Page 36 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Nevermore truly adrift,

in fog and mist.

I opened my eyes and stared into his. The experience was like staring into the haze, for I could glean naught from them.

“Yes, I have looked at you for a long while,” he answered the question I had not yet asked. He added, “What monster could not?”

The heat in his gaze stirred my body, and I could not control the hitch in my calm inhales while still half in slumber.

The wonder drained from his face and hardened, and I felt the same seriousness fill me.

That was the only warning either of us received.

We met somehow. The space between us disappeared in the clash of our hands and mouths and bodies. I pulled him down. He rolled me under.

He had slept in a tunic and pants. The tunic could stay for now. I ripped at the other, and vaguely noted the ripping of my nightgown too.

I gripped his length, and guided him to my entrance. See pulled my body to his, and he was in.

Filling me again at last. I arched with the depth of my moan—he looked incapable of making a sound. The tension of our frenzy locked him so.

See drew out and eased back in, and I relished the press of our bodies. But more . This reunion demanded everything of me and him.

I screamed as See slammed in, sensing all that I would demand. Yes!

Such fullness. Such?—

“My queen, what is wrong?” Valetise ran through the wardrobe.

I wrenched my head aside to look at her.

Valetise blinked. And colored. “M-my queen, Prince Consort. Please forgive me!”

I extracted myself from under See, nearly succumbing to tears as the fullness inside me ended abruptly. My queendom shook and squeezed, and though my prince had not caused either, his menace was terrible.

“Get out,” he snapped.

Valetise stumbled back through her wardrobe, and I perched on the edge of the bed after.

I pursed my lips. “She was not to know.”

The shakings and squeezings of my queendom eased, and the air slowly relaxed as See’s rage did the same.

I threw off the ripped remains of my nightgown and knelt on the bed, facing him. “Where were we?”

See blurred across the bed, impossibly quick as only a nightmare could be. His lips closed around my breasts, and his low groans rumbled through my nipples and to my core.

He pressed his forehead to my chest. “I want to feel all of you, my darkness. So much that I am frantic with where to begin.”

I placed a finger under his chin. When he lifted from my chest, I drew that finger up to my neck and over my jaw to the corner of my lips. I trailed my finger back down between my breasts, over the flat of my stomach, then between my legs.

See’s inhales were rapid and pained—guttural—as he scooped enormous hands under my ass to lift me against his face.

I choked on a shriek as his mouth, so large, covered me entirely.

He swept his tongue back and forth, across my entrance and to my ass, only to sweep back.

My legs trembled at the unyielding pressure that was nearly painful and not nearly enough.

Absolute glorious agony.

I gripped his inky hair and rolled my hips against his face. “More, my prince.”

He paused for the tiniest second as his fury filled the room. His fury of me. His fury to possess me always in whatever way I would allow.

See was my prince. And he liked me saying so.

His snarls were muffled against my flesh, and I was not immediately aware of the fresh rattle of my queendom.

I was not causing it.

See continued to groan between my legs, but I craned my head to listen.

Ah.

Duke Raise was awake. I moaned at the timing, then moaned again because every lustful fantasy I had ever had about See was demanding to be released all at once.

I ground a few more times on See’s face, then said on the air, “ Champions, detain him. I will be there presently. ”

I tipped back See’s face, still held aloft by him. His gaze was wild and furious.

“No,” he said hoarsely .

I smirked. “There are queenly matters to attend. I must dress.”

“I can fuck you while you dress.”

“I will be sitting.”

See set me down and jerked the vanity chair to him with his power. He punched through the bottom and held up the remaining frame. “I’ll feast on you from below.”

I cupped his face. “Will you feast on me while Valetise readies me, and while Princess Bring attends to her lady’s maid duties?”

“ Yes ,” he hissed.

I laughed, then blinked to snatch up my dressing gown. I whipped a tendril of power to fix the chair, then sat in the seat before the mirror. “Valetise. You may enter.”

She did so, and quickly turned from the sight of See kneeling naked in the middle of my bed. I did not, however. I drank in the sight of his erect and glistening cock, there and ready and so desperate for me.

Both of us were so desperate in lust. But I was not mindless. Never mindless while monsters lived.

See’s face was stony with fury and unsatisfied desire. He pressed his thin lips together and climbed off the bed, unbothered by his nudity, clearly, for he did not stop to collect his clothing.

