“No,” said Cadon. “It’s one thing to be a scrawny, prissy cownt, Pairce. It’s another thing entirely to be no one with nothing and to also be weak and small like that.”
“I’m weak and small, and I manage.”
“I’d be shorter than you,” he said.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“You… you said to me that women were not bothered by largeness,” he said.
“I definitely don’t care about the size of your cock!”
“That wasn’t what I meant, but thank you for that,” he said in a low, ironic voice.
She folded her arms over her chest. “You care about that.”
“I don’t think it’s ridiculous that I don’t want to give it up. She destroyed me, and this is the only up side.”
“I don’t see why you suddenly like it,” she said. “You called yourself a monster.”
“If I wasn’t shaped like this, I wouldn’t have you,” he said.
“That’s not true.”
He snorted.
“Cadon—”
“Oh, come now, Pairce, what is it about me that you’re so enamored with that doesn’t have to do with my physical prowess, hmm? Because I have nothing. I have no interests or skills or things to converse about, so let’s not pretend—”
“You’re good,” she said, coming across the garden toward him.
“What does that even mean?”
She put her hands on his chest. “You’re good to me. You’re unselfish and sweet and you make me feel…” She bit down on her bottom lip. “You’re perfect. I told you before. And I love you, so stop it.”
“Did you just…” He put one of his huge palms against her cheek.
She shut her eyes, leaning into his touch.
He kissed her forehead. “I love you too.”
She wrapped her arms around him as best she could. “I need you in the light, Cadon.”
“All right, but we’re going to find another way,” he said. “Because I need to be able to protect you, and I need to be able to do something useful with myself. I need this body, and I’m not giving it up. Let’s cease to speak of it, all right?”
“But if there was no other way?” she said, looking up at him.
He sighed. “You mean, if it was a choice between going back to that body or living in darkness my entire life?”
“What if we want to have children? What if we want to be married? Are we going to have the ceremony in utter darkness?”
He sighed. “You want these things with me?”
“Yes,” she said. And she might have been frightened about revealing herself, making herself so vulnerable, if he weren’t Cadon, if she hadn’t somehow grown to trust him despite everything. She could tell him anything. She knew it would be all right.
“No one has ever wanted…” He crushed her against him. “I would choose the light, of course, even if it meant I had to give this up. But I worry that you wouldn’t want me afterward. You have never seen me that way.”
“I know you worry,” she said. “I know it’s hard for you to trust me.”
“No, I do trust you,” he said. He kissed her. “I do. I do.” He murmured the words against her mouth, and she felt them wash through her, and everything was good.
She took his hands in hers and pulled. “Come with me,” she whispered.
She led him back to the house, back to his room, and to his bed.
She straddled his thick, huge body and they kissed and kissed.
Kissing him was like the sweet rustle of tree branches from a warm, spring breeze.
Slowly, with no hurry, they undressed each other, still kissing all the while. His hands found her breasts in the darkness, found her eager between her thighs. He kissed her and stroked her and wrung cries of pleasure from her lips.
She pushed him back into the bed, and they kissed and touched each other there, him lying beneath her, her kissing his chest, running her hands over the muscles in his stomach, feeling him rippling and firm and sleek against her.
She kissed the tip of his cock, but he stopped her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I want to do this. I like doing this.”
“I like you doing it,” he said, his voice labored. “But… I’d like… I want… can we be together entirely tonight?”
She stroked his hard length. “You want to put this inside me?”
He stopped her movement. “I want the first thing I feel to be your snug warmth.”
“Oh,” she said, letting go of him. “Well, we could do that, I suppose.” She was smiling. “I’m snug, am I?”
He groaned. “I dream of it.”
She giggled. She felt shivery anticipation at the thought of being filled up by him again. It had been since the first time she’d met him, and she remembered how huge and overwhelming he had been. She rolled off of him, pulling on him, wanting him over her.
He obliged her, settling between her legs. She opened for him, cocooning him with her hips, feeling his hard length pressing into her belly. She wriggled her hips, moving to accommodate him.
He kissed her. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said. “Are you sure? You’ve been very hesitant.”
He groaned. “I’m quite positive.”
She ran her hands over his shoulders.
He put his hand between the both of them and he moved his cock. It slipped against her folds, and she sighed, and then he positioned the head of it against her opening.
She licked her lips. Oh, yes, she had forgotten about how large he was. Well, she hadn’t forgotten, not exactly, but she’d hoped that if she were more aroused when they got to this point, he’d fit more easily, but he still seemed impossibly big. Last time, he’d forced his way into her, and it hadn’t been the least bit gentle. “Wait,” she breathed.
“All right,” he acknowledged.
She thrust her hand between their bodies and massaged herself between her thighs. “Slow, if you don’t mind.”
