A Lord's Wild Taming Touch
# The Lady's Gambit ## Chapter 1 Morgan The whispers in the court weren't just gossip anymore; they were a physical presence, a low hum that vibrated against the stone walls of my solar. A flick of my wrist sent a crystal decanter trembl
Chapter 1
Morgan
The whispers in the court weren't just gossip anymore; they were a physical presence, a low hum that vibrated against the stone walls of my solar. A flick of my wrist sent a crystal decanter trembling, the amber liquid within sloshing dangerously close to the rim. I curled my fingers into a fist, the power crackling just beneath my skin like a trapped storm. It needed an outlet. It needed a tether. A husband, supposedly.
Not for love, though. No, that dream had died the moment *he* had turned his back on me. Now, it was purely political calculus, a cold equation for survival. I was the last of my line, and my magic was becoming a liability. The gilded cage of the palace felt tighter with each passing day, the proposals from grasping lords more repulsive. Their sons were puppets, their lands leverage. I needed a different kind of alliance.
My gaze drifted to the window, overlooking the wild, untamed forests that bordered the kingdom. Nature, raw and unforgiving, called to the wildness in my own blood. My choice had crystallized there, in the silence of the pines. Cameron Shademore.
He was a minor lord of a northern territory, a man of the woods more than the court. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a shadow of dark beard always gracing his jaw and spectacles that couldn't hide the keen intelligence in his eyes. He was talkative, easygoing with the guards, yet carried a quiet dominance that wasn't bred in throne rooms but earned in the wild. He asked for nothing. He gained nothing from my court but vague respect. And that was precisely why I wanted him.
My advisors thought me stubborn, reckless. They didn’t see the calculation. To bind my chaotic magic, I needed a will strong enough to hold it, a spirit adventurous enough to not flinch from the storm within me. Cameron, with his freckled skin and quiet confidence, was the only key that fit.
I hadn’t told him. No one knew, except for Isla. The thought alone sent a shiver through me that had nothing to do with fear. This would be no seduction of courtly love. It would be a proposition from a noble to her subject, with the fate of my magic—and my kingdom—as the stakes.
Rising from my desk, I felt the power surge in response to my resolve. It heated my blood, made the olive skin of my arms prickle. I ran a hand through my long, chocolate-brown hair, my full lips pressing into a determined line. I was done being the shy, estranged queen, buffeted by the winds of politics. Tonight, I would finally turn the tides in my favor.
Chapter 2
Cameron
The austere silence of my office pressed in, and my mind betrayed me, slipping back through the years to a noise-filled hall and the smell of spiced wine.
It was a masquerade in a border town, a riot of color and anonymity. I hadn’t gone there to find a woman. But then I saw her. A forest sprite in a gossamer dress, fake fairy wings fluttering with her every laugh. A butterfly mask obscured her face, but nothing could hide the lush curve of her body as she moved, a wild, untamed rhythm in the crowd that called to something primal in me.
I remembered her hand on my arm, strong and sure. Her voice was low, fire-warmed honey that cut through the noise. “You look like you need to get lost,” she’d said, her green eyes glinting behind a butterfly mask. I hadn’t planned on saying yes.
We didn’t speak much. Words were useless. I was leading her up a narrow staircase to a rented room. She was fire in my arms, her mouth hungry on mine, her fingers tugging at my clothes with a desperate urgency that mirrored my own.
Her body was a revelation. Curves that my hands ached to map even before her dress hit the floor. Olive skin, so rare and luminous in the lamplight, dotted with faint freckles across her shoulders. She was wild, unashamed, her spirit a tangible force that filled the small space.
I laid back on the rough linen, and she climbed atop me, those ridiculous wings bouncing with each deliberate, rolling descent of her hips.
The mask became askew. In the dim candlelight, I saw parts of her face as she rode me. Olive skin sheened with sweat, strands of dark chocolate hair sticking to her temples. Her eyes, a startling, vivid green, held mine as she moved. Then her full lips parted, her eyes squeezed shut in concentration, then flying open as pleasure took her. The sight of her, and the tight, wet heat of her, was unraveling me.
“Look at me,” she’d whispered, her voice a husky command. I did. I watched her fall apart. Her body clenched around my cock in fierce, rhythmic pulses, a trembling that started deep inside her and radiated out until her thighs shook against mine. She didn’t scream, she roared with pleasure, riding out her orgasm. She seemingly made the walls tremble.
The raw, unfiltered ecstasy on her face broke my control. I gripped her hips, driving up into her as my own release tore through me, a hot, blinding spill that left us both gasping and tangled.
When I woke to cold sheets and morning light, she was gone. Vanished. I asked after a green-eyed woman with olive skin and brown hair. I described her laugh, her fire. People shrugged, looked at me with pity. No one had seen her. As if she’d been a phantom, a dream conjured by the night. A woman with those features did not simply vanish in this kingdom unless she willed it.
A cold certainty settled in my gut, cutting through the haze of memory. Green eyes. Brown hair. Olive skin. Traits so rare alone, impossible together. Surely, there couldn’t be two.
My blood heated, a slow, simmering pulse that had nothing to do with the northern chill at my window.
A messenger knocks on my door. "My Lord? You have received an invitation to the royal ball in two weeks time." He handed me the invitation.
Sure enough. I was politely requested to attend this ball. It was a request disguised as a demand.
Maybe, just maybe, I could find my fake fairy, and actually meet the girl who ruined me.
Chapter 3
Morgan
*1 week before the ball*
The throne room doors slammed shut behind me, the final, resonant boom echoing the fury in my chest. They treated me like a prized mare at auction. My advisors, the lords… all they saw was a vessel for power, a key to a kingdom, and a problem to be solved by marrying me off to some vapid son.
I had played the part too well. The shy, estranged royal, buffeted by circumstance. But the act was chafing, a too-tight gown. It was making me look weak, and weakness here was a death sentence.
“Eleanor, wait!”
Leo’s voice chased me down the gilded corridor. I didn’t stop. My heels clicked a furious rhythm on the marble.
“Eleanor, please.”
I whirled on him so fast my chocolate hair lashed across my cheek. “You will address me as ‘Your Grace,’ or ‘my lady,’” I snapped, my voice low and venomous. “I am not the girl you played in the gardens with anymore. I am the last of my line. Remember your place.”
He flinched as if struck. Good. “I apologize, Your Grace.” The title sounded like ash in his mouth. “But… Lord Bellington’s son. His lands border the disputed territory. It’s a good strategic fit. Why refuse him?”
A bitter laugh escaped me. I closed the distance between us in two strides, invading his space, my face tilted up to his. It wasn’t graceful. It was an attack. “A good fit? You think I care about his father’s grain yields or his cavalry count? You lost the right to have any input on my life, *Leo*, the moment you chose *her*. The moment you made me feel like a fool for believing in something as fragile as love.”
Hurt, raw and deep, flashed in his eyes. “It wasn’t like that. You have to understand the pressure—”
“I don’t have to understand anything,” I cut him off, the old wound throbbing beneath my ribs. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Not now. Not ever. Just… don’t bother.”
I turned my back on him, on his sputtered attempts at defense, and walked away. The familiar ache settled in—the hopelessness, the sharp sting of rejection that never truly faded. It threatened to pull me under, to drown me in that old, quiet sorrow.
No. Not today.
I let the darkness rise. It swirled from the shadows in the corridor, a comforting, cool vapor that wrapped around my limbs. It felt like coming home. With a thought, I let it swallow me whole, the world dissolving into a silent, inky rush.
It deposited me in the center of my solar, the sudden silence ringing in my ears. I was alone. Safe. And more determined than ever. Leo’s betrayal, the court’s manipulations—they were the past. My future required a different kind of strength. It required a man who wouldn’t see a commodity, but a partner. A storm.
And he would be arriving in one week.
Chapter 4
Cameron
The journey south was a welcome change. The endless pines of my own lands gave way to rolling hills and, finally, the cultivated fields of the capital’s breadbasket. My men were in good spirits, their laughter and coarse jokes a familiar comfort against the growing formality of the landscape. At the heart of it all was Captain Arlen, riding beside me.
“Nervous?” Arlen asked, nudging his horse closer. His grin was knowing.
“About a room full of powdered nobles smelling of desperation and rosewater? Terribly,” I deadpanned, adjusting my glasses. “I’m more worried about which fork to use for the ornamental swan.”
He chuckled. “Just follow my lead. I’ll start a food fight if it gets too dull.”
Our easy banter was cut short by a hushed conversation drifting back from a pair of younger guards riding ahead. I caught only fragments.
“…twenty proposals, they say…”
“…stubborn as a stone…”
“…what’s her title even mean? Is she a princess or a…”
I urged my horse forward slightly, my curiosity getting the better of me. “What’s the gossip lads?”
They stiffened, but Arlen gave them a reassuring nod. One, a red-cheeked boy named Kael, spoke up. “Just talk from the last inn, my lord. About the royal lady at court. The one they say has to marry.”
“Has to?” I asked.
“Aye,” the other guard, Bren, said, lowering his voice. “Word is she’s refused twenty offers from the high lords. They say her… situation… demands a match, but she won’t have any of them. Poor lass. Sounds like she’s being paraded like a prize mare at a fair.”
A genuine pang of sympathy hit me. I’d seen enough political marriages in my time—cold, transactional things that left both parties miserable. The thought of some young woman, alone in that gilded prison, being forced to choose from a line of preening suitors who only wanted her name… it left a sour taste.
“Poor girl indeed,” I said, more to myself than them. “I hope she finds someone who sees her. Not her title, or her lands. Someone to actually cherish her. No one deserves that auction block.”
Arlen shot me a sidelong look, a smirk playing on his lips. “Sentimental, Lord Shademore. Careful, that almost sounds like a proposal.”
“Hardly,” I scoffed, but the image stayed with me—a faceless, tragic figure in silk, surrounded by vultures. It made my invitation feel heavier. What circus was I riding into?
Little did I know, as the first spires of the capital pierced the horizon, how thoroughly I would soon eat those words.
Chapter 5
Morgan
Today was the day. My only chance. The weight of it pressed on my chest, a physical thing. I had been studying Cameron for years, from afar and in every dispatch my spies could secure. I knew his holdings, his fair judgments, the loyalty of his men. I knew he asked for nothing. I was almost completely sure he would say yes. Almost.
The faintest ripple in the air behind me, a displacement so slight it would be nothing to anyone else. But that was the blessing, and the curse, of my powers. I could feel every vibration around me. Even that of an ant. It was just a matter of weight and pacing that told me if I was being assassinated, ambushed, or just about to have my solitude interrupted.
“I know you’re there,” I remarked, not looking up from my book.
A melodramatic huff sounded from the doorway. Isla, my best friend and most effective spy, slinked into the room. “It’s no fun when you always know,” she complained, flopping onto the chaise opposite me with practiced grace.
“It keeps you sharp. What do you want?”
She grinned, a feline thing. “Your boyfriend just arrived.”
My heart gave a single, hard knock against my ribs. I kept my eyes on the page, though the letters had blurred. “Oh?”
“Oh, how cute,” she laughed, the sound like tinkling bells designed to annoy. “No, darling, he’s not here in the castle. He’s in the city now. My man at the gate saw his party. They looked… travel-worn. He should be arriving within the hour, though. It depends on if they stop at the stalls to freshen up… or, perhaps, if he seeks a more personal form of companionship in the arms of a welcoming street woman before facing the royal gauntlet.”
The lights in the room flared. The shadows stretching from the bookshelves grew long and trembling. I took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing the storm inside me to settle. “He is not,” I gritted out, closing the book with a soft thud.
“Touchy.” Isla’s smile didn’t fade, but her eyes softened with real concern. “You’re certain about this, Morgan? The northern wolf? He’s a good man, by all accounts, but he’s not one of us. He doesn’t play the game.”
“That,” I said, rising to pace before the cold fireplace, “is precisely why he’s the only choice. I don’t need another player. I need an anchor. I need someone whose ambition isn’t for my throne, but for… something else. A life.”
“And you think he’ll want this? A political marriage to a woman whose magic is slowly tearing her apart?”
I stopped, hugging myself. “I think he is a man of duty and adventure. I am offering him both. I have to believe that’s enough.” I turned to her, my voice dropping.
Isla nodded slowly. “Then your plan is set. You’ll corner him tonight? After the welcome feast?”
“Not corner. Proposition.” I tried to sound regal, confident. The flutter in my stomach betrayed me. “It has to be tonight. Before the others swarm, before my resolve… wavers.”
She stood and came to me, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Then you should get ready. And for the love of the gods, try not to make the chandeliers shake when you see him. First impressions matter.”
I managed a weak smile. An hour. He was an hour away. I would have to wait longer, until the cover of night, to talk to him. The wait was its own kind of torture, every second a tremor I felt in my bones.
Chapter 6
Cameron
The capital’s walls loomed, a gray contrast to the deep greens of home. My men were restless, the energy of the city getting into their blood almost as soon as we passed the gate. Their "advice" started before we’d even found the stables.
“A man should not arrive at a royal summons alone, my lord,” Rylan said, clapping me on the shoulder. “A companion on your arm shows… stability.”
“A warm companion in your bed shows you’re not a ghost-chasing monk,” added Kael, quieter but with a sharp look.
I knew what they meant. The ghost woman. The memory of that single, stolen night years ago, a woman whose face I never saw but whose touch I could still feel in my dreams. They thought a new woman would scour her from my mind. They were wrong. You don’t replace a haunting; you learn to live with it.
I declined. Politely, then firmly. The politics here were murky enough without bringing a stranger into the mix. My purpose was to answer the Crown’s call, nothing more.
Once the horses were settled and my men had scattered to their own distractions, I took my own. The market was a riot of color and scent, a luxury we rarely enjoyed in the steady, practical rhythm of the northern holds. I moved through the stalls, the press of the crowd a tangible force. I bought a small vial of forest-pine oil, the scent a piece of home, and watched a metalsmith work on a delicate hairpin. The normalcy of it was a balm.
But my mind kept drifting back to the palace, to the reason I was here. A royal was seeking a husband, the rumors said. Some said her magic was unstable without a tether. It sounded like a prison sentence to me, for both parties. But I also felt a pang for her, a noble creature being traded like a rare falcon to the highest bidder. I hoped, vaguely, that whoever she was forced to choose would see the person, not just the power.
I didn’t know, as I tucked the pine oil into my tunic and turned my steps toward the castle gates, that my sympathy was about to become profoundly personal. The game was already in motion, and I was walking directly into the heart of it.
I slowly made my way to the palace.
The great hall was a shimmer of silk and polished leather, a hum of voices echoing off the high ceiling. Arlen stood beside me, his presence a familiar anchor. We exchanged the necessary courtesies with other lords, my mind only half on their words. The air was thick with perfume and ambition.
Then I saw her.
