“I’m sorry I’m late with the tray. The kitchen was a little backed up.”
“Are you kidding me with this? I don’t care about the food. I care about you! Tell me everything that happened. What did she do to you?”
His face softened into a gentle smile of affectionate indulgence. “It was the standard whipping, sweet girl. Nothing more. I just… I’m still reeling from what you did to try and save me. Were you really offering yourself up in my stead? Had Morgan consented, would you have allowed yourself to be tied to the post and whipped until you’d spilled enough blood to satisfy her majesty most high’s fancy?”
“Of course I would have. It was my fault you got into trouble in the first place. I’m so sorry, Demi. Tell me where it hurts.”
He looked down at me, enraptured. Demi had the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen, and I felt like I could understand a thousand of his many conflicting emotions without a word. His arms encircled me, pulling me tight to his chest. He spoke slowly, with throbbing passion in his voice. “I ache for you, Juliet. That’s where it hurts the most. That you would take my place? No one would do that for me.”
I gulped at his declaration, coupled with our close proximity. “I told you, we’re friends. Friends take care of each other. What can I do? How can I make it better?”
With his free hand, his fingers traced the curve of my lower lip as if it was made of glass. “If we could finish the kiss you started yesterday, that would make the entire world better – every dark and maddening spot of it. It was a kiss worth savoring, and right now, the world seems like a grim place, in desperate need of true loveliness.”
His words were so gallant and swoon-worthy; I couldn’t help the intake of breath that stole my words away. I tilted my chin up at him, my lips slightly parted as my eyes zeroed in on the mouth that had only ever been kind to me. “Just one kiss?”
“I would trade worlds for it, Rosie.”
Again with the Romeo in action pledges that made me go weak in the knees. I couldn’t help myself. I’d gone from being with a guy I couldn’t keep in one place to a man who looked at me like I was the sun and moon and something precious. I was the dude friend, and wasn’t used to being precious, but somehow Demi saw the softness Avalon was trying to stamp out.
My fingers floated up to stroke his jaw and gently beckon him closer. When our lips touched, it wasn’t the explosion I felt when Bastien and I went at it, but the fire was still there, slowly kindling into something with actual potential to be lethal.
Of all the things I could’ve guessed, it was no surprise that Demi was a good kisser. His lips were soft and knew what the crap they were doing, which was a far sight better than me, who’d only just gotten my training wheels off. Demi drove the kiss deeper, sucking on my lower lip between breaths, like I was a piece of candy he needed to savor and treasure and keep in his pocket when the world grew cold and devoid of treats.
I was his treat, and for the moment, he was mine. Demi was sweet, and I indulged in him for probably too long, promising him things with my lips that my mouth would never admit to aloud. It was too soon for such declarations. I’d only known him a few days. He was still mostly a stranger to me, yet here I was, threading my fingers through his hair and tugging on the follicles just to hear him groan into my mouth. I loved the sound of Demi coming undone. He was beautiful, and in real life, I never would’ve had a chance with someone as pretty as him. It was a heady thing, to be desired by someone so desirable.
When my hands drifted down to wrap around him, gripping his back to force him closer, I jumped when I swallowed one of his gasps that turned into a grimace. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just the cuts from the whip. Don’t stop, though.” Demi shook his head and went back in for my lips.
“Oh, jeez!” I dropped my hands from around him, fighting the desire to hug him through the pain. “Show me, sweetie. Show me what she did.”
“She got you to admit you feel something for me. I’ll not hold that against her majesty most high. I’ll endure as many lashings as it takes to get a repeat of that.”
“Okay, smooth talker. I’m serious, Romeo. Let’s take off your shirt.”
Demi quirked his eyebrow at me, a playful and charming smirk teasing his features. “If you insist.”
He hissed only once when I got his shirt all the way off of him. “What… What… Demi, I…” I couldn’t find the words; I was horrified. I guess I had only a passing understanding of what being beaten with a whip would do to a person. The real picture was far more gruesome. “What can I do? Does it sting? Is there something I can put on it?” There were crisscrossing slashes marring the middle and top of his muscular back. The part that made me debate between tears and vomit was that beneath the fresh slices, there were similarly designed scars from years of this kind of brutal abuse. “How can I help?”
