Knight's End: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (Tangled Crowns Book 3), page 10
"What about … what about your maid? Is she frozen but sentient? Does this spell still let her see?"
I leaned forward and pressed my breasts together so that my nipples were close. I spread my legs and put my hands on my thighs, posing for him as I raised a brow. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? To think she's watching us?"
Connor swallowed hard and nodded. “But would you?”
I walked over toward Gennifer and climbed onto the bed right in front of her line of sight. I scooted backward on the coverlet, my eyes steadily on Connor’s. I slowly spread my legs. "So, we’ll let her watch." I let my hand drift down to my mound. I dipped my fingers inside to gather some wetness and rub it up over myself.
Connor groaned.
"Come closer to your queen," I ordered. I pulled my pussy lips apart so he could see how wet I was.
I leaned back on my elbows and realized my flower crown and tiara were still set in my hair. I left them there as my hands gestured for Connor to join me on the bed.
Connor's chest heaved like he had run a foot race. But I knew he was just trying to control himself, like he always did. He was trying to hold back, despite the tension I saw in his body, despite the hard dick in his hands. He stroked himself slowly, getting his voyeuristic fill.
“I’m still on edge, Bloss,” he whispered, as his hand slid up and teased the head of his shaft. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I needed him. I needed him on top of me. I realized I’d need to go further to tempt him. "Connor," I whispered. "I want it rough.” I rolled over and let him see my ass. I looked back over my shoulder as I said, “I want you to spank me. Use that anger. And I want you to hold me down as you suck me from behind and yank my hair, then I want you to rut me hard."
“Gah!” He strode to the edge of the bed, stroking himself. "Get up on your knees. I want to watch you play with yourself," he ordered.
I rose up and arched my back so he could see my slit. I used my middle finger to circle my clit. And then I started moving in figure-eight. Pleasure mounted inside me and I laid my head down on the mattress so that I could use my other hand to pinch a nipple.
"No," Connor’s hands latched onto my ankles and pulled me roughly toward the edge of the bed. He flipped me so that my back fell to the mattress. Then he leaned forward, so his body covered mine. "Your nipples are mine." His lips latched onto the left one and he rubbed his lips against my swollen bud in gentle circles, teasing me. His lips barely touched my flesh. It was maddening. So good and yet not enough. I rubbed my gash harder and tried to arch my breast up into his mouth. But he used his other hand to hold me down.
"You said you wanted me to be mean." He pinched my nipple and then lightly smacked my breasts before reaching down and yanking my hand away from my sopping slit. "Turn over," he growled.
My mind lit up in a lust-filled haze. Connor had never given me orders. Our entire life, our entire friendship, had been based on me being a brat and him being the good-natured peacemaker who smoothed things over. I didn't know if dealing with this magical anger brought out a new side in him, but I knew I liked it.
I turned over beneath him. He held his body suspended over mine as I did. But once my ass was back up, Connor shuffled off the side of the bed and stood. He pulled on my waist so that my ass was up and facing him. Then he spanked me. He smacked my ass three times, just enough for me to yelp. Just enough for it to sting. Then he pulled my ass cheeks apart and his face dove down into my pussy from behind. He lapped at me, flattening his tongue and using long, slow strokes.
I moaned as I heated up like an inferno. I longed to grind myself into his face, but he held my hips and ass too tightly.
"Connor, I need you,” I moaned as I teetered on the brink of orgasm.
He stopped and I wanted to cry. My orgasm receded.
"Beg more," Connor smacked my ass one more time and then flipped me so that I star fished on the mattress.
My chest heaved and I begged, “Please. Oh please.”
His fingers slid inside me and curled, and he held down my stomach as he gave me lip service. He was a sarding mouth artist. My legs writhed on the mattress and I nearly kicked him when I finally exploded. My vision went black, the sensory overload too much. I died a little death and my head floated in the clouds.
