by Amanda Milo
“Look at that,” Gareth tries to say lightly, but his voice is too tight with strained concern to pull it off effectively. “I haven’t lost my touch. I told you I’d charm you out of your wolfskin in no time.”
CHAPTER 12
When I finish my change to human, I’m naked, and I’m still in Gareth’s arms.
We’ve been apart and haven’t touched skin to skin in two years.
We attack one another.
Nipping, shoving, pulling, growling—when I catch his bottom lip between my teeth and draw back on it, Gareth snarls so convincingly, an observer would believe he was the wolf among the two of us.
This move always preceeded him turning me over and burying his hands in my skirts, raising them so he could get to my drawers and dry hump me stupid. But now, there’s no clothes on me for him to fight. He deals with his own heavy brocade doublet so roughly that his outfit is done for after this. It’s obvious he doesn’t care when he drops me on his bed, drags me under him and pins my wrists in one of his hands.
I’m on my back under him, and I distinctly remember the last time we were in this position. I should be dreading the part where he sticks me with that fire-hot steel rod that’s growing against my leg, but I’m not. I’m so hungry for Gareth, I’m looking forward to loving him—and being loved by him—all over again, even if it hurts at the end.
But Gareth isn’t moving. “What?” I pant, searching his face.
His eyes are fixed on my chest.
I squish my chin to my neck, pushing my jaw out like you do when you’re trying to stare down the line of your own body. I see nothing amiss. I test the strong clasp of his rough palm clamped over my wrists, and get nowhere. I’m not getting free until Gareth is good and ready to let me go. “What’s wrong?” I ask in confusion.
Gareth brings his other hand over my left breast, hovering there, before he brushes his thumb over my nipple.
I gasp.
“Why didn’t we ever let these out before?” Gareth asks, his golden eyes dazed. “These are so, so bloody bonny—and look, Ella; they like me. They’re sitting up, begging for me to give them attention,” he says, the last word muffled because he’s fastened his lips around my nipple.
I had just started to laugh, but the feel of his mouth closing around this sensitive area makes me wheeze out a breath.
Oh my heavens! Why didn’t we let my breasts out to play with Gareth before this? Ah yes; because all of our meetings were clandestine and discoverable at any moment—necessitating in as many clothes staying on as possible. Us getting caught with any part of me naked would have resulted in a swift beating. Gareth’s father is a firm believer in corporal punishment, and with five rowdy sons to bring to heel, he has arms bigger than Smithy Jones—and that man hammers metal rods into horseshoes for a living. “We… could have been caught,” I manage to string together, writhing under him as he sucks me, making jolts of electric pleasure zing directly between my legs.
What an odd, inexplicable connection. The human body is so strange.
But so, so enjoyable.
“If we couldn’t stuff ‘em back in to hide them fast enough, would have been worth it,” Gareth claims, moving to lave his tongue along my other breast, and taste my other nipple. Which is good; it was beginning to get jealous. It feels like it’s a pebble of granite that’s been glued to my front. The other is wet and softened and distended from Gareth pulling at it. The area between my legs feels wet and soft too and would really like Gareth to pay attention to it next.
“Let my hands up,” I order.
“Nohf,” he says, half my breast in his mouth.
Gareth and I used to bicker near-constantly. Him refusing my requests is normally what kicked our arguments off. However, having his lips on my body immediately renders his negation as a null impact. Thus, I believe all future negotiations should be done with Gareth and me naked. Will you go shopping with me? No? Fine; then you have to suck me.
I’m fairly certain he will agree to this stipulation.
Still, I can’t let him boss me around this way. “I want to touch you too,” I tell him. When he only grinds his hardness into my thigh, his way of demonstrating who will get to touch whom first (and isn’t that so like him, always of the opinion he gets to do everything first—how can I love such a domineering beast?) I squirm. Both from his stimulation so near where I want him to be, and the wicked things he’s doing with his mouth. Thinking I’ll spur him into action, I kick my calf free of his weight, and set my heel onto his buttocks.
Which are still clothed.
“Why are you still wearing your breeches?” I ask, piqued.
