Page 75 of Coronation
Tears are streaming down both sides of my face now as I rock into his touch, my chest heaving as he fucks me with his fingers, not hard or fast, but careful and exacting. We’ve only just begun, and my thighs are beginning to shake, tension winding tighter with every touch. “Ben,” I whimper, myhands tightening in his hair, dizzy with the force of what is happening.
His thumb finds my clit.
I cry out.
“I would have made you come, nice and hard, and then I would have held you against me as I told you I had to go. I would have asked for your number, because I’m told that is what normal people do.” My answer to that is half-laugh, half-moan, as his ministrations between my legs begin to pick up speed, perhaps sensing I’m close. “And with any luck, you’d have given it to me.”
“I would have,” I promise. “Fuck, Ben,oh my god.” The measured, exacting pace he’s set is impossible to resist. My body is an instrument, and he is playing it like he’s been practicing for years.
How does he always know what I need?
Ben’s voice is impossibly rough when he continues. “Then that night, I would have called and asked you to dinner. I would have found someplace quiet and private, someplace I could think, because you have a way of robbing me of that ability, darling, and I need all the help I can get.”
His free hand snakes around to my chest, dragging down the top of my dress so he can take my breast in his hand, teasing my oversensitive tip just enough, but not too much. The added sensations are all it takes, and I come with a sob, shaking and grinding into Ben’s touch. He doesn’t cease the pace he’s set, fingering me and circling my clit as my orgasm wracks my body, giving me all the pleasure he possibly can.
When it’s all over, he pulls his hand from my panties and holds me close, lips brushing my temple. “I would have saved both of us a lot of pain, but in the end, we would have ended up exactly here. You still would have come to that garden party, and I still wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from looking at you.”
“It sounds like you’re talking about fate,” I muse softly as I snuggle into his chest, warm and spent.
Drawing a hand up and down my spine, Ben hums. “Not fate, no. Merely a very bitter, lonely man, who stumbled into the path of the best thing that’s ever happened to him and was never going to let her go.”
I stare at his chest rising and falling beneath my hand, emotion clogging my throat. Before I can even think of speaking, however, the car has slowed to a stop.
Ben kisses my temple one more time, releasing me so he can fix the top of my dress, tugging it up over my breasts as the sound of voices comes from outside the car.
Reluctantly, I lift my head from his shoulder, just in time for the car door to open, and for both of us to look around at a footman. The man’s expression changes from mortified to professional in the blink of an eye, quickly averting his gaze and clearing his throat. “I’m terribly sorry, Your Highness. Would you like me to?—”
“No. No,” Ben assures him brusquely, offering me an amused smile as he helps me to my feet and we both climb awkwardly out of the car. Taking my hand, he begins to lead me into the palace but pauses when he sees I’m not following. My gaze has caught on something in the distance, and the sight of it alone makes my heart lift.
We might not be able to turn back time, but I can think of at least one moment we can try again.
Thirty-Three
Benedict
It’s Zelda’s idea to walk the maze.
I see her gaze catch on the high row of hedges as we step out of the car beside my typical entrance door to Ashwell Palace. The entire garden was bathed in moonlight, and when she looked back at me, it was to ask hesitantly if we could stay outside for a while before turning in.
There isn’t a single part of me that wants to refuse her.
Zelda pulls off her shoes, setting them by the door beside a bemused guard, and when I hold out my hand, she takes it without hesitation. The night is still, and I’m acutely aware of every soft rustle of our feet on the grass, the sound of my own breath leaving and entering my lungs, and an owl hooting from the patch of trees beyond the garden wall.
“It’s a bit forbidding at night,” I warn as we pause before the great, arched entrance. When I turn to Zelda, I find her already looking up at me, as incandescent as she ever is in the moonlight.
For a moment, I forget there is anyone else in this world.
“You’ll protect me, won’t you?” she teases, her smile gentle and unbothered.
In way of response, I pull her through the archway.
It’s hardly the first time I’ve walked the maze this late, and I doubt it will be the last. This is, however, the first time I’ve done it with another person, and I find myself more aware than I typically am moving along the darkened path. There is nothing inside the palace walls we need to be afraid of, and yet, natural instinct has my awareness heightened as we move through the shadows.
“Tell me a secret,” Zelda requests as we make our first turn, her voice as lovely and familiar as the darkened space we currently inhabit.
“What sort of secret?”
She hums, clutching my hand a little tighter as we make another turn, heading north now. “Any kind.”