It was only a sliver of profile between two courtiers—a flash of chocolate-brown hair against olive skin, a curve of a cheek. My heart seized, a visceral punch of recognition that stole my breath. I turned, my movement too abrupt, earning a curious glance from a nearby duke. But the space where she had been was empty, filled now by a portly lord in green velvet. Had it been her? The ghost from the forest, the memory that refused to fade? Or was the strange tension of this place playing tricks on my mind?
Chapter 7
Morgan
*Three weeks ago*
In the king’s private solar, the air had been thick with my own barely-contained power.
“You must stop, Eleanor,” the king had said, his voice weary. “Ten proposals. Ten. You are bringing down the morale of the entire court with these refusals.”
I’d stared at the intricate pattern of the rug. “They all bored me, your majesty.”
He’d blinked, then a low chuckle escaped him. “Amused by your own candor? Very well. I am throwing a ball. In your honor. And at its conclusion, I will be announcing your engagement.”
My head snapped up. “My engagement? That I don’t have yet?”
“Yes. Precisely. You make everyone nervous, Lexi. The… fluctuations. Getting married provides stability to your magic. It’s tradition for a reason.”
A cold anger had seeped through me. “You mean it cages me.”
He’d looked at me for a long, silent moment, the lines around his eyes deepening. Finally, he sighed. “Lexi, my dear, I cannot tell you what you wish to hear. I have done all that I can to shield you. I am throwing this ball. I won’t announce that it is for you, but at the end of the night, I *will* announce your engagement. Who it is to, is up to you. Or I will pick for you myself.” He leaned forward slightly. “Are we clear?”
I had bowed my head, my magic buzzing beneath my skin like trapped wasps. “Of course, your majesty.”
I’d let that power surge, a silent, invisible torrent that swept me from his chambers back to the solitude of my own rooms in a dizzying blink. The plan had crystallized instantly, cold and hard. I would have to move my timetable with Cameron up. Swiftly.
Isla would have to be involved. My most trusted handmaiden and spy, the only one who knew the wilder, truer parts of me. I’d summoned her immediately, the words spilling out in a rushed, desperate whisper.
Chapter 8
Cameron
The feast was delicious. I was able to make intriguing conversation with everyone around me, from a talkative old knight to a sharp-eyed merchant’s wife. The court buzzed with speculation, a pleasant hum over the clatter of dishes. No one knew why the king was throwing the ball, just that there, apparently, was to be very exciting news to be announced at the end of the night.
When the tables were cleared for dancing, I hung back, content to watch the swirl of silk and velvet from the edge of the hall. That’s when she approached—a pretty, slim, blonde woman with an efficient grace. She didn’t simper or flutter her lashes; she simply stopped before me and asked, “Will you dance, my lord?”
“It would be my pleasure,” I said, offering my arm.
As we joined the flow of the dance, I noticed her eyes. They weren’t looking at me in admiration or seduction, but with a cool, calculating assessment, as if measuring my worth against some private ledger.
“The king outdoes himself,” she said, her small talk smooth as the polished floor. “Such a gathering, and for no stated purpose. It makes the gossip so much more inventive, don’t you think?”
“It does,” I agreed, making a small remark about the quality of the musicians.
She steered the conversation like a skilled rider guiding a horse. “Of course, the most popular topic remains our mysterious royal lady. The one who’s turned down every suitor presented to her this season. It’s quite the scandal.”
I raised a brow. “And are you the source of such fascinating gossip?”
She giggled, a light, airy sound. “Oh, heavens no. I’m far too free-spirited to be in such a predicament. I merely observe.” Her assessing gaze sharpened. “What do you think of it, Lord Shademore? A lady refusing her duty for so long?”
I gave an honest answer. “I think if a person is forced to a lifetime’s union, they have a right to be particular. Duty is one thing. Misery is another.”
A strange, knowing smile touched her lips just as the final notes of the song faded. We bowed to each other. As she dipped her head, her whisper was a breath against my ear. “You are to meet Lady Lessandra in the gardens. The eastern pergola, before the night is over.”
I straightened, my pulse quickening. “Who—?”
But when I raised my head to look at her, she was already gone, vanished into the crowd like a phantom. I stood alone at the edge of the dance floor, the king’s impending announcement forgotten, my mind now fixed on the shadows of the eastern gardens and the mysterious lady who waited there.
Chapter 9
Morgan
Isla returned to my room just as I was fastening the final pearl button at my wrist. The nervous energy in the solar had been a physical pressure; up here, it was a cold, sharp focus. I looked at my reflection—the determined set of my jaw, the storm in my own eyes. This was the armor.
“Tonight, it all comes down to this,” I said, my voice steady. “Either Cameron will be my unknowing savior, or I will be shackled to the king’s choice for me.”
Isla leaned against the doorframe, a shadow with a smile. “If it came to the king’s choice, you could simply have that man disappear.”
I rolled my eyes, turning from the mirror. “It would only borrow time. Then they might move to kill me, or worse, actually put me in a cage.” A shiver that wasn’t entirely unpleasant traced my spine. “At least with a man… he could probably be seduced.”
Isla’s chuckle was a soft, knowing sound in the quiet room. “I would pay to see you seduce a man.” She laughed harder at my glare, then composed herself with an effort. When she looked at me again, her grin was pure mischief. “I delivered your invitation. Lord Shademore seems to really know how to dance. And is very handsome up close.”
A hot, irrational spike of something green and sharp shot through me. The candle on my dressing table flared, its flame stretching thin and blue for a heartbeat. Isla’s eyebrows rose.
“Maybe the council is right,” she said lightly, pushing off from the door. “Maybe you do need to get laid to lighten up.”
“Your counsel is noted and ignored,” I said, my tone drier than summer dust. I turned back to the mirror, giving myself one final, assessing look. The gown of deep emerald silk, my hair falling in deliberate waves—it was a presentation of power, not a plea. I was not going to him as a supplicant, but as a queen offering a pact.
Without another word, I swept past her and into the corridor. The sounds of the feast were a distant murmur as I descended the private stair to the eastern gardens. The night air was cool, fragrant with night-blooming jasmine and the damp earth scent of coming rain. My heart hammered a relentless rhythm against my ribs. Each step on the gravel path was a decision, irreversible.
Chapter 10
Cameron
I drifted from the crowd’s center, finding myself in a quieter hallway, lined with portraits. The ruling family was not long-established; the paintings were few. My footsteps were muffled by a thick runner as I walked past stern-faced kings and graceful queens.
The most recent portrait stopped me. The king and queen were there, smiling with their children. But one figure didn’t fit. A young woman, seated slightly apart. She shared the queen’s auburn hair and the king’s pale complexion, but her features were utterly distinct—fuller lips, a rounder face, an expression of profound solemnity while the others beamed. A strange chill traced my spine. Affair children were kept in shadows, not immortalized in royal galleries. Who was she?
Moving on, I slipped through a side door, the heavy oak groaning softly behind me. The night air was cool, smelling of damp earth and night-blooming jasmine. I kept to the shadows of the high hedges, pausing every few steps to listen. Nothing but the distant murmur of the feast and the rustle of leaves. The secrecy of this meeting felt dangerous, a palpable thrill that quickened my pulse.
Then I saw her. A solitary figure at the center of the moonlit maze, her back to me, draped in a dark cloak that pooled around her feet.
“Lord Shademore.”
My name, spoken without her even turning. Her voice was low, clear, and it wrapped around me in the quiet garden. For some reason, it seemed impossibly sexy.
For a heart-stopping moment, the moonlight played a trick. I saw the curve of an olive-skinned cheek, a cascade of chocolate-brown hair. My forest ghost. I blinked, and the illusion shattered as I drew closer. The woman before me had the auburn hair and pale complexion from the royal portrait. The resemblance ended there; her presence was entirely her own.
“Are you Lady Lessandra?” I asked, my voice sounding too loud in the stillness.
She finally turned. Her eyes, a striking contrast to her fair skin, held mine. “I am.”
She studied me for a moment, then gestured to a stone bench. “What is your opinion, my lord, of the lady who has spurned so many advantageous proposals?”
Chapter 11
Morgan
He studied me for a few moments in the silvered light. The air between us was charged, but with what, I couldn’t yet tell.
“If the rumors are true,” he began, his voice a low rumble that seemed to quiet the garden, “I find I empathize with the lady in question. To be bartered like a prize stallion… I don’t blame her for wanting the best possible match. For holding out.”
My breath caught. It was not the reaction I’d anticipated from a lord summoned for a secret audience. Not flattery, not calculation. Simple, blunt empathy. He paused again, his gaze searching my face. “Are you that woman?”
There was no point in further theater. “I am.”
He nodded slowly, as if confirming a private suspicion. “And do you refuse them all because you’re still searching for love?”
A bitter laugh escaped me before I could stop it. The sound was harsh in the tranquil night. “Love has nothing to do with it, Lord Shademore. Love is a story told to children to make political obedience taste sweeter. It doesn’t exist.” The words tumbled out, sharp and cold. “And even if it did,” I added, the truth I’d carried for years now laid bare before this near-stranger, “no one could love me. Not truly. Not once they know what lies beneath.”
I saw the shift in his expression then—not pity, but a focused intensity. He took a single step closer. “And what lies beneath, Lady Lessandra?”
“A storm,” I whispered, the confession pulled from me. “A chaos that requires an anchor. That is the proposition. Not love. A pact. Your strength for my… stability.”
He was silent for a long moment, his eyes never leaving mine. I could feel my powers just beneath my skin. Being in his presence has always done this to me. I thought I could control them better tonight, but I was wrong. They were even more intense just being in his presence.
A slow, understanding smile touched his lips, though his eyes remained serious. “A practical woman. I respect that.” He closed the remaining distance, not touching me, but his presence was a tangible warmth against the night’s chill. “But you are wrong about one thing, my lady.”
“What am I wrong about?”
“The part where you say no one could love you,” he said, his voice dropping to a husky murmur. “That is not a fact. It is a fear. And fears are meant to be faced.”
Chapter 12
Cameron
I saw it again- a faint, pearlescent shimmer across her skin. I dismissed it as a trick of the wine or the moon.
The questions tumbled out before I could stop them. “Why refuse them all if a good marriage secures your position? What *is* your position? And why, in all the gods’ names, ask for *me* in secret?”
She chuckled, a soft, dry sound. “I cannot give you the full depth of those answers tonight. We haven't the time. But I can offer this: I have studied you for years, Cameron. I knew a day would come when I would be forced to marry. I prepared.”
“Why me?” The core of it.
She didn’t answer. Instead, the air around her *changed*. It wasn't just her skin now. The very space between us began to shimmer, a heat-haze distortion that made the stars behind her waver. My breath caught.
“Are you… doing that?” I whispered.
Her eyes flew wide with shock. Her skin didn’t just shimmer; it glowed with a soft, internal light, illuminating the delicate freckles across her nose. “You can see that?”
“I can see you’re… luminescing...” I said, the word feeling absurd. "And the air seems to shimmer around you. Much like being in the desert."
She closed her eyes, drawing in several long, calming breaths. The light dimmed, the air stilled. When she looked at me again, her expression was one of desperate resolve.
“My time has run out,” she said, her voice tight. “Tonight, before the court, the king will announce my engagement. If I do not present him with a man of my own choosing before that moment, he will choose one for me.” She stepped closer, the scent of her—wildflowers and ozone—washing over me. “That is why the secrecy. There are many here who would sabotage this. I am the last of my bloodline. They wish to either extinguish what I am or forge me into a weapon. I will be neither.”
She finally answered my biggest question. “That is why I choose you. You gain nothing from this union but a problematic wife and a tenuous connection to a court you clearly disdain. You have no faction to please, no land to seize through me. You are… clean.”
The sheer, terrifying honesty of it left me speechless. She was offering me to be the lock on her cage. And in her eyes, I saw not a schemer, but a survivor, clinging to the only rock she could find in a torrential sea.
I couldn’t explain it, but I felt very attracted to her. The raw honesty, the dangerous gamble—it was the most magnetic thing I’d ever witnessed. The political frost in her voice couldn’t hide the heat in her gaze. I stepped a little closer, needing to see her better in the moonlight.
“I still can’t tell what color your eyes are,” I said, my voice low.
She stayed silent, her lips pressed together as if holding back a tide of words.
“What do you have to offer me, my lady? Beyond a lifetime of political headaches,” I asked.
She took a steadying breath. “Companionship. Loyalty. I can guarantee your safety, as long as you do not seek to take advantage of what I am. And…” A faint flush touched her cheeks. “Conjugal... rights, as well. If you so wish.”
I moved closer still, until the cool night air barely separated us. She didn’t retreat. Seeing her right here, she looked stunningly sexy. The determined set of her jaw, the nervous flutter of her pulse at her throat—it was achingly familiar. The ghost from the woods had been all wild heat and desperate passion. This woman was all coiled control and desperate calculation. But the shape of her lips, the arch of her brow, the shape of her face… they were the same.
“Do you have a sister, perhaps?” I asked, my eyes searching hers. “With brown hair, olive skin, and green eyes?”
The air between us shimmered again, a brief, visible ripple of power.
She gave a nervous chuckle, a forced, breathy sound. “My dear lord, we haven’t time to discuss family trees. Unfortunately, time is not on my side. I do need an answer from you, because in about a minute we will be discovered.”
I studied her for a few more moments. Her nervousness was visible now, a crack in her regal armor. The fate of her magic, her legacy, was resting on my next words.
“I agree,” I said slowly. “But I have conditions.”
“Wonderful,” she breathed, a flicker of relief in her eyes. “We will talk about those later. For the next couple of minutes, you need to act like you can’t keep your hands off of me.”
Before I could respond, her hands were on my doublet. She pulled me firmly against her, her back to the garden stone wall. I crashed into her, my body pinning hers. Then, without warning, her lips were on mine.
It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was a claim, a distraction, a brilliant piece of theater. Her mouth moved against mine with a fervor that stole my breath. Her hands guided mine to the generous curve of her ass, pressing my hands firmly against the soft velvet of her gown. Then her hands were tangling in my hair.
I knew then. The taste of her, the specific way her fingers clenched in my hair, the little gasp she made when I parted her lips, the way her body felt against mine... albeit this time we were both clothed... She *had* to be the ghost I’d been searching for. I couldn’t prove it yet, not while her tongue was dancing with mine and our hearts hammered in a frantic, shared rhythm.
But I was going to get the truth out of her. One way or another.
Her kiss was a lightning strike, and I was the parched earth catching fire. The taste of her, the fervor of it—it ignited something primal. Instinct took over. I lifted her easily against the cold stone wall. She gasped, a delicious, surprised sound, and her legs wrapped around my waist, holding on tight. The soft velvet of her gown bunched in my fists.
“Keep your hands on me, remember?” she breathed against my lips, her voice laced with a thrilling panic.
