“No.”
She exhaled, her voice steadier when she went on. “I want to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
Jane arranged her expression into thoughtful determination. “I want Varian out of the staff and away from the Hall.”
Reagan assented, the corner of his mouth jolting. “Of course. You don’t need to ask me that now. You have the power to simply decide. But”—he held her gaze—“he will be out of our lives after the next Audience, if you can wait a few more days. When I bury him for good.”
Her interest sparked at that, a flush painting her smooth neck pink. “Are you telling me what your plans are?”
He tipped her chin upward and leaned down to nip at her throat. “I keep no more secrets from you, Jane love.” She hummed, pressing herself into his side. “Men like Varian hide their tracks well, and they can easily manipulate corrupt courts, like Ashenagth’s.” Reagan felt his rage surface and pressed his face into her neck. “They are difficult to detain. And as long as he is considered a possible heir of Mountheim, he will remain a threat. So I have been keeping a cool head and thinking of a way for him not to be considered at all.”
He felt rather than saw her smile.
“Varian understands power, understands Lordship, but he doesn’t understand our principles. Or rather, he disagrees with them. He believes he knows what it means to rule, but he has never walked the tightrope.”
Jane pulled back with a wholly changed expression, as if she understood where he was going with this. It was far too easy to forget his scum of a cousin when she slid off the couch and settled on her knees between his legs.
“Keep going, My Lord,” she murmured in the husky tone he liked so much, her hands roaming over his chest and abdomen.
Reagan tried to recover the train of thought. “He shared his ideas with me in one staff meeting, and I want everyone to hear him. With a little encouragement, his damning will be…” She leaned down and pressed her mouth over the bulge in his drawers. “Hard.”
“Hard?”
His breath deepened. “Inevitable,” he corrected.
“What will be?”
But he forgot what he was talking about when her fingers warmed and curled inside his waistband.
“The…” he started, noticing Jane’s concentration. Before he could ask, his drawers vanished.
He didn’t have the time to praise the successful spell. Jane’s fingers closed around the base of his already-hard cock.
“Curses,” he groaned, his head falling back.
“Maybe I can find it in myself,” she murmured, stroking him slowly, her warm breath driving him to madness, “to wait until the next Audience.”
Maybe she realised he didn’t have a working wit anymore, because she closed her mouth around his shaft.
Reagan hissed out a breath. His cock pulsed. She looked up under heavy lashes, sucking gently. His hands curled into fists.
Jane’s hair fell like a curtain over her face. He gathered the curls in his grip so he could watch her, watch her cheeks fill and hollow. She washis. He could scarcely believe it.
Reagan wanted a proper bed, wanted her flat on her back with all the time in the world to claim her, to ruin her. But he caught the faint light of a familiar waiting beneath the door.
Jane’s pink mouth worked him. His familiar surged through his mind, racing through gravel and branches in search of the reddish-brown bird. Reagan wrapped his fingers tight over hers, groaning at her grip on his cock, feeling the built-up need rise until he grunted hard and came.
Chapter 46
Jane
The bath was a cold plunge straight into my worries again, and unfortunately Reagan was not in it.
Cerridwen had summoned him to review pleas for the next Audience, which he told me was nothing more than code for her chiding him about Varian’s sudden involvement.
I told him to just tell her his plan already, as any sensible lord would tell his advisor, but Reagan told me we would all see soon enough.