Unlike Bastien, Demi didn’t turn mean on me when I saw his scars. He merely studied my face over his shoulder, and reached back to squeeze my hand. “You can stay with me while it hurts. You can kiss me until I forget about the pain.”
“This can’t be your life!” I recalled Lane’s wisdom, hoping it might give Demi some solace. “This isn’t all there is for you. Avalon isn’t your adventure. This awful castle isn’t where it ends for you. You are your own adventure, Demi. There’s so much more in store for you than this.”
His chin lowered. “No, sweet princess. This life is all Avalon has for me. I’ve accepted it, and one day you must accept it, as well.”
My reply came out in a strangled whisper. “Don’t break my heart like that. I see you beyond the bowing and the ‘her majesty most high’s.”
“I hardly know who that is anymore,” he admitted.
Tears dotted my lashes and fell down my cheeks as I tugged him over to the bed, climbed up with him, and gently pushed him down until his stomach was pressed to the mattress. I pulled off his shoes and reached for the oil that was kept on the nightstand. It was supposed to be used for all the raucous sex we were expected to be having, but it worked well enough for massage oil, too. His cuts had been treated with some kind of shiny ointment that kept his white dress shirt from sealing to the wounds, but I couldn’t imagine it was comfortable to be wearing material over throbbing marks.
I started on Demi’s feet, making him jump when I started massaging his toes. “Rosie, no. You shouldn’t be doing this. If someone saw you, I would be punished severely.”
I got down off the bed and crossed the room to make sure the door was locked. “There. Now we can be as crazy as we want.” I went back to rubbing his feet, taking my time and making sure to drag out each stroke so he knew not everything in this castle would hurt him. I fished around for a change of topic to distract me from staring at Demi’s tight backside. He had a baseball player’s butt; it was hard not to gawk. “Tell me about your brothers and sisters. I never had any, and always wished for some.”
Demi’s reply came back weighted as he grew drunk on my touch. “Geraldine was the youngest. I miss her terribly. She always looked at me with hero worship in her eyes, like I was something great. I hold onto that memory when I’m polishing floors and being traded like a toy.” His mouth didn’t close all the way, and I was pretty sure he started drooling halfway through his response. “I’m not supposed to talk like this.”
“Like what? Honest? You can be yourself in here, Demi. Maybe not anywhere else, but with me you don’t have to worry.”
“I always worry now,” he admitted. “I never used to before you came along. I did as I was told and accepted my fate. But you? You treat me like I’m a person.”
“You are a person, silly.”
“I think I forgot that until you came to live here. Now I worry something will happen to you. Her majesty most high does what she likes, regardless of who gets hurt.” He groaned into my pillow, his butt clenching in a way that made me bite my lip to keep the lust tucked away. “Oh, right there.”
“Like that?” I re
ached under his pant leg and dug my knuckles into his tight calf muscle.
He reached under his stomach and rocked his hips. For a second, it looked like he was humping the bed. When his belt came undone and he slid off his pants so I could better massage his legs, I understood.
“I hate to bug you now that you’re so relaxed, but would you mind undoing this stupid corset? It’s wicked uncomfortable.”
Demi sat up, his eyes lidded. He swung his legs off the bed and dropped down with the soundlessness and agility of a jungle cat. He extended his hand to help me off the raised platform, so my feet could plant themselves firmly on the polished wood floor. “Of course. You should never be afraid to ask me for anything. Turn around.” His fingers were adept at undressing women, which wasn’t a huge shocker. My dress fell to the floor, and the corset was a sweet relief when it hit the ground. My ruffly under-dress came off, leaving me in the dressing gown, which was actually pretty comfortable. The white gauzy material kissed my toes and left my cleavage mildly exposed to the evening air that wafted in through the window. My ribs expanded with the freedom of being able to take in a full breath. “Oh, that’s a hundred times better. Thank you.”