“Oh, I remember,” I murmured, my mouth tracing the line of her jaw. My dick was hard and aching. If there wasn't so much fabric in between us, she probably would have felt it. My blood was pounding, a roaring in my ears that had nothing to do with the approaching footsteps I now faintly registered.
As if perfectly timed, the crisp rustle of plate armor and the clink of weapons halted just beyond the rose trellis. A group of royal guards stood there, silhouetted by torchlight from the path.
I broke the kiss, turning to see who was invading our privacy.
The one in front, a tall, powerfully built blonde man in an officer’s intricately embroidered surcoat over his armor, took a step forward. His eyes, cold and assessing, locked onto the woman in my arms.
“Eleanor!” He said in a panicked tone. “You! Unhand her. Now.” He was talking to me, but I just held her tighter.
*Eleanor.* Not Lessandra. So that was her real name.
I recognized him as the prince- I hadn’t seen him since he was a gangly youth visiting the northern keeps; he’d filled out into a soldier.
She slowly, deliberately, turned her head toward the voice. A smirk played on her swollen lips. “Brother,” she drawled, the word dripping with sarcastic sweetness. “What an unexpected pleasure.”
Leo’s expression was a mask, but cracks showed at the edges—a tightness around his mouth, a flicker in his eyes that looked like annoyance cut with something sharper. Betrayal, maybe. “What are you doing?” he demanded, his gaze slicing from her to me.
Eleanor leaned in, her lips brushing my cheek in a slow, sensuous kiss that sent a jolt straight through me. Then she looked back at Leo, her voice clear and bright with false cheer. “We were just enjoying some *private* time before *your* father announces our engagement. Must you interrupt everything?”
With that, she unwound her legs and slid down the front of my body until her feet touched the ground. I kept my hands firmly on her waist, feeling a sudden, unexpected surge of protectiveness—and possession. Yeah, I was definitely asking her about this crazy family dynamic later.
Leo’s jaw tightened. The strange cocktail of anger and something almost like hurt was plain on his face now. “The king has summoned you. Immediately.”
She offered him a tight, mirthless smile. “Of course he has. We’ll take the quick way.”
He furrowed his brow, a shadow of genuine concern crossing his features. “Morgan, that’s not ideal. Not with a…”
“A what, Leo? A guest? A future husband? *He* isn't afraid,” she interrupted, her voice taking on a hard edge. Then, without another word of explanation, she flamboyantly threw her arms up in the air.
There was a deafening crack, not of sound but of reality itself bending. A searing flash of silver-white light consumed my vision, blotting out the garden, the guards, Leo’s alarmed face. Then, absolute, silent darkness swallowed me whole.
The darkness wasn't empty. It was a thick, velvet pressure, cool and silent, wrapping around me completely. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear the garden, but I could feel. My hands were still locked on Eleanor’s waist, the curve of her hips firm under my palms. She was a warm, solid anchor in the nothingness.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the pressure vanished. We were still standing, but the scent of night-blooming jasmine was gone, replaced by the dry, aged smell of old stone and beeswax candles. The cool garden air had become still and warm.
I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the soft glow of a solitary wall sconce. We were in a narrow, windowless corridor of pale stone. A servant’s passage, by the look of it.
“What in the seven hells was that?” I breathed, my voice echoing slightly off the close walls. My hands hadn’t moved from her.
She turned within my hold to face me, her expression a mix of defiance and residual fear. “That,” she said, her voice low, “is my personal transportation. A minor trick, when it works. It’s… temperamental.”
“Minor?” I let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You just dissolved us through shadows."
"Ah... yes... it's unsettling at first," she said looking away, the shrugging her shoulders she concluded, "You will get used to it. I promise it won't harm you."
I looked at her. Her coloring seemed to wane, again with the shimmering.
"The prince, or I'm assuming that's who he is, called you Eleanor. Is that your name, or was he mistaken?”
She looked away, a faint flush on her light skin, which had looked pale in the portrait and moonlight, but now looked... almost normal. “He is, and it is. Lady Eleanor, if we’re being formal. ‘Lessandra’ is… my cover name.”
“Cover name?? Um, alright, we need to circle back to that... so, Leo, is it? You called him brother but you referred to the king as *his* father,” I prompted, remembering the storm of emotions on his face.
“It's... complicated...” she confirmed, her tone flat. “And a complication I don’t have time to explain. Your first lesson in this ‘crazy family dynamic,’ as you put it, is that nothing is simple here. My engagement to you does not please him.”
“Because he wants the throne for himself?” I guessed.
Her dark blue eyes, finally clear in the candlelight, met mine. They were deep pools swirling with secrets. “Not the throne,” she said quietly. “He wanted me. A long time ago. Before things… changed.”
The pieces clicked into place with a cold, solid weight. The ghost in the woods, the betrayal she’d mentioned, the prince’s look of personal anger in the garden. “He’s the one,” I stated, my grip tightening minutely on her waist. “The reason you don't believe in love... why you think you're unlovable.”
She didn’t deny it. She just held my gaze, her full lips pressed into a thin line, as if waiting for me to recoil from the messy truth of her world.
Instead, I pulled her a fraction closer. “Well,” I said, my voice dropping to a murmur. “He can want all he likes. You just told him you’re mine. And I find I’m inclined to play along.”
A startled breath escaped her. Before she could reply, the distant sound of authoritative footsteps echoed from around a corner in the passage. Her eyes widened.
“The king’s chambers are at the end of this hall,” she whispered urgently. “We have about thirty seconds to look like we just arrived, and we're madly in love, as they say.”
“Then we’d better look convincing,” I said. I leaned down, catching her lips in a kiss that was slower than the one in the garden, but no less deliberate. It was a seal on the pact, a claiming she had initiated but I was now fully committing to. When I pulled back, her breath was shaky. “Lead the way, Lady Eleanor.”
She nodded, smoothing her gown with trembling hands before squaring her shoulders. The shy, nervous noblewoman was gone, replaced once more by the lady gambling with her destiny. She took my hand, her fingers lacing through mine with a surprising strength.
“Remember,” she said as we began to walk towards the sound of the court. “You agreed. No turning back.”
I squeezed her hand. “I remember. And I have conditions. But first, let’s go meet my future father-in-law.”
Chapter 13
Morgan
I kept my hand firmly in Cameron’s as we stepped from the dim passage into the cavernous royal chamber. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs, but for the first time in years, it wasn’t from fear. It was power, raw and singing in my veins. The king’s word had been given. The mask of the shy, broken girl was a burden I could finally shed.
“Remember,” I whispered to Cameron, my voice barely a breath. “Do not speak unless you must. Let me.”
He gave my hand a subtle squeeze, his thumb stroking my knuckle. It wasn’t a gesture of reassurance from him to me; it felt like an acknowledgment, a signal between partners entering a battle side-by-side. That simple touch steadied me more than any deep breath could.
As we crossed the threshold, I let go.
Not of his hand, but of my restraint.
Tendrils of living shadow, cool and silent, peeled away from the corners of the room and from the hem of my gown. They slithered across the polished floor, curling around the ankles of each startled advisor and councilman seated at the long table. A collective gasp filled the air. My skin answered their fear, glowing with that soft, internal moonlight that had so shocked Cameron in the garden. For good measure, I focused on the iron sconces flanking the king’s high-backed chair. Their flames leapt and roared, casting dramatic, dancing shadows across his impassive face.
The room trembled. They all trembled. All but him- Cameron.
King Alistair merely steepled his fingers, resting his chin upon them as he observed our approach. His eyes, the color of a winter sky, flicked from my illuminated form to Cameron’s steadfast presence beside me.
“I see you’ve brought a companion into my chambers, darling girl,” he said, his voice a dry rumble that silenced the last of the uneasy whispers. “Tell us, is this whom you’ve chosen to be your husband?”
I lifted my chin. “Yes.”
A wave of murmurs broke out again. The Lord Treasurer, a man whose jowls quivered with perpetual outrage, was the first to find his voice. “And who is this… person, Your Grace? We were not informed of any candidate being presented for approval.”
I felt Cameron tense beside me. I spoke before he could. “He is Lord Cameron Shademore of the Northern Forest region.”
The name meant little to them, which was precisely the point. The outrage crystallized.
“The North? A minor holding!”
“There is no political advantage here!”
“Your Grace, the council must approve such a match! We cannot allow–”
“I will have him!” My voice cut through theirs, sharper than a blade. The shadows at their feet tightened like shackles, and the glow from my skin intensified, painting the terrified faces in hues of silver and fear.
The Lord Chancellor, emboldened by procedure, slammed a hand on the table. “You cannot, my lady! We have the authority! You will marry where it best serves the realm!”
That was it. The final thread of my patience snapped. I stepped forward, pulling my magic around me like a storm cloak.
“I... 'cannot'? 'Where it best serves the realm'?" A sordid laugh escaped me . "We have already *consummated*!”
The words were a thunderclap. The lights flared blindingly bright before plunging the room into a deeper darkness for one terrifying second. Men cried out, hiding their faces. When the light returned to normal, they were cowering in their seats.
All except one.
My gaze found Cameron. He wasn’t cowering. He wasn’t even afraid. He stood tall, his eyes locked on me behind his spectacles, and in them was none of the terror that gripped the others. There was only awe—a fierce, blazing wonder that stole the breath from my lungs.
“I will not have anyone else,” I finished, the words leaving me in a heated whisper that echoed in the silent room.
And then King Alistair laughed.
It was a rich, genuine sound of amusement that seemed to vibrate through the very stone. He shook his head, looking from my defiant stance to Cameron’s unwavering one.
“Well,” he boomed, his laughter subsiding into a warm chuckle. “It seems the matter is quite settled beyond even my considerable influence.” He leaned back in his throne, spreading his hands. “I gave my word to honor your choice, Eleanor. And it appears you have made it… emphatically clear.” His eyes twinkled with something that might have been pride. “I am keeping my word. You may keep your Lord Shademore.”
The relief that washed through me was so profound it made my knees weak. But I didn’t falter. I simply bowed my head.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
The king’s expression shifted to something more businesslike as he addressed the sulking council. “The betrothal is announced and sanctioned by the Crown. Chancellor, draw up the formalities for a swift union.” He then looked directly at Cameron for the first time. “Lord Shademore. You have chosen a path fraught with… unique challenges. See that you walk it well.”
Cameron finally released my hand to execute a perfect bow. “I intend to, Your Grace.”
Alistair waved a dismissive hand. “Go on then. I believe you two have much to discuss. Be ready to be presented before the guests.”
We didn’t need to be told twice. I turned, and together we walked from the chamber, leaving behind the stunned silence and the weight of a thousand political calculations now rendered null and void.
The heavy oak door closed behind us with a final-sounding thud.
We were alone again in the quiet hallway. The frantic energy drained from me all at once, leaving me trembling and warm with fading light around my edges.
I looked up at Cameron.
“So,” I said.
“So,” he echoed.
And then we just stood there for a moment in the aftermath of everything we had done and said—the lies and truths all tangled together under one undeniable truth: he was mine.
Now we just had to figure out everything that was going to come after.
Chapter 14
Cameron
*“We have already consummated!”*
Her words were a thunderclap in my skull long after the last echo faded. Two possibilities warred in my mind. She was either the world’s most convincing liar, a master of political theater willing to scorch her own reputation to win. Or she was the phantom. The forest fairy ghost whose taste I’d chased for years. The question burned hotter than the king’s laughter. *Why hide it? Why not just tell me in the garden?*
The heavy door to the royal chamber sealed behind us, muting the council’s stunned silence. We were alone in the cool hallway. She was trembling, the furious glow around her edges fading to a soft shimmer.
“So,” she said, breathless.
“So,” I echoed, my voice rough.
I looked at her—really looked. The defiant lady was gone, leaving behind a woman who’d just bet everything on a single, shocking bluff.
“What happens next?” I asked.
She drew a steadying breath. “We are to be presented to all the guests in the great hall. The king will announce our engagement formally.”
It was happening too fast. The politics, the performance—it was a rushing river threatening to sweep us both away before we’d found our footing. I needed to plant a flag. To establish the rules of this wild game she’d drafted me into.
“And when will we get time to discuss *my* conditions?” I asked, holding her gaze.
She studied me for a long moment, her dark eyes searching mine. Then, without a word, she lifted a hand. The torchlight from the sconces guttered and died. Not just dimmed, but was utterly consumed by a living darkness that flowed from her, wrapping around us until the world vanished. All that remained was her, illuminated by a small, silvery light that hovered above us like a captive star. The air grew still, soundless, thick.
“What is this?”
Then, a light. A single, small, silvery orb winked into existence high above us, casting a faint, moon-like glow that illuminated just the two of us in a small pocket of nothingness. The hallway, the walls, the world—they were gone.
“What is this?” I whispered, the awe in my voice unavoidable. I turned slowly. There was no floor, no ceiling, just an infinite soft blackness and that impossible light.
I stepped closer. In this pocket of impossible stillness, there was only her truth and mine.
“I don’t know what it's actually called... but I call it my shadow space,” she said, her voice echoing strangely in the non-place. “Time doesn’t pass here. Not like out there. No one can see or here us. I think it's an interdimensional space, because we are completely gone from the spot we were standing... But... I can’t hold it long. It’s… draining. Speak your conditions.”
I couldn’t help it. Awe washed through me, cold and bright. This wasn’t just parlor tricks with flames. This was profound, deep magic. She had carved a piece of eternity out of the air for a private conversation. The shy, estranged noble was a facade for this—a creator of realms.
“You are incredible,” I said, the words leaving me with pure, unguarded honesty.
A faint blush colored her peachy cheeks under the spectral light. She wrapped her arms around herself. “Your conditions, Cameron. Name them.”
I took a steadying breath. This was the contract. “Right... First,” I said, holding up a finger. “No more lies between us. Not about us. You want me as an anchor? That requires truth. Absolute honesty. You need to find the time to tell me everything. Even if it's one thing at a time.”
She nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
“Second,” I continued, “This partnership is mutual. You are not a problem I am solving. You are not a political burden I am bearing. I am not some kind of award to only show up when you want me to make an appearance. We are allies. Equals in this… arrangement. Your counsel on my lands, mine on your magic. A real partnership.”
Her eyes widened slightly. That, she hadn’t expected. “Equals,” she repeated, as if tasting the word.
“And third,” I said, my voice dropping. I closed the small distance left between us in the shadowy void. The air hummed with her presence. “When we share a bed, Eleanor, it will be because we both wish to. Not because of what you said to the council. Not for duty or stability. Not because you think I want it or you're supposed to give it. It will be a choice. Every time.”
She stared up at me, her breath catching. The silvery light danced in her wide, dark eyes. The shadow space seemed to pulse around us, holding its breath.
“Those are my conditions,” I finished.
She was silent for a long moment, the only sound our mingling breaths in the timeless dark. Then, the edges of our pocket began to shimmer, to fray. The darkness felt thinner.
