Page 23

I’m not sure when the prospect of sleeping in a quiet bed began disturbing me. Maybe it was all those lonely nights in the hospital, so scared for the delicate life growing inside of me, but ever since I came back to the palace, it feels like something’s missing, and I’ve been unable to shake this strangehunger. Not for sex, although with the way my hormones have been raging, it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

The hunger is for the way it used to be—even briefly. The sensation of the four of us packed in tight, wrapped around one another, had been an aching comfort. It’s taken me a long time to put my finger on it, but I think it must remind me of home.The warmth of bodies, the press of shameless limbs, and heady breaths. West End has an undeniably physical nature. I never really considered it before I was thrust into East End, with its cold dinners and stiff, formal rituals.

Then there’s the baby, his size making it harder and harder to find a comfortable position. And if I do settle down, he’ll press on my bladder giving me the urge to pee every forty-five minutes. My sleep is always restless now, as if my limbs are seeking the closest warm body and only findinghis.

Not that Wicker isn’t a fantastic cuddler.

I can’t tell what rouses me tonight, but I know that when I surface from the foggy veil of sleep, it’s the breadth of him against my back. Wicker always smells clean, but there’s an edge of something spicy buried beneath it, sharp as a razor. I don’t even need to open my eyes to know it’s him.

Also, his erection is drilling into the small of my back and turns into a small, mindless, rut.

It’s not the first time. Usually, I just jostle him with a jerk of my body, and he grumbles something soft and frustrated into my neck before aggressively flopping to the other side of the bed.

Tonight, that hunger throbs between my legs.

It’s the first time I’ve felt a warm, sticky wetness accompanying the pressure.

“Wick?” I whisper, arching my back into the sleepy curve of his body. “Wicker, you awake?”

All I get in response is his gritty chuff, his arm tightening around my middle. Against my backside, his cock gives a strong twitch, the wetness surging. I groan at the realization of what’s happened, pressing back into his lazy, mindless thrust. He’s the most difficult to be around these days. Mostly, he’s absent, always busy down in the dungeon or sweeping the palace grounds. Aside from our quiet, fragile bedtime, he hardly spends any time with me at all.

And the hungerburns.

I wonder, as I roll toward him and straddle his hips, if this is how Lex feels when he’s sleeping. Does the need for touch burn like an inferno through his veins? Does he look down at me like I’m watching Wicker, hoping to see a gaze staring back? Does it twist painfully in his gut when I don’t?

But then Wicker’s blue eyes suddenly blink to life, his cock hard against my center as I rock into him. “Red?” he rasps, pushing his hair from his eyes. “Can we fuck yet?”

“No,” I say, pulling off my nightgown. Everything feels unbearably slow and far too heavy. It hurts to hold myself up, the gravity dragging me down into the expanse of his warm chest. Even the blink of his eyes as they settle on my exposed breasts seems to take a century.

“Oh,” he breathes, fingers grazing my bare sides. “Brutal, Red. Can’t fuck you yet. Lex said.”

Holding his gaze, I feel ripe and too warm, rocking down against the bulge in his boxer briefs. “This’ll do.”

He hisses at the motion, grinding his head back into the pillow. Strong hands grasp my hips, fingertips bruising as he drags me up the length of his cock. “Jizzed in my shorts already.Jesus. Fucking junior high shit. That’s how desperate I’ve become.”

“You complaining?”

The air between us is full of hot exhalations, and suddenly he’s rearing up, licking a hot path from my collarbone to my nipple. My belly protrudes between us, but he manages to avoid it carefully, like it isn’t even there. “Would you care?”

Freezing, I thread my fingers through his hair, pulling until his dazed blue eyes lock with mine. “I’ll always care, Wick.”

He stares at me like that for a long moment, his left palm cupping the weight of my breast.

And then he falls back.

“Come on, then,” he rumbles, guiding my hips into a slow, aching rhythm. “Ride me.”

It’s never difficult with him, as if our bodies have known what they wanted long before our brains ever caught up. It’s like being possessed, my hips working of their own accord in long, rolling writhes. I can see his building pleasure in the slack part of his mouth. The way the tendons in his neck strain when he rocks up into me. The pinch of his eyes as he watches the sway of my breasts, so quiet.

“No one touches me like you do, you know,” he murmurs, skating his fingertips up to my nipple. “You gonna come like this?”

God, he has no idea.

One brush of his fingertip over my nipple has me trembling, but it’s the hardness against my center that drives my movements, the fabric between us damp with arousal. Mine? His? Ours?

Wicker already came in his sleep, but he’s still hard.

Still throbbing.