AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling utterly pathetic, trying her best to control her stumbling, wine-twisted steps. “What about your friends?”
Fabulosa flicked a hand, causing the wings on her back to twitch. “Oh, don’t worry about them. They have been writing for months about wanting to see the real Ardora. I am quite sure it will find them.”
“Thank you,” she said as they walked up a grand staircase. “Your... your costume looks very nice.”
“How kind. Yes, one does have to splash out for these occasions.” With another swish, Fabulosa opened the door to what must surely have been her bedroom. It was a palace of pink silks and gold, plush cushions and curios from places she couldn’t name. “Yours is also a good first attempt at an eidolon. A little overcovered for the occasion. But no doubt once you are taken into the royal fold, these things will start to come a bit more naturally!”
Teigra sat in stony silence on the edge of the bed.
“Ah,” said the high envoy. “And where is your prince, little tiger? On a night such as this, you should be embracing the debauchery together.”
“We’re through,” Teigra spat.
Fabulosa sat beside her. “What a great shame. The prince is beautiful. Many women would want him.”
“Well, they can have him! And his beauty as well. He’s nothing but a heartless thug.”
“Ah, a lady of refinement? Not interested in looks alone, but character? So, you and Mr. Accola are free to continue your little dalliance, then? Don’t look surprised, Teigra. Any fool could spot the connection. He is certainly a creature of superior character to the prince?”
“You’ve... been watching me?”
“Often, my dear,” she said with a grin that made Teigra’s pulse quicken. “But let us not change the subject. Mr. Accola? He has been good to you?”
She thought of the boy who had shown her nothing but kindness since she had first been appointed. The man she’d just rejected in front of the whole crowd.
“Yes,” Teigra said in a heavy voice. “Much kinder than I deserve.”
“And that is what nice girls yearn for, is it not? A loving husband? A companion without serious vice? A good father? And a rather strong minotaur to make sure that fatherhood takes place.”
“I... I already said he was kind!”
Fabulosa closed the distance between them—not put off by Teigra’s defensive tone but seeming to relish it. “I didn’t ask whether he was kind, Teigra. I asked whether you yearned for him.”
She turned away. “What difference does it make?”
Fabulosa pressed a finger against Teigra’s chin, drawing her gaze back. “What we tolerate and what we yearn for makes all the difference in the world.”
Fabulosa leaned in, her decadent perfume enticing with sweet apple and lily. With a soft but knowing touch, she took Teigra’s unresisting hands and ran them up her torso, across the soft, bare skin of the costume cutouts, all the way up to the curves below her full, womanly breasts.
A shudder went through Teigra, accompanied by a pain she couldn’t explain that the woman had stopped at the fabric’s edge, rather than continuing to the secret skin beneath.
“What is it that you yearn for, Teigra?”
“I... I want to reconcile with Calix,” she stammered, her stomach heavy and twisted. “So I can save my... so I can help my...”
With a slow movement, Fabulosa guided Teigra’s hands under the fabric, across her naked breasts.
Teigra shook from deep within—at once wanting to pull her hands away, and yet never wanting them to leave.
The woman’s skin was warm and yielding.
Teigra’s shaking fingertips traced the edges of Fabulosa’s nipples, hard and immediate, drawing a high groan from the powerful woman that warmed her very being, making her own nipples stand desperate.
Teigra felt she was going mad! It was wrong. It was bestial. It was sinful. And it wasn’t what she wanted. It wasn’t what she desired! It wasn’t what she yearned for!
Then why does her skin feel so wonderful against my touch?
Then why aren’t I stopping?