“I accept,” she whispered, just as the shadow space collapsed, dropping us back into the dim torchlight of the quiet hallway. The world snapped back into place with a dizzying lurch. Cold stone underfoot, the faint smell of torch smoke, the distant murmur of the waiting court.
Eleanor swayed, and my hands found her arms, steadying her.
“Easy,” I murmured.
She looked up, her face pale under the returning torchlight. I took a steadying breath, adjusting to the sudden change.
“What has been the longest time you’ve ever been able to hold your shadow space?” I asked.
She wearily put a hand to her forehead. “I’m unsure. Time pauses while I’m in there.” Her voice was thin, strained. She seemed sick.
“Are you okay?”
“I just have to get through the presentation,” she said, closing her eyes for a brief moment. “Then I can finally rest.”
Then she looked at me. Her gaze shifted past my shoulder, down the hall. Her eyes widened. “He’s coming,” she whispered, turning back to me. Fear and anger warred in her dark eyes.
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about or what she wanted me to do. Then I heard the footsteps—firm, purposeful strides on the flagstones—and saw a shadow lengthening on the wall.
Without thinking, I acted. My lips pressed onto hers. Gently but passionately. It wasn’t like our spectacle in the garden for the king’s benefit. This was deep and tender, a private claim in a public hallway.
At first, she clung to me as though her life depended on it, her fingers digging into my doublet. Then she softened, melting against me as her arms wrapped around my neck. The feeling of her full breasts pressed against my chest, the memory of their feel and shape from so long ago, vivid in my mind, sent a jolt of heat straight to my cock.
Prince Leo came around the corner and stopped short.
I kept Eleanor in my embrace, one hand splayed possessively against the small of her back. She made no move to leave me, her cheek resting against my shoulder as she turned to face him.
The prince’s handsome face was a mask of controlled disbelief. His gaze swept over us, lingering on where our bodies met.
“Eleanor,” he said, his voice tight. “A word.”
“You may speak your word here, Leo,” she replied, her voice steadier than I expected. “Cameron shares my confidence.”
He flinched at the title. “This… performance in the council chamber,” he began, trying for a tone of regal reproach but landing on something wounded. “To declare such a thing to force their hand? And with a…” He gestured vaguely at me, struggling for a suitably dismissive term.
“A ‘measly northern lord’?” I supplied quietly, not releasing Eleanor.
Leo’s eyes narrowed at me, but his focus returned to her. “It is beneath you. It makes you a scandal instead of a royal. I expected more tactfulness from you.”
His chiding wasn’t filled with the hatred I’d anticipated. It was laced with a pained care, a look of personal betrayal. It made me hate him more—this man who thought he had a claim to her judgment.
“You lost any right to expectations of me years ago,” Eleanor said, ice in her tone. “My choices are my own. My betrothed is my own. The king has ratified it. Your opinion has been noted, and thus, DISregarded.”
“Is it?” Leo took a step closer, his voice dropping. “Do you truly know what you’re binding yourself to with such a reckless lie? A marriage built on a fiction before it even begins?”
Eleanor pushed away from me slightly, just enough to stand fully on her own and face him square on. The weariness was gone, burned away by defiance. “The only fiction here, Leo, is the one where you have any say in my life. Let it go. You made your choice, long ago, without any input from me. I'm just returning the favor,” she said, turning to offer me her hand without breaking eye contact with the prince. “My love, our audience awaits.”
I took her hand, lacing my fingers through hers. As we walked away from Leo toward the bustling noise of the great hall, I felt the tension thrumming through her like a plucked wire.
“You looked amazing, standing up to him like that,” I whispered close to her ear.
She squeezed my hand once, tightly. “Thank you,” she murmured back, her voice barely audible over the growing fanfare ahead.
Chapter 15
Morgan
*I just have to get through this and then I can rest.*
The mantra looped in my mind as we entered the roaring din of the great hall. The weight of my magic felt like a cloak of lead, my energy dangerously thin after holding the shadow space. But Cameron’s hand was firm around mine, an anchor in the storm of curious, judgmental eyes.
We approached the dais where the king stood, a wide, amused smile on his face. He raised his hands for silence, which fell slowly, like a settling fog.
“My lords and ladies,” his voice boomed. “A joyous announcement! Our own Lady Eleanor has chosen her consort. Lord Cameron Shademore of the Northern Reach has accepted her hand. Let their union bring stability and strength!”
Polite applause rippled through the crowd, mixed with whispers that slithered like snakes. I kept my chin high, my face a mask of serene certainty I did not feel.
Then the king continued. “And in the interest of cementing this fortuitous alliance with all haste, the wedding shall be held in a fortnight’s time!”
A fortnight. *Two weeks.* The air left my lungs. It wasn’t panic over the timeline—I had expected that—but the visceral, final thud of reality. I was really going to do this. I was going to marry him. This was no longer a theoretical pact made in a moonlit garden. It was a real man with real thoughts, and in two weeks, he would be my real husband.
The crowd’s noise became a distant buzz. I felt Cameron’s thumb stroke the back of my hand, a subtle, questioning gesture.
“Breathe,” he murmured, his voice for me alone.
I managed a shallow breath as we were paraded before the court, accepting hollow congratulations. My mind raced ahead, past the ceremony, to the quiet of a shared chamber.
*Yes, I chose him. Yes, I spied on him.* I knew his public face, his honorable reputation. But I didn’t know the private man. What angered him? What made him laugh freely? What did he desire in the deep of night? We were about to live together, to merge our lives, and we were still strangers.
The thought of closing that distance, of truly knowing him, sent a treacherous heat pooling low in my belly. The thought of his hands, those strong, capable hands, learning my body… my pussy clenched, a sudden, slick awareness that stole my focus from the nobleman bowing before me.
The reception line seemed endless. Finally, as the musicians began to play for dancing again, Cameron leaned close, his breath warming my ear.
“You’re trembling,” he observed, his tone not mocking but concerned.
“I am tired,” I said, which was true. “And… overwhelmed.”
He studied my face, his hazel eyes sharp behind his spectacles. “We need to talk. Properly. Not in a magical void or a garden... or a hallway.”
My head was starting to pound. “Your... chambers are being prepared... in the west wing. I will meet you... there in an hour.” It wasn’t a request, but it wasn’t a command either. It was an offer—a private space for our first real conversation as betrothed.
He nodded. “I will.”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles, a formal gesture that felt intensely personal under the watching eyes. As he released me to mingle with some approaching lords, the space where his touch had been felt cold.
I turned, seeking Isla in the crowd, my mind already spinning toward that meeting in an hour. The fear was there, sharp and real. But beneath it, undeniable and warm, was a current of anticipation. I would finally begin to learn the man behind the title. And perhaps, let him learn me.
The king’s laugh was a low, rolling thunder that cut through the polite chatter of the hall. I felt it in my bones before I saw him approach, his gilded robes parting the crowd like a ship’s prow.
“Lady Eleanor,” he boomed, his voice deceptively jovial. “A word.”
I dipped into a deep curtsy, my heart a frantic drum against my ribs. “Your Majesty.”
He waved a dismissive hand, his eyes twinkling with mischief that felt like a trap. “I’ve just reviewed the chamber assignments. It seems there’s been an oversight. Why does your betrothed have quarters in the west wing?”
I kept my gaze lowered, my voice steady out of sheer habit. “It is protocol, Your Majesty. For a betrothal period, separate chambers are customary to maintain propriety.”
The laugh came again, louder this time, drawing glances from nearby courtiers. “Propriety?” He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that carried anyway. “My dear, you threw propriety out the tower window the moment you let the man bed you before the vows were said. Or did you think I wouldn’t hear of your little garden tryst?”
My cheeks ignited. The heat was instantaneous, a wildfire of shame and fury that spread from my face down my neck. The knowing glint in his eyes was a blade, probing for the lie beneath my composed facade. He was calling my bluff, and we both knew it.
Before I could form a single word of defense, he turned and beckoned. “Lord Shademore! A moment.”
Cameron detached himself from a group of northern lords, his expression wary but composed as he strode over. “Your Majesty.”
“There’s been a change,” the king announced, his voice returning to its public volume. “No need for separate chambers. It’s an unnecessary formality. You will reside in Lady Eleanor’s quarters. Your men can take the spare rooms down the hall. It’s all settled.”
The world seemed to tilt. Cameron and I looked at each other, a split second of pure, unguarded shock. I saw my own dizziness mirrored in his hazel eyes behind his spectacles. This wasn’t a discussion; it was a decree.
Cameron recovered first. He extended his hand, and the king shook it firmly. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Your consideration is… appreciated.”
I managed another curtsy, my movements stiff. “Yes. Thank you.”
As the king clapped Cameron on the shoulder and turned to leave, he paused, looking back at me over his shoulder. His final words were a soft, lethal dart aimed straight at my heart. “I expect your magic to be considerably calmer now. And of course,” he added, his smile widening, “I shall be listening for the sound of a babe’s cries in the not-too-distant future. Do see to it.”
Then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd, leaving me standing there, hollowed out by the weight of his expectations. The noise of the feast became a distant roar, muffled by the sudden, suffocating reality.
*Tonight.* He would be in my rooms. In my space. In my *bed*.
There would be no slow unfurling, no gentle revelations over days or weeks. The careful plan—the meetings, the conversations, the gradual piecing together of our strange pact—was incinerated in an instant. Now, I would have to hand him chunks of my truth, raw and unprocessed, and face the barrage of questions that would surely follow. All while lying beside him in the dark.
Any frail hope I’d clung to for a moment’s rest, for a breath to gather myself, was gone. The king hadn’t just rearranged furniture; he had lit a fuse. And he was watching, waiting for the explosion.
Chapter 16
Cameron
Her hand was cold when she grabbed mine, her fingers trembling with a frantic energy. Before I could fully process the king’s staggering decree—my things moved to her rooms, the expectation hanging in the air like a blade—the world dissolved.
A plume of inky blackness swallowed the hall’s torchlight, the music, the stink of wine and gossip. There was no sense of movement, only a dizzying lurch, and then my boots were on a thick wool rug instead of marble.
The first thing I registered was the weight in my arms. Morgan was sagging against me, her breath shallow. The second was the woman in black leather rising from a chair in the corner.
“What is he doing with you?” she hissed, her blue eyes blazing. It was her. The dancer from the feast.
“The king… required,” Morgan mumbled into my shoulder.
The blonde woman—Isla, she had to be—advanced on us. “Well don’t just stand there!” she shrieked at me, gesturing wildly at Morgan’s limp form.
I tightened my hold on Morgan, baffled. “What am I supposed to do? I just met her not but a few hours ago!”
“Kiss her, you dolt!” she snapped, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Excuse me?” The absurdity of it cut through my shock.
“Stop it, Isla,” Morgan muttered, pushing weakly against my chest to stand on her own. She wavered but stayed upright. “Get me a vial. He’s gonna find out eventually. Might as well… be now.”
Isla crossed her arms. “You aren’t supposed to be taking these,” she said, but she turned and went to a carved wooden cabinet anyway. She retrieved a small glass vial filled with a shimmering silver liquid. “The whole point of *him*,” she added, shooting a pointed glare my way, “was so you would stop drinking this stuff.”
Morgan took it, uncorked it with a practiced flick of her thumb, and threw it back like a shot of cheap whiskey.
Then, I watched her transform.
It wasn’t a gentle shift. It was a ripple that moved through her, reality re-knitting itself. The dull red of her court-appointed hair deepened, rich and dark, becoming the chocolate-brown from my memories. The pale, almost washed-out complexion of Lady Eleanor warmed and darkened to a true olive tone. Finally, her eyes changed. The deep blue pools vanished, replaced by that startling, vibrant green that had haunted me for years.
The breath left my lungs in a quiet rush. There was no mistaking it now. The ghost from the forest glade. The woman whose memory had tethered me. She was standing right here, weaving a web of political survival that had somehow ensnared us both.
Eleanor—*my* Eleanor—maybe seemed to draw strength from the potion. She straightened her shoulders and gave Isla a quick, hushed recap of the king’s words: the shared rooms, his… expectations.
Isla’s face contorted in disgust. “He can’t order people to have sex on his command. It’s vile.”
“He is the king,” Morgan replied, her voice weary but firm. She then turned, a formal mask settling over her features. “Lord Shademore, this is Isla, my confidant. Isla, Lord Cameron Shademore.” She took a steadying breath. “Now, please give us privacy.”
Isla balked. “Morgan, you can’t be serious—”
“In order for this alliance to work,” Morgan interrupted, her green eyes locking with mine for a fleeting second, “we have things we need to discuss without prying ears.” As Isla moved reluctantly toward the door, Morgan added softly, “And I will know if you try to listen in.”
Isla huffed dramatically and pulled the heavy oak door shut with a definitive thud.
Silence descended, thick and expectant. The room was large, dominated by a great canopied bed and a crackling fireplace. It felt like her—warm shadows and hidden corners.
After a few moments, Morgan offered me a small, tentative smile. It was the first truly unguarded expression I’d seen from her all night.
“She’s gone,” she said quietly. “Maybe now would be a good time to talk.”
"Yes. I do believe it would," I said probably a little too harshly, but all of the secrecy was gnawing at my brain.
She nodded tentatively, and gestured for us to sit in front of her fire place.
"I'm sure you have many, many questions," she said quietly as we sat. "I will answer them as best I can."
“Why on earth would you hide yourself from me? Why didn't you stay? Why didn't you tell me who you were? How does all of *this*," I gestured vaguely at her and the room, implying her relationship with the royals, "work?" The questions tumbled out, more wounded than I intended.
She looked at me for a long moment, and then hesitantly tucked her hair behind her ears. It revealed, not regular, human ears, but ears that pointed at the top.
For a long moment, I just stared. The ghost from the woods, the woman I’d dreamt of, was standing before me as a creature from a faerie tale. She *is* an actual faerie. I reached out, my fingers hovering near the delicate point of her ear. “So this is you. The real you.”
She nodded, her green eyes wide and searching my face for a reaction. “This is me. All of it.” A sad smile touched her lips, and she let her hair fall. “Glamor is part of my survival, Cameron. I am the last of my kind and bloodline. To walk around looking like this… it would be an invitation for worse than political maneuvering. It would be a hunt for my end.”
“I can’t believe it,” I breathed, the reality of it settling in my bones. “Fae.”
“I don’t even know what that truly means,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. “I have no idea where I came from. I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is of Prince Leo finding me, hiding and terrified, in the palace gardens. He brought me to the king.”
The pieces were forming a picture, bleak and lonely. “How are you able to glamor yourself? Is it difficult?”
She gestured vaguely, her fingers weaving through the air. “My powers bend light and shadow, which means I can alter the color of my appearance—hair, eyes, skin—with relative ease. I can’t alter my true structure, but I can bend shadows to make my cheeks appear more hollow, or add light to my cheekbones to suggest a different shape. The more complex the illusion, the more power it draws. It’s a constant, wearying drain.”
