I slid off the chair, on my hands and knees, crawling to her. “You’re the most graceful woman I’ve ever known. I’ve never had the pleasure of watching a Goddess sip soup draped in a sheet from my bed.” I trailed a hand under the silk and up her leg, revealing her skin and kissing the top of her knee. “You know,” I said, lifting her leg by the ankle and laying it across my back, “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of watching a Goddess eat while she herself is…” I kissed the bite mark on her thigh, pulling a sigh from her lips. “Consumed.”
I found her center with my tongue and the spoon dropped with a clatter into the bowl before her hands dragged through my hair. She gasped and I lifted her other leg across my back, pulling her to the edge of the seat.
Between the kisses, the sucking on her clit, and my fingers pulsing inside her, she still managed to speak. “I’m going to be there, you know,” she panted between sharp inhales of breath. “I’ll not be parted from you for it.”
I growled against her inner thigh, nipping at her wound. She squeaked, laughing as I kissed over her belly, pulling away the rest of the sheet to reveal the body I’d been busy worshiping for months. “You’re not going.”
She grabbed my face, kissing me hard, all that desire from the bite, her fever, and my mouth, wild between us. She had my cock firmly in her grasp, lining herself up on the edge of the seat, guiding me inside. Her teeth pulled at my bottom lip with my first thrust deep within her. I moaned in relief, knowing Iwouldn’t last long this round. She pulled at my shoulders and I picked her up, pressing her body against the stone wall as I moved inside her.
“Yes, I am,” she panted, her nails digging into the back of my neck as she pulled on my ear with her lips. “Yes. I. Am.”
CHAPTER 41
Reshina
All three ofus stood in the silent snowfall at the foot of Marianna’s grave. Fourteen red roses laid in the snow, marking the years since her death and the beginning of Arthur’s curse as the Beast.
Piffle sniffled into a handkerchief, and I wondered if it was for Marianna or Arthur that he mourned. It was the Beast there beside me, not the man I knew, but the monster brought from the Veil. I slid my hand across the Beast’s claws at his side, holding them there, giving my presence, and giving what I could.
We didn’t say a thing. By then, there was no need to. No words of mourning. No hopeful comfort in the passing of the woman Arthur had respected as his mother, but never truly loved. The Beast took a deep breath, releasing it into the frozen air, leaving a cloud in its wake.
Arthur and I had continued to argue about my presence at his mother’s memorial, but a Goddess was a Goddess and when we wanted something, we were sure to have it.
The three of us stayed for an hour. My thoughts drifted to what it must have been like for Arthur, watching the rasping sickness take his mother and inevitably take his life away from him.
It wasn’t any wonder he had begged me to stab a knife through his chest all those weeks—he’d had nothing to hope for. But he hadn’t mentioned it in months, and I hadn’t even begun to look for another way to leave. I leaned my head against the Beast’s arm and he shifted slightly. He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t bite me—not now, not at the moment that mattered so dearly to Arthur.
When the hour was up and Piffle and I walked silently back inside, Arthur joined us a few minutes later, shifting from Beast to man as he came down the stairwell. I took him into my arms where we sank to the steps, and I held his head at my chest as he silently wept.
The soft scratchof the pen was what woke him. I was busy writing notes in the margins of what looked like his most prized possession by the condition of it.Cursed Goddess of the Veillay flat before me, the spine cracked, the pages thumbed through so many times, they stood on end of their own accord, stiff with a few small tears.
This edition had a pale blue cloth cover, frayed at the edges and corners. It was small, something that could easily fit inside a pocket, and when I’d discovered it in his bedside drawer, I’d almost laughed aloud to see myself there.
Here was the part of me Arthur had known for years. It was the book that led us to this point where I was naked in his bed with three leftover bite marks from the Beast within him.
The moment I discovered his treasure, I’d begun reading the book, fascinated by his notes in the spaces between the pages and along the margins. He’d annotated many—the most I’d seen in any of his books. By the time I got to the heart of the story, I’dgrabbed his fancy pen that held ink inside the barrel and had begun to add my own notes.
I knew he wouldn’t be angry about it. He consistently left me his favorite books after seven months of being his captive—asking me to add to his annotations and then return them to him.
I finished my last note, eyeing him as he stirred, his beautiful hands searching across the bed beside him. I scooted closer, cleared my throat, and began to read. “It was on that morning that I had come to understand change. She is a vile thing, yet you cannot stop her. Not a root from digging through the soil, not a flower from budding before it blooms. So I did nothing the day he left me but recognize the change. I accepted it and kept on living. My life was not his to break, nor was his mine. Once two lovers, we were then nothing but the past tense of the word. And though we shared a child, we did not share what was important at that time to him. An undying, everlasting love for each other.”
I lowered the book, crawling to him and sliding my legs around his torso. “You’ve written something here in the margins. Do you remember what you said?”
Arthur nodded, sliding his hands along my bare thighs and speaking low. “I would not have left her.”
I mirrored his nod. “I would not have left her.” I snapped the book shut, tossing it to the side, boxing him in beneath me with my arms. “Have you always loved me?”
“Yes,” he breathed. “And no.”
I raised a brow.
“Yes, I’ve always loved you. Your story. How you’ve woven your words in here.” He tapped his chest. “But I did not love you then as I love you now.”
“Arthur.” My voice cracked and I froze, unable to do anything but listen.
“I loved you then, but I did not know the look of you. The way you hold yourself.” His eyes narrowed and he shook hishead. “The steps you take in this realm and the one above as if you’ve lived it all. As if this world belongs to you, not you to it, and your poise, Reshina. I am transfixed by the mere sight of you walking towards me.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but his hand was there, covering my words. “The way you taste. I loved you then, but I did not know the sweetness on your skin or the luscious warmth of your blood. And the way you feel beneath my hands, so supple. So soft.”