Gareth sits up, pulling away from my swollen, aching breasts. “Excellent question.”
Finally, he lets up on where he’d been keeping my arms pinned, and while he works on stripping out of his thigh-hugging attire, I glide my hands over his shoulders, his arms, his ribs, his stomach.
Low on his belly, his skin jumps when I skim it with a light touch.
Gareth growls. “Not yet.”
I flick him, right there on his stomach just above his golden curls. “You don’t give me orders. You’re not my king.”
That gets me his hands cupped around my face, and a growl right against my lips. “When I have you naked, I am.”
“How is that fair? When you’re naked, why can’t I be king?” I huff into his mouth, right before he dances his tongue with mine.
He pulls back enough to nip my lip. “Because you are my queen.”
I melt under him, and his lips smile against mine all throughout our next kiss.
Incorrigible charmer. My knees fall open for him and his hips take advantage, moving in.
Gareth pulls away from my mouth, panting, eyes wild. He looks down at himself before he fists his shaft, squeezing it hard enough it turns darker.
I try not to cackle in hungry delight. It may have hurt last time, but I know very well it can feel very good too. “Before you stab me with that, I demand that you play nicely with it first. Make me see stars.”
Gareth casts me a side-long look. “I won’t hurt you this time, Ell. And I promise I’ll give you lots of damn stars.”
“I trust you,” I say simply. And it’s exactly the right thing to say, because Gareth catches me by the hair, growling into me as he takes my mouth with ferocity. His hand slides down my front and dips between my legs, first trying two fingers, then settling for one, getting coated with my excitement. He draws it out and pulls back from me enough he can lick it clean—a sight that leaves me breathless.
“I think we’re off to a good start,” Gareth proclaims, his rich, tawny eyes glittering. “But damn you’re tight as a fucking drum,” he says with wonder. “I could barely fit my finger in you. I think your maidenhead must have grown back.”
“Well,” I pant. “It has been a long time for me.”
“No longer than for me,” Gareth says, shooting me an arched brow.
“You never…”
Gareth’s nostrils flare. My playful, easy-going boy is gone. In his place is a man, a man who had something—someone—he treasured very much taken away from him. “You think I could so much as look at someone else?” His jaw clenches. “That I’d settle for someone who wasn’t you?” If I thought his eyes looked like glittering gold before, now his gaze is molten fire. “You’re my other half, Ella. There’s never been, and never fucking will be, anyone for me but YOU. You know that.”
I’m biting my lip, staring into his eyes, grateful, silly tears hovering at the corners of mine.
Gareth leans in and kisses them away. He sets to kissing all of me then; every hurt, every scar.
Even my stump.
At first, I try to draw my leg up, away—but Gareth won’t have it. He catches me behind my knee, slides his hand down my calf, his thumb skimming my shin just behind his trailing lips. When I’m covering my mouth, shuddering under the tender way he’s feathering his lips over my ugly-healed amputation, Gareth meets my
eyes, and whispers, “I love you, Ella. All of you.”
I want to shake my head, because I reject what I did to myself so strongly, I can’t see how he can’t hate it too. But Gareth knows me too well. He pauses his kisses to ask, “If it were me, if I’d done what you had to, what would you be doing right now?”
The same damn thing.
I don’t declare this outloud.
I don’t have to.
Gareth’s lips tip up, and he places one last, soft mouth-touch on the place where I used to be whole, before he moves his attention to the inside of my leg, traveling up to my thigh, then my mons, and right, right, RIGHT where I want him to be.
He licks and suckles me until I scream.
I try to drag a feather-down pillow over my face, but Gareth rips it away, growling, “Let them hear me pleasing you.” He savors me like I’m a platter of piping-hot cherry pie, the look in his eyes so satisfied. “I want them to know I damn near kill my wife when I get her alone.”
My nose wrinkles. “Fine, but I’ll only be able to hold my head up if I can make you shout the rafters down later. I want everyone to know I’m torturing my husband when I’ve got him alone.”
Gareth shrugs and grins into the apex of my legs, an oddly thrilling sight. “Fair enough, love.”
