“Mierde. Who has suddenly gotten herself a saucy little mouth? Is discipline in order for you this afternoon, little magie?”
And oh my word, another few of these inner thigh smacks would be perfectly nice too.
“Will discipline get your penis inside my pussy faster, Monsieur Bâtard?”
Another pair of perfect spanks. Harder and louder than before.
And I think I’m in heaven.
While whips and chains have never been my full saucer of milk, I’ve indulged some kinky fantasies by way of a few favorite porn sites. But never have I been brave enough to actually ask for stuff from a lover. Never has one been able to see right through me and deliver it. Not until now. The only now I want to think or care about. The only man I want to spend it with.
“You shall get fucked when I say it is time,” he grits out. “But for now, my sweet Magiq—”
He freezes before my eyes. Remorse drenches his face and clouds his gaze. He gulps hard, clearly trying to summon the proper regrets in the proper ways.
I abhor every second of it. Further, as I communicate with a frantic shake of my head, I don’t agree with it. Not at all.
“No. Look at me. Just no, Bastien. Stop thinking it. Stop feeling it. It wasn’t on purpose. I understand. I look like her…”
He grunts viciously. “That is no goddamned excuse.”
“It is every excuse. You love her—”
“Loved her.”
“And you can’t be expected to just turn your feelings off!”
No matter how completely you’ve helped switch mine back on. So many of them. In so many wonderful ways…
But he doesn’t get to hear all that. He can’t ever know it. If I go there, it’ll also be to express the preciousness of the gift he’s given me. The gift of me. Yet I won’t stop there. I’ll have to also let him know how my soul feels changed. How indelibly he’s stamped me. Undoubtedly, that insignia is shaped like a fleur-de-lys. The symbol of his land…of him. An emblem of unity, strength, power, and light, patterned on one of the world’s most beautiful flowers. Fleur de lys…
De Lys…
De Lys…
The echo continues across my mind, layered like church bells across the city on New Year’s Eve. Except in my mind, they aren’t American bells at all. They’re somewhere else…
Just like I’m suddenly somewhere else.
But am I? Because Bastien is still here with me…
Except that here isn’t exactly here.
And I’m not exactly me anymore. Not completely. But somehow, that’s all right.
It’s…better than all right. It’s strange but astounding. Unreal but extraordinary.
De Lys. Magique De Lys.
I feel her.
Everything she knows right now, staring up at this incredible man. How he grins when she sings because she’s crappy at it. How he tells her every story from his patrols, and she knows all the places in which he embellishes for drama, but she lets him. How he has taught her to read stories for herself, written in words across pages, and opened up new worlds for her because of it.
I feel her.
And I want so badly to tell him that but don’t dare. There are other things she needs to tell him. Things that can’t be put off, especially if he decides I’m really crazy this time and bolts out again.
Dear God, no.
This time, I can’t guarantee finding him before Logan or his friends do. And while Bastien is still more on the right side of the law, Agents Lautrec and Degas definitely aren’t. He needs to be right here with me, not Logan’s bargaining chip in some holding cell.
I feel her.
And God help me, I yearn to feel so much more.
“Feel.” That part, I can let out. Not too far astray from where our subject is already. “Please, Bastien. Stop fighting it. Can you try…for me? For her?”
No more of his skewed glower. He rivets the look straight into me now. “You want me to think about another woman? Here? Now?”
“What if I do?” It’s shockingly effortless to be serious about it. But still scary. Oh, still plenty of that. “You were all-in on obsessing over her a couple of nights ago.”
“That was different! This is—”
“Still no different, if you time-jump your mind back. If we both do.”
His nostrils flare. I glimpse the grit of his teeth, with those front four a little more prominent than the others, emphasizing his bossy side by delicious degrees. “Why are you doing this? She is gone, and I am struggling to accept—”
“But what if you don’t have to?”
What if we get you back to the wardrobe, and you can fix it all? What if you can save her?
More astral concepts that I keep inside. I’ve already hit the poor man with all he can handle for now. All that he still hasn’t embraced—and that I might have to convince him of with the dirtiest tactics. With my naughtiest side.
“Raegan.”
“No.” I stroke a hand down the center of his chest. When getting to the ridged path below that, I keep going. “My name is Magique now. Come on. Try it. I think you’ll like it.”
With a terse sweep, he halts my caress. “What are you about? And why? Is this some strange new sorcery?”
“No.” I purse my lips. “Okay, maybe. I don’t know myself. But you believed Kavia’s spell enough to go for all of it.”
“Because there was an enraged mob after my balls!” he protests. “And a lot of everything else.”
“Well, I don’t blame them. I like being after your balls too.” I take advantage of the moments in which his surprise loosens his grip, and I can slip free to continue my downward stroke. “And now, I want to know what it’s like to have them craving me. To know what it’s like to be the woman you desire the most in the world.”
The lucky woman who’s captured your whole heart.
And there’s the part I should have left out of my heart. Because its absence from the air doesn’t stop his dukeness of discernment from spotting it on every inch of my face.
At once, there’s a defined change across his. Not one I’m fond of. The man can keep his tender pity, damn it. I don’t want it. I’ve actually told him what I do want, so why isn’t he listening?
“One day, one unbelievably blessed man is going to claim yours too. And he shall know the true gift he has in his possession. And he will cherish that prize with every ounce of his heart, soul, and body.”
Okay, so he did pocket the pity—only to replace it with everything worse. Words like that.
“So let’s pretend, just for a few minutes, that you’re that blessed guy.” My offer is joined by my smile when he doesn’t try to stop my caress anymore. “You get to role play him, and then I get to be Magique.”
But he hitches again. Damnably hesitant again. Even an extra undulation of my pelvis doesn’t affect him. “I am not one for playing, little one.”
His expression is true to his tone. Not a single bantering quirk around his lips. Not a wink from his unblinking eyes. The small glitterings in his irises have been buffed and blended to a take-no-shit sheen. A glaze that now seems to bleed into the air around us, tinting everything in an old movie sepia.