Grayling: Nocturnal Creatures Book 3 Read online

  “If you did not invest your heart, Callina, I do not think your heart will break.” Asha angled her head to peer into Callina’s eyes when she turned them from Asha. “Besides, once the king turns me away from the castle, I will have the world, as you say. And you will be out in it. Would it be such a wonder if our paths crossed? Perhaps when I am as much a monster as you, I will be able to run the same paths. Or fly, as the king does.”

  “The king will change you. There is no telling how in more than just your body, my queen.”

  “Just because I will crave blood instead of the flesh you crave?” Asha brought Callina’s chin back around to her. “I think I will not change much.”

  She raised herself on her toes to reach Callina with her lips, kissing her with quiet intensity until Callina’s body lost the tension beneath her deceptive softness.

  Callina wasted no time wrapping her arms around Asha and using the wall not as a way to keep Asha there but against which to brace themselves.

  Asha bit Callina’s lip against a soft cry when she hooked her hands under Asha’s thighs and lifted her with a wolf warrior’s strength. Asha tucked her knees against Callina’s hips, adjusting their heights until she was just a touch higher and with new leverage to control the kiss. Callina nearly purred when Asha clenched a fist in her wild, braided, knotted mane—controlling her, claiming her.

  “What am I to do with you, Callina?”

  The captain’s voice was that of alpha, so Callina reacted more quickly than Asha, whereas Asha had her reasons not to let it snap her to attention. The king could promise what he would, but the captain had made his position clear. Whether he wanted her or not, he had made his decision, and she was bound to respect his will, though he had yet to respect hers.

  The captain stood with his large arms crossed and legs parted in a stance Asha was well familiar with—one that bespoke of authority and would have raised her hackles had she been a wolf herself.

  “If I cannot trust you to do such a simple thing as fetch a monarch without giving in to distraction, perhaps another woman would be better suited to lead the female pack.”

  “She obeyed, sir, but as soon as she stood before me, her queen was where her loyalty lay.” Asha gave him little more than a moment’s glance. His ferocity in the torchlight pleased her, but he would not intimidate. “We needed to speak.”

  “I did not witness speech, Your Majesty.”

  “Then you came here too late. Our conversation was substantive.”

  “The king asks for you.”

  “He would wait for this. I promise you.” Asha tightened her grip in Callina’s hair to signal Callina to stay—a request rather than a demand, an urging to trust her. “Do you not have better things to do than ‘fetch a monarch,’ captain? If you wish to play delivery boy, please tell the king that I will be with him presently once I have handled a matter I am obligated to settle—as a woman, not a queen. He will understand.”

  More than understand, he would welcome it, she knew, with his insistence that she learn to make herself vulnerable. What vulnerability came down to was weakness, and though she had always been weak, she had never made herself weak with good intention, and it did not come naturally.

  Asha would never allow herself complete nakedness, but she recognized with a pang what Callina revealed in hers. Such a strong woman, to make herself weak before a cold one. Whether what Callina felt was love or mere affection mattered little. It pained her either way.

  “I was told you needed fetching,” the captain said.

  It was not just her imagination. His blue eye glowed in the dark, that same icy burn once more that seemed equal parts anger and something she still could not define.

  “Go.” Asha refused to snap at him for obeying his king, but command colored her tone nonetheless.

  The captain strode away, the length of his stride short of stalking.

  “There is no need to antagonize him, pet,” Callina whispered in her ear.

  “He is not my alpha.” She used her grip on Callina’s hair to hold it away from her neck so that she could run her tongue up its length to Callina’s ear. Between attention to the lobe and shell, she said, “It does him good to be defied, if he so insists upon defying me without consequence.”

  “He is quite out of patience whenever you do. You never see him when he leaves your sight. If he were not still well capable of leading while in his moods, his life might be more threatened by challenges to his position.” Callina struggled to speak through her own waves of arousal—Asha measured them with the canting of Callina’s hips that shifted Asha a little higher on the wall.

  “I wreak havoc wherever I kneel,” Asha mused, pausing in her sensual apology to breathe in Callina’s scent caught in her hair. “It is my curse.”

  “It is not such a terrible curse. It would be a greater curse to not be noticed.” Callina pulled back with reluctance, and Asha’s legs slid down her trousers. Callina squeezed the backs of her thighs, pressing in claws through Asha’s gown, before releasing her to the floor. “Far easier for you to disappear than to be gathered up from the stone before you can slip through the cracks.”

  Asha ran her thumb over Callina’s lower lip. “A curse to those who notice me, then. I am an ungenerous person, Callina, with little to offer. Can you forgive my caution?”

  Callina moved aside Asha’s simple braid and granted a kiss to the nape of her neck. “You give more than enough. You are simply unaccustomed to it. Lead on, my queen. I must complete my task.”

  “The audience chamber?”

  “It was never urgent, or I would not have stopped.”

  “With the northern mystery solved, what could possibly be urgent again?” Asha said.

  “There are other challenges to the king’s supremacy, but none for you to fear. They require wolves rather than queen. All he needs to do is put a knife in a map for us to flood the adversary with blood.”

  “I thought you sought not to tempt me further.”

