Chapter 108: Nobody But Her

Alaric:

Ten minutes. That’s how long I gave her before I stopped counting.

The woman on her knees - I never learned her name since I never asked - had been working my cock like it owed her money. Tongue flat along the shaft, then pointed at the head. That deep-throat trick she had clearly practiced until she stopped gagging. She pulled out every skill she owned and a few she had probably only read or heard about.

And I felt nothing.

Not her hands on my thighs. Not the wet heat of her mouth. Nothing but the anger sitting low in my gut and the frustration that had been building for a week now. Since the gathering night. Since I found the princess lost in the woods and made the worst mistake of my life by doing more than what I was supposed and told to do.

For someone who used to enjoy these pleadure-filled moments to their fullest and had ladies screaming my name, all it had taken was one woman and one private encounter with her to ruin everything.

The more time passed, the more I realized Reign had a reason for reminding me not to overdo anything.

Maybe I should denied his request that night. Or maybe I should have left her there and called someone else to help her out from that situation. Yet I went against all the perfect and good ideas, and made the mistake of helping her.

She had arrived at Moonveil with her chin up and her title worn like armor - Princess Eleanora Argentis. And from the first second I saw her I found her devastating. Only a blind man wouldn’t notice just how beautiful she was, how she made the uniform look like it had been sewn onto her skin. But it’s what happened after the gathering night that worried me.

The dreams started that very first night, and they weren’t gentleman dreams. They were all the things I knew - with absolute certainty - she would never do with someone like me. Because even after I had acted like a decent person that night, she hadn’t started looking at me like a friend. That would have been too easy. The look in her eyes had only shifted from outright frustration and dislike to confusion and suspicion.

I expected nothing less. She was smart, and she remembered exactly how I had been since the day she arrived - because Reign told me to be. My best friend had announced a war against us and ordered us to help make her realize her fault, whatever the hell that meant.

And I had done it without question. Because I never questioned Reign and his decisions no matter how stupid or unreasonable they might sound. I used my illusion on her more than once, made fun of her, humiliated her in front of crowds, and was there most of the times when she got cornered by Reign.

But the more nights I spent picturing her face, the more I wanted to tell Reign where to shove his plan. The princess could spend her time on far better things than whatever lesson he wanted to teach her. She could spend it beneath me, breath catching, my name spilling out of her like she couldn’t hold it in. She could spend it moaning while I-

Her face slammed into my mind’s eye, and my eyes fluttered shut.

And just like that, the woman between my legs wasn’t some random from the club anymore. She was Elara. In whatever impossible world I was building behind my eyelids, the princess had chosen this... had wanted this, wanted me. I let it swallow me whole.

The fantasy filled in around me. The way her lips would part around my thickness. The small and broken sounds that would escape her mouth. The way her fingers would dig into the leather beneath her, the way she would look up at me with those glowing silver eyes, wrecked and wanting.

My body finally answered. My hips bucked off the seat, and I fisted my hand in the woman’s hair, harder than I should have, because in my head it was Elara’s long silky hair I was gripping. In my head it was her tongue, her heat, her.

I bit her name back at the last second, refusing to let it out, because some lines even a fantasy couldn’t make me cross in front of a stranger.

I came hard enough to see white, spilling into the woman’s mouth while my whole body shook with it. For one perfect, ruined moment there was nothing else in the world but the pulse of it... and her. Elara. Always her.

Then I opened my eyes.

The woman pulled off me with a satisfied smirk, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, already reaching for her robe. I was already reaching for my trousers. The disgust rolled back in thicker than before, because she wasn’t the one I wanted, and she never could be.

"Get out," I said.

She blinked, the smirk slipping. "Did I do something-"

"You were fine. Leave."

She left, whatever her name was.

I was still doing up my belt when the door opened and Penelope sashayed in, all silk and perfume, heading for my lap the way she always did after I finished. I stopped her with a hand flat against her collarbone before she could sit.

She arched a painted brow. "That bad, was she?"

"Cancel my membership," I said. "And tell your girls I’m done. None of them come near me again. Not tonight, not ever."

She opened her mouth, questions lining up behind her teeth - who is she, what’s changed, since when does Alaric Ravenshade turn down a warm body.

I didn’t answer a single one. I buttoned my jacket, stepped around her, and walked out into the night while her voice chased me down the hall and died at the door.

At this point, there was no denying the princess was going to be the death of me.

But the worst part?

I was starting to think I didn’t care.