His thumbs spread me open so that he can continue exploring me. “Oh, by the by,” he starts. “I’d hate to think you’ve been kept up at night worrying about this, but turns out,” he says, face mock-serious, “this is not a finger.” He pinches my clit, making me perform actual levitation. “Nor is it the world’s tiniest cock,” he adds, acting surprised, as if this is truly a revelation.
I sniff. Then I blink up at him. “Thank you, your Royal Obviousness.”
He gives me a gallant cant of his head. “You’re welcome, my mouthy subject.” His eyes drop from mine to fix on my lips—and his gaze heats. Clearly the power of suggestion at work, because he moves to grip his shaft, and he strokes himself while staring at my mouth.
“And how did you come about your discovery that my clit was not a cock?” I ask him, more to prick his focus than anything.
It works. Gareth grimaces and releases his cock, making it slap excitedly against my thigh before it bobs up. “I asked my father.”
I wince for him and sit up on my elbows. “How’d that go?”
Gareth looks a little ill. “Guess.” He shudders a little, still suffering from the trauma. “And who did you ask to learn it was called a clit?”
It’s my turn to squirm, and I cross my arms to hug myself and cover my breasts. “My stepmother.”
Gareth’s look is commiserating. “Went that good?”
“She might have been redder than I was. It’s hard to say. Both our faces were flaming so badly, we nearly caught fire.”
“Okay,” Gareth scratches his cheek. “No more discussing parents in bed. It’s now a royal decree.” His fingers spread me open. “Back to the fun part before we waste my sword.”
I make a face. “You’re really calling it your sword?”
“We are.”
“No we’re not.” I shake my head. “You will not get me to call it that.”
“You’ll call it what I want or I’ll have to punish you.”
Intrigued, I sit up further, bracing on my hands. “How?”
Gareth grins. “I suppose I’ll have to show you.”
Without warning, he flips me to my stomach, and yanks me up to my knees.
When I try to get up on my hands, he grabs me by my elbows, brings them together in one of his hands, and uses them to keep me pinned, cheek pressed to the coverlet.
I’m about to struggle, escape, and give him an earful on how he should treat his queen, when his tongue drags up between my legs. “AHH!”
Gareth squeezes my cheeks, digging his fingers in. It should hurt, but instead it makes me moan in bliss. “That’s right, my Ella. Be loud, tell them all how good I’m destroying you.”
“You are too cocky,” I huff.
“Ha ha,” he retorts.
He keeps at me until I think the foundation of the castle shakes with my sounds. And I see stars. He makes me see more stars than I’ve ever seen in a night’s sky.
“Not that I’m complaining,” I pant.
“Oh spare me. You’re about to complain,” Gareth grouses into my pussy.
“But isn’t this sort of thing beneath you?”
Gareth pulls away from me, and I curse myself for saying anything. I whine, and he rewards me by hauling my rear higher in the air and giving me a kiss—square on my clit. “Course this isn’t beneath me. Way I see it, you’re serving yourself up to me.”
This brings my head up. I twist my neck to peer at him in disbelief. “You’re pretending that I’m serving—”
Gareth’s large hands wrap around the front of my thighs, and give me a squeeze. Like a warning, except I don’t take it as such. “Not pretend. You’re serving me yourself,” he reiterates, obstinate.
I face the headboard again, my lips twitching as I try to hide my smile under my next inflammatory words. “My, my, you’ve forgotten who I am. I don’t serve any—”
He rolls behind me, like an alligator, and when he’s on his back, his arms hug over my hips and he eats me from underneath and between my legs.
It isn’t long before he calls me on my claim. He does this by ceasing his wondrous ministrations.
“Why did you stop?” I cry in a pleading voice. “Gareth, I’m almost there!”
“I know, sweetcake,” he pets my calf adoringly, while his other hand skates over my belly until he’s reached under my carriage to grab a breast. “You’re getting tastier.”
“Then why did you quit?” I demand.
He tweaks my clit, making me shudder above him. He should really be more careful. I could collapse on him and break his big stupid nose. “Because you said you weren’t a serving, therefore, I probably shouldn’t eat a whole helping, am I right?”
