Page 85 of The Court of Venus

“She knew of your torment?”

“Oh, yes. We were just children, but she was in love with me. I took it for granted. Because when she stepped into the throne room mere weeks ago, she didn’t desire me anymore. She even drew a knife on me. So you see my predicament?”

“No,” I said, and he laughed into my neck. “You had grown accustomed to something and didn’t have it anymore, and that irritated you?”

“I’m usually far more articulate than this,” he muttered under his breath. “Now that we were older, the frustration I felt for her changed entirely. I saw she was clever and determined, and far more deserving of being Prospero’s apprentice than I ever was. When I couldn’t sleep at night, her beauty soothed me.” Mouth against the shell of my ear, he let the gates of his mind slide open, and I could feel his hope and his terror, and wave upon wave of lust. “I’ve tried to tell her how I wanted her. I wasn’t subtle. Yet no matter what I said or how I looked at her, she brushed me aside.”

“Perhaps,” I murmured, my breath hitching, “since she’s known you since childhood, she’s unsure of your intentions?”

“My intentions are certainly immoral.”

“She must have observed many of your flirtations. Your eye, accustomed to wandering. Perhaps that may have confused her?”

His lips skimmed my jaw. “It has wandered nowhere else since I saw her again. I was only trying to draw a mouse out of hiding.” A low groan. “I didn’t know what else to do. She wasn’t in bed when I woke.”

My eyes closed as our cheeks slid against one another, our mouths an inch apart. “Now,” he breathed. “She’s hiding still.”

I gritted my teeth. Slowly shook my head. “She’s not.”

He shuddered as he rested his mouth on my collarbone. “Yes,” he said against my skin. “She is. Marguerite proved it.” His breath was hot and sweet with wine. One of his hands drew small circles over my hip, and he knew what he was doing to my breasts, to the slickness growing between my legs, as he pressed himself against me. His tone frayed. “Why? Do you know, Mary?”

In what was only a matter of seconds but felt like a sweep of hours, I warred with myself. I saw Hal. What would he think of this? Would he see us, entwined together, and feel as if we’d been the ones to kill him?

I’d seen Roland in so many pairs of arms, and I’d seen his eyes dancing over whoever he wanted that particular night. What would that feel like—all that intensity, focused on me? What would it feel like if I let myself have him, just for a moment? If I cast off my guilt, cast off my terror of losing someone else I cared for?

Slowly, my disguise unraveled. Roland ran his thumb over my lip, and he watched, tenderly, as my features returned. We stared at each other, breathing hard. He was here, and so was I. He was still alive, and so was I. We were both in so much pain, and we lived despite it.

We did not meet gently. Both of us were desperate—for lips, necks, jaws, anything we could reach. My hands plunged into his hair. I had sworn not to be a common beast when it came to him, but what were swears said in the daylight compared to the ones he made now, whispered under his breath—the ones I drew from him? He muttered something about my competitiveness, tipping my head back so he could lick up my throat. I moaned as he slowly traced the seam of my lips with his tongue, as he murmured, “Not yet, not yet,” and then, finally, his tongue swept in to meet mine. My eyes rolled back into my head. He kissed with creativity and passion, with subtle, deft movements.

He suddenly pulled back, lips hovering over mine. “Do you like this, Bianca?”

He had every proof—the sounds I made, the wetness between my thighs, the magic that told him exactly what pleasured me most. Yet he still wanted to hear me say it.

Instead, I asked, “Who is Bianca?”

A nip at my earlobe. “Mouse, do you?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Yes? What was it again? Darling?” He kissed the right side of my mouth. “Sweetheart?” The left. “Oswyn?”

I bared my neck to him, waiting, trembling from waiting, his thumb swiping across my lips, parting them. He finally lunged forward, and we sighed into each other’s mouths. He pinned me to the wall, the kisses lingering and starved, until I made a wretched sound and rolled my hips and he broke away to drag his mouth back to my ear. “Let me take you to bed,” he whispered. “Let me fuck you before I die.”

His head fell. Dragging kisses along the ridge of my breasts, he begged to have me, please. My eyes shot open to witness it—his mouth, forming such words.

Instead, I saw Marguerite.

She loomed over his shoulder, the candlelight flickering across her spectacular face, her eyes shining with malice. That look was punishing. I had fought against my guilt, wrestled with it, but I knew it would be there always, for the rest of my life. Guilt was my shadow—a friend to grief.

“Roland,” I managed. “Roland, stop. I must speak with you.”

He raised his head. His pink hair was disturbed by my hands, his lips swollen and bruised by my teeth. He overflowed with lust. “But why must we speak?” he asked, smiling at me in a way that ignited my entire body.

I took a deep breath to clear my head, then twisted out of his arms.

He caught my hip. “Mouse, what did I do?”

“Nothing. It is only that I think you should find someone else. Take Marguerite’s lady to bed. She will be far less trouble for you.”