  Callina glanced at her. Asha still jested too rarely for those around her to recognize it. If anything, the uncertainty amused her.

  “The king would not brush you aside or cast you out of my bed simply because he has returned, Callina,” Asha said before they reached the audience chamber. “He is grateful for what you and Lysan give. He would grant any affection from me that you desire if I desire it in return. And I do.”

  She traced the line of Callina’s collarbone, then drifted her fingertips down to an exposed breast. Callina’s nipple hardened as though in imploration to urge her closer, and Callina’s breathing shallowed.

  “In this, I do not regret the weeks my husband was away. I would never have known the things only you and Lysan could have shown me. If he had stayed, I would have never looked beyond him. I would not be the woman he returned to, the woman he prizes. The king understands this; I understand this. I have not forgotten you.”

  “If you had, I would have ensured you remembered when you sneaked into the den for the next full moon. We have a week before the captain straps the chastity belts onto his pack once more. There are other games we can play then, to your advantage.” Callina came up from behind and crossed her arms over Asha’s breasts, breathing in the bite the king had left. The edges of the scabs had already turned pearly pink. Unlike many of her others, they would scar white—there was no Gray dust or soot to settle into the wounds. “It smells different, where the king bit you. As though he leaves a piece of himself behind. As though he already gave you his blood.”

  “I will refrain from accepting that honor until the next winter, despite its temptation.” Asha hummed as Callina tasted the healing. “To succumb to it would be to end my time here almost before it has begun, and I have no intention of leaving early.”

  “Good. I am partial to your screams. I would hear them again.” She relinquished Asha as reluctantly as before.

  Asha adjusted her gown, smoothing away the wrinkles and folds from the attention Callina had give
n her. “Did he say why he wanted me?”

  “To satisfy a craving, nothing direr.” Callina lowered her gaze. “I cannot deny that I would like to view such satisfaction, pet. He has become quite the man, has he not?”

  “He was twice the man before he drank my blood. But I do not find his new form unpleasant.”

  “A bat at your neck and wolves at your feet, but you leave the humans to their own devices. Your tastes run odd, pet.” Callina licked her cheek playfully. “It is not a complaint.” She nodded for the red-clad servants to open the audience chamber doors.

  Not many wolves were in the room, although one appeared to have taken a place in whatever facsimile of an iron maiden the king possessed, atypical as his collection of torture devices were. The captain stood next to the platform like a dour guard, although his stormy mood appeared somewhat quelled.

  Callina started toward the banquet table to sit with some of the females, but the king, hooded but not masked, shook his head and beckoned to her.

  When she and Asha reached the platform, the king rose to his feet and pushed back the hood. It would take more time for Asha to adjust to the visage of a man emerging from the darkness.

  “The captain tells me that my messenger was not as prompt as she might have been because she worries what will come of what she shared with my wife.”

  He reached out to take Callina’s hand and guide her onto the platform with him. As soon as she stood upon his level, she lowered herself to her knee as though something overrode her will, although the thrall did not so much as stir within Asha.

  “No, my dear. When I bring you here, you need not kneel.” He urged her back to her feet.

  “It is not protocol that demands it, Your Majesty,” Callina said.

  “I am aware. You have my permission to stand or kneel, whatever your wont. I merely wished to show you my gratitude. Asha acted enough of the distraction that I never offered you what you earned in the time that I was away.”

  The king stroked Callina’s cheek, then kissed the other. She leaned into his touch.

  “You accepted a responsibility I did not dare solicit,” he said. “Your king and queen cannot thank you enough. You are welcome to serve her, and she you, whenever I do not occupy her alone in private. Does that assuage your fears, Callina?”

  She nodded, hummed as he nudged her forehead with his.

  “May I speak with my wife?”

  “You may do whatever you desire with your wife,” Callina replied with a step back. The end of the platform did not take her by surprise. Her gait remained fluid and graceful, her boots silent on the carpet.

  The captain growled at the insubordination, but its tone lacked the conviction of their last fight over Asha. The king smiled, throwing off the illusion of humanity with his teeth in the brightly lit room.

  Callina turned around, brushed Asha’s fingers as she passed before Asha replaced her on the platform.

  “You needed me, my lord?”

  “Need you? Yes. Yes, I need you.” With unexpected strength, he pulled her to him by the hand that Callina had brushed. He eschewed any other warning, taking her face in his long-fingered hands and kissing her as though he wanted to drink the moans startled from her.

  She scrabbled at the fabric of his robes over his chest, then tucked her arms under his to clutch at his shoulders. It did not matter to her that the captain was no more than three steps away or that the other wolves were there. Let the whole pack see a kiss somehow more intimate in its spontaneity than her bloody fingers in his mouth.

  “The craving is strongest after first taste, my love. I am afraid my transformation to almost man wishes to complete itself before you are fully ready.” He kissed down to her neck as he spoke,.

  “I remember what you are, what the camouflage hides. If you can still bite me and leave a mark for every one of your teeth, I shall refrain from excessive complaint, my lord.” Asha tucked her braid over her unmarked shoulder. “Do not apologize on my account if the temptation proves too much.”

