Page 49 of Ravished By the Revenant

“Clara. You have everything backward.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think scarcity made me love you. Woman, I had scarcity for centuries. Servant girls lived under this roof for four hundred years. Pretty ones. Willing ones. There was scarcity and availability and every arrangement loneliness could invent, and I felt nothing that survived the morning.” He leans forward. “Then you fell through my gate, insulted my décor, ate my strawberries, called me rapey to my face, renamed my cat, and lied about being able to fillet a fish. Do you truly believe I love you because you were the only woman in reach? I love you despite the fact that you are the single most exhausting creature to breach my walls since the plague.”

“That’s…” I blink furiously. “That’s the worst nice thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I am not finished.” He stands, comes around the table, and crouches beside my chair so we’re eye to eye. “If the gate had opened onto a thousand women, I would walk through them to reach you. Not because you tolerate the bones. Because you argue with me. Because you set my table and light candles and pretend they are functional. Because you looked at the ruin of me and demanded to see more. I did not choose you for lack of options, little intruder. I would choose you over every other option.”

I stare at him until he gets blurry, then blink.

“Okay,” I manage to say despite my chest being squeezed like someone parked a horse carriage on it. “Okay. Noted. Duly recorded.”

“Furthermore.” He rises and returns to his seat, picking up his fork like he hasn’t just eviscerated me. “The premise is flawed. You claim no other woman would want me. And yet you want me. Therefore, women who want me demonstrably exist, and I have a full one hundred percent success rate with the ones I have met this century. Statistically, I am irresistible.”

The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it. “That is not how statistics work. Your sample size is one!”

“My sample size is perfect.”

“You know what?” I push my chair back. “You’re right. I’m the only woman on earth deranged enough to want this.”

And I slide off my chair and under the table.

“Clara.” He sounds mildly scandalized. I crawl closer and fit myself between his knees, then run my palms up his thighs, feeling the muscle jump under the fabric. “Clara, we are at dinner⁠—”

“You’re at dinner.” I find the buttons of his pants. “I’m at dessert.”

“By the saints.” The table jolts as his knee hits the underside. Cutlery rattles.

He’s already hard when I free him, and I take a second to appreciate the view even in the near darkness under the table. The curve, the thickness, the ladder of barbells gleaming faintly blue in the light bleeding through his shirt. His whole body has gone rigid above me like he’s bracing for artillery.

“You do not have to⁠—”

“Aldric.” I press a kiss to the base of his cock, making him growl. “Stop interrupting my meal.”

“Fuck!”

I take him into my mouth, and the table jumps again.

He’s both warm and cool, silken skin and metal adornments, and I work my way down slowly, letting each barbell roll past my lips, one rung at a time, until he hits the back of my throat with plenty of him still left over. My hand wraps around the rest. Above me, his breathing has gone ragged.

“Clara… your mouth.” His hand fumbles under the table, finds my hair, but he doesn’t push. Just holds me, trembling. “We were having a civilized meal.”

I hum around him, and his hips buck. A plate skitters overhead. I do it again, louder, hollowing my cheeks on the way up, dragging my tongue along the piercings on the way down, sloppy and deliberate, all spit and no shame.

He makes a sound that’s wrecked and helpless and mine, and the crystal in his chest must be blazing, because blue light pours down through the gap between the table and his body and washes over my hands where they grip him.

“Clara. Clara. If you do not stop⁠—”

I grip the back of his thigh and pull him toward me, which is my answer, and has been my answer since the bathtub.

He comes with a roar that rattles the candelabra, flooding my mouth in thick pulses, too much as always, spilling past my lips no matter how fast I swallow. His fist tightens in my hair, his boot heels dig into the flagstones, and above me, all his dignity collapses into a string of gasped, broken syllables that might be my name and might be prayer.

I ease off him slowly, letting the last barbell slip free, and wipe my chin with the back of my hand. Then I crawl out from under the table, resurface at his elbow, and sit back down in my chair like nothing happened.

I pick up my fork.

Aldric is slumped in his seat, chest heaving, his hair a mess from his own hand, staring at me like I just handed him the keys to a kingdom. His pants are still open. He looks like a cathedral after an earthquake.