“Yes, master,” she murmurs. I pull the covers back for her to crawl in, and she pulls me down by the shirt, kissing me. “Charlie?”
“Yes, little mortal?”
“If you’re mad at me, just punish me, okay?”
I draw my brows together. “I’m not mad at you.”
“I mean next time. Don’t walk out. I don’t like to be abandoned. I’d rather you stayed and yelled or...you know,” she says, fluttering her lashes.
“Tied you up and flogged your beautiful arse?”
She giggles and waggles said arse for me. I give her twin moons a few sharp slaps, then lean over and kiss each cheek.
“Sweet little mortal,” I murmur, my chest feeling crowded. I pull her jeans and panties off, then tug her t-shirt over her head and unlace the corset she’s still wearing from what seems like ages ago. “You’re on clothing restriction again. No clothing while in this house until further notice. Understand?”
She groans, but I can tell she loves it. “Even while you’re asleep?”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Even while I’m asleep. Disobedience will be severely punished.”
“But isn’t that like, punishing you, too? I mean since you can’t…”
I touch her lips with the pad of my index finger. “An exquisite torture.” I leave her and walk to the bathroom to wash the blood off. I turn on the water and strip off my bloodied clothes. Stepping in, I close my eyes, and let the water splash over me.
I hear the door open and figure she wants to brush her teeth before bed, but the shower curtain opens, and she steps in.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she says softly.
My unmoving heart twists, and I open my arms. “Come here, little fairy.”
Chapter 12
Anka
He left her.
A panic like none she’d ever experienced filled her chest, threatening to drown her with its very nature.
No. Not Charles. Charles would never leave her. He loved her. He alone knew and loved the real Anka, flaws and all. He accepted her pride, ambition, moments of insecurity. He’d been her rock.
But Anais had just reported he’d taken Madame de Olivier as his consort, deliberately aligning with her greatest rival.
With a sweep of her arm, she cleared everything from her dressing table, bottles of eau de cologne and her articles of toilet flying off in all directions. How could this be? She would kill him. A stake through the heart. No, worse, she would torture him. Confine him with some form of silver to hold him—chains or a cage and keep him in her bedroom, forced to watch her every trique.
But that thought sickened her. She had cuckolded him, after all.
Damn him—why did he have to materialize in her room when she had a young man in her bed? An Adonis-beautiful, wealthy young man, no less, who paid her to teach him how to pleasure a woman. She’d expected Charles’ fury. Perhaps part of her had even craved it as proof of his love for her. She had thought she might have to protect the boy from murder, imagined a delicious dramatic scene in which she would use her feminine wiles to distract him. Perhaps she hoped he’d beat her mercilessly with the riding crop.
But leave her? Non et non!
Bitter tears burned her eyes. She hated him for this. How would she go on without him? She had no one in the world who cared for her now. No one at all.
She hurled a silver pitcher at her looking glass, shattering it.
Damn him.
She would show him. She would best Madame de Olivier and her traitorous vampire.
Summoning the full force of her anger and pain, she collected it in her gut, drew it up her center column and down her arms to her hands. Picturing Charles naked with the Olivier bitch, she hurled her curse, striking his cock with a magic more potent than she’d ever wielded, punishing him for all of eternity for scorning her.
She wrapped her robe around her with a snap.
“Adieu, Charles. You will never take pleasure with another woman, so long as you live.”
Aurelia
I sit up in bed, trembling.
Anka. And the curse.
Why was I dreaming as if I were Anka? To help heal Charlie?
I pull the blankets up around me as if they could stave off the chill within. Even as I think it, I know it’s not true. That feeling. That panic Anka experienced over being left by him was way too familiar. It perfectly mirrored my own the night before. I thought my anxiety about his leaving seemed overblown, and now I understand. Something deep inside me knows the truth. Fork. I’ve always known it. I fell in love too quickly. Had trusted too wholly. Had ached more than the situation warranted.
Charlie didn’t find me by accident. I am Anka. Or I was in a past life.
I know it on a cellular level.
The thought terrifies me. How could I have done something so terrible to him? And what would happen when he finds out? He’s just beginning to trust me, to open up and share his vulnerabilities. How could he ever forgive me for what Anka did to him?