“Gareth…” I whimper.
He makes a low, evil tsking sound. “Oh, I like it when you beg.”
I could drag this out, fight him on this. But I really, really want to come, and I really, really love his mouth. The rest of him is debatable right now, but his mouth… “Please finish me,” I sigh.
He walks his fingers up the back of my leg, making my skin flicker. “You can do better than that.”
I groan into one of his pillows.
“That’s a sound I’m going to enjoy pounding out of you in a minute. Want to come like this first or…?”
“YOU’RE A KING AMONG MEN,” I start, rolling my eyes at his audacity. “Your mouth is amazing—”
“Nice beginning,” he praises, nosing my folds and making me bite my lip for a breath in anticipation. “You may proceed.”
I growl—he laughs. I do proceed though. “I love your tongue, and—”
“Yet you tell me to shut up frequently.” His tongue teases the crease between my leg and labia.
I bite back the Shut Up! I’d been about to issue to him, and he knows it too, because he chuckles into me and gives me a hard lick that has me moaning. Quickly, I finish, “You have innumerable amazing qualities, almost all of them within your face, and I’d like it very much if you’d eat me like your favorite dessert platter.”
“There, was that so difficult?” he teases, making me want to kick him, but he makes good on making me beg, and he sucks and licks and tongues me with abandon until I feel almost as if I’m squirting fluid on his chin as he sucks my clit until I surpass stars and see supernovas.
He slides out from beneath me with perfect timing, because I melt down until I’m flat to his bed, not a bone left in my body to hold me up for him.
He doesn’t seem to mind. Chuckling darkly, he arranges my limbs just how he wants me for his use, and he starts rubbing the fat head of his cock along my slit that feels so wet, it’s like he’s slicking himself through a creamy sauce. It sounds like it too.
My fle
sh is swollen and achingly aroused, and despite just coming my brains out, I wrestle a last burst of energy to shove back and sheath him when he moves himself back from teasing my clit.
We both groan as the swollen-feeling head of him easily slides inside me. Yes, it’s a tight fit, but my maidenhead, despite his claim, did not grow it’s damn self back, and he’s gotten me so thoroughly ready, I could take a steel pipe—and it’s a good thing too, because that’s precisely what he feels like.
Gareth’s hand clamps over my hip, and we stay like this for a few panting breaths. “Does it hurt?” he asks, voice strained.
“No,” I breathe. “Feels good. You feel like what I’ve been missing,” I tell him.
His swallow is audible, loudly so. “You too, Ella.” And he thrusts himself all the way in.
We both hiss, the tightness I experience clearly something he can feel too, and seems to be struggling with if his ragged breath is any indication. “Still good?” he asks.
In answer, I reach back and find the delineated muscles of his abdomen, stroking there.
Gareth draws back his hips slowly, and advances in a jab that makes me squeak.
This excites us both; he pulls out faster, and pounds back in harder, jarring me, making me slide a few increments up the bed.
That’s when he presses his thumb to the rosette of my—oh, let’s just put it plainly: he pushes his thumb into my arse.
I shriek in shock.
“Doesn’t hurt, does it?” he asks, sounding as if he’s checking.
“It’s DIRTY!” I exclaim.
“Looks clean to me,” he muses.
“GARETH ARTHUR DRAKE STIRLING CLIFDEN BRÀIGH MHÀRR!”
Gareth goads me, giving me a prod to my insides that makes me pant. Not from pain or discomfort either. “Go on. I like this. Now list my titles.”
“Duke of Ellington—”
“Duke of Ellerton, not Ellington. I can’t believe you misspoke my first title.”
“Shut up! Who did you learn this with?” I demand, breath shrill.
“I suppose the day I was born, they pronounced them to me; I’m to inherit all you know—”
“GARETH,” I growl.
He slaps my rump. “Not what you’re thinking. I’ve never practiced this,” he wiggles his thumb and his cock rocks forward and back inside me, “with anyone but you. I heard the stable boys trading stories of what they do to blow a maid’s skirts off. Thought this sounded like something we would like.”