Page 24 of Ravished By the Revenant

“Aldric—” She turns her face into the pillow, brow furrowed, mouth open. “Please.”

My fist tightens. I stroke myself slowly, matching the rhythm of her hips, because if I let myself go faster, this ends in seconds. I will not survive that humiliation twice in one lifetime, endless as it may be. Slow. Root to crown, the ladder of piercings on the underside of my dick massaging my palm. My thumb drags over the head, and I have to clench my teeth, else I’d moan.

What does dream-Aldric do to you, little intruder? Does he pin your wrists above your head? Does he kneel between your thighs and feast until you weep? Tell me what he does. I will study his methods like scripture.

Her hand moves.

It slides down her belly as she kicks the blanket lower and settles between her legs. Through the thin cloth of her underwear, she pets herself with soft, tight circles.

I nearly erupt.

The sight of it—Clara touching herself to a dream of me, of this ruin, this scarred and hollow-eyed thing—hits me like a war hammer to the gut. My hips jerk. Heat gathers at the base of my spine, and I clamp my free hand around my balls and squeeze until the tide recedes, breathing through my teeth like a man hauling himself back from a cliff’s edge.

Not yet. Not before her.

The room fills with our breathing. Hers, soft and hitching, tangled with small broken moans. Mine, harsh and ragged, greedy for anything that carries her scent. Elderberry. Basil. Warm woman and firelight. The fire pops. Her fingers circle. My fist works my cock in long strokes slicked by my own arousal, and I watch her like I once watched besieged cities—patient, ravenous, certain.

“There,” she breathes, to no one. To me. “Right—there⁠—”

Her rhythm quickens. So does mine. Her heels dig into the blankets, thighs tensing, hips grinding up against her own hand, and her head begins to toss, silver hair whipping across the pillow. I lean forward in the chair, elbow braced on my knee, jerking my cock hard and fast now, chasing her, pacing her, my whole body strung tight as a drawn bow.

Come for me, Clara. Come for the monster in your dream. He is right here. He is watching. He is yours, God help you.

Her body seizes.

Her back arches off the blankets, head kicking back, her throat exposed. I stop fighting. The climax shoots up my shaft, and I come over my fist in hard pulses, softly growling through clenched teeth.

She sighs. Her hand goes slack between her thighs, her body melting back into the nest of blankets, and her face… it looks so peaceful now.

I sit there, chest heaving, my spend cooling on my fingers, and I don’t clean myself. I don’t leave. I watch her sleep. The rise and fall of her breathing. Her face burrowing deeper into my pillow. Hours pass.

This is not how you woo a woman, some long-dead advisor mutters in my skull. Sitting in the dark like a gargoyle, soiled and staring.

Perhaps not. But for the first time in living memory, I am wanted. Even if only in her sleep.

Gray light seeps through the window, and somewhere below, the rooster gathers his miserable little breath, ready to announce the dawn.

With a deep sigh, I rise, fasten my pants, and slip out the door before he sounds, leaving behind the only thing I have ever truly wished to conquer.

16

CLARA

The door clicks shut, and I count to ten before I open my eyes.

Then I count to twenty, because the seven-hundred-year-old warlord is known to lurk, and I refuse to get caught mid-smirk.

The room is empty. Gray dawn light pours in from the windows, the fire is dying, and the chair by the hearth is definitely angled differently than it was last night.

“Okay,” I whisper to the ceiling. “So that happened.”

When you’re sleeping in a cursed castle with a hot undead landlord who announced his intention to make you beg, you don’t really sleep. To be honest, I’ve been taking two-hour catnaps since I got here, jolting awake at every creak and gust. So when the door whispered open in the middle of the night, I woke up like a ninja. My eyes shut. My breathing slow. Though I’m surprised he didn’t hear my heart racing.

I’d been dreaming about him, and in my dream, Aldric had me against the bookshelves. Dream-me was not filing complaints with HR about it. So I was already halfway to combustion when the real Aldric came in, and I braced for him to do something that would make me beg, something I couldn’t resist, just like the night before.

Instead, he sat down. There was the unmistakable rustling of clothes. Then his breathing changed. It became rough, low, with a growl underneath it like distant thunder. And then the sound of slow, slick⁠—

Fuck.