on top of him and propped up by the wall. It’s tight but not uncomfortable.
He trails his hand down my spine and cups my ass. I throw one sleepy leg over his hips and straddle him, feeling the hard length of him pressed against my center. Lazily, he squeezes my upper thigh. “Are you tired, little bird?”
“Not tired enough to say no to this.” I kiss along the underside of his jaw, feeling warm and loose and as if nothing exists in the world other than the heat of his body beneath me. He lifts me, and with a swift angle of his hips, slides into me, drawing a deep breath as we join. I interlace my fingers with his on either side of his head as we start to move. Our lips brush. Deeper. He sweeps his tongue into my mouth, the rhythm of our bodies moving against each other in the way of well-practiced lovers.
This lovemaking is soft, gentle, a tangling of souls in the night, a pinpoint of light in an otherwise eternal darkness. The wagon rocks with us as we crescendo, coming together, climaxing in unison as if everything we are is one and this mating is an orchestrated dance for the gods. Holy. Sacred. Soul-bound.
When it’s finished, we curl onto our sides, his bigger body wrapped around mine. “The future King and Queen of Stygarde make cracking use of dog-sized bed,” I say in my best news reporter voice.
“We don’t know that,” he whispers. “Depending on how this all goes down, we may have no titles at all. We may become renegades very happy to make use of any bed that’s above ground.”
He means, we’ll be lucky to be alive. “Well, you didonce say you’d be happy to build a home for us in the wilds of Dimhollow. I’m sure the witches would be amenable to that plan if we survive.”
He burrows his face into my hair and whispers, “I don’t care where it is. Wherever you are is home.”
I drift off, feeling exactly the same way.
28
Sacrilege
Damien
At moonrise, I wake to a knock on the wagon door. I open my eyes to find myself nose to nose with my mate, our bodies tangled in a ridiculous pretzel of interlocking limbs and mingled breath.
What a life I’ve given Eloise. Far from royal accommodations, this bed is a joke. It’s a torture chamber. By some miracle, though, her face is serene. My queen seems perfectly happy and perfectly unconscious, a glittering thread of saliva running from the corner of her mouth to the mattress, the tips of her fangs poking white from beneath her full upper lip.
Another knock and I shift into shadow, dress quickly, and open the door. Jaqual waits on the other side, frowning in obvious disappointment when he sees me. “Don’t look so disappointed, Jaqual. I understand that Eloise is the more appealing of the two of us, but it is both of us who are pursuing this arrangement with you.”
He snorts. “Actually, that wince you saw was because I’ll have to smudge the wagon with burning sage after you’re gone. This is a maiden’s wagon, Damien. In our culture, masculine energy isn’t allowed inside. Had I known you were coming, I would have put you both in a family wagon.” He runs a hand through his long, loose curls.
“Oh. Sorry.” I step outside, looking back at the violet door with some amount of guilt. Maggie said something about the prohibition of men and women sleeping under the same roof, but I assumed it was because the characters we were playing weren’t married. I didn’t know the wagons had rules.
Eloise appears in the door, dressed and somehow looking as put together as if she’d had a lady’s maid helping her. “I heard through the wall that we committed a faux pas,” she says. “Allow me to add my apology to Damien’s.”
Jaqual sighs. “I’m sure, to you, the restriction seems arbitrary or even legalistic. But to us, the practice is spiritual. Wagons, in my culture, signify freedom and purity of spirit. We build each wagon by hand, infusing it with masculine, feminine, or duovine energy.”
“Duovine?” Eloise asks.
Color stains Jaqual’s cheeks. “Something else…like me.” He places a hand on his chest. “Parents build wagons for their children during their teen years, and that wagon is as sacred as their soul. They’re taught to keep it well tended, and we only consecrate a wagon for a family after marriage, at which point, the couple chooses one wagon to expand to a suitable larger size.”
Eloise raises an eyebrow. “Your people don’t, um, gettogether before marriage?” She hooks her fingers together.
I had the same question, but I’m glad she asked it, because I’m sure I’ve embarrassed myself enough in front of Jaqual today.
But the Rivertoad king only laughs. “Oh no. Rivertoads celebrate pleasure in all its forms. They simply do it outside their wagons.” He gestures toward the woods. “A maiden only invites a maninsideher wagon if they are betrothed.”
“But we are married and Eloise invited me inside, so we’ve not offended the wagon,” I proclaim.
Jaqual closes his eyes and releases a pained breath. “You are not Rivertoads. This wagon belonged to the daughter of one of our families, a young girl named Elsabar. Elsabar died at the age of fourteen, making this forever a maiden’s wagon. No one lives in it because we keep it as a remembrance in her honor. That is why it was available for Eloise.”
I glance up at my mate, who now has a hand clasped over her mouth, no doubt remembering how we defiled the maiden’s bed last night.
“I’ll smudge the wagon myself,” Eloise says. “I swear I will remove every trace of masculine energy, Jaqual, if I have to magic this sucker apart and put it back together myself. I’m so sorry.”
