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“Because it’s sensuous.” My voice unfurled. “Because it feels good.”
She didn’t seem repulsed, only confused, frustrated as if she couldn’t fathom why such items would be necessary. Days ago, she might have viewed them as tawdry. Now she only appeared baffled by their functionality.
And yet. She licked her lips, a sprinkle of curiosity dashing across her face before she endeavored to conceal it.
The crinkle in her chin relaxed only marginally. “And who else?”
“You want me to recite a list?” I asked. “That will take a while.”
“Surrounded by the court, I cannot tell which of your admirers has shared intimacies with you. They all look at you the same way.”
I stepped nearer. “There’s only one person at this court I want looking at me, Briar. There’s only one stare that matters. There’s only one I care about.”
Her exhalations quickened. “I refuse to be a conquest. You’ve had scores of visitors here.”
“They have their own chambers to welcome me. That’s not to say I’ve bedded anyone since our return, because I haven’t. Believe this: I’ve tried to accept sexual advances of late, to find someone tempting, yet I’ve failed pathetically. You saw me with a man, but my note made it clear I didn’t take up his offer for an exchange of oral pleasantries. Why, you wonder? That’s easy. For the life of me, I can’t stop thinking about you.”
Briar’s throat worked like a pump. My eyes tracked the contortion before trailing back to her face. “I’ve never had anyone else in this room.”
Stunned, she reexamined the space, her eyes tripping across every furnishing. Every pot of color, every textile. Flamboyance be damned, I coveted my privacy. Having this woman here peeled another layer from me. For devil’s sake, I shuffled my feet like an antsy juvenile.
I begged like one, too.
“Stay,” I said, the word raw on my tongue.
Briar shook her head and pleaded, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I lack the strength not to.”
“Poet—”
“I see you. I see your resilience and strength of will. I see your determination and tenacity. I see your desire for control and your longing to dance. I see your integrity and daring, even when every other fool in a packed room fails to. I see it all, and I want it all, for you’ve bewitched me out of my wicked fucking mind.”
“Poet,” she implored. “You mustn’t.”
“What would have happened in the labyrinth if we had been alone?”
The memory surfaced like steam. Her legs opening, inviting me in. My hands inches from her, stroking the slit of her drawers. That dear pussy so close to the tips of my fingers.
Answering my question wasn’t necessary. I already knew.
“You broke my rules,” I said. “Now you’re in my head like a verse and a curse. You’re a plague and a fantasy. You’re there when I’m tossing and turning in bed, twisting the sheets into a heated mess. It’s you who I picture moaning beneath me, above me, in front of me. I’ve pumped my cock to those desires, and I’ll keep doing so until long after you leave this place. I won’t stop until you’ve drained me dry.” The humid words rose from my mouth. “I won’t stop until I’m so lost in your memory, your hand will tingle whilst I come.”
A strangled noise squeezed from Briar’s lips.
“You’re the one targeting me now,” I confessed. “You’re every bitter and euphoric feeling I have. You’re in every word I speak, every move I make. All of it is you. Whatever happens from now on, you will be my ecstasy and my downfall.
“And that face of yours. How I’d like to twist it in a thousand ways, in the ink of this room. My body wants to tear your body apart, to make you sing and sigh, to fill you with incoherent noises.” On a sweetly erotic impulse, I took her hand and kissed the inside of her palm. “Say you want that, as much as I want to give it to you. Either that—” I lifted my head, leaned in, and husked against her trembling mouth, “—or stop me.”
Briar shut her eyes. “This is wrong.”
Because of my son, her minstrel, and the monarchs who reigned over this land. Most of all, every decision I made placed Nicu at the forefront. The more I shared with this Royal, the more she would know about him.
But she already knew the crucial parts. She was steadfast and didn’t look at my son the way others would. She cared about him, committed treason for him with her silence. What we did here wouldn’t change that.
And whilst this may be wrong, when has that ever stopped me?
We weren’t in a forest anymore, where provocative temptations filled its recesses. Even there, with our mouths and bodies going wild in the dirt, the feelings had been stoked long before that.