I thought of the vial. “Isla said I was supposed to solve that problem. The potion.”
Morgan sighed as she stood up to pace. She couldn't keep still and suddenly looked very tired. “The vials suppress my magic, keep me from… essentially combusting. It’s only happened once. I don’t remember much of it. I mainly remember feeling frustrated, hopeless, and, ironically, powerless. The royal physicians concocted this potion for me to drink whenever I feel the power about to explode. I’ve needed them more and more in the last few years.”
“Why do you think that is? Why now?”
She paused and looked down at her hands, a blush coloring her olive cheeks. When she spoke, her voice was a shy, yet confident whisper. “I started needing them more frequently after... our night together.”
The air left my lungs. “What?”
“It was a theory, even before we met,” she continued pacing, avoiding daring a glance at me. “That physical intimacy… regularly… would keep my magic sated. Balanced. After you, the king noticed my shadows becoming erratic. My luminescencing became more frequent. A few years ago the whispers started that the king would be arranging a marriage for me. Then, about a month ago, he noticed the deterioration became acute, and found out I had been taking more of those vials. That’s when he told me, in no uncertain terms, I had to find a husband.”
I stayed quiet for a minute, soaking in the information. I, then, impatiently asked, "Why did you leave so suddenly? That night? Why not glamor yourself afterwards? I've spent years trying to find you... no other woman has ever even piqued my interest."
I could see on her face that she didn't really believe me. Then she said quietly, "I was scared of the way my body reacted to you. Like it didn't want to let you go. I had never, and have never since, had such peaceful sleep. I have never known my magic to not be on the brink of bursting out of me, other than when we were in the throes of passion. I knew... then... either we would have to get married... or I would have to die."
The sheer weight of it pressed on me. She hadn’t chosen me for my lands or my title or political shield. She’d chosen me because my touch, my presence, had already marked her magic. I was the catalyst and, she hoped, the cure.
“So this marriage,” I said slowly, “it’s not just political shelter for you. It’s a literal lifeline.”
“Yes.” The word was a bare confession. “And the king’s order tonight… moving you here… he expects that lifeline to be activated. Immediately.”
I looked at her—truly looked—at the fear and hope warring in those brilliant green eyes, at the proud set of her shoulders that belied the tremor in her hands. The strategic lord in me saw the vulnerability, the immense power play. The man who remembered a one-night, moonlit passion in a tavern room felt only a fierce, overwhelming protectiveness.
“Then we have a great deal to discuss,” I said, my voice softer than I’d used all night. “Starting with what you actually want, Eleanor. Not what you need to survive. What you *want*.”
Chapter 17
Morgan
I stared into the flames, my thoughts a chaotic whirlwind. “What do I want?” I echoed his question, the words sounding so foreign. “Other than my survival?”
I turned to look at him, his profile illuminated by the fire. The freckles across his nose, the way his glasses reflected the light, the strong line of his jaw beneath his beard. My fingers itched with a sudden, fierce desire.
“I want to touch every inch of you,” I confessed, my voice barely a whisper. The honesty burned my throat. “I want to map every scar, every freckle, every muscle. I want to learn the textures of you by heart.”
He was utterly still, listening.
“But I also want to go slow,” I rushed on, the contradiction tumbling out. “I want to know what makes you laugh when you’re not at court. I want to know what you dream about, what you fear. I want to sit in a forest with you, just us, with no glamor, no audience, and talk until the sun goes down. I just... want to know you, and I want you to want me and to want to know me...”
I sat down, feeling defeated, and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. The ache of the longing was physical. “I want to walk through the palace gardens looking like *this*,” I said, gesturing to my true face, my pointed ears. “I want to feel the sun on my own skin without it being a political statement or a death sentence. I want a lot of things, Cameron. But the cost of wanting… it’s always been too high.”
He shifted then, turning his body fully toward me. The intensity in his gaze was a tangible weight. “The king’s order is a blade hanging over us, forcing our hand. But it doesn’t have to define the hand we play.”
“What are you saying?” I asked, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“I’m saying we have tonight. Right now, in this room, the only expectations are the ones we set for ourselves.” He reached out, his hand hovering near my cheek. “You said you want to go slow. To know me. So let’s start there.”
His thumb brushed my cheekbone, the touch so gentle it made my breath catch. It wasn’t the possessive, claiming touch I half-expected. It was an inquiry.
“Ask me something,” he murmured, his voice a low rumble. “Anything. And I’ll ask you.”
The simplicity of it undid me. Here, in the heart of the political storm, he was offering a clearing. “What’s your favorite memory?” I breathed.
A slow, genuine smile spread across his face. “The first time I caught a trout in the river near my home. I was ten. The cold splash of the water, the frantic fight of the fish, the sheer pride of it.” His eyes held mine. "What does your magic feel like, when it’s calm?”
I closed my eyes, focusing inward. “It feels like… the moment just before a summer rain. The air is thick and charged, but it’s peaceful. It hums.”
I felt him lean closer. His scent—leather, pine, and something uniquely male—wrapped around me. Opening my eyes, I say, “What did you think, that night in the forest, when I disappeared?”
His expression grew serious. “I thought I’d dreamed you. And then I thought I’d gone mad. I spent years looking for a ghost in every shadow.” His hand slid from my cheek to cup the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair. “Now I know I was just searching in the wrong court.”
His lips were inches from mine. The pull was magnetic, a raw need that eclipsed strategy and survival. But he didn’t close the distance. He held us in that breathless space, his gaze asking a silent, potent question.
The king’s command was a distant drumbeat. My wants—the slow knowing, the frantic touching—coalesced into this single, suspended moment. I didn’t have to choose one or the other. Not yet.
“Ask me,” I whispered, surrendering to the current between us.
His voice was rough with wanting. “Can I kiss you, Eleanor? Not the lady. Not the asset. Just you?”
The question hung between us, a fragile, perfect thing. The last vestige of my royal composure shattered. My answer was a soft, surrendering sound as I closed the final, searing inch between our mouths.
His lips were warm and firm, moving over mine with a deliberate slowness that made my head spin. It wasn’t a claiming, but an exploration. His hand stayed cupped at the nape of my neck, his thumb stroking the sensitive skin behind my ear. I melted into the touch, my hands lifting to rest tentatively on his chest. The fine linen of his shirt was soft, but beneath it, I could feel the solid, unyielding heat of him. My magic, which had been a restless storm all day, quieted to a low, contented hum.
He broke the kiss, just far enough to look into my eyes. His breath fanned across my damp lips. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured, his voice rough. “Any time.”
“I don’t... want... you to stop,” I breathed heavy, the truth of it vibrating through my core. “I want… more.”
A dark, pleased smile touched his mouth. “Define ‘more’.”
I swallowed, my courage fueled by the desire blazing in his eyes. “Your hands. On me. Under my clothes.”
He didn’t need further invitation. His fingers slid from my neck to the laces at the back of my dress. He worked them with a frustrating, tantalizing patience, his knuckles brushing my spine with each tug. I shivered, my head falling back.
“You’re trembling,” he observed, his lips at my throat.
“It’s not fear.”
“I know.” He finally loosened the gown enough to slip his hands inside, his palms sliding up my bare sides. The contact was electric. A sharp gasp tore from me as his thumbs swept over the undersides of my breasts. “You are so unbelievably soft,” he growled against my skin. “All this power, and you feel like heaven.”
His touch was everywhere, mapping the terrain of my waist, the flare of my hips, the sensitive skin of my stomach. I was panting, my fingers clutching at his shoulders. “Cameron…”
“Tell me,” he commanded softly, his mouth finding mine again in a deeper, hungrier kiss. One hand remained splayed on my belly, while the other traveled upward, his palm finally, fully covering my breast. My nipple peaked instantly against his touch, aching through the thin fabric of my shift.
I broke the kiss, my words coming in a rush. “I want to, need to, feel you. All of you. Skin to skin.”
He stilled, his gaze searching my face. “That’s a line we can’t uncross tonight. We cross it, and I won’t be able to stop. Do you understand?”
The promise in his warning was the most potent aphrodisiac I’d ever known. I nodded, my heart hammering against my ribs. “I understand. I want to cross it.”
A low sound rumbled in his chest. He stood, pulling me to my feet with him. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly, reverently, pushed the gown from my shoulders. It pooled at my feet, leaving me in just the thin linen shift. The firelight danced over my body, outlining my curves through the fabric.
His eyes darkened, his admiration a physical caress. “My turn,” he said, his voice thick. He took my hand and placed it on the fastening of his trousers. “You asked to map me. Start here.”
Chapter 18
Cameron
Her hand on my trousers was a brand. I could feel the heat of her palm through the fabric, a soft, hesitant pressure that threatened to undo every ounce of my control. I covered her hand with mine, holding it there, feeling the tremor in her fingers.
Her body was an undiscovered country beneath my hands, and I was mapping it with a reverence I hadn’t known I possessed. The curve of her hip, the soft swell of her breast, the frantic beat of her heart against my palm—all of it was a silent, sacred text.
“A secret for a secret,” I whispered against the damp skin of her throat. My fingers traced the line of her spine down to the sweet, full curve of her ass. “What’s a sound you love that most people find annoying?”
Her laugh was a breathy puff against my shoulder. “The scrape of a quill on parchment late at night. It means someone is thinking, creating.”
“What was the first book you ever stole?” I asked, my voice gravelly. I began working the buttons of my shirt with my free hand, my gaze locked on her wide, dark eyes.
A breathless laugh escaped her. “A treatise on celestial navigation from the royal archives. I was around twelve.” Her fingers flexed against me, then gave me a slow, deliberate stroke. “Have you ever… touched yourself while thinking of someone you couldn’t have?”
The raw honesty of it, the sheer intimacy of the inquiry, hit me harder than any flirtation. “Yes,” I groaned, my hips pushing into her grip. “For years. A faerie in a forest.” I watched her eyes darken with understanding, with a shared, aching history.
“What’s a skill you have that no one at court would ever guess?”
“I can whistle any bird call in the northern forests.” I shrugged the shirt off my shoulders, letting it fall. The firelight danced over my chest, and her eyes followed the movement hungrily. I guided her hand to the waistband of my trousers, helping her find the fastening. “What about you?”
Her touch grew bolder as she worked the leather tie. “I can speak four dead languages,” she whispered, her attention divided between my face and her task. “But I’ve never told anyone what I whisper to myself in them when I’m afraid.”
The tie came loose. I kicked the trousers aside, standing before her in nothing. Her breath hitched, her gaze traveling the length of me with a reverence that made my cock twitch. I reached for her, my hands finding the hem of her thin shift. “Tell me one now,” I commanded softly, gathering the linen.
She lifted her arms, letting me pull the garment over her head. Completely bare, she was a vision of soft curves and olive skin, her huge, perfect breasts rising with each rapid breath. “*Noli timere*,” she breathed, the ancient words a husky sigh. “It means ‘do not be afraid.’”
“Good advice,” I murmured, pulling her against me. The feeling of her skin on mine was electric—the cool silk of her back under my palms, the heat of her stomach pressed to my hips. I lowered my head, capturing her mouth in a deep, consuming kiss. My hands roamed down her spine, over the swell of her ass, gripping her firmly to bring her even closer.
I broke the kiss, my lips trailing to her ear. “What’s your favorite constellation?”
“The Wanderer,” she gasped, her head falling back as my mouth moved down her throat. My hands slid between us, one cupping her breast, my thumb circling her taut nipple. The other hand slipped lower, through the soft curls between her thighs.
“Why?” I breathed against her skin, my fingers finding her wet, hot core.
She moaned, her body arching into my touch. “Because it… it doesn’t follow the rules. It charts its own path.”
My thumb found the wet heat between her legs, circling the tight, swollen knot of her clit. “What’s the first thing you ever built with your own hands?”
“A… a tiny boat,” she gasped, her back arching as I pressed deeper with my thumb. “From bark and a leaf for a sail. I launched it in a palace fountain.” Her rhythm on me faltered, her focus splintering under my touch.
I groaned, my forehead dropping to her shoulder. “What’s the worst lie you’ve ever told?”
Her hand began to move on me again, a slow, perfect friction. “That I didn’t want this,” she confessed, her voice breaking. “That I could marry for politics alone. That I didn’t need you.” Her other hand guided my face back to hers, her kiss desperate. “What did you wish for on your last birthday?”
I couldn’t think. Her touch, her scent, her being right here in my arms. “This,” I gritted out, my own hips rocking into her fist. “Exactly this... Finding you... Being with you... Again...”
Her hand on me tightened. “What’s a place on my body you’re most curious about?”
The question, so blunt and hungry, sent a jolt straight to my core. “Here,” I murmured, my fingers trailing down her stomach, through the dark curls, but not touching where she was hottest and wettest. I brushed the sensitive skin of her inner thigh instead. “This exact junction. The feel, the taste, the sound you’ll make.” I looked into her dark eyes.
A shiver ran through her. She licked her lips, her gaze dropping to where her hand still stroked me. “Have you ever thought about me… touching myself? Since that night in the woods?”
“Every fucking day,” I growled, the confession ripped from me.
We were a tangle of questing hands and whispered secrets, mapping each other with touch and confession under the fire’s hungry light. Every gasp, every shuddering breath was an answer to a question we hadn’t asked aloud. The need to be inside her was a physical ache, a pounding demand, but the king’s blade of an order held me back. This exploration, this frantic, honest knowing, was its own exquisite completion. For now.
"Where do you want to come? Not… not yet, but where?”
The heat in my gut coiled tight at her words, at the permission and the prohibition wrapped together. I guided her to the side of her bed and pinned her there, the firelight gilding her flushed skin. I settled between her thighs, the head of my cock nudging against her slick entrance. I didn’t push in. Not yet. The promise of it was its own exquisite torment.
“Inside you,” I rasped, the answer torn from me. “Always. Deep inside you, Eleanor. Where I can feel you pulse around me after I've made you fall apart.” I lowered my mouth to her breast, sucking her nipple deep, my tongue working the stiff peak. "What’s a taste you hated as a child but love now?”
“Wine,” she cried out, her hands fisting in my hair. Her hips lifted, seeking more pressure, more of me. “Bitter then. Complex now.” She was trembling, a live wire of need. “Tell me… tell me what you’d do to me if the king’s order didn’t exist right now.”
I lifted my head, meeting her feverish gaze. I settled her onto the bed, caging her in on my hands and knees. Then I captured one of her wrists and pinned it above her head, my other hand roaming the rest of her body.
“I’d have you on your hands and knees,” I said, my voice thick with a dominance that felt as natural as breathing. “I’d taste every inch of you from behind until you were begging. Then I’d take you like that, hard and deep, while I told you how perfectly you take my cock. I’d watch your pretty ass shake with every thrust until you screamed.”
