Page 78 of Of Monsters Of Kings

He roared, and the sound squeezed my mind. I embraced the sensation, relishing that I’d made him come undone so completely. He’d been unable to resist the end.

I grinned at the bed frame where he couldn’t glimpse it.

Schooling the enjoyment on my face first, I draped the black sheet around me and stood beside the bed as footsteps pounded toward us. King See must be a mess. He was slickened with his own pleasure, and he’d wanted it. Doing that to him had felt fantastic. I’d never experienced more power over another, and I better understood his point of view from that night on his landing. Perhaps his vice would become my own in time because I only felt awe that he’d stopped himself from doing the same to me.

“My liege,” said a frantic Has Been. “What has happened?”

A silence fell that somehow managed to say everything.

The three princes gaped at their king, who was covered in his own fluid, and then glanced at me clad as an empress in a dark toga.

I padded to the doorway. “To think that you might have done this to me that night, sir. I might have been happy with the outcome. We shall never know. I am not such a new monster this dusk, and now you are defiled.”

“I am,” he said hoarsely. “I feel it. I yearn for it again, and so you have done what I could not.”

My smile was twisted, and I wondered if he could guess at how my body ached for him.

“We will not spend another night this way, King See,” I said. “I value your acquaintance too much, and now I perfectly understand what transpired in your tower. There is no unbalance of power, nor the memory of it to get between us.”

“I thank you,” he said sincerely. “But to be most clear, I do not seek acquaintance with you, mistress.”

“No, but that is what you will have.”

“Kings do not get told what they will have.” He rose to his lean and impressive height, but my thoughts were on his unlaced trousers and on wishing I could see what I’d done to him. He was unashamed of his three princes witnessing his state. I coveted his self-confidence very much.

I should try to be more assertive about what I deserved, just like him. “Kings do get told when it comes to me.”

“Has the lady’s phrase always been so articulate and well-rounded?” Is whispered to Has Been.

Neither I nor the king reacted to his bewildered question.

“Be sure that you do not play the game I wish, Perantiqua,” said King See. I could hear the humor in his voice.

“You wished for this?” I gestured at his body.

“I am pleasured and satisfied, while you…” he lowered his voice, “you will think of me until dawn, and then until dusk again. You think of me right now, and so you will touch yourself in the privacy of your room, and you will despise me as you explore for the first time—it will be as if I am present and watching you struggle. As your cheeks flush and your thighs press, you shall remember how I prophesized this in front of my princes. You shall worry about meeting them next for fear they’ll know all you’ve done to yourself. And they will. Through all of those thoughts and worries, you’ll think of me speaking these words, and continue to touch yourself until you find the pleasure I already feel.”

A blush tinged my cheeks. The aching in my body intensified, but I tilted my chin, deigning not to answer.

“That is the game I wished to play.” He walked toward me across the room. “Who is more defiled out of us?”

I couldn’t speak. The sheet around my body had chosen that moment to distract me with its whispering sensations.

“You are not a new monster, but you are a young monster sometimes,” King See said when he was as close as he dared. “Magnificent in every stitch and wonderfully wonderful. Articulate and intriguing, delightful and well-rounded, yet not monster enough to tell a king he is confined to acquaintance. Rid yourself of the notion. We are not meant for such.”

I found my voice again. “I am certainly more ancient this evening, but I will hear what you believe we are meant for, sir.” My heart thumped faster as the words left my uneven lips.

“You feel what we are meant for, Perantiqua. Soon, you will admit it to yourself. But this is what I believe—clinging to the cliff has lost its appeal since you blinded me.”

I frowned. Whatever did he mean? “So you’ll fall to your death?”

“Or fly, mistress. I will fall to my death or fly. And you will fall to your death or fly with me.”

Chapter Eighteen

Things were not Left as before

It only remained they were Right.

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