Page 27 of A Reign of Embers

I bite my lip against a cry. One more lap of his tongue and press of his thumb, and I’m careening over the edge.

My thighs clench around his face. A shudder runs through me from toes to head, as if I’m going to float right off the ground.

When I come back to myself, Bastien is grinning up at me, licking his lips. Not a trace of disappointment that he didn’t get any physical gratification for himself shows in his expression.

Marc stands by the door so rigidly he might as well be made of marble, but he’s still watching us. The stark heat of his gaze—how much lust and how much anger, I can’t determine—sends another jolt through my nerves.

Bastien is just easing my skirt back over my legs when Raul and Lorenzo emerge through the hidden entrance. Raul takes one look at the two of us, at my cheeks flushing hotter under his scrutiny, and clucks his tongue playfully. “You’ve gone and hoarded her all for yourself, Bas. That’s hardly sporting.”

Bastien raises his eyebrows back at his foster brothers. “Maybe you should have figured out she headed back to herrooms sooner, then. I wasn’t going to make her wait when she needed attending to.”

I laugh and start to get to my feet. Lorenzo hustles to my side in time to grasp my elbow and steady me through one final tremor of aftershock.

He kisses my jaw with a teasing nip of his teeth.“I’m just glad to see our empress looking so satisfied.”

Raul hums, giving me another onceover and a cocky smile. “It does appear that our brother did the job well.”

Their companionable warmth wraps around me, lighting a glow inside that’s much more than just bodily pleasure. When they’re with me, every consideration—even the man who’s technically still my husband poised across the room—can fade into the distance.

Watching them, inspiration flares like a lantern in my head.

I’ve been trying to appease Sabrelle, to court her favor… an awful lot like I once courted Marclinus’s.

But I could never count on him to actually help me survive. It was the other men I turned to and won over who helped me achieve the heights I’ve gained.

Even Lucrene told me I should take my allies wherever I can find them. Strike a balance between all the empire’s needs.

That advice could apply to more than just my subjects.

I wet my lips. “I think… I think I might have been looking at this rebellion all wrong.”

Chapter Eleven

Marc

What exactly has this woman reduced me to? She’s standing there amid three men she lets paw her with abandon, her skin still flushed from the way one of them pleasured her just moments ago. And I can’t tear my gaze away, even as my hands clench at my sides and my jaw aches with the gritting of my teeth.

I want to rip their heads from their bodies and wallop them across the room in a bloody game of croquet. I want to stomp their fucking corpses to pulp.

But I won’t, becauseshewould hate me. Because I’d lose any chance of her warm, sparkling gaze ever being aimed at me with the same kind of affection, and that thought agonizes me even more than the sharp sear of my jealousy.

So I’m left here seething as ineffectually as a toddler who’shad his favorite toy snatched, biting back the complaints even I know would sound pathetic.

She was mine first. She was mine more than yours.

Can I really say that’s true? Aurelia’s certainly not mine now. I’m only in the room because of the barest thread of fidelity I earned by stopping Linus’s final madness.

I saved her life, and I get to sleep by her door while they share her bed.

As with every time my mind veers so far into resentment, an image rises up of her face bent close to mine in the dimness of that secret basement room. The eyes now sparkling then hard with pain and fury. The matching emotions rippling through her taut voice.

Who hurled knives at my head? Who burned my hands raw?

You played along with his games. Even when you finally ‘let me into the family,’ it was all another test designed to crush me.

I doubt you’d have done much different in my position, whether you believe it or not.

The rage that was swelling inside me deflates.

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