"Fuck... Cameron... I-"
"What’s the most reckless thing you’ve ever done?” I breathed, my own hand sliding from her wrist to her pussy, circling the tight peak until she gasped.
“Running away from the palace and finding you,” she said, her voice a husky tremor.
My cock twitched. I pushed two fingers into her mouth, feeling the wet heat of her tongue. “Suck. Get them good and wet.” She obeyed, her eyes locked on mine, and the sight was nearly my undoing.
“What’s your favorite way to be touched? Be specific.”
I withdrew my glistening fingers from her mouth and finally brought them down to her pussy. I didn’t plunge inside. I traced the swollen folds, painting her with her own saliva and her slick desire.
“A firm circle, right… right there,” she panted, her hips rocking into my hand, seeking my touch. “With a fingertip. Slow, then fast. Oh, fuck, Cameron…”
I gave her what she asked for, applying that exact, perfect pressure to the hard little nub at her apex. Her back arched, a broken cry escaping her lips. Her hand on my cock stuttered, then began to move in earnest, matching the rhythm I set on her.
“When you imagine me taking you, how do you see it?” I managed, my breath coming in ragged pants.
“From behind,” she moaned, the words a raw confession. “In this bed. My hands fisted in the sheets. You holding my hips, telling me how good I feel.” Her own fantasy seemed to inflame her; her pussy grew impossibly wetter around my circling fingers.
I was so hard it was a constant, pounding ache. I wanted to flip her over right then, to sink into that heat and lose myself. But the game, this brutal, honest exchange, was its own exquisite torture. I leaned down, capturing a nipple in my mouth, sucking hard as my fingers continued their relentless work. I was building her up, coil by tight coil, and the strain of holding myself back was a sweet, burning agony. We were a breath away from shattering, and every whispered secret only wound the tension tighter.
A sob broke from her lips, her inner muscles clenching violently around my fingers. She was close, so close to the edge, and the need to push her over, to feel her fall apart under my hands and words, was a physical ache in my bones. But the king’s command was a cold chain. I gentled my touch, slowing the rhythm, easing her back from the precipice. Her cry was one of pure frustration.
“Soon,” I promised, kissing the damp hollow of her throat. “But not yet. We have more questions to ask.
Chapter 19
Morgan
The line between political pact and personal desire was dissolving like sugar in hot wine. The king’s firm suggestion was a faint, fading echo in a room filled with the sound of our ragged breaths and the crackle of the fire. His hands were on me, his mouth, his words weaving a new reality where only we existed.
A familiar buzz began beneath my skin, a vibration that started in my core and spread outward. But this time, it wasn’t the chaotic, frightened energy of a storm seeking escape. It was a warm, golden hum, a current of pure ecstasy that resonated with every stroke of his thumb on my clit, every groan that rumbled from his chest.
“What is it?” Cameron murmured against my throat, his voice thick. “Your face… you tensed.”
He must have been reading my face. I let out a shaky breath. “My magic. It’s buzzing again.”
I felt him go still for a fraction of a second, his touch gentling. Concern.
I shook my head, grabbing his wrist to keep his hand right where it was. “No, it’s different. It’s not angry or scared.” I met his eyes, my own wide with awe at the sensation. “It’s buzzing with *this*. With you. It needs… it needs an outlet, but not to break things.” A desperate, playful smile touched my lips. “To celebrate them.”
The realization was a lightning strike. All this touching, all this him in control—it wasn’t enough. My magic sang for participation, for agency in this bliss. I wanted to give as good as I got.
With a surge of strength that came from that very magic, I pushed him onto the bed. He landed on his back with a soft *oof*, surprise flashing behind his glasses. I settled astride his hips, kneeling over him, feeling the hard, hot length of him pressed against my inner thigh. The power inside me purred.
My gaze traveled down his body, over the dark hair on his chest, the tensing of his abdomen, to where his cock was touching my thigh. A plan, delicious and wicked, solidified in my mind.
“My turn for rules,” I said, my voice lower than I intended.
I leaned forward, bracing my hands on his chest. His skin was hot. “You are not allowed to touch me,” I commanded softly. “Your hands stay here, on the bed.”
His eyes darkened, but a slow smile spread across his face. He slowly lifted his hands and placed them palm-up under his head in a show of surrender. The trust in that gesture made my heart clench.
“Now,” I said, bending down, my hair fell around me like a curtain, as I trailed kisses down his neck and chest, “I still have questions. You have to answer.” I continued kissing down his stomach and thighs, then positioned myself between his legs. He was magnificent. Thick and hard, the head glistening in the firelight. My mouth watered.
“When you imagined me,” I whispered, my breath ghosting over the sensitive skin, “in all these years after our night together … what was the first thing you wanted to do?”
Then I took him into my mouth.
I didn’t tease. I swallowed him deep, hollowing my cheeks as I sucked hard. A strangled roar tore from his throat. His entire body arched off the bed, but his hands remained fisted in the sheets where I’d told him to keep them.
I pulled back slowly, swirling my tongue around the tip. “Answer,” I murmured against his skin before taking him deep again.
He was trembling. “Fuck—Eleanor—I wanted—” He gasped as I applied suction, my hand working the base of his cock in rhythm with my mouth. “I wanted to taste you. To have you ride my face until you screamed.”
His words sent a fresh flood of heat between my own legs. I moaned around him, the vibration wringing another broken sound from him. This was power of a different kind. To see this strong, dominant man unraveling because of my mouth, my rules. My magic sang its approval, the buzz settling into a contented thrum that matched the rhythm I set.
His hips began to lift involuntarily, seeking more depth. I let him, taking him to the back of my throat before pulling off with a wet pop.
His surrender, his hands fisted in the sheets beside his head, sent a wave of possessive heat through me. He was letting me lead, letting me wield this power. My magic thrummed in approval, a golden current that made my lips more sensitive, my tongue more clever.
I let my lips drag slowly up his length. "Next question,” I murmured, my breath warm on his wet skin. “When you finally realized it was me, the woman from the forest… what did you want to do first?”
Before he could form a word, I took him deep again, savoring the taste of him, the salt and skin. I swallowed him down to the root, my throat working around him. A guttural, broken sound was torn from him. His hips bucked off the bed, a desperate, involuntary reflex.
“FUCK—Morgan—” he choked out, his voice strained.
I eased back, swirling my tongue around the flared head. “Answer,” I whispered, in a teasing tone, then took him deep once more, my hand pumping his base in a steady, demanding rhythm.
“I wanted to pin you,” he gasped, his body trembling with the effort to hold still. “To finally have you under me. To see if you’d still look at me with that same wild challenge in your eyes.”
His confession, raw and honest, lit a fire in my belly. I moaned around him, the vibration making his thighs tense. I increased my pace, my head bobbing faster, using my mouth to worship every inch of him. The sounds he made were pure music—ragged breaths, bitten-off curses, my name like a prayer.
I could feel him getting closer, the tension coiling tight in his body, the way his cock grew even harder against my tongue. I slowed, drawing out the long, wet slide until just the tip rested on my lips.
“Next question,” I breathed, looking up the length of his body to meet his glazed, hungry eyes. “When you imagine our wedding night… what’s the first thing you’ll make me do?”
I took him back into the heat of my mouth, working him with a relentless, sucking rhythm designed to unravel him completely. His answer was a fragmented, desperate stream of consciousness.
“Touch yourself—I’ll watch—I’ll make you say what you want—Fuck, Eleanor, your mouth—I’ll make you beg to come—”
He was right there. I could taste the change, feel the frantic pulse at the root. His control was a fraying thread. I brought him to the very edge, my movements becoming urgent, my suction fierce. A sharp, warning cry tore from his throat.
I pulled him from my mouth with a soft, wet pop, leaving him achingly hard and throbbing in the cool air. A bead of moisture glistened on the tip. I leaned down, blowing a soft, cool breath across the sensitive skin, watching his entire body shiver.
“Good boy,” I whispered, crawling back up his body to kiss his panting mouth.
“Now it’s my turn to ask more questions,” he growled as he flipped me back over.
The world spun, the furs scraping against my back, and then he was over me, a dark silhouette against the firelight. My breath hitched, not in protest, but in thrilling surrender. His hands pinned my wrists beside my head, his gaze holding mine—a promise, not a threat.
He released my wrists but the command in his eyes held me still. “Your hands stay on the bed, Eleanor. Don’t move them.”
I nodded, a shiver of anticipation coiling tight in my belly. He began his descent, his mouth a brand of fire on my skin. He licked a slow, searing path down my neck, over the pounding pulse at my throat. He took his time with my breasts, his tongue circling one peaked nipple, then the other, until I was arching off the bed with a silent plea.
“So responsive,” he murmured against my stomach, his breath hot.
"For you," I whispered, my eyes closed to enjoy the sensation of him worshipping my body.
His journey continued, over the quivering plane of my abdomen, lower, to the crease where my thigh met my pelvis. He nuzzled there, inhaling deeply, before tracing a maddening line down the insides of both thighs with the flat of his tongue. I was trembling, soaked, utterly exposed.
He settled between my legs, his broad shoulders pushing my thighs wider. The first flick of his tongue against my clit made me cry out.
“Rule two,” he said, his voice thick and muffled against my flesh. “You answer my questions. Honestly.” He licked a slow, torturous stripe through my folds. I cried out.
“What were you thinking about, in the council chamber, when you declared me your choice?”
His mouth closed over me then, sucking deeply. My thoughts shattered. “I—oh, fuck—I thought you were a flight risk,” I gasped, the words splintering. “I thought you’d see the trap, the burden… and run away.”
He hummed against me, the vibration shooting straight to my core. His tongue delved inside, then circled my clit with relentless pressure. “Wrong answer,” he chided, pulling back just enough to let the cool air tease my heated skin. “Try again. What were you *really* thinking?”
He didn’t let me think. His mouth was on me again, his tongue fucking into me in a rhythm that stole my reason.
“I wanted you!” I sobbed, my hips bucking against his face. “That night... at the party… I never stopped. I picked you because I was selfish. I wanted your hands on me, I wanted this—”
He rewarded me with a with loud moan and a deeper, hungrier suction, drinking from me as my confession spilled out in a broken, wet symphony. Just as the first tremors of a climax began to gather, he stopped, lifting his head. My body wept at the loss.
“Next question,” he said, his lips glistening. “When you drink your potion and you de-transform… what does it feel like?”
His mouth descended before I could form a syllable. This time, his focus was ruthless, his tongue a pinpoint of exquisite pressure on my clit. Pleasure, sharp and blinding, shot through me.
“It’s a sigh,” I choked out, my fingers clawing at the furs. “It’s… relief. Like shedding armor. Like being truly seen for the first time—”
He ate me through the rest of the answer, my words dissolving into incoherent moans. He brought me to the edge again and again, each time pausing to ask another question, each time stealing my voice with his mouth.
“Who do you belong to right now?”
“You. Cameron, please—”
“What do you need?”
“You! Fuck- I need YOU- FUCK!”
The cycle continued, a exquisite torture. My magic wasn’t buzzing anymore; it was a silent, rapt audience to my unraveling. I was a bundle of raw nerve endings, strung taut between his questions and his tongue, hovering in a place of desperate, pleading need. He owned every shattered syllable, every tremor. And he showed no sign of letting me fall.
His mouth left me aching and empty. I whimpered, a raw, desperate sound, my body begging for his return. He lifted his head, his breath hot against my inner thigh, his lips slick and shining.
“One more, Eleanor,” he said, his voice a low thrum that went straight to my core. “And I want the truth, the whole truth. Don't be afraid, I just need to know." He was looking at me, soft and also serious, as if to let me know telling him the truth to his next question would be safe.
I looked at him over my heaving breasts and nodded.
"Have you ever been with anyone else?” and dove back in, his tongue finding my clit with devastating precision. The sensation was a live wire, shocking my system, scattering my thoughts. The question, so direct after such intimate torture, made my heart clench.
“No!” I cried out, my hands fisting in the furs as my hips lifted off the bed. He hooked his arms under my thighs to hold me down and still, while using his broad, sexy shoulders to keep my thighs open. His tongue lashed me, a relentless, wet rhythm. “Fuck, no—only you—ever—only—ah!”
He sucked hard, pulling a sob from my throat. The words tumbled out, fractured and honest. “In the forest… that was it. I looked at you and I… I just knew. I felt the need to… to *fuck* you right there. That night.” The crude word, spoken in my ragged voice, seemed to electrify him. He groaned against me, the vibration pushing me higher. “You were my first… my only… please, Cameron…”
He pulled away abruptly, surging up my body. His weight settled over me, his cock, hard and insistent, pressing against my soaked entrance. His eyes were wild, his chest heaving. “You can’t say things like that,” he growled, his voice thick with awe and lust. “Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
I whined from the loss of his mouth on me. I let my legs fall open to give him easier access. Pushing up into him, desperate for his cock to be in me. I was such a slut for this man. It was slightly embarrassing, but right now, I didn’t care.
“I don’t care about anything else,” he panted, his forehead pressed to mine. “I don’t care about the crown, the magic, the fucking politics. I need to be inside you. Now.”
“Please,” I begged, wrapping my legs around his hips, anchoring him to me.
With a driven, possessive sound, he shoved into me.
The fullness was shocking, a brilliant, stretching burn that obliterated everything else. A sharp cry tore from my lips, my back arching. He stilled, buried to the hilt, his entire body trembling with the effort.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice rough.
I forced my eyes open, meeting his blazing gaze.
“I’ve never been with anyone else either,” he confessed, the words a hushed, sacred secret between our pounding hearts. “Not a soul. This… this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
The shock of his confession mingled with the overwhelming sensation of him filling me. Our eyes locked, wide with shared disbelief.
“This can’t be luck,” he whispered, hips still flush against me, fully sheathed. He was so deep I felt him in my soul. “This is fate. It has to be.”
He began to move, a slow, deliberate withdrawal followed by a hard, claiming drive back in.
"Fuck! Eleanor!" He moaned. "You still feel... fucking perfect... amazing... I don't know how long I'm going to last..." he was trembling from the battle between self control and unanswered need.
The sensation was overwhelming, a perfect, consuming friction that stole the air from my lungs. Every nerve was alight, singing with the truth of his words and the solid, undeniable reality of him moving within me. We were a locked secret, a first and only for each other, and in that moment, with him sheathed inside me, the chaotic storm of my magic fell into a silent, awed hush, watching its anchor hold.
The feeling was beyond anything I’d imagined—a perfect, fracturing completeness. My magic didn’t surge; it purred, a contented hum syncing with the slap of our skin. I clutched him closer, my heels digging into his back, holding him inside me as he set a pace that was both tender and devastatingly possessive. We climbed together, a shared, breathless ascent toward a peak we’d promised not to reach, yet every thrust made the promise feel like a beautiful, impossible lie.