His hands wrapped around my waist from behind, lingering on my stomach. I couldn’t help the butterflies that swarmed around the spot where he touched me. I leaned so my back was pressed to his swelling chest and closed my eyes contentedly. He wore only his boxer briefs, and I knew if I turned around, my eyes would be drawn straight to where I shouldn’t be looking. “Are you quite certain you don’t need help out of this dressing gown?”
Shivers rolled up my spine at his husky tone. “I’m sure. This whole thing? I’m not great at it. Not a whole lot of practice with gorgeous, almost-naked men.”
His face moved to my neck, where his lips lingered, turning my limbs to jelly. “Would you prefer me all the way naked?”
I’m sure there were cooler ways to respond, but the pinched and panicked squeak of, “You’re too sexy for that!” was all I could muster. I smacked my forehead at my geeky response. “I’m not used to guys like you paying me any attention. Not like this, anyways. It’s… This… I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Guys like me?” His tone closed off, and I knew he’d misunderstood me. “Surely I’m not the first man below your station to fancy you.”
“Not that, you dork. You’re too hot to pay attention to me like this. It feels like all the cool kids are going to laugh at me because the sexy guy is hitting on me as a joke, just to see if he can make me weak-kneed for him. Which, incidentally has happened to me twice.”
Demi’s eyebrows furrowed, and then he tilted his head back to let loose a hearty laugh. “I forget that you’re a maiden. You really think of me like that?” He ran his hand up my side, tracing the curve of my hip. “Do I make you nervous?”
I turned around and took a step back, giving him the stink eye through my blush. “You know you do. Knock it off. I’m trying to be good to you, and I’m barely keeping it together, here. You can’t touch my side like that, or say things that are too sexy. I have no idea what I’m doing, and you’re just confusing me, making me think I’m in the hot people ranking. I know my social status, and it’s not up where you are.” I fixed my eyes on the ceiling to avoid his smirk that beamed out at me. “Oh, shut up. Just lay back down so I can stop thinking about things I shouldn’t.”
Demi pressed a sweet and simple kiss to my lips, looking very much like a mostly naked man, and nothing like a submissive servant. My stomach did a violent flip when he taunted me with a low rumble of, “You want me.”
I covered my face with my hands, hoping to obscure some of the pink in my cheeks. “Yeah, yeah. Shut up about it. I think I mentioned something about a massage you’re missing out on by teasing me like this.” I waited until he lay face-down on the bed again, and slathered more oil onto my hands. I picked up where I left off, and rubbed further up his leg, pretending his beige boxer briefs were just plain shorts so it wasn’t weird. Demi groaned and moaned pornographically, making me wonder when the last time was that someone took the time to be good to him.
“Tell me about the first kiss guy,” Demi mumbled, catching me off-guard.
“There’s nothing to tell. He never trusted me enough to really give us a shot, and I got tired of his constant mood swings.”
“Were you nervous around him, too?”
“I guess not. He was so antagonistic that I guess I forgot to be nervous.”
“Do you miss him?”
I swallowed hard, unsure how Demi danced the line between half-naked hot guy to platonic girl-talk friend so seamlessly. “I try not to let myself think about him. Too painful.” I was quiet a few beats while I rubbed the outside of Demi’s thighs, loving how hard the muscles were. “The way it ended was a real bummer. I thought we could’ve had something real, but he never trusted it. He’s a loner, so he wasn’t good at leaning on me – on most people, really. We’d get close, then he’d bolt. Kind of sucked being run out on that many times. It’s better this way. Now he can be happy being by himself, which he made pretty clear was what he wanted all along.”
“I can’t imagine him being happy now that he’s parted from you. Trust me, no matter what you think, he’s suffering.”
“You can’t know that. You don’t even know who he is. He doesn’t suffer over me. He pushed me away. I was right there, and he couldn’t see me. No matter how much I wanted it to work, after the way it ended, it can’t.”
“How did it end?”
