Page 104 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

Hungrily savoring the way his face twisted, Lilac braced herself against the wanton pull of her muscles, straining against it. “Say please .”

“Stop if it doesn’t please you, Lilac, but I’m going to come if you don’t stop touching me that way.

” His hand shot down and gripped her wrist, stilling it when she giggled and failed to heed his warning.

“I can barely control myself, and nothing but magic will open that door. You don’t know what you’re doing. ”

Failing to stifle another sultry laugh, she allowed Garin’s command to wash over her.

Partially. She sank onto her heels and dragged the tip of her tongue against the base of his head, smiling up at him.

“Stopping would not please me.” Lilac tipped her head back and rubbed him, mixing his precum her thickened saliva, coating it over her lips.

Garin’s throat bobbed, and his hand fell away from her to clench one of the limestone bricks. “And I know exactly what I’m doing.”

A low growl escaped Garin’s lips when she nipped lightly along the bottom of his shaft and finally took him in.

“You look unexpectedly exquisite with my dick in your mouth, Your Majesty.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb before trailing his hand toward her scalp.

“Hands off .”

He reluctantly obliged, detangling his fingers from her waves with an incredulous, almost pained scowl. As terribly as she could feel he wanted her, the grip of his will seemed weaker the more she leaned into her own pulsing hunger.

Lilac’s eyes were wild with fervor as she took him in. What was that look of his? Want? Fear?

Fear sounded better.

A shocked—and pleased—whimper erupted from her throat when he began thrusting into her mouth, as if he couldn’t help himself. The first two times were gentle. Probing. Garin stopped himself, wrestling his need back under control.

How delightful it would be to tug him back out from it.

Lilac wrapped her hands around his thighs and raked her nails into him, pulling him deeper until she gagged.

Garin bucked and groaned in warning—and shot all over her tongue.

Lilac savored every last drop, never breaking eye contact. She rocked back on her heels, absorbing his stupid, dumbfounded glare.

Speechless, he held a hand out to help her up, but she rose on her own, daintily wiping her lips.

“I assume that was an adequate distraction,” she said as he refastened his belt.

It was a shame; how she would’ve loved to ride him on that bench.

“At least, it was for me. I suppose it’s good practice for whatever we need to do to tide your urges over. ”

She felt him stiffen when she slid his coat off and reached around him, draping it around his shoulders.

“Tide me over?”

“Yes. When I’m Maximilian’s.”

“You are far from a distraction. Especially from my urges.” His jaw tightened against the saccharine kiss she planted upon his cheek. “You are the sole cause of my suffering.”

“That is all I’ll be to you when I’m Maximilian’s wife, isn’t it?” She stepped back and regarded him with all the malice and curiosity of a fool taunting a starved lion with a piece of steak. “A distraction for your bloodlust. A vessel for your pleasure.”

Garin was silent, his fury palpable.

They hadn’t heard anything for a while; perhaps everyone was so hungover from the feast, they’d gone back to bed.

Swallowing against the fading satisfaction and rising bitterness, Lilac turned to try the knob again.

Shit —the door didn’t budge. Garin began to chuckle, sounding even more chilling in the dark.

Lilac whirled to see him him reaching for her, jerking her arm out of the way and swiftly replacing it with her blade. She laid it against Garin’s Adam’s Apple, tilting his chin up.

“You are deliciously fast,” he said with a deep laugh.

She pressed the blade harder against him. “You might command my will, but my touch is still mine to give. And when I do… it won’t be because you demanded it. It will be because I chose to ruin you with it.”

“Come to me.”

So much for those hawthorn berries.

Lilac’s body reacted immediately. The force of his command was so powerful it took her breath away, causing her to fall against him.

Garin caught her at the elbows, dodging the haphazard slash of her blade.

He plucked it out of her grasp and bent, gathering her skirts to place it neatly back into her garter, his fingers scrupulously lingering at her outer thigh.

“It would be a tortuous, most painful affair,” he breathed, straightening, “if you chose to ruin me upon these benches.”

“Go to hell.”

Garin’s eyes, softened by his laughter, were pools of muted starlight as he pulled her into his arms. “Your body and blood are my distraction, only as salvation might reprieve a man plagued by his own melancholy. The way it might remind him of the beauty of sunsets, and the smell of baking bread, and good things on the horizon. You are the veiled specter in the night, haunting my dreams each time I close my eyes.” He swept Lilac’s left hand into his and pressed his lips against her fingers.