Chapter 20
Cameron
One thrust. That's all it took for my brain to short-circuit. She was so fucking tight, so hot and wet, that every primitive instinct screamed at me to spill myself inside her right then. I had to clench every muscle, think about council tax policies, anything to keep from losing it like some untried boy. I locked every muscle, my breath coming in harsh gasps against her neck. *Don't come. Don't come. Don't—*
"Cameron?" Her voice was genuinely concerned, confused that I'd frozen.
"Give me a second," I gritted out. "You feel... fucking exquisite, Eleanor."
I needed a distraction, something to pull my mind back from the edge. My eyes scanned the room, landing on the dancing shadows cast by the fire. It sparked a memory.
"How do you know?" I grunted, barely moving, letting her adjust to the fullness of me buried to the hilt. "When people are approaching. Who they are. How the fuck do you always know?"
Morgan's eyes were hazy with pleasure, but she focused on my question like it was a lifeline. I started moving, slow and shallow, because I wasn't sure I could handle anything else.
"I—" she gasped as I hit a particular angle, "I feel them. The shadows."
I thrust again, a little deeper. She cried out, but I kept talking. "Explain. Distract me before this is over way too soon."
"Vibrations," she moaned, her nails digging into my shoulders. "People move... they displace shadows... I can feel—fuck, right there—I can sense... size, weight... FUCK... how much... space they take up."
"Fuck," I breathed, not just at the information but at her—at the way her breasts bounced with each thrust, at the sheen of sweat making her olive skin glow in the firelight. I was thrusting faster now despite myself, but I needed to hear more. "That's incredible. You're incredible."
Her eyes fluttered at the praise, and I filed that reaction away.
"Pace tells... me their intentions," she continued, words breaking between my strokes. "Learned to differentiate... everyone in the palace... any assassins... anyone seeking me out."
"So you're telling me," I growled, slamming into her harder, "that you can sense anyone coming?"
"Yes! Yes, I can—oh gods—"
"Then... do you... sense if anyone... is nearby?"
"No! There's... There's no one! Cameron! PLEASE!"
"Then you know we're alone. You know no one's coming." I was losing rhythm, my hips moving erratically as the pleasure built past the point of control. "You're safe with me. You're always safe with me."
The lamps flickered violently. Shadows stretched and danced across the walls like living things responding to their mistress. But it didn't scare mr. It turned me on even more.
"Cameron!" She screamed my name, no longer giving a single fuck about the king's warnings or who might hear. "I'm gonna come—I want you to fuck me until I can't walk—make me yours, please, please—"
Her dirty talk and begging destroyed me.
My control was shredding. Words tumbled from me without thought.
"You're so beautiful when you let go," I babbled into her skin. "So fucking amazing wrapped around me—never felt anything like this—never want anyone else—" I was babbling nonsense, praise falling from my lips like a prayer. "So beautiful, so perfect, so fucking tight, you feel amazing, Morgan, you're everything—"
I felt her body tense, that coil about to snap. Her arm swept out in a wild arc, and suddenly the world *shifted*. Velvet darkness surrounded us. We were in her shadow space, that timeless pocket dimension she'd shown me before. Her light sputtered to life. I could see her wild, widened eyes locked on me.
The surreal stillness pushed her over and she shattered on my cock.
"Cameron! FUCK!" She screamed, her pussy clamping down on me in rhythmic, vice-like pulses. "FILL ME UP, BREED ME, I DON' FUCKING CARE, DON'T STOP, PLEASE—"
Her orgasm was the trigger. I couldn't hold back another second.
"FUCK—Eleanor—" I roared, slamming home one final time as my release ripped through me. Hot spurts of cum painted her insides, pulse after pulse of pure, blinding pleasure. "TAKE IT—TAKE ALL OF IT—FUCK!"
I kept thrusting through both our climaxes, riding each spasm, each aftershock, until I softened inside her and my body finally gave out. I collapsed onto her, chest heaving, my face buried in her neck.
The shadow space flickered and dissolved. We were back in the room, tangled together, spent and trembling.
"Whoa," I breathed.
She laughed, weak and satisfied. "Yeah. That."
Chapter 21
Morgan
My legs were still trembling when the shadow space dissolved around us, depositing us back into the rumpled sheets of my bed. The fire had burned low, casting long amber fingers across the ceiling, and somewhere in the palace, a distant bell chimed the third hour past midnight.
"So..." I murmured, my cheek pressed against Cameron's chest, feeling his heart gradually slow beneath my ear. "I guess we kind of ended up obeying the king anyway."
"Fuck the king."
"I'm pretty sure that's treason."
His laugh rumbled through his ribcage, vibrating against my skin. "Worth it. We did obey, but I suspect His Majesty wasn't anticipating quite so much... enthusiasm."
I snorted, undignified and utterly uncaring. "He told us to share a room."
"Yes, he did." Cameron's hand traced lazy patterns on my bare shoulder, his touch feather-light and possessive all at once. "And I have no intention of clarifying the matter for him."
Silence settled between us, comfortable but fragile. I could feel the weight of unspoken things pressing at the edges—the marriage contract, the council's disapproval, the wild magic still humming beneath my skin. But right now, tangled in these sheets with his seed still warm inside me, none of it seemed quite as terrifying.
Then he shifted, pulling the blankets up over us both, settling deeper into the mattress like a man with nowhere else to be.
"You're staying," I said. It wasn't a question. More like wonder.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
I propped myself up on one elbow, looking down at him. His glasses were askew, his dark hair a mess, and there was a bite mark on his shoulder that I didn't remember giving him. He looked thoroughly debauched and completely unrepentant about it.
"The sex is amazing," I said, forcing my voice to stay light. "Obviously. That much is clear. But Cameron..." I swallowed hard, the old wound in my chest giving a familiar throb. "I don't blame you if you want to fuck and run. This is a political arrangement. You didn't sign up for... for all of me."
The lazy pattern-tracing stopped.
His hand found my chin, tilting my face toward his. And the look in his eyes—it wasn't anger, not exactly. Something sharper. Something that looked almost like hurt.
"Eleanor." My name came out low and careful, like he was choosing each letter deliberately. "Did you just suggest that I'd use you for one night and disappear?"
"I'm just saying I'd understand—"
"No." He sat up abruptly, the blankets pooling around his waist. The movement brought us eye to eye, and I could see the muscle ticking in his jaw. "No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to put those words in my mouth or those intentions in your head."
"Cameron—"
"Do you know how long I've thought about you?" His voice cracked, just slightly. "That night in the forest—I never forgot about you. Not your laugh, not the way you looked at me like I was someone worth looking at. The way you tasted and felt and fit me... I never even looked at someone else after you. And then I walk into this palace, and a few hours later you're standing there, and every piece of my life suddenly makes sense for the first time in years. I knew you had to be my fairy because you're the only woman who has ever made me feel this way."
I stared at him, my heart pounding somewhere in my throat.
"So no," he continued, softer now but no less intense. "I'm not going to 'fuck and run,' as you so crudely put it. I'm going to stay. I'm going to marry you. And I'm going to spend however long it takes convincing you that you're not a burden, not a political tool, and not someone people leave." His thumb brushed my cheek, catching a tear I hadn't realized had fallen. "You're my choice, Eleanor. My only choice. Do you understand me?"
I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe.
So instead, I kissed him—soft, trembling, tasting of salt and hope.
Chapter 22
Morgan
The kiss deepened, his tongue sliding against mine with a desperate tenderness that curled my toes. He moaned into my mouth, the sound vibrating through his chest into my palms, and the heat we’d banked roared back to life. I shifted, my thigh brushing the rigid length of his cock, and his breath caught.
But then he pulled back, forehead pressing to mine, his breath ragged. “I still have so many questions.” The strain in his voice was a rope pulled taut between curiosity and need.
A wicked grin curved my lips—the shy lady retreating, replaced by the woman who had just begged to be bred. I swung a leg over his hips, planting myself above him, my slick pussy hovering just above his erection. The tip of his cock nudged my entrance, and I bit my lip, rocking just enough to coat him in my wetness. “Ask me anything,” I purred. “I’ll answer every single one.”
His hands clamped onto my hips—not rough, but firm, halting my motion. A groan tore from his throat. “Wait,” he pleaded, not commanded. I could see the battle on his face: the vein throbbing in his temple, the way his cock twitched against my folds, so hard it must have ached. That visible restraint, the iron will it took to hold me still when I was so ready, sent a fresh wave of desire pooling low in my belly. I wanted him just as badly in that moment of denial than when he’d been buried deep inside me.
“I need you to understand something.” His eyes held mine with an intensity that stripped me bare. “I want to prove to you that this—us—isn’t just about the sex. Even though the sex is mind-blowing, it’s never been just that. I want *all* of you, Eleanor. Your mind, your magic, your fears, your shadows. So please… let me have your words before I have your body again.”
My heart clenched. I sank back onto his thighs, the head of his cock slipping away from my pussy, and the loss hit like a physical blow—but so did a swelling warmth that had nothing to do with arousal. “Alright,” I whispered. “What do you want to know?”
He took a shuddery breath. “Your shadows. You said you can sense people through them. Explain it to me. How does it actually work?”
My magic stirred, the shadows in the room growing thicker, attentive. I let my hands rest on his chest, feeling the steady drum of his heart. “Everything has a shadow,” I began, my tone dropping into the hush of shared secrets. “I don’t just manipulate light—I command its absence. And in that darkness, I feel… vibrations. Displacements. Every living thing casts a shadow, and when they move, they ripple through the light and the dark like a stone dropped in a pond. Each ripple is unique.”
Cameron’s thumb traced slow circles on my hipbone, his body still tense with unspent need, but his eyes keen with fascination. “So you can recognize people by their… shadow ripples?”
“Exactly. It’s like a signature. Their gait, their weight, how fast they normally walk. But it’s the pace that tells me their intention. Someone walking lightly but swiftly—that’s an assassin, trying to be a ghost. Guards are heavy and rigid; you can feel the armor clanking even through the shadows. Isla is light and swift too, but I’ve memorized her pattern. I’d know her step in a pitch-black room. And the king?” I let out a small laugh. “His shadow is slow and lazy. Nothing can hurry him. I could feel his approach from across the castle just by the arrogant drag of his presence.”
Cameron exhaled, a sound that was half-laugh, half-awe. “That’s… incredible. You’re incredible.” His voice was still rough with desire. Beneath me, his cock remained granite-hard, twitching when I shifted my weight. But he made no move to take me.
“Now you know,” I murmured, leaning in to brush my lips against the corner of his mouth. “I’m a living map of every soul in this palace. Even in my sleep, I feel them.”
“I’ll never sneak up on you.” He smiled, but the strain was still there—a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Never.” I nuzzled into the hollow of his throat, tasting salt and sex on his skin.
“What does my shadow feel like?” he asked then, his voice dropping to a whisper.
I closed my eyes, letting my senses reach out. In the near-darkness of the room, his shadow was a steady, warm presence—solid, but with an untamed edge, like a wolf who’d learned to sit by the hearth. “Like home,” I said, and the truth of it made my throat tight.
He pulled me closer, our bodies flush, his erection a hot brand against my belly. His fingers traced my spine, featherlight touches that made me shiver. “Tell me more,” he murmured. “I want to know everything.”
And so we lay there, tangled and aching, the air thick with unspent passion. His cock pressed into the soft give of my stomach, leaking a bead of moisture that smeared against my skin. I was dripping too—my thighs slick, my pussy hollow and hungry. But neither of us moved to finish what we’d started. Instead, we traded questions and answers like lovers trading kisses, feeding a hunger deeper than flesh.
It was the most exquisite torture I’d ever known. And I never wanted it to end.
Chapter 23
Her weight settled against me, warm and solid, as my questions spilled out. "How long have you been here? How old are you, really?"
Eleanor's fingers traced idle patterns on my chest. "Twenty years. They think I was five or six when Prince Leo found me in the gardens. That day became my birthday."
I did the math quietly. Twenty-five or twenty-six, then. No real birthday, no real name, no real history. Just a foundling with shadows in her blood. "So that's why you're not a princess. Not officially."
"Exactly." Her voice was soft, but steady. "Only the king and Leo know the truth. The queen and princesses might suspect, but I've never been sure. To everyone else, I'm a distant relative. A convenient fiction."
"And your people? Have you ever tried to find them?"
She stiffened against me. "Leo discouraged it. Said it was too dangerous. The few times I tried in secret..." She shook her head. "Dead ends. And then my... abilities complicated everything."
"Your camouflage."
"The day he found me, I copied his face. A frightened child's instinct." A bitter laugh escaped her. "So I became useful. A child spy. Eventually spymaster. Until the king decided I needed a husband instead." She tilted her head up, meeting my eyes. "There wasn't much time for personal investigations."
One question still burned. "Did you ever spy on me?"
Her cheeks flushed, visible even in the dim light. "Yes. After our night together. You were asking questions about my real identity, and I..." She bit her lip. "I felt drawn to you. But I was terrified the king would find out. That he'd have you killed. I had to make sure no one else had seen me. Had seen us."
"Protecting me," I murmured.
"Protecting both of us." Her hand pressed flat against my heart. "I couldn't stay away."
I cupped her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. "You're not alone in this anymore. Whatever answers are out there about your past—we find them together."
Tears glistened in her eyes, but she nodded, and the shadows around us seemed to exhale.
Chapter 24
His hands found my hips and pulled me back onto him, but something had shifted. The tenderness from moments before was still there, but now it was edged with something rawer, more primal.
"I can't believe it," he breathed, staring up at me with something like awe mixed with fierce desire. "You were protecting me. This whole time. Even when I didn't know if you existed, you were watching over me."
I opened my mouth to explain—the self-preservation, the political calculus—but his grip tightened.
"That's the most arousing thing anyone's ever done for me." His voice dropped to a growl. "And we're going to finish what you started earlier."
Before I could respond, he shifted beneath me and thrust up into my pussy in one smooth, devastating motion. I gasped, my hands flying to his chest as that thick cock stretched me wide, filling me so completely that my thoughts scattered like startled birds. The shadows in the room flickered, my magic dulling to a distant thrum as sensation overwhelmed everything else.
"There we go," he murmured, watching my face with dark satisfaction. "Tell me. What did you see? When you spied on me?"
He pulled nearly out, then shoved back in, and my answer emerged as broken fragments. "You reading. By the fire. Always reading."
"Keep going." His hands guided my hips, setting a rhythm I was too dazed to maintain on my own.
"You talked to your—oh fuck—your guards. Made them laugh." Each word cost me, pleasure scattering my thoughts like leaves in wind. "You looked lonely sometimes. I wanted to—"
"To what?" He drove deeper, forceful but controlled, and I moaned.
"To show myself. So badly. So we could... fuck again... Cameron," I gasped his name urgently as he hit a spot so deep inside me.
"FUCK. That's my girl. That's so fucking hot, Eleanor" He pulled me down harder onto his cock. "Keep talking. Tell me everything. I want to know exactly how long you've wanted this."