I moved up to rubbing his forearms, avoiding his perfect glutes. I don’t know why I had the overwhelming urge to bite down on the tight, delicious swells. I tried not to look even remotely near them, but my eyes kept ogling as if they were tethered to his sweet can. “Do you really want to hear this? I can’t imagine this is interesting conversation. My pathetic excuse for a love life isn’t exactly fascinating.”
“How did it end?” he repeated, his jaw going slack at the deep pressure.
I swallowed hard, trying to pick the right words. “He’s engaged, for one. So there’s that. We were traveling here, and one of the people in the party accused me of stealing something. I told him that of course I didn’t steal it, but he took me into the woods and told me to strip down so he could make sure I hadn’t taken anything. Didn’t trust me enough to take my word for it, and humiliated me on top of it.”
Demi buried his face in my pillow. “Oh, Rosie. No wonder you don’t want my help dressing. I’m sorry, Juliet. There’s no excuse for that. Did he…”
“No, he didn’t come near me. But he was the first guy to see me naked, and it happened like that. After how it all went down, I can’t look at him the same way. He should’ve trusted me. He was my first kiss, and he knew enough about me to know how far over the line what he made me do was. Broke my heart a little.”
“I’m sorry, sweet girl.” He reached around and gripped my hand.
I shrugged, like it was no big deal. Like it didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, choking me with sadness. I didn’t know how to make peace with it all, and wasn’t sure how much closure existed in a situation like this one. “Once I got my clothes back, I punched him for it, so I’m glad I stood up for myself. I’m not all that great with the love stuff. It’s fine. I’ll never see him again, and I guess that’s how it should be. Besides, my adventure wasn’t him. My adventure is me, and I’m still very much here.”
I worked my way up his toned arms, unsure how to make his back better without being able to massage the muscles. Instead of rubbing his back, I opted for light and gentle kisses placed on the edges of his cuts.
Demi purred and clawed at the sheets like a cat, getting revved up over something so small. It was a powerful feeling, to be able to get such a handsome guy worked up like that.
When I ran out of parts that were kosher to massage on him, I laid down on the bed at his side, closing my eyes while I listened to his even breathing. I knew I couldn’t
stay here forever with him, but that night, I was grateful for his company. Despite the dark place we were both in, we finally weren’t there alone.
11
Unwelcome Guest
My bowling pins were a welcome addition to my room, and teaching Demi was a great way to pass our time together as the days passed by. The birds acted as my spies, covertly following Morgan around the grounds to see where she stopped most often, and any other telltale signs that she might be guarding something nearby. This freed me up to stay out of Morgan’s eyesight, which served both our interests. In the morning, she would stop by to make sure Demi tightened my corset beyond human standards in order to “retrain my drab figure.” She would squeeze my face with the threat to “be beautiful,” and then left me alone for the rest of the day, locked (actually locked) in my bedroom with Demi. So far, I hadn’t seen the benefit in having a mom like Morgan.
I missed Lane terribly, and as the celebration banquet neared, the anticipation of seeing my girl soulmate again lifted my spirits. I thought about summoning Kerdik, now that my bowling game was complete, but guessed that a better time for houseguests might be after the hoopla of the Avalon-wide party. Besides, Morgan imprisoned me in my bedroom, instructing Demi that I was not to leave.
Demi and I pretty much made out like teenagers most of the time. It was safer, really, than risk pissing Morgan off yet again. Demi schooled me on the provinces, filling me in on how the different duchesses rose and fell, and who was in charge of what now. We talked about our childhoods, our dreams for the future, and all sorts of mischief and fun. He read to me, and I swooned at the kindness every time.
Rigby finally interrupted us a week and a half later in the late afternoon with a polite knock. “You’ve a visitor in the parlor, your grace.”
I pulled back, confused. “Oh, me? Seriously? Am I allowed to leave the bedroom?” Hopeful light shone in my eyes. “Is it Lane? Oh, just wait until you meet her, Rigs. She’ll love you. Well, this version of you, not the one you have to pretend to be in front of Morgan.”
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