The door slammed a moment later.

My smirk widened.

“My queen, I am very sorry for intruding,” hushed Valetise as she brushed my hair.

“You do not need to be. You did not know. See has returned to my bed, so I shall summon you each dusk.”

“Will this be your shared quarters from now on?” she asked.

Shared quarters? “These will only ever be my quarters, dear Valetise, but See will slumber beside me between times. ”

Valetise twisted my hair into a coil. “My queen? Between what times?”

Times of betrayal. Though my answer could not be understood by simple monsters. Perhaps not even by champions.

Princess Bring blobbed in. “A wonderful dusk to you, my queen!”

I dipped my head. “Good dusk to you.”

“In recent news of queendom, Duke Raise despairs violently upon waking to find his duchess lost and gone, perhaps forever.” The young princess leaked some teary globs at that, then damply drew herself together.

“Marchioness Take and Princess Change contain him for now, but they beg your prompt assistance. They are needed at the picket to throw back the clamor of humans climbing your walls.”

Valetise stopped brushing as I glanced at the princess. “How many?”

“The entirety of Vitale’s population, Your Majesty.

Those who are within your picket clamor at your wall of bars to get into your queendom.

I am awed at their persistence considering their extreme weakness and single dimension.

Those who do not dwell within your picket, of course try to climb the picket, with the consequence of great impaling injury. ”

I stood to allow Valetise to wrap and fasten a simple, silk gown of white around me. The sleeves were full and flowing. The bottom of the gown was overlong and pooled on the floor.

I murmured, “Humans clamor, and in this time where I most need Duchess Raise, I have lost her.”

Princess Bring was wet in her reassurances. “You did not lose her, my queen. She fell into the black sea.”

Valetise fastened an enormous, gilded chest piece into place around my neck and let it hang from collarbone to bottom rib. A statement indeed.

I floated from the room, and the princess hastened beside me. I said to her, “I suppose that I cannot rely on Duke Raise’s reason while he is in violent despair. Do the humans say anything?”

“They simply clamor for survival.”

For survival… but why now?

I burst from my quarters and lurked at the balustrade to peer upon their clamor. The humans could not see me, of course. Their minds would not allow it. But they could hear me.

I whispered to them, “Why do humans clamor?”

Screams. Cries. Silence. Whispers. Shrieks.

“ Mistress Stitch,” they chanted.

Their clamoring intensified at my presence. How unexpected. Were they afraid?

Down in the courtyard, Picket rushed to and fro, shoving humans off the parapet with the help of my pawns.

“Picket, what do you sense?” I called.

He panted. “My queen, I sense that they are testing your fortifications.”

Testing my strength.

Mindlessly so. Driven by fate, not fear.

I tuned out their clamor and the rush of monsters. I tuned out my body senses, and paused to smile at the woman and child in me, who held hands. I settled into my mind and power and waited.

A wisp arose without difficulty, and I inhaled the connection. Ah

But ah.

I tuned back in. “Do what you can, good monsters, but I expect they shall overrun the queendom.”

Pawns gaped at me, even Huckery.

“My queen, you—” Picket blinked several times in a flurry.

I nodded. “I shall assist in the matter while I can.”

Gently, like a mother cat herding her kittens from danger, I batted at the humans atop the parapet. I curled my power around them to guide them down, then started to push my power out. Slowly. I should not like them to trample one another, but a playpen for these humans would buy us time.

I erected a barrier over my queendom after, and when humans started to climb one another to get over that, I sighed and created a roof over Vitale that would not allow them to find extinction that way either.

Their persistence was admirable. And concerning. I had to wonder what species infected everything around them, and then worked so hard to render themselves extinct. Monsters would be hard pressed to keep them alive in a saved world.

“That will do for now. Pawns, Sir Picket, kindly monitor the clamor of humans.”

Sixteen bows, in various forms.

Princess Bring blobbed behind me as I descended to the level below. Duke Raise’s bellows and screams were more evident now the clamor of humans was less.

“But what do you mean that humans will overrun the queendom?” Princess Bring exclaimed.

I did not answer as I pushed power ahead to open the duke’s door.

Duke Raise was inside. His tie was on, though loosened, and his shirt was gone. His trousers remained.

Empty bottles were strewn through the chamber, and the duke gripped a partially filled one in his bejeweled hand.