This is my last update today, but it's a long one. You guys make me so happy. I know there is a lot of angst, and there is certainly more to come, but I think the Sunshine Prince & his Cath can withstand it all... ~Spark
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I begin to undress once the doors close behind me. My heart, it aches. The steward's crude words swim in my thoughts.
I did soften beneath the prince. I would beg for his touch.
But I wouldn't soften for another man. I am no whore. My body shuts down at the thought.
And oh, I am ignorant. I know not why the prince wants to bed me when he could have every girl in the castle. I know not why he brings me back time and again, only to send me off harshly after.
"Cath?"
My prince sits on the chaise near the window, watching me with wide, shadowed eyes as I step out of my skirts. He stands, making his way to me.
I watch in a mixture of horror and awe as he wordlessly falls to his knees before me, wrapping his arms around my hips.
My shaking hands rise, making their way into his hair. "My Lord?"
His voice is muffled, mouth pressed to my navel. "I sent you away ruthlessly earlier. I did not mean it."
Swallowing back a sob, I manage, "I know."
"I was going mad tonight waiting for you."
I bite my lips, struggling to not apologize in return, and lift my chin, proudly. "Well, my Lord . . . you deserved to wait."
Slowly rubbing his scratchy cheek against my stomach, he mumbles, "I hate this. I need this, but I hate it all the same."
I don't know what to say to this, so I remain quiet, relishing the soft slide of his hair through my fingers.
"In the hall just now, what did Douglas say to you?"
Shame cools my blood. "Nothing."
He sighs, jaw clenching in the orange light of the fire as he rises before me. Tenderly, he tells me, "Go, now. Lie on my bed."
With cheeks blazing and the memory of the moment in the hall with Sir Douglas pounding in my ears, I do what he asks, walking to the bed and lying back.
I feel his attention as a rush of heat across my breasts.
"What did he say to you, Cath?" he presses.
I swallow, closing my eyes. "That I should not spoil you with sin."
His laugh is a tight exhale. "What else?"
"That your future wife will not want you to be this way. She will not let you . . ." I shake my head, not even wanting to give the idea life. "That I am a whore."
He grows very, very still. "What else?"
I don't tell him what else Douglas said. About giving me a proper rutting. About shoving himself deep into my . . . "That was all."
The prince climbs to the edge of the bed. "Did he touch you?"
"No," I lie.
He reads me like a text. "You dare lie to me?"
"Do not yell," I beg, throat closing with tears. "Do you not know what this is like for me? Have you any idea? He could have me beaten. He could ruin me."
His nostrils flare and he bends, pressing another quiet apology into the skin just beneath my breast. "This powerlessness fills me with a rage I cannot manage," he admits so quietly, it is almost as if he had not intended to say it aloud.
Minutes tick by. The fire crackles in its enormous hearth. Finally, his voice rises up from the quiet. "I need to hear your pleasure. I need to think of nothing but you while I have you."
I arch beneath him, telling him silently I need the same from him.
"Give yourself pleasure for me to watch."
I freeze. "My Lord?"
He moves above me, pulling his shirt over his head. I gape at his complete nudity, heart pounding so hard I'm shaking, body growing so warm I know I'll melt beneath him.
His chest is smooth, lined with muscle. His torso stretches, unending. At his navel, a trail of dark hair begins and travels in a soft, straight line down between his legs. He is perfect.
My nipples grow tight, skin heated. He inhales deeply - knowing - and reaches to touch between my legs, as he lets me stare.
He wants me to stare.
"Do you know how many times I took myself into my own hand after you left today?" he whispers. "I abused you, took you painfully, and was still left wild. Look at me."
He wraps his hand around himself, pulling to the end and back up to reveal a bead of slickness there. The crown is swollen and engorged.
My face heats, breath locked in my throat as I really look at him for the first time.
"I am insatiable. I want to be rough with you. I want your claw marks in my back. I want to know how to make your heat frenzy around me. If I took you tonight, I'd spread you too wide, I would try to draw blood again." He leans over me, breathing ragged, arms braced at my hips. "It is because I am obsessed. I have had a taste of you, and I can't go back."
He reaches for my hand, pulls it up over the soft hair on his navel and higher to his chest, his other hand stroking himself again, for me to watch. "Instead of apologizing for bringing you here in daylight, instead of apologizing again and again for what Douglas has done, instead of begging your mercy for it all - for all of it - I simply want to take you tonight, because I can't really have you." His eyes grow tight. "Does this make me a monster?"
I shake my head, quietly telling him, "No, my Lord."
He watches my mouth, lips parting in desire. "It does. You claim my sanity." Nodding to the exposed flesh between my legs, he whispers, "Do as I tell you. Touch yourself."
He moves down until he is there, right up close, watching as I slide my own hand between my legs. He bends close enough to breathe me in, to hear the whisper of fingers on skin that turns sucking and wet under his attention.
Close enough for me to feel his breath across my circling fingers.
"You do not push inside," he notes.
"No," I breathe.
