Page 102 of A Kingdom of Pleasure and Torment

He lifts his head and whispers, “Cenere. My love. My honey flower.”

“Don’t leave me again,” I beg him. “If you love me, you won’t leave me.”

“You’re about to be the queen of this court,” he reminds me. “It’s what you set out to achieve.”

“I set out for revenge,” I remind him. “The crown is an empty bauble now. My purpose…is you.”

His mouth is on mine again, for long, gasping moments that leave us both breathless and staggering. He backs me toward the bed, until I can go no further and we tumble down. Our previously dressed bodies are bare, our skin pressed together everywhere we can touch.

I wonder what he thinks, as his kisses trail down my body. Is he here with me, or revisiting past memories of this bed, with another queen, in another lifetime?

Then, his mouth drags down my stomach, he finds his way to my center, and I don’t think anymore. He knows my body too well, his tongue is far too skilled, even when he is frantic with need. He seeks out my clit, sucks at it and toys with my piercing, two fingers working their way inside me to find the sweet, aching place that intensifies the sensation. I bury my hand in his silky black hair and hold him with my thighs, grinding against his mouth as the pressure builds, builds, then bursts. I come, wailing, my juices slicking down his face as he continues to pump his fingers mercilessly and flicks his tongue over my too-sensitive pearl. I cry out and arch my back, shouting my pleasure again. I am boneless in the wake of my climax, but I somehow push him off me, onto his back, and sit astride his face, leaning forward to grasp his cock and worship the head of it with my tongue.

His moans vibrate through my core as he feasts on me. I take him into my mouth, to the back of my throat, still swirling and sucking. He tenses, strains, and his breath bursts in little puffs against my opening while I slide my cunt back and forth over his face. He grips my hips to stop my squirming, delving his tongue into my sex and drinking from me as if dying of thirst. He lifts up rhythmically, thrusting into my mouth. I’m stunned to realize that I know his body, his responses just as well as he knows mine. He’s so close to coming, salty drops already leaking out to coat my tongue. I maintain the same tempo, the same motion with my tongue, and he pulls his mouth free long enough to cry, “Wait!”

It’s too late. Cum hits the back of my throat, spurt after spurt, as he shouts and groans. I choke on it, cough some from the corners of my mouth, and he pulls out so I can swallow the rest down.

He pushes me off, pins me to the mattress on my stomach, and drives his still hard, still erupting cock into my aching, clenching cunt. He whimpers and curses as he strokes in and out, though he’s the architect of his own torment. He grasps my hips and pulls me back, driving deeper, plunging over and over until I’m shivering from the shocks of pain.

“Harder!” I beg him, and he complies, pummeling me with his thrusts. I slip a hand beneath myself and find my swollen, slippery clit with my fingertips. It takes me but a few heartbeats to bring myself to climax again, just in time for Luthian to give over to another, brutal peak. He grabs a fistful of my hair with one hand, pushes my shoulder to the bed with the other, and stays buried inside me while his cock jerks and bathes my pussy with his cum.

I lay gasping beneath him. It was not the most artful coupling, but it is by far the best I’ve ever had.

“Don’t leave me again,” I beg him. “Never leave me again.”

He kisses my ear. “Never again in our immortal lives.”

I jolt. My life is not immortal, not while Parphia’s curse is still upon me. It may have been an enchantment in her eyes, but to me, it is a cruel sentence. Tears flood my voice so that I cannot respond.

But Luthian senses it and rolls off me. He strokes my back and murmurs, “Cenere. What’s wrong?”

I sniff and shake my head. “I’m not fae. Not yet. And I may never be. The spell can only be removed by Parphia. Firo thought perhaps you could help me, but it feels hopeless. I could have wished for it, but…”

“But what?” he asks. “You could still wish for it.”

“I’m out of wishes. You know that.” I roll onto my back and count them off on my fingers. “I wished for an end to our agreement, and I wished that Kathras would escape.”

“You aren’t out of wishes,” Luthian admits quietly.

I sit up. “What?”

“I never took any of your wishes.” He sits up, too, but he can’t face me. “I helped Kathras escape, and I only said I took the first because I was angry with you. You had three wishes that I paid your mother. She did not wish for a child. She saw taking you into her care as an honor and a blessing, but it did not cost her a wish. You inherited three, Cenere.”

Perhaps, I would have been angry with him for lying if it didn’t mean a solution to removing the spell.

“I have three wishes?” I whisper.

“You have two. You used one to bring me here.” He nods to me. “Wish.”

I rise from the bed and stand before the mirrored wall. I see a thousand Ceneres in the tunnels of the reflections all around me, all of them human. I take them in for the last time.

She is who I have always been, despite the faery beneath the enchantment. She is the human child who ran too fast and fell, cried over a scraped knee. The human child who watched the bumble bees tumbling from flower to flower and chased them, giggling with wonder at the world. These are experiences that no other faery has had. A life no other faery could live.

On the precipice of returning to my true form, which is unfamiliar to me, I regret. Will I lose those human memories? Will the human Cenere die so that the fae Cenere can live?

I run my hands down my naked body. Will I feel different? Will all this voluptuous flesh become lean, the skin less pale? The freckles that dot my nose and shoulders and arms, will they vanish, another part of my mortal self to be forgotten?

Luthian comes to stand beside me. “You are beautiful, Cenere. And you will still be beautiful when you change.”

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