“Listen, Pairce, we don’t have to—”
“I want it, just slow,” she said, angling her hips, taking the tip of him inside her. She let out a little noise at the way he stretched her.
He gasped.
She rubbed herself. “You’re very big, that’s all.”
He grunted. “If I’m hurting you—”
“No,” she said. “No pain, not at all.” Maybe she was lying, because it did sort of hurt, but it was that sort of funny kind of good hurt that she couldn’t quite describe. It was right on the edge of unpleasantness, but it didn’t cross over. “Give me another inch, please?”
He chuckled softly, pressing further into her.
They both moaned.
“You feel… you feel…” His voice was strained.
“Yes,” she gasped. “All of you. Give me all of you now.”
He suddenly slid into her, piercing her deeply, all the way to the hilt, and she threw her head back and opened her mouth in a silent scream. It was… he was… Blazes, what that did to her. She felt so very full and complete, and the way he stretched her also stretched her sensitive places.
She began to rub herself as he started to thrust against her, something she would never have done with anyone else. Men who were paying would find it offensive to think that their cocks weren’t enough for her, and maybe he would be enough for her, she didn’t know, it was only—this was too good to stop.
He kissed her. “All right?”
“Perfect,” she told him, rolling her hips against his movement, her hand still between them, shamelessly stroking herself.
He panted, one of his hands straying to her breast. “Your hand there, it’s driving me mad knowing that you’re pleasuring yourself.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed. “You want me to stop?”
“No, a good mad,” he grunted. “A very, very good mad. You’re tight and sweet and so slick, and you’re such a little minx, doing that. Keep doing it. Never stop.”
He did it again.
She stroked herself in time to his movement, and she climaxed against him.
Oh, blazes, it was going to be like before, wasn’t it?
Her hand retreated, useless as she was suddenly flung into a whirlwind, one that pulled her into swirling bliss. She hit heights of pleasure, convulsing and moaning, and then she went higher, another height, and then another, and then—
Blazes, it went on longer than it had any right to, and when she was jelly in his arms, and it was over, she realized some of the convulsions weren’t her own, but his, that they had found those heights together at the same time, and she held tightly onto him.
They kissed for a long time as the aftershocks of their lovemaking worked their way through them, and he stayed inside her.
She wanted him to stay there.
She liked the way he felt, as though he belonged there, as though somehow it completed her—completed them—that they were meant to be this way.
They breathed together, and she could feel his heart through his skin and bone, pounding in an answering rhythm to her own.
She was sated and finished, a closed circle.
He fell asleep still joined to her, his body weight mostly resting on the bed beside her, and only a bit of his heft against her—a comforting, good heft. She liked it.
She wanted to fall asleep too.
She wanted to see if they would wake up like this, if his body would still be in hers. She wanted to know what it would be like to dream with their bodies entwined and connected.
But instead, she eased herself out from under him, breaking their connection—the loss of him a sharp, almost painful emptiness. (Or maybe she was just sore. Blazes, he was big. Maybe it would be better if he wasn’t so big. It would be a good thing, in the end, doing this.)
She drew on her clothes and left his cell. She went to the other side of the dungeon, where she lit a candle and surveyed the Cowntess.
The Cowntess’s face was swollen and bruised and scabbed.
Cadon did that. Pairce shuddered.
“Well, if it isn’t the seamstress,” said the Cowntess.
Of course, the Cowntess remembered her from the time she and Sefoni had come to visit to find the schedule to steal Cadon.
“What do you need in order to reverse what you did to him?” said Pairce.
“Where’s Haid?” said the Cowntess.
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” said Pairce. “He doesn’t have to know. You should know, I don’t think he intends to let you live. He hates you, and he takes too much joy in hurting you. So, help me, help Cadon, and it’ll be in your best interest. If you reverse what you did to him, I’ll let you go free.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HAID HAD TO admit the room was better with the new bed linens and blankets. The dampness and the smell of mildew were much reduced, although they weren’t gone, not entirely. He was sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket. He was determined that he was going to sleep there, in the chair, so that Sefoni could have the bed.
She was sitting up at a desk that had been brought in, going over expenditures and salaries for the new servants they’d hired that day, even though he’d told her she needn’t worry about it.
She said that she was the mistress of the house, wasn’t she, or had he taken that back since he knew he hadn’t gotten her with child? And her eyes flashed, and he had backed away like a coward and let it all be.
He well knew that there was no letting her go now. Not only because he’d had her—more than once—not even because he wanted her more than he had before he’d had her, but…
Well, she was magnificent.
He couldn’t bear the idea of her being not married to him anymore, and he certainly wouldn’t let her marry someone else.
Unless she wanted to, of course. He couldn’t stand in her way, then, but…
“I’m going to turn down the lamps,” came her voice.