"Mine is the only touch that has been inside you?" His voice rings victorious.
"It is only the second time I have touched here."
His eyes drift up to mine. "When was the first?"
I close my eyes, remembering.
"Cath," he coaxes gently. "Tell me."
"When you'd left, my Lord. After you'd taken me. And you left."
"You missed me?"
Again, I take long enough to answer that this time his prompt is rough, impatient: "Answer me or I shall bend you over the table, take my hand to you."
"Yes," I say, glaring at him. "You bring me into your bed, do not speak to me this way anymore!" His eyes soften in regret, and I reach down for his face between my legs, cupping it. "I missed you terribly. This time was the worst, by far, but I missed you each time you left. You were my best friend, from age seven, until we were teens. And then I lost you."
"France?" he asks quietly.
"Yes."
"And Spain? It was so long ago. We were so fleeting. I didn't think you remembered."
With a choked sob, I tell him, "Six years of friendship is not fleeting."
He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead to my hand so that my fingers press more firmly between my legs.
"I couldn't look at you. I wanted to, but I could not."
I hold my breath, trying to decipher his meaning. "What?"
"That first time," he whispers. "The night you bled from me. And the second. And third."
Oh.
"My father insisted I lie with a woman. To be prepared for the sensation, to be learned so that the wedding night could . . ." He trails off and I shutter my thoughts against the image of it. "Douglas brought me a girl from the kitchen. My body would not rise for her. I didn't even try."
My heart shatters.
"Father heard of it," he says. "Heard that I'd sent her away. Douglas . . ." he trails off again, blinking away. "He could have lied, but wouldn't. Father accused me of being wicked, of being unfit for the crown. He had Douglas send girls from the house, from the fields. Some older, some far too young. He sent eight, nine of them. One at a time or more. I don't remember now. He was obsessed."
It is horrible, the idea of him being forced into this, too. Something breaks irrevocably inside me and won't be put back together.
"I was your first?" I ask.
"My only." He looks up, climbs up my body. "And I took you against your will."
"Only because you didn't bother to ask."
"Did it hurt?"
"Yes."
"Each time?"
"It hurt in different ways after that first night. It does not hurt anymore, unless you are cruel afterward."
He winces, understanding. "Forgive me. Forgive me, my Cath."
I feel something inside me twist. "I can't forgive, but neither can I be angry. These things battle inside me now, hot and shameful. You had to know of my feelings for you; you only had to ask me here. Why did you not?"
"I wouldn't have been able to bear it if you'd refused." He reaches forward, moving a strand of hair off my neck. "I've wanted you my whole life. I've never wanted another."
I swallow, feeling the surface of my eyes burn.
He glances at my mouth. "Cath, say my name."
I squeeze my eyes closed. Why is it so hard to break this one single boundary?
I know why. Because I cannot love the prince, and speaking his name aloud will show him that it is already too late.
"Cath."
I open my mouth and close it. Swallowing. "My Lord . . ."
"Cath. Say it. Please."
I look up at his face. My mind screams the two, perfect syllables.
He presses his mouth to my neck. "Please, my darling. I need to hear you say my name."
Melting, I whisper, "Harry."
His breath catches, eyes falling closed. "Again."
"Harry." It feels good, like a favorite song, released into the air. "My Harry."
Reaching down, he urges my hand to move again, shifting down my body so he is right there, right between my legs with his face and his mouth and his eyes trained only inches on this soft, forbidden place.
"Do you like to lie with me?" I feel his breath on my skin, gasp at the heat of it.
Choking on pleasure, I can only swallow.
"Answer me or I'll pull your hand away at once. Do you like to be filled by me? Do you like the feel of me between your thighs, claiming?" He rocks against the mattress between my legs.
"Yes, my Lord."
"Yes, who?"
My pleasure teases at the edges. Threatening.
"Yes, Harry."
He lets out a quiet growl. "You crave being near me."
I sob. "I do. I hate that you're not mine. I want to hurt you just the same."
"I've broken you, too."
He bends, and to my shock presses his face to my belly, kissing madly along to my hip, down to my thigh.
With a sharp cry, I climax under my own hand with his open mouth pressed to the back of my jerking wrist.
My strokes slow, breaths steady.
He lifts my hand, looking up at my face as he pulls my index finger into his mouth.
Wicked, my brain screams.
My body arches in desire.
His tongue wraps around the middle finger, sucking hard.
"Someday you'll take me in your mouth," he tells me, eyes dark. "Your plump lips will kiss and suck my pleasure out of me."
Thrill consumes me. Dark, sinful thrill. "I-"
"I'll feast between your legs until you've nothing left to give me."
My chest heaves up and down, eyes stuck to his.
"The sounds of our pleasure will be embedded in the stone of these walls. You'll lie with me, in my arms, in this bed, and we will dream the whole night through."
It is my most fervent dream. "Harry."
I blink, not sure if I believe what I'm seeing. A tear slides down his cheek.
"They'll notice your absence, Cath. You should leave now," he whispers, turning away.