“And the relief of golden sunrise. There is nothing human about what I feel for you, Eleanor, yet you offer yourself to me like a fool. As if I have not considered taking you far, far away from here. Where crooked kings cannot touch you.”

She should’ve been alarmed by how quickly her rage succumbed to desire, despite the evident warning in his words. She should detest that there’d be reasonable temptation if he ever offered such a fantasy.

But Lilac leaned into his embrace, inhaling deeply the scents of juniper and firewood.

His confession was an ax in her chest, his words the deadliest of poisons.

“They deserve a monarch who will fight,” she whispered. But her conviction was already weakened, by spell or by the heart. It was anyone’s guess.

Garin bent to her ear—her hand in his, his other palm pressed to the small of her back as if they were afforded the surreptitious privacy of the center of a bustling dancefloor. “By the time I made the decision, you wouldn’t have a choice.”

The door swung open, the top cracking off its hinge. Wide-eyed, Piper stood there with a large half-full cart at her hip, the one maids used to collect soiled laundry.

Sound flooded the tiny closet—sound they should’ve heard from inside. Worried voices and footsteps. Lilac wiped at the moisture in her eyes.

“What do you mean, no one knows where she is?” came her mother’s shrill voice in the distance. “First Henri, now her?”

“She called a meeting in her library,” replied Yanna, sounding apprehensive. “They’d been waiting for some time, so I thought I’d ask. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Not to worry,” Piper called out, jostling the cart violently toward their door. “I found her.”

Immediately understanding, Lilac pushed Garin aside and lifted Ciel’s corpse from the corner bench. She shoved it at Piper, who dumped it into the laundry cart, tugging and piling the garments over it.

“What is all that noise?” Marguerite poked her head around the corner, blinking into the dim hall. “Oh, thank heavens.” Her gaze lingered on the girls before darting into the closet. She gasped. “Are you all right, Sir Albrecht?”

Garin’s hand was pressed to his mouth, which remained shut. “I’m fine,” he said behind it, unable to dislodge the hunger in his voice.

Even her mother heard it; Marguerite’s eyes widened. Whispers erupted in the room beyond.

“He’s still feeling very under the weather,” Lilac said hastily. “He is not himself. After his bad reaction to the wine.”

“He was supposed to remain in the infirmary,” Madame Kemble shouted over the second floor bannister.

“The leeches made him squeamish. All that blood.”

At first glance, to anyone who didn’t know what he was, Garin might’ve appeared seasick, or as if he’d had one too many boysenberry tarts. But there was something else there in the shadows beneath his eyes—a lingering hunger perceptible in the clench of his jaw, the way his hands were balled fists.

Lilac found Garin’s hand, but he resisted when she made to lead him out of the closet. She looked back with a glare she hoped was reassuring, squeezed his wrist, and firmly led him out.

Marguerite retreated from the hall to make room for them, eyeing their interlocked fingers with silent incredulity.

Half the guests staying on the first floor had spilled out of the northern corridor into the foyer.

Several maids from the scullery room peeked into the hallway to their left, each holding their breath as their gazes fell first upon Lilac.

Then Garin.

Her mother and Piper trailed them into the foyer, where several of her staff waited.

Yanna and Isabel were there, Yanna’s eyes wide and apologetic.

Helena and Gertrude were on the other side of the door, nudging each other, looking panicked.

Emma was still in her nightgown, glancing distantly out the stained glass window.

Lilac led him to the center, feeling stripped bare. She would try. She had to try .

“So, what were you doing together in the closet?” Agnes stood behind them, leaning arms crossed against the center table. There were streaks down her cheeks that cut through her powder, eyes rimmed in black, as if she’d been crying.

Lilac held firm, fighting to hold the baroness’s amused gaze, feeling every other pair of eyes on her heating face.

Her kingdom deserved its own defenses—and more imminently, a queen who fought no matter the outcome.

Regardless of the ring on her hand. Such gall demanded a monarch who did not care what others thought.

Garin managed to remove his hand from his face. “Not to fret, she was showing me?—”

“I am sleeping with him, Agnes, if that is what you’re inferring.” Lilac sighed, shooting a sidelong glance at Marguerite—and Henri, wherever he was. A quick sweep around the room told her he wasn’t there. “In true Trécesson fashion.”