“No, it’s fuckingGuinevere,” I growled to myself.
“Sir?”
“Don’t make a sound,” I groaned, feeling the weight of the wine in my head.
“Apologies, my—”
“—I want you to beg for my forgiveness,” I interrupted her as I eyed that slit between her thighs, which was exactly what I needed it to be: the entry to a woman where I could, no doubt, enjoy myself for a few minutes at least.
Yet, it wasn’theropening. And the light white hair that dusted Guinevere’s cunt was missing from this one. This one was somehow larger, and the hair was more wiry and darker. Almost light brown.
It didn’t fucking matter. This was Guinevere beneath me. No, this wasGuin. This was the woman I’d loved. The womanwho’d taken everything from me.And I was going to fuck her as hard as I could to make her pay for what she’d done.
“Fucking apologize,” I growled.
“Please,” she said. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
But her voice didn’t sound right. And the hair spread across the pillow was the wrong shade of fair, and the hands gripping the sheets were too big, and nothing like—
“Tell me you love me.”
Silence.
“Tell me you fucking love me.”
“I... love you.” But her voice was confused, too careful, and... it was nothing, just sounds in the dark from a girl doing her job.
The wrong girl.
Fuck her anyway. Close your eyes and you won’t know the difference.
But when I looked down at her cunt and I held my cock, ready to penetrate that hole that wasn’t Guinevere’s, my cock was limp. I stroked my hand over the tip, hoping to feel the beads of moisture I usually did. But there was nothing. Just my unspent cock in my hand and a woman bent over my bed who wasn’t the woman I wanted.
I rolled away from her.
Nothing. There was nothing there. There had been nothing there from the start, and I’d fucking known it, but I’d gone through the whole ugly performance anyway. I was a fucking fool.
“Leave,” I said.
“But you haven’t...”
Then she made the mistake of looking at me, and something in my expression must have frightened her because she gathered herself quickly, and a moment later she was at the door. She didn’t look at me on her way out, and I was grateful for that.
When the door clicked shut, I stayed where I was, with my elbows on my knees. The room smelled like wine, extinguished candles, and the particular bleak staleness of failure.
My hands had finally stopped shaking.
But I didn’t find that reassuring.
CHAPTERSIX
-MORGAN-
Caer Gwyll smelled like wet stone and old grievances.
I truly couldn’t stand the place, almost as much as I couldn’t stand Merlin. If the Standing Stones had killed me on the way here, I might have counted it a mercy. Death would have been preferable to sitting in this cold room watching a collection of the realm’s finest minds prepare to say absolutely nothing of consequence. At least death had dignity.
But the stones hadn’t taken me; Merlin had seen to that. He’d provided each of us with a small vial of his blood before we’d crossed, and the stones had let us pass like obedient hounds recognizing their master’s scent. A clever solution.