He turned away from the fire to see that she was standing by the bed and she was wearing a nightdress. He’d missed her undressing? She hadn’t asked for his help?
She’d said her maid would be arriving on the morrow, and she’d have her own bedchamber the following night. She’d wanted it for that night, but the servants simply hadn’t been able to get to it, so great were the number of tasks before them.
He and Sefoni had helped as well. He’d tucked the sheets in on this bed himself, in fact. They were sort of crooked. He wasn’t very good at it.
“I’m going to sleep in this chair,” he said. “Do as you like.”
Silence.
Then, “You’re that angry with me, then?”
“What? I’m not angry with you.”
“Well, then…” She came over to sit down next to him in the other chair that sat next to the fire. These chairs were new, delivered just that day. He liked them, because his father would have hated them. His father’s tastes had run towards the cheap and serviceable, and these chairs were ornate, with carved backs and velvet padding, and Haid liked the extravagance of them. She gazed at him. “Should we talk?”
He shrugged. “What do you want to talk about?”
She let out a helpless laugh.
He swallowed. “I’m not angry. I’m relieved. Maybe I’m… I don’t know. Some part of me is disappointed, but… mostly relieved. If we are going to have children together, I want it to be… after.”
“After the job?” She raised her eyebrows.
He nodded. “I think I’ll… I need to see it through, do you understand? I know you resent it—”
“I don’t.” She shook her head. “I know you have to do it. I know it’s part of who you are. I know that whatever the job is, it saved you from yourself and from the Cowntess and from… from whatever you were on iubilia, and I’m glad to have you, so I can’t resent it. You need it, and I need you, so…” She shrugged.
“You don’t need me,” he said.
“I do.” She gripped the armrests of the chairs. “That’s why I lied, don’t you see? Because you brought me into this, and you changed me, and you got it in your head it was honorable to throw me back to the wolves, and I couldn’t convince you any other way, so I had to do something.”
“The wolves? That’s what you think of the people at court?”
“Do you like it at court?”
He inclined his head. “All right. I suppose I see your point.”
“This world, your world, maybe people are criminals, maybe they do underhanded things, but in court, people are cruel—and out of boredom. Nothing matters to them, and they want for nothing, so they hurt each other for amusement. Here, at least people… at least it’s not like that.”
“If you don’t want to be at court, you don’t have to be,” he said. “After Rzymn, you’ll have money. You don’t need me for that. I spoke about the prospect of your buying an estate for yourself. You can establish yourself in any way you like. I’m not necessary in that proposition.”
She drew back, as if she hadn’t actually considered this.
“I like you here, though.” He turned back to the fire. “I like you in my house and in my bed and I like you… I like everything about you.”
“I like you too.” Her voice was raw.
He turned to her. “You know, you say that—”
“And you refuse to believe me. You always refuse to believe me. You blame honor or you say you’re trying to think of my own good or various other things, but I think it’s not about me at all. I think you just can’t conceive of someone wanting you.”
His lips parted.
“You’re really not as bad a man as you think you are,” she muttered.
“Well,” he said quietly, “then stay and convince me.”
She got out of the chai
r. “All right.” She came closer and she cupped his face in her hands. She kissed him.
He shut his eyes.
She kissed his forehead. “I’m sorry I lied about being pregnant.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you when you tried to tell me what you wanted,” he said.
She pulled away.
He opened his eyes.
“Come to bed,” she said.
“Soon,” he said, his gaze lingering on her. She was beautiful, the reflection of flames dancing on her skin. How could he have this? How could this magnificent creature be his? He didn’t deserve her.
He swallowed and turned deliberately back to the fire.
She sighed.
A long, long moment passed.
And then he heard her move through the room and climb into bed alone.
THE COWNTESS’S EYES danced. “There you will find a comingled sack—a great mass of mixed wheat, barley, poppyseed, chickpeas, lentils, and beans—and you must sort these into separate heaps before dawn. When you have finished the task, another door will open, and you will find a room full of sheep with golden wool. These sheep are not docile, like their duller counterparts. They have sharp teeth and you must take care as you sheer one to get the fleece. With this fleece, then, you will travel to the mouth of the river that flows from the Land of the Dead itself, and you will trade it with the man at the door—”
“That’s quite enough,” said Pairce, glaring at the woman. “I’m beginning to see why everyone else wants to kill you.”
“I’m only answering your question,” huffed the Cowntess.
“You’re trying to have some fun with me. I’m not going to sort wheat and dry beans.”
“Well, I thought I’d say something to give myself some time to think.”
Pairce scoffed. “Think of what?”
“Well, I don’t know how to reverse it, of course,” said the Cowntess.
“So, you’re going to simply make things up?” Pairce planted both hands on her hips.
“You won’t like him when you have him,” said the Cowntess. “He was not a man. He was a docile sort of lily-fingered thing. A woman with a cock.”
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