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Many found her wanting for looks. She had no admirers outside of crown chasers. In short, the people were ignorant. I wanted to pull this female from the roots, expose her for the goddess, warrior, and ruler she truly was.
When the princess didn’t restrain herself, she still moved with a clunky lack of rhythm, but her awful coordination hardly mattered. For the dancing made her happy, and that happiness made her the brightest fucking thing in this garden.
Enthralling woman.
Hypnotized jester.
Me, the renowned trickster who terrified and seduced everyone. Me, who got hypnotized by no one.
Wicked hell. One more twist of her hips, and I’d be scooping my tongue off the floor. To say nothing of how my cock would react, for the cursed appendage couldn’t be trusted in Briar’s presence. Really, Cadence should have counted herself lucky I didn’t veer her into one of the hedges, so thoroughly did that Royal of Autumn enthrall me.
Eliot’s playing tripped as his head swung from me to her. It happened merely for a single note, but shit. I needed to be more careful. Enduring his crestfallen face as I’d made my feelings clear had been an awkward torment for us both. Having my attention linger on others would reopen the wound.
Yet. Still. Her.
Damn her. Now she had me thinking in fragments instead of prose. I drew the line there. My voice would not be tampered with. She’d already compromised the infamous regions below my waist by encouraging me to fondle the filmy, wet trimmings under the dress.
Fuck almighty. Such a pleasant surprise, this princess. Briar’s limbs had yielded open like the pages of a spicy novel, her flesh had sweltered under my touch, and her thighs had fallen wider. That divine reality had driven me to the brink.
My hand had continued to move like a troublemaker, inevitable where she was concerned. My touch had ascended that lovely thigh toward the pleat between them. And there, an enthralling heat had pumped from under the skirt, from inside the slot of her rather short drawers, which barely covered her ass. I’d almost swallowed my tongue, to say nothing of the damage this did to my cock.
The precious fabric concealing her pussy had been soft, thin, rippable. My fingers had all but itched to slip through the gap, to dip into the slickness hiding there, to fill her cunt to my knuckles. I still tingled with the urge to fit them inside her. It had been agony, wanting to pump between the walls of her pussy, to see how resilient her moans were, to feel her squeezing me. She would have had to work diligently, fighting to be quiet whilst coming hard around my fingers.
I would have done her moans justice, were it not for our companions. How I had wanted to throw them out of the labyrinth at that moment.
After dancing, the ladies begged me for an exclusive diversion. Scarcely recovering from the princess, I stumbled through a lukewarm string of verse, in which I projected them as characters, to their whooping delight.
Flushed from the moonlit cast and a healthy dose of rebellion, Her Highness clapped for me. As I bowed, I slanted my head and thanked her with a fiendish grin. Oh, but I loved what that did to her applause, how my attention and unspoken thoughts snagged on her wrists like a rope, causing her hands to falter.
The route to the castle proved tamer, the end of an era as we traveled a path back to ranks and precedents. We filtered through the tunnel and mounted the stairway. Vale and Posy whispered sweet nothings to each other, Eliot conversed with the princess whilst maintaining a formal front, and Cadence suctioned herself to my side.
“The evening is young,” she cooed. “And so are we.”
“Are we, now?” I inquired but added nothing more.
I’d been in her room before. She hoped for an encore.
The princess’s bated breath rustled from behind. She had overheard Cadence proposition me.
True, I needed to work off the tension—or for someone to release the tension with a few substantial tugs or a mouthful. Indeed, I might have accepted the lady’s offer of a tongue lashing. It would have sent a lucid message to Autumn, reminding her of our agreement.
I might have if Eliot weren’t there.
And if there was another reason I intended to decline Cadence’s offer, I’d rather not dwell on it. And if that reason had to do with a certain redhead to whom no one could compare, who I couldn’t evict from my head, and whose skin I craved like a drug, I certainly wasn’t in the mood to analyze it.
Thereupon, I prepared an excuse about needing my beauty sleep, but the guards newly stationed outside the hidden shaft spared me the chore. My hand gripped the wall as their voices drifted through the crack. I held my free palm behind me to the halt the group, who clammed up, freezing like deer caught in the scope of a crossbow. By angling my head and listening to the guards’ banter, I estimated them to be around the corner.
An eclectic band led by the Court Jester wouldn’t usually ruffle feathers—if it weren’t for two things. One, only certain areas of this fortress were open for all-nighters, most of which didn’t include the gardens. Two, a certain member of this group wore a crown.
I didn’t have to turn to know Briar’s eyes bulged from their sockets. Ladies-in-waiting were acceptable company but not the minstrel, and especially not the Court Jester. It would seem more suspect now that she’d spent four nights and three days—ample time to get acquainted—in the woods with me. That meant Basil and Fatima would submit us to a tedious interrogation, which would drag on for at least an hour. Thereafter, Briar’s pristine reputation would walk a tightrope.
A fool’s work was never done. I hand-signaled to my companions. I would distract the watch whilst they crept back to their chambers.
I sauntered into the hall, my appearance startling the night watch, which included a woman and the same guard who’d summoned me the morning after I first met Briar. The pair jolted around, clasping the hilts of their swords.
“Evening, sweetings,” I charmed, gesturing to their armor. “You didn’t have to get dressed up for me.”
It worked. With a bit of subtle pleasantries, I got them to turn their backs on my companions, who spilled out from behind the panel. One by one, the small group detached themselves from the black slash of shadow and skulked down the corridor.