And even as my orgasm tapered off, every part of me still ached for him to press his cock inside and just ream me. My mind was overcome with primal urges. I whimpered, “Connor, I've never wanted anything more in my entire life than you."
His arm came up around my neck, squeezing lightly as his dick slammed into me, owning every inch of my pussy. He rutted me hard and fast until he was close to completion. Then he stopped, pulled out, and sank his teeth into one on my breasts, biting me as he forced his cock to calm down. He ran his dick back and forth over my clit, soaking it with my own hot lubrication. Then he went down on me once again, sucking my clit into his mouth with so much force that I came instantly, rocking my pelvis against him and screaming.
He gave me no time to recover before he slammed back into me and rode me again. This time, he threw one of my legs up over his shoulder. “Take it,” he cried, as his dick hit my cervix.
“Yes, Connor,” I breathed, mindless with my afterglow even as he pummeled me. He got so deep that it hurt. I tried to hide my whimper. But he wouldn’t let me get away with that.
He put a hand on my stomach and pink light permeated my skin, easing the pain. And then he pushed even harder. He grabbed my other leg and bent both legs toward me so he could hump deeper. After his pink healing magic, the pain was only a sliver of sensation that heightened my senses. And I moaned, clutching the sheets, as an orgasm deeper than any I’d ever felt before took me.
Connor dropped my leg and smacked my hip, pulling out. “Ride me,” he commanded. He lay back on the mattress and stroked his dick as I struggled to recover enough to get up and do what he wanted.
When I sank down on him, he grabbed my breasts, pushing them together. I used my knees to pump myself up and down on top of him and he leaned forward, his tongue flicking from nipple to nipple. Impossibly, my pleasure started to grow again. Sparks flitted across my vision. And I reached the high point of pleasure, clenching around him as he groaned and pumped up hard into me.
Afterward, we lay across my bed, sated. Connor’s hand traced up and down my spine as he stared at the bed canopy.
“That was amazing,” I told him. “Everything I never knew I wanted.”
He chuckled.
“I’m definitely making you use your magic a lot during sex,” I promised. “That was sarding hot.”
He gave me a satisfied smirk. “It was, wasn’t it?”
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. “I’m so lucky.”
He started to laugh but post-sex emotions took over, and I said softly, “I’m serious, Connor. Not just because your magic is hot. I’m lucky to have you. You’ve always been my best friend. Even when I left, you were my best friend. I know you never got my letters … but I’ve always loved you. And I feel lucky to get to love you as you evolve.”
He squeezed my hand and his eyes misted. But he swallowed hard and tried to joke, “Devolve, more like. These powers make me a brute.”
“Hey, angry sex with you is hot, so if you ever need to burn off some magically-induced rage …”
He chuckled. “I have a feeling I’m gonna be angry in a lot of places, Bloss. We’re gonna need healing magic for a lot of things. Battlefields, for one.”
“Good thing you like the idea of people watching then,” I jested.
He laughed but gathered me up and cradled my head on his arm. “Thank you, Bloss Boss. I needed this.”
I rolled on my side to stare at him. “Connor, I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you.”
“And I, you.”
“Secret friends forever?” I asked, raising my right hand for our secret handshake.
Connor lifted his hand, too. And there, in bed, after the most amazing sex, we did our secret shake. And my heart felt certain that everything would be alright.
My heart was shite at predictions.
After Connor and I dressed, and he helped me comb and plait my hair, we went in search of the other knights.
We stopped short in the great hall. A gargoyle had entered the palace. Not one of our newly created young rocks—one of the two ancient gargoyles that had served my mother and grandmother. The gargoyle saw me and immediately bowed. Then it knelt on the ground, its old body creaking as stone rubbed stone when it bent.
I walked toward it and realized something was lashed to its back.
It was our messenger. And his throat had been cut.
Chapter Ten
I smashed open the door to the private royal library. It was a room kept separate from the literature and histories provided to the courtiers. This room had been solely for my mother and fathers’ research.
