She was panting, too, and could not find words. She merely nodded.
Finally the doublet came off. He loosed the buttons and then peeled it away, that livery stained with her husband’s blood, damp with her wetness, and let it crumple to the floor.
She could not have imagined the beauty of him, what lay beneath his clothes. The corded muscles of his chest were as firm and thick as the branches of an oak. She ran her palm across them, past his navel, and down to where he was achingly hard and still damp from the ministrations of her mouth. He groaned again and then surged forward, his huge body arching over her.
Their faces were close. He brushed his lips against hers, kissed the tip of her nose. She shivered, trembling with need.
“I do not want to hurt you,” he said. “Will you tell me if I do?”
Again she nodded.
With agonizing slowness, he began to thrust himself inside of her. His entrance was eased by the slickness of her channel; she was so wet and needful for him that there was hardly any pain at all. What little pain did occur to her was so twined with pleasure that she could not bear to tell him to stop, the loss of such pleasure would have destroyed her.
Still, his restraint was remarkable, and it was almost as great as his need. He did not increase his pace until he was fully hilted within her, their bodies joined most inextricably. Then he paused and looked down at her questioningly.
Her face was so flushed, her mouth ajar with the beginnings of a gasp; how could he question her desire? But there was a wry tilt to his lips, a teasing glimmer in his eyes. He would make her speak it.
“Liuprand,” she said, her voice strained with desperation. “Please.”
Would he make her beg more piteously for it? She would. But then he began moving within her, gently, so gently she could have cried out in frustration—instead she lifted her hips and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him even closer.
This was all the urging he needed. Liuprand increased his pace until she was jostled across the bed, nearly up against the headboard, though his arm shot out to keep her from knocking into it, curling around her skull protectively. Yet still Agnes sensed restraint from him. She wondered if his strength was such that the world around him took on a terrible fragility; did he fear that if he unleashed himself, he could inflict some grievous harm upon it? Upon her? The Seraphine were heaven-kissed, imbued with power beyond that of humble humanity. It seemed to her more curse than boon, to live in a world too flimsy for your unshackled touch.
The notion grieved her so deeply that Agnes suddenly pushed herself up. Liuprand halted at once, stricken, but she did not allow even the half-formed thought to pass through him, the fear that he had hurt her. She braced her arms around his neck and pulled him up with her, until she was spread open in his lap, her back against the headboard.
She hoped this would undo him, undo all his careful restraint. Even without speaking, she hoped she had made her intent known. A silent vow that she would indeed take all of him. That his need did not frighten her; she would never cringe before his true face.
Black desire was in his eyes, and she was almost brought to climax by this look alone. He grasped her thighs, her flesh swelling up from between his huge fingers. His restraint fell away from him at last, and he thrust into her so powerfully, so uninhibitedly that she cried out in a broken sob when her release finally came. Her vision blistered with stars.
And then, as if fevered by the sound of her climax, he spent himself inside her. He muffled his own cry against her throat, kissing her there messily. He gave two last, shuddering thrusts and then went still. His mouth slipped from her neck.
Rather than collapsing upon her, he pulled himself out and, with one fluid motion, flipped their bodies so that she lay on top of him. His arms curled around her; she was bastioned against him. His heart beat as if it might crack through his chest. She felt every pulse of it reverberating through her like it was an organ of her own. And the beating of his heart, so raw, so close, banished every last drop of coldness from her veins. His seed, pooling warm inside her, melted the frost of Agnes’s eternal winter.
She took Liuprand’s hand by the wrist and guided his fingers across the scars on her stomach. Slowly, so that he could read them with his touch.
“You are my ruination,” she whispered.
With his free hand, Liuprand tipped her chin up, so that she could see his face. The look in his eyes was pained.
“Do you regret it?” he asked. “I would have never—”
“No,” she broke in. She guided his hand down farther, so he could feel the slickness of their coupling between her thighs. “I begged for it. Just like in your dreams.”
He stroked her there, once, and she twisted against him, biting her lip on a moan. Then he leaned down and kissed her, briefly but deeply.
“Your ruination is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmured.
Those were the last words that passed between them for a long time. She merely lay upon him, breathing, exhaustion weighing down her eyelids. His grip on her never slackened, and Agnes was glad for it. She thought she might die—truly—if he ever let her go.
They did not speak because they both dreaded the words that hardened in their throats. The truth, as bitter as the core of an apple: that this had not been Agnes’s ruination alone. That all of Drepane would fall if ever their clandestine coupling came to be known. And then there was the truth within the truth, which was as poisonous as it was sweet, the secret at the heart of it all—that not even the threat of the kingdom’s ruin would make them regret what had been done.
XXXVI
The Casks of Lord Fredegar
The House of Blood did not see its greatness diminished by its dungeon, as so many houses did. It was no forgotten, moldering niche, no rat-filled hole in the earth. The door was that of a vault, gridded with iron and then limned in gold, and the wood did not swell or sag with moisture. There was a dampness, of course, and mold that could not be warded off even by the most devoted of servants, who came down often to scrub the walls and the floors. No cobwebs frosted the corners or draped between the slats of the wooden banister, and the steps down to the dungeon were softly worn with many centuries of footsteps.
The guard who sat within had his legs propped up on a table and a book open in his lap. Cendrillon, he was called. Yet his book contained no poems of courtly love, no mythic sagas of the ancients, wrung out through generations. Rather, it was a ledger book, an accounting. And all within the dungeon had been most scrupulously accounted for.
