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Yet it would be effortless for my head to loll back and find relief on his shoulder. To grant him permission like every other admirer, consort, and virgin he’s had.
Poet’s shallow outtakes rustled through my hair, tickling my skull and plying my arms with goosebumps. A hint of his mouth traced my temple, the scant touch a temptation and a threat. With every inflamed second that passed, my resolve slipped another notch.
Tension coiled in the narrow space between us. It radiated from there, a taut pressure on the verge of snapping.
Slowly, he reached around me. Black enameled his fingernails, and one of the bracelets clinging to his wrist bled scarlet into the half-light. The pad of his thumb played across my lips, sketching their shape until my mouth quavered, loosening like a chink.
As my lips parted of their own volition, Poet hummed in approval. “That’s more like it.”
Then he used his fingers to tilt my chin, giving him access to my ear. His mouth idled over the shell, a maneuver that coaxed the fight out of me.
My lungs compressed. I hissed, but the sound came out fractured. “What are you doing?”
“Everything,” the jester husked. “And if you wish, everything I wanted to do to you last night.”
That indecent voice probed the nexus of my thighs, coaxing a mortifying response from my core. A terrible ache bloomed there, my walls clenching. Wetness dripped from me, slick and seeping through my undergarments.
Poet paused and waited for me to decide. When I didn’t pull away, couldn’t pull away, wouldn’t pull away, he did his worst. He palmed my hips, and his tongue flicked the dainty lobe of my ear, dislodging a gasp from my throat.
My lips unhinged, and my head slumped against his shoulder.
The jester toyed with my flesh, tracing the edges and curves with his mouth. Like a brushfire, the upheaval of his lips tingled down my skin, from the roots of my hair to the tips of my fingers and toes.
The ground dissipated. My eyelids fluttered, and my vision rolled backward, and my hysterical heart pounded so hard I thought it might crack through my breast.
Then he sunk his teeth into me. And I sunk my nails into my palms.
Then he bit my lobe. And I bit my lip.
Yet I failed to stifle the barest moan. The noise slipped from my throat and tripped into the air. “This can’t be right,” I heaved. “This can’t be happening.”
Poet dipped his head, his mouth sketching the length of my neck as he intoned, “The mystical corners of this woodland aren’t as vile as you assume. They merely enhance what’s already inside you. Nevertheless, I told you. This meadow is pure.”
So this was real? Was I relieved or disturbed?
It was all I could do not to reach back and cling to him, to ground my backside into his pelvis until he grew hard for me. It required all semblance of willpower not to twist and subdue the jester with my mouth, to vanquish him with the same grievous touches.
He prolonged this torture, his lips thrusting humidity against the crook of my neck. My knees dissolved, so that my limbs threatened to give out.
“We can’t,” I said, the protest barely audible.
“Sweet Thorn,” he whispered. “We both know better. Give this another few seconds, and neither of us will give a fuck.”
“I disagree.”
“The princess disagrees. The woman trapped within doesn’t.”
The cord severed. I broke from the spell, whirled on my heels, and pushed him. “How dare you presume to tell a Royal who she is. I don’t need you to dissect or fix me!”
Poet hadn’t so much as budged from the impact of my hands. “Where to start,” he mused, stepping nearer, our chests bumping. “I’m not talking to a Royal, I’m talking to a woman, for that has a more charming ring to it. I’m not presuming, I’m provoking. And I didn’t say you needed fixing. I’m denying you’re broken to begin with.”
“Fix. Change. It doesn’t matter what you meant!” I leaned into him, pinching my thumb and forefinger together. “What you know isthis muchabout carrying a kingdom, countless lives, and centuries of ancestry on your shoulders.”
“Just to clarify, we were referring to a kiss. You haven’t received word that Autumn is being invaded, correct?”
“Aren’t you the clever one.”
“But enough about me,” he exaggerated. “What I see is a woman with bandages on her leg, not a crown on her head. She defended the jester whom she despises and befriended the child whom society expects her to shackle. She dances in front of mirrors. She cherishes a minstrel. That makes an authentic heart, and that’s what makes a leader.