The library rose three stories in front of me. The bottom floor was lined with windows on the left and two additional floors could be accessed by ladders. Those floors were lined with marble balustrades and narrow aisles with plush red carpet to muffle footsteps as courtiers looked for books. When we were younger, Connor and I had once used the carpet to our advantage to sneak to the edge of the balcony and pour an ink pot down on Lady Agatha.
I rushed past books and scrolls, maps and ledgers. I ignored the scent of aged parchment. Normally, when I came to this room, I could appreciate the beauty and the knowledge that it held. But my heart was beating furiously, and I was so enraged I saw red. Declan looked up from the scroll he was studying.
"What is it?"
"Your mother's responded." I seethed.
"She killed our messenger," Connor said softly behind me.
Declan closed his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.
Ryan appeared at the balcony of the second floor, a book in his hand. He gripped the railing hard with his free hand and said, "Too bad all of her ambassadors have turned into such cowards. We could have responded in kind."
I walked over to Declan's table and slammed my hands down on the tabletop. "Sedara is the reason for this mess. This war is against them and Queen Diamoni’s unfair trade practices. But Evaness is the only country suffering."
Connor took a seat next to Declan, rubbing my scholar’s shoulder in solidarity. Ryan descended the ladder to come stand behind me. My giant knight wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me back into him. His fingers traced circles on my hips. “It’ll be alright, Little Dearling.”
I sank back against him, drinking in the comfort of his hold. I tried to let go of my anger. But urgency still gnawed at me. I stared down at Connor and Declan. "What can we do?"
Connor rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "We can send messengers south to Lored. But they haven't the battle power. Neither does Macedon to the north of Cheryn. At best that country could be a distraction." He trailed off chewing on his lower lip as he sank deeper into thought.
Declan’s contributions didn’t help the matter. “Everything I’ve read said that the sea creatures we’re likely to face are sirens, who can lure you to drown yourself, and ashrays—which are worse.”
“What are those?” I asked.
Declan grabbed an open book next to him and pushed it toward me. I leaned forward to look. The page showed an illustration of several murky blurs with glowing green eyes floating in the water. They looked almost like the sea jellies I’d seen washed ashore, but for the eyes, which were hauntingly human.
Declan’s finger traced the outline of one of the ashrays. “They are sea ghosts. Humans tempted to die by sea creatures. Their souls become trapped under the sea. They spread terror. But, more importantly for us—they spread cold. They can take a sixty-degree patch of ocean and turn it into one that’s just above freezing. Our soldiers wouldn’t have time to drown before they died of hypothermia or fear.”
A shiver ran down my spine at the thought of falling overboard and being surrounded by these creatures. I tried to combat my fear by returning to my anger. My frustration. “Hell!” I cried. “Why can’t our enemies be sarding human?”
Declan cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve only ever manipulated physical things. But temperature is technically physical. I wonder if Ryan—”
The clank of armor interrupted Declan’s train of thought. We turned to see one of Ryan’s soldiers standing in the doorway.
“Sir,” the man had clearly come straight from his horse. He still wore his cape and his riding boots, though he’d pushed the cape back to reveal his balding head. He saluted and waited for Ryan to address him.
Ryan turned away from the rest of us, but stayed next to us, so we could overhear the conversation. “Commander Blythe. Proceed.”
“Duchess Agatha’s province is overrun with djinn.”
My heart drummed so quickly that I couldn’t separate the beats. “We had mostly evacuated the province due to the dragon threat, hadn’t we?” I hated how tight my voice came out. It was not confident or calm at all. I took a slow breath, hoping to ease the tension that had me wound so tight.
Sard it, Bloss, I scolded myself. Hold it together for this man. Who knows if he’s got family there? I couldn’t tell by the look in the soldier’s eyes, but Ryan tried to station soldiers within a two hour walk of their home village.
Ryan looked at me as if he knew what I was thinking. He frowned as he said, “Evacuations were in progress.”
