But that is a double-edged sword. Like everything else with him.
I ride him until I cry out. Until he grips my hair and flips me over onto my back, drives us both into oblivion. Then kisses me like I’m made of glass.
He has taken things for me. He has given things to me. He has made my life smaller and larger.
And I’m left wondering what I’ve done to change his.
Chapter Eleven
It goes onlike this. The way that we want each other is almost like torture. The passage of time does nothing to stop it. If he’s with me, he’s inside me, which is why it’s an incredible shock when I start bleeding. My cramps are terrible, and I can’t get out of bed. I would’ve thought that a man working so hard to produce an heir would surely be rewarded with one. Particularly because it seems like even biology wouldn’t dare defy Lucian.
But mine has.
For the first time, a strange new fear winds through me. He chose me to be his bride—well, he allowed me to trade places with my sister—and we never established whether or not I was actually fertile. There are options, I know that, but I don’t know what he considers to be an option.
And yet again, I’m left with the wrenching push and pull of my own desires. In some ways I’m relieved that I’m not pregnant. I can’t imagine being a mother in nine months’ time. I can’t imagine being a mother. It just wasn’t part of my plans, and it’s going to take some time for me to wrap my head around the fact that my whole future is going to be different. Knowing it, and truly being able to imagine it, to accept it, are different things. But I also feel strangely sad. Worried. Anxious. That could also be my hormones.
My PMS tends to take the form of anxiety. It chews at me, makes me want to plan things, set things into motion, something to protect me from the relentless crush of time, and all of the things that I can’t control.
I take breakfast and lunch in bed, and by the afternoon, Lucian comes for me. “Are you quite well?”
I can see the tension on his face. Is he hoping that I have morning sickness?
I’ll spare him the anticipation.
“I’m not pregnant,” I say. “I’m on my period. My cramps are particularly vile today is all.”
Except that’s not all. Because how could it be? He doesn’t say anything; he disappears from the room. Of course. I’m no use to him as long as I’m bleeding. He can’t even get satisfaction, and I’m not carrying his baby.
What a useless wife.
My thoughts are such a dark, grumpy cloud, and unfair besides. He didn’t say any of that.
But I’m in a terrible mood. When he reappears with a tray containing two large pieces of cake—one strawberry, one chocolate—a heating pad tucked underneath his arm, I don’t even know what to say.
He sets the cake on the bed beside me, drags a chair to the side of the bed and places the heating pad on my stomach. I look at him, lower it just slightly to where I need it. “That… Thank you.”
“Have you not realized by now that I’m not a monster?”
He has been content to let everyone else think so. But never me.
Not from the first, and I don’t understand why.
I can’t speak, because I’m afraid I’ll cry, which is a horror I don’t even know how to cope with, because I’m not a crier. Though, I’ve cried more times since coming to this palace than at any other time in recent memory. Twice. Which still isn’t a lot, but is notable.
“I know you aren’t,” I say.
“You’re upset,” he says.
“Yes. I am upset.”
“Why? Is it something that I did?”
“It’s everything,” I say, ready to lash out. Ready to be mean because everything inside of me feels jagged. “I’m not pregnant. And thank God. Because I’m too young to have a baby. But here I am, married to you, expected to have a baby. We never had protected sex, and we have sex all the time. I think that we have sex more than anybody in the whole world. It might actually be a problem.”
His expression remains measured. “Do you find my attentions unwanted?”
I shake my head. “No. Ours is a mutual sickness.”
