Page 66 of The Huntsman's Heart
She presses her forehead against mine as she takes me inside herself over and over. I’m trapped by the force of it—more intimate than kissing. More piercing than a blade, more powerful than the magic that made us monsters. In her gaze, I’m remade once more into something else.
She’s chosen to see the man underneath. Not the man I used to be. And though he died long ago, today a new man is born, one who lives to serve his queen. A ferocious and dominant queen, but a queen with a soft heart and mercy, even for those who don’t deserve it.
I wish I could put into words how I feel. All I can do is tell her the one thing spinning around in my head. “I am yours, princess. Yours if you will have me. If you want me.”
Unexpectedly, she leans in and kisses me softly, stroking my cheeks, slowing her movements until our coupling feels more like an embrace. “Of course I want you.”
Not of course. There’s nothing predictable about it. It’s a blessing from the heavens. But I’ll take it because for the first time in a long time I believe in this.
I rock her in my lap, making love to her, showing my devotion with my body. Her gift is the beauty of her orgasm as she digs her nails into my flesh, shudders, and convulses around me. It is the sweaty tendrils of hair that stick to her forehead, her rosy lips parted on a sigh. It’s the second and third climax on my tongue, fingers wound into my hair.
And finally it’s the way she takes me in her hand when she’s finished, stroking me to a slow and tender climax I am half expecting her to deny me. The way she combs her fingers through my hair as we lie in the warm sunlight afterward, tugging at the tangles until it lies smooth and unknotted across my back. It’s the quiet hum of satisfaction she makes as I gather her against me and hold her close.
We lie like that for a long time, present but drifting in the state closest to sleep we can manage as we are. After a while, the princess stirs. “What happened? At Thornvale?”
“How much do you remember?”
She hesitates. Then her body stiffens in my arms. “The hanging!”
“Hanging?”
“They were hanging an old woman for sedition. In the square.”
“She probably complained about not having enough bread.”
“What?”
“Most of the food from the farms goes to the queen’s table. Surely you knew this?”
She turns to face me, brows knit together. “Of course she would take more from them than they can afford to give. She must be stopped before more people die for her greed.”
“She must,” I agree. But I can’t drag myself from Guin’s bed. Not when doing so could bring an end to the warm glow surrounding us. When leaving the bed and the castle means taking her back into danger for my own selfish reasons. If only we could stay like this forever.
Eventually night falls and the gargoyles join us, and I’m forced to relinquish the moment whether I would or no. The spell is broken.
She leaves the warmth of the bed and they dress her, casting looks between the two of us but never questioning her. Perhaps the looks are imagined and they do not burn with jealousy the way I do.
Guinevere
The longer I am awake, the more the memories of what I saw at Thornvale haunt me. Townsfolk casting blame on each other. Fear in the old woman’s eyes as they tied her to the stake in the square. The child’s scream.
The cat whose poor dead body I borrowed shook with the force of my anger where it hid in the shadows. I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. I had to act. These are my people. The only reason they’ve been forced to speak out against their so-called queen is because she is starving them. I heard and saw enough to see that things are grim. Even worse than I thought.
It wasn’t a conscious choice to raise every dead thing in the town. I wasn’t even sure what I had done at first; my mind seemed split into a million pieces. I suppose it was.
“Would you like us to prepare a bath for you, princess?” Raban’s soft voice breaks through my tumultuous thoughts.
I shake my head and he bends to help me with my boots. “I must go to Blackthorn.”
He frowns. “You have only just returned.”
“And look how close you were to not returning to us.” Corvin folds his arms across his chest.
I’m surprised when Alaric joins in to lend his support. “He is right. You need more training.”
I glare at him. He may be right, but people are dying. Every day we wait could cost more lives. “I must act.”
Évandre places his hands on my shoulders softly. “You help no one if you fail because you were not ready.”