My heart fell. That wasn’t a good sign. I resisted clasping my hands together. I looked back at the commander. His eyes were lined with crow’s feet from years of smiles. But he didn’t smile at me now.
“They’ve taken the Duchess Agatha’s estate, sir,” the soldier reported.
“Were any of her husbands there?”
Commander Blythe nodded and his lips thinned. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Deceased?” It killed me that I had to ask it nonchalantly.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Another noble family smashed apart. My thoughts flew to Agatha and Willard. I realized that I didn’t even know if the pair had survived the attack on the castle.
Ryan took over after that—asking about what few Elven weapons we had on hand. “Get a contingent together. Take those Elven weapons with you; they’ll cleave through wish-created creatures,” Ryan advised. “Send any citizens here.”
The commander saluted again before leaving the room.
Shite, shite, shite.
“They think I’m dead and that they’ve destroyed our capital, but Raj is still sending people after our provinces?” I raged.
I didn’t hear Blue and Quinn enter the room until Blue walked up behind me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My father’s a locust. He won’t stop until everything here is a wasteland.”
To my surprise, and his, my hand reached out and automatically clamped around his. But I needed someone to hold onto or I was going to lose it. I was going blind with panic and fury. I needed the warm, dry feel of his palm covering mine to anchor me. I turned and stared into his eyes, which reflected back my own agony. Was my country about to be lost? Were we completely without the hope of any ally? “We need help,” I ground out.
"The only other possibility is Gitmore," Declan said.
I froze and stared at him. "What on earth can we possibly give Gitmore to convince them to ally with us? My mother always said their queen was beyond unreasonable—"
A throat cleared behind me. But when I turned, I didn’t see another soldier. One of my least favorite people appeared. It looked like Jorad had survived the attack on the castle after all. I briefly wondered if Donaloo had unfrozen him or if the steward had fled the castle. He was so attached to these stone walls; I didn’t think it likely he would have left.
I turned to look at him, abandoning our current conversation. I might not have cared for Willard, but he was one of my nobles. The portly man had done me a good turn recently. He’d just lost at least one of his fathers to the djinn. And Jorad cared for Willard. “Did he make it?” I asked.
Jorad’s lips thinned and he gave a brief shake of his head.
Willard had been killed by the explosives in the noble’s wing then. Surprisingly, the thought that he was gone made my heart ache. I reached my free hand for Jorad, but he stepped back, staying formal and inclining his head.
“Did any of the nobles in the wing make it?” I asked.
“Fer, Orunta. The pixie Sunya. Duchess Kycee and her entourage left early so Connor’s family wasn’t even here during the attack.”
I felt like he’d hit me over the head with a log. “That’s it?”
Malia had been a traitor. Agatha was gone. Duke Aiden and his wife were also dead. Nearly half my noble families had been wiped out in a night.
“What’s the death count?” I couldn’t dwell on emotions. I needed to deal in numbers until the shock wore off. Then I’d figure out what to do next.
“One-hundred-ninety-three, Your Majesty.”
I nodded. “You’ll take care of funeral arrangements at the crown’s expense—”
Jorad nodded. “Already begun.”
I pressed my lips together and took a moment to regain my composure. “How many frozen?”
“Six-hundred-eighty two, including the entire kitchen staff.”
My hand started to fly to my neck, but I stopped it halfway. I had to maintain control of myself. “We’ll need to get food brought in for whomever shelters—”
“It’s been done.”
As much as I didn’t really enjoy him as a person, Jorad was efficient.
“How is it you weren’t frozen?” Declan called out.
I wanted to smack my scholar. Sometimes, tact was not his forte.
Jorad looked at the ground. “I’d received some disturbing news—”
I recalled how Jorad had found out Willard had cheated. I quickly interjected, “He had leave to take a few hours.” I could hardly imagine Jorad drowning his sorrows at a tavern, but wherever he’d wandered, his heartbreak deserved a bit of privacy.