  “How fitting, that to indulge now would make me seem weak after months upon months of abstinence.” His laughter rippled down her spine. “You do know how to humble a king, Asha. Cut me more with your tongue.”

  “If you wish me to cut, I prefer a knife, Your Majesty. I can do more than that with my tongue,” she murmured against his neck.

  “Knives aplenty you have. You have but one tongue, and how well you know to use it.”

  “If it is blood you prefer, my lord, take my hand. I have other tastes in mind.”

  She fell to her knees on the platform. It was not what he had called her to the audience chamber for, if a chalice’s drink of her veins had conjured her from all the way out in the gardens, but he let out unnecessary breath, almost hissing as she rubbed her cheek over the front of his tunic. The promise of freshly decanted red had partially swelled him already.

  With his body between her and the captain, she licked her lips and flicked her gaze to where she knew the captain would either be watching or deliberately not watching. The king’s slow blink, like that of a cat, indicated his agreement, which told her that she had not been invited solely as the king’s temptation after all.

  He took her hand as she bade him and bent to salute the veins on the back, then turned it over to trace the sensitive blue web over her wrist with the point of his tongue. He closed his mouth over the flesh and sucked as though he had pierced through the thin skin. Asha moaned against his cock. She hurried to free him from under his trousers and tunic, unbuttoning both without his help before easing his cock from its confines.

  She had watched pleasure like this plenty but done it only once. From the way the king’s gaze smoldered, more fire than the captain’s burning ice, she doubted her lack of experience would condemn her now any more than the first time she had tried.

  He cradled the back of her head with his gentle, spidery fingers and slowly brought her mouth to his thickening erection. He did not push her over the cockhead but brought it against her lips as he guided her by her mouth and proffered hand to follow him back to his throne. A strange dance with her on her knees, but enticing enough, if sounds from behind her were what she thought they were—wet, fleshy sounds that made her feel as though she and the king were naked, though he had not removed her clothes and she had only removed enough to bare his cock.

  The king parted his legs to give her space to crawl between them. She tucked herself against the wooden throne and over his thighs. When she licked her lips, her tongue teased him. He tongued her veins in response.

  “As you do to me, so I shall do to you.” The roughness of his low voice alone might have brought her mouth over his cock if he had not held her back. “If you want my teeth in your flesh, you know what I need. And I promise, wife, I shall stain your mouth as you will stain mine.”

  Asha did not remove her attention from his black eyes as she parted her mouth, licked her way to the tip, then sank down over the head with a moan. He rewarded her with the whirlwind of his thrall sweeping through her mind like thin silk scarves. He sank his upper fangs into her wrist, the flesh too slight to bite completely, but it made little difference to her.

  His thrall spurred her into greater enthusiasm. Flesh was flesh and life was life, and his thrall made everything about him better than anything she could ever have without its influence. Just to have him in her mouth, stroking over her tongue in an obscene slide, whetted both her appetites at once, as though taking him in her mouth was the same as him possessing her between her legs as well. She knew what it meant to be starving. It was no exaggeration that his thrall made her starve for him.

  The king nudged at her with his chin as though milking her. Blood welled over the black at the edge of his lips from its eagerness to fill him.

  He did not thrust. He allowed her to set her own pace and depth, but she pushed herself beyond her limits, bringing herself low over him. Her lips stretched and cracked. She choked over the head, gagged, swallowed as th
ough to beg him to come—fruitless though it was to expect him to quicken as she did—but she moaned at the cool velvet of him over her heated tongue as she struggled.

  Though enthralled, she experienced an indignant twinge at how easy it was for him to satisfy himself on her blood, which strengthened his weakness and weakened her little strength against him. She could be the most experienced Tapestry courtesan and still not force him to climax before he chose, yet he could bring her to orgasm with a thought.

  The king had made himself her world with his teeth inside her, yet she glanced away from him for a few brief moments. With the king lounging in his throne, he no longer blocked her from full view of the captain. The wolf’s temples twitched from him clenching his jaw. His gaze flicked away then back, helplessly, involuntarily drawn, first to her mouth sinking over his king’s cock, then to where his king bled her like a leech. He yearned for both, evident in his anger and in the raw envy that an animal such as himself could not conceal—as though he rather than Asha were the truly starving one, and he the one denied the feast.

  As he tried to look away, he saw that she saw him.

  Mere moments. Moments before she sank back down over the king’s cock as far as she could take it and still breathe to meet the captain’s eyes.

  The thrall pulled her back. She gasped, her mouth gaping and straining, still in need but now deprived.

  The king eased himself from her wrist more slowly, catching the blood as it welled, then wrapping his fingers around her arm, applying the pressure of his palm to the wound. Blood dripped down her pale skin, more tempting than chocolate. This time, though, she was awake and aware as he stitched her skin together with his prickling magic.

  “I only regret that I cannot drink from you forever. A monster could lose himself in such a chalice.” He unraveled the thrall, strand by strand, so that the pain at her wrist would not overwhelm her. The magic that had stopped the bleeding kept the pain from being mortal, but the open wound still stung like glass or a sliver of metal inside her, and each passing second hurt more.