Page 52 of A Crown So Cursed
When the bathing is done, I dry her with care—every inch of her, slowly and deliberately—then wrap her in a new robe, soft as down, and guide her through the corridors at a pace that belies the beast stirring beneath my robe.
Denied too long. There has never been another for me, but her.
At the door to our chambers, the heavy oak swings open with the barest push, and torchlight spills across the threshold, warm and golden. I have forbidden the Faerie Flames from entering this chamber tonight. No Esme, no Púca—only us, as it should be.
Within, every detail proclaims that this should be her sanctuary, prepared with a meticulousness bordering on obsession.
The door closes behind us with a gentle click, sealing us in, and for a long moment, neither of us speaks, the silence becoming a living thing, charged with all that has gone unsaid so long.
Her eyes—blue-gray, and sharp as a blade—are almost too much to bear. Every time I look into them, I am reminded how easily the fate of my kingdom, and the fate of my soul, pivots on the edge of her regard.
“Now, where were we?” I ask, my voice roughened by want.
Her chin lifts—a challenge, shattering any illusion of weakness. She has always been proud, stubborn, indomitable. This is what I love most: not her beauty, nor her power, but her refusal to break, save for the sake of others. “What should I call you now?” I ask, marveling at the transformation wrought in her.
She is Curcog, but not Curcog—her eyes, her smile, but also something new, something born of pain and time and change.
She breathes softly, not meeting my gaze at first, nervous perhaps, but not meek. “What did you call me then?”
“Lover,” I growl, my need for her as plain as my fangs, which ache for her essence.
With a wolf’s hunger, I press her to the wall, one hand at her hip, the other at her jaw, forcing her to meet my gaze. Her eyes—stormy, desperate—lock with mine, so raw I fear the world might shatter under the weight of it.
Gods. I can never tell if it is the mortal in her—the suffering, the endurance, the years spent holding the world together with nothing but grit—or the immortal, my immortal, whose need burns white-hot in these stolen moments.
All the memories between us congeal: the aching absences, the fleeting touches, the agony of never enough.
For too long I have waited.
Too long.
Still, I hold myself in check as her hand splays between us, breathless.
The lump in my throat is a stone.
How many nights have I lain awake, longing for this moment? How many times have I conjured her voice, her touch, only to wake to cold, empty sheets and the shameful solace of my fist? Bringing myself to a completion that never satisfied—never truly, not without her.
My hands ache to touch her, to test her wetness and prove she is real. I grin. “So here we are at last.”
She nods, her smile lovely and a touch defiant. “Against all odds.”
“Indeed,” I whisper, pride swelling in my chest.
This is the creature I would die for, a thousand times over.
“I am glad I did not know what Esme planned,” I confess. “I wouldn’t have let you leave.”
A beat of silence.
She shrugs. “I am glad I went.”
“No regrets?”
Gwendolyn shakes her golden head, and the sight of it—her hair, her certainty—stirs my cock to pain. For so long, even the thought of her lips on mine, her body beneath me, was enough to torment me beyond reason.
“No regrets,” she whispers, the words a promise, a dare. Her hand slips lower, finds my shaft, and the hunger in her palm is equal to my own.
“Whatever comes,” she says, “we will face it together.”