And I tried, I really did, but his thickness moving inside me, the demanding grip of his fingers on my hips, the way he looked at me like I was something precious and filthy all at once—it made speech nearly impossible. Feeling this wanted, specifically by him, specifically as myself, was more intoxicating than any magic I'd ever wielded.
Then, a secret so deep, I felt like he fucked it out of me, "I touched myself, watching you..."
His breath grew ragged beneath me. "And you watched it all."
"Every moment," I confessed, my voice breaking. "I couldn't look away."
He wasn't fucking me out of duty or political necessity. He was claiming me because the truth of my devotion had ignited something primal in him.
"Eleanor," he growled my name like it was sacred. "My fierce little shadow."
I leaned forward, my hair falling around us like a curtain. His cock filled me so completely that I swore I could feel him in my throat, in my chest, in places no man had ever reached.
"More," I begged. "Please, Cameron. More."
His response was a guttural sound of pure possession as he drove himself deeper still.
Chapter 25
Her confession unraveled something in me—those months of loneliness by the fire, never knowing her eyes were on me, her fingers between her thighs while I read. The thought made my cock throb inside her so hard I could feel her pulse answering mine.
I gripped her hips tighter, driving up into that slick heat with a rhythm that had her gasping. Her breasts bounced with every thrust, and I watched her face contort with the pleasure I was giving her. Mine. This woman who had stalked my solitude, protected me from royal suspicion, and chosen me against every political instinct in the realm.
"Fuck me until I cum," I commanded her. My voice came out rough, scraped raw by the need clawing up my spine.
She nodded frantically, her inner walls already fluttering around me. I pulled her down harder, grinding her clit against my pubic bone with each stroke. Her chocolate hair spilled around us, and I reached up to tangle my fingers in it, pulling just enough to arch her throat.
"That's it," I grunted. "Take it. Take all of it."
Her whimpers pitched higher. I felt the exact moment her control shattered—her pussy clamped down in rhythmic pulses, milking my cock as she cried out into the shadow-drenched room. The sensation ripped my own orgasm from me, hot spurts of cum flooding her as I buried myself to the hilt and held there, shuddering.
We collapsed together into the tangled sheets. I pulled her against my chest, still buried inside her, and pressed my lips to her sweat-damp temple. No words were necessary. Whatever came next—court politics, magical mysteries, the king's temper—this was certain. She was mine, and I wasn't letting go.
Chapter 26
We fell asleep like that, a tangle of furs and limbs, his seed trickling out of me.
The next morning, light pressed against my eyelids. But it was the sound that woke me—the chattering of my nurse maids, their voices carrying through the door like startled birds.
"Did you hear? The king himself confirmed it—"
"They say she chose him herself, can you imagine?"
I bolted upright, my heart seizing. Cameron still lay beside me, his chest bare, the furs pooled at his hips. We were both completely naked. The evidence of our night together was written across my skin, my tangled hair, the ache between my thighs.
"Wait," I whispered, more to myself than to him.
With a desperate flick of my wrist, I threw up a wall of shadow. A thick curtain of darkness swallowed the bed, solid as stone but shimmering at the edges. The magic hummed through my veins, cool and obedient for once.
The door creaked open. Two maids stepped inside, their arms laden with folded linens. They stopped dead.
"My lady?" Elin called out, her voice uncertain. "We... we can't see you."
"I'm here." I tried to sound regal, but my voice came out hoarse. "Leave my clothes by the hearth. And..." I felt heat bloom across my cheeks, my freckled skin burning. "Lord Shademore will need clothes as well. Retrieved from his belongings."
A pause. Then a barely suppressed giggle.
"Of course, my lady," said Tessa, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "Shall we send for a bath as well? For two?"
"Please," I managed.
Their footsteps retreated, but not before I caught Elin's whisper: "She used her shadow magic. For *modesty*."
"About time she found a good use for it," Tessa whispered back, and then the door clicked shut.
In the silence that followed, I became acutely aware of Cameron stirring beside me. He stretched, the movement lazy and masculine, and when his eyes opened, they found me through the darkness of my own making.
"Good morning," he murmured, his voice sleep-rough.
And I, who had faced down the royal council, who had stalked this man through the wilds for months, felt a fierce, irrational embarrassment. Because now, in the daylight, he could truly see me—the curve of my belly, the freckles dusted across my shoulders, the vulnerable woman beneath the queen.
"You stayed," I said softly.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
I looked away, the shadow wall wavering. "I don't know what I thought."
Chapter 27
Cameron
I woke to the sound of her voice, hoarse and commanding, ordering the maids away. The shadow wall she'd conjured still rippled around us, dark as ink but transparent to my eyes. It always had been. I could see the curve of her spine as she sat up, the way her hands trembled slightly despite the authority in her tone.
When the door clicked shut, I reached for her.
"Good morning," I murmured, but she wouldn't look at me.
"You stayed," she whispered.
"Did you think I wouldn't?"
She looked away. "I don't know what I thought."
The silence that followed was heavier than any words. Her shadows flickered, and I understood—this wall wasn't just for modesty. It was for protection.
I gently grabbed her chin and pulled her to face me. Her eyes widened, those dark pools full of something I couldn't name. The wall was still up, both figuratively and literally.
"Morgan," I said quietly, "how can you fuck me but not trust me?"
She flinched, but I didn't let go. Not roughly. Just enough to let her know I wasn't going anywhere.
"I don't know," she admitted, and the words came out cracked, like something breaking. She pulled away from my grip but stayed on the bed, her bare shoulders hunched. The shadows around us pulsed, responding to her agitation.
"There's a strong pull towards you... deep inside of me," she said, bringing her fingers to her chest, her voice so soft I had to lean closer to hear. "I don't understand it. I'm scared of it. It started that night we saw each other in the forest. When your eyes met mine through the crowd." She wrapped her arms around herself. "It's why I've been so forward. The sex... yes, I enjoy it. Of course I do. But it also calms my mind. Quiets my magic. And I don't think that's fair—that I'm somehow using you."
I opened my mouth to protest, but she kept going, the words spilling out now like a dam breaking.
"I've been in this palace long enough to know not everyone is how they seem. Every lord, every duke, even the soldiers—they all take secret lovers. Sometimes it's not even secret. Sometimes it's more than one. And the wives?" Her laugh was bitter. "They're left humiliated, pretending they don't care. If they show they care, they and their children are discarded. Begging on the streets. Broken hearts are a currency here, Cameron. I can't let myself be that."
The shadows were trembling now, matching the shake in her voice.
"Morgan." I sat up fully, the furs falling away, and I didn't bother to cover myself. Let her see me. All of me. "I'm not those men. I've never been those men. My territory is the woods, not the court. I don't play these games."
"Everyone plays these games," she whispered.
"Not me." I reached for her hand, threading my fingers through hers. "You know why I came to court in the first place? Not for politics. Not for power. I came because my steward said I needed to show my face. That was it. I had no ambitions beyond going home to my forests."
She was listening now, her breath shallow.
"But then I saw a ghost in the trees. And that ghost followed me all the way here." I squeezed her hand. "You're not using me, Morgan. Whatever this pull is between us—I feel it too. It's not one-sided. It's not a transaction."
"How do I know that?" she asked, and her voice was so small, so unlike the lady who had defied her entire council.
"You don't," I said honestly. "Not yet. Trust isn't built in a single night, no matter how good that night was." A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips. "But I'm asking you to give me the chance to earn it. Not because of politics. Not because of your magic. Because *I want to*."
The shadows thinned, but only just. I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers twisted in the furs. She was still braced for me to leave, to turn cold, to become one of those court bastards she'd described.
"Morgan," I said, shifting closer until my knee pressed against her thigh. "I need you to hear me."
She finally met my eyes. "I'm listening."
"What do you need from me right now?"
The question seemed to startle her. "What do you mean?"
"I mean this—us." I gestured between us, then let my hand come to rest on her bare knee. "Do I need to keep my hands off you? Do we just sleep beside each other until you trust me? Because I'll do that." I squeezed her knee gently. "I don't expect sex just because we're betrothed. I don't expect your body. We ordered baths. We can eat. We can talk. Fuck, Morgan—I'll sit on the other side of this bed and read if that's what helps."
A laugh escaped her, surprised and wet around the edges. "You read?"
"I'm full of surprises." I smiled, small and real. "But I'm serious. I need you to stop pretending that sex with me can come without strings attached. Because my strings are fucking attached to yours."
She gasped quietly, surprised by my crude words.
"I need to know what I can touch. If anything."
Her shadows fluttered again, but this time not in fear. Her chest rose and fell a little faster. "You're really asking me that."
"Of course I am. You told me the sex calms you. Quiets your magic. And you said it feels like you're using me." I turned fully toward her, one leg folding onto the bed. "But here's the thing, Morgan. I was there last night. I felt what you felt. That wasn't using. That was two people trying to hold onto something before the sun came up."
Her breath caught. "Cameron."
"I want you," I said, plain and honest. "I've wanted you since that night... and then you disappeared like something out of a fever dream. Now we're finally together. And if you tell me you need space, I'll give you space. But if you're only pulling away because you're scared I'll become some lord with three mistresses and a cold bed for his wife—"
"I am scared," she interrupted, voice cracking. "I'm terrified. You keep saying these things and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For you to wake up and realize what you've agreed to."
"What have I agreed to?"
"Me." The word came out tiny. "The magic. The secrets. A court that will try to tear you apart for getting what they all wanted. That's not a wife, Cameron, that's a war."
I didn't answer right away. Instead, I reached up and cupped her jaw, my thumb tracing the apple of her cheek. Her skin was damp. She'd been crying without a sound.
"You're not a war," I said softly. "You're a miracle I don't deserve. The magic doesn't frighten me. The secrets?" I huffed a quiet laugh. "Well, I've got my own. And the court can choke on their jealousy. Courtiers don't go into the deep wild. They're soft. You and I are not."
She swallowed, leaning into my touch. "You say that now."
"I'll say it tomorrow. And the day after. And every day until you believe it." I dropped my hand to her wrist, wrapping my fingers around it gently. "So tell me. Do I keep my hands to myself? Because if you need me to, I will. But I need you to say it. 'Cameron, don't touch me.' Say it."
She stared at me, lips parted, eyes dark. Her pulse fluttered against my palm like a trapped bird.
"I can't," she whispered.
I shifted even closer, bringing our faces inches apart. "Then what do you want, Eleanor?"
The shadows around us darkened. Her free hand came up to my chest, spreading flat over my heart. I knew she could feel it pounding.
"I want you to hold me," she said, each word slow, deliberate. "And then I want you to make me forget everything else exists."
A growl built low in my throat, but I swallowed it down. "That I can do."
I leaned in, but I didn't kiss her. Not yet. I waited, letting the moment stretch, letting her decide. Her fingers curled against my chest, nails drawing faint lines through the hair there. Then she pulled me down, and our mouths met.
The kiss started tender, questioning. But it didn't stay that way long. Her lips parted, and I swept my tongue inside, tasting her. She moaned, soft and broken, and the sound went straight to my cock. I wrapped my arms around her, needing to feel her against me, and she climbed into my lap, straddling my thighs under the tangled furs.
"Last night," she breathed against my mouth, "you asked so much of me."
"I did." I kissed along her jaw, down to her neck. "And you gave it all."
"Ask again." Her nails dragged down my back, making me hiss.
I pulled back just enough to meet her gaze. "What do you want me to do to you, Eleanor?"
"Everything," she whispered. "I want your fingers inside me while I tell you about every night I watched you. I want your mouth on me while I confess how many times I touched myself in the shadows, pretending it was your hands."
A tremor ran through her words—not shame, but pure, molten want. Her pussy pressed hot against my thigh, and I could feel the slick heat of her through the thin barrier of air between us.
"Then let's start there," I said, sliding my hand down her belly, lower, until my fingers found the wet folds of her cunt. "Tell me about the first time."
Chapter 28
His fingers slid inside me while I tried to speak, and the words came out broken.
"A week," I gasped, my hips rocking against his hand. "A week after our night in the forest, one of my scouts came back with whispers. A northern lord asking questions. Looking for a woman with chocolate-brown hair. Olive skin." My breath hitched as his thumb found my clit. "Green eyes."
Cameron's rhythm didn't falter, but his gaze sharpened. "You knew I was searching for you."
"I didn't know you were a lord... our first night." The confession tumbled out, my nails digging into his shoulders. "When my scout described you—tall, broad, dark hair and beard, spectacles—I panicked. I thought you'd somehow discovered who I really was. That the whole night had been some elaborate trap."
"And instead?"
"Instead I told the king there were whispers of unrest in the north." A moan escaped me as his fingers curled inside, finding that spot that made my vision blur. "He gave me a month to investigate. Reconnaissance. My first day there, I found you."
Cameron slowed his pace, dragging it out. "Tell me."
"You were in the village tavern. Asking everyone the same questions." I remembered it so clearly—the slump of his shoulders, the way he'd run his hand through his hair in frustration. *Have you seen her? Brown hair, green eyes. About this tall. She was here a week ago.* My voice cracked. "They all said no. Called you mad. And you looked so... defeated."
His fingers thrust deeper, and I clutched at him.
"I- I watched you for days," I whispered. "From the shadows. From the trees. From places you'd never think to look. Every innkeeper who shook their head. Every merchant who shrugged. You kept asking. You never stopped."
"You should have come to me."
"I wanted to." The words came out raw, desperate. "Fuck, Cameron, I wanted to walk right up to you and drag you back into the forest. Fuck you until neither of us could remember our own names. But I was terrified. Terrified you'd see through my disguise. Terrified you'd hate me for the deception. So I just watched. Every night. Wanting you. Touching myself in the dark while you slept in your bed, the fire burning low, your face still troubled even in sleep."
His forehead dropped against mine. "How long?"
"The whole month." I could barely breathe now, his fingers working me relentlessly. "I fabricated reports to send back to the king. Fake evidence of unrest. All so I could stay. All so I could watch you. I told myself it was strategic. That I needed to understand your intentions. But the truth?" I met his eyes, my body trembling on the edge. "I just couldn't let you go."
"Morgan."
"When... when you finally stopped asking, I thought—this is it. He'll forget me. He'll go home. Find some northern girl who doesn't lie about who she is." My hips bucked against his hand. "But you didn't forget. You just kept asking quietly."
"Because something told me I could find you. I just had to keep looking."
"I know." My voice broke on a sob. "I know, and you're still not supposed to know. Even when I chose you. Even when I defied the whole council. I was still that scared girl hiding in the shadows, too afraid to step into the light."
His brought his hand up and cupped my jaw, tilting my face up. "You're not hiding now."
"No." I swallowed hard. "I'm not."
And I kissed him, hard and desperate, my confession still wet on my lips, his fingers still buried inside me, the truth finally out in the open between us.