“You must admit?”
“I liked it,” I said, more bluntly, but now I was twisting the hem of my nightgown between my fingers nervously.
He climbed back into bed beside me and put one hand over my body, his head craned down to look at me. “Would you like me to touch you like that again?”
I nodded.
He tipped up my chin. “Yes,” I gasped.
Still looming over me and looking at my face, he pulled my nightdress up again, revealing my bare skin. Once again, his thumb nudged between my nether lips and found the tender little nub of pleasure there. He began to circle his finger there, very slowly, painfully slowly. I was already very swollen and sensitive, and immediately I sighed, arching into his touch. The sensation of his glove, a little bit stiff, rough at the seams, against my tender skin—the claws just beneath. I knew they would tear me up if they were set free, and sometimes I could feel the suggestion of their edges, but their danger was tampered by the leather.
I was quickly growing very warm, and I lifted my heavy braids away from my neck and shoulders, spreading my arms so more of the cool air would touch my skin, as his thumb continued its exquisitely slow explorations.
I spread my knees, encouraging him to touch me harder and deeper. My body was responding as if of its own accord.
Now two more fingers slid into my already slick passage, and he drove them into me, skillfully mixing the fluttering sideways motion of his thumb with firm plunging thrusts of his fingers. I was starting to moan again. I was too warm.
I looked at him, wild hair and golden eyes, his face so intent that it was quite impossible to imagine he had ever laughed much. Nothing about his features would have been regarded handsome in Fairhaven. Besides his unearthly eyes that glowed in the night and the sickly pallor of his skin, besides that even when his mouth was closed you could see the faintest suggestion of the shape of his crowded fangs, his nose was a little crooked and brutishly shaped. Perhaps it was hard to find a man truly ugly when he could produce such sensations, but I rather liked his strange appearance, I thought.
Of course, it was true, compared to the golden fey man sleeping in the grotto…
“I must have you,” he said, with urgency.
His trousers were tight again.
“Then have me,” I said breathlessly.
This time, he pulled me to my feet and stood me between his legs, facing away from him. I felt him loose his cock from his trousers. He hooked his feet around my feet and nudged my feet apart, guiding me down until the tip of him found my entrance.
“Sit down,” he said.
I was excited by the command; this was the first time he had allowed me to have control of fitting myself to him rather than the other way around. I wiggled onto the head, and then the length of him slid into me more easily, his feet continuing to push my legs farther apart, until I was spread out, with him deep inside me.
He started to thrust into me while his hand reached around and resumed stroking me. I was already so sensitive. Almost immediately, I started seeing stars. My hands gripped his knees. “Oh—oh, goblin king, I do wish I knew your name!” And then I could say nothing else. I was almost crying. I had never felt such a thing, my body pulsing and clenching around his hardness, all of my skin shivering with pleasure.
As it passed away, it left me spent and tender, but hearing my cries die into moans only seemed to encourage him to rock into me harder. I didn’t even try to stop him; I wasn’t sure he could stop if he wanted to.
He suddenly whipped off one glove and then the other, revealing his bare hands and sharp claws. The sight of them thrilled me and frightened me at once. I didn’t think he would hurt me on purpose, but why had he taken them off?
He ripped the front of my nightdress. He couldn’t easily get it off me entirely, but he pulled the fabric away from my shoulders and breasts, my stomach and thighs, leaving it bunched at my wrists and back.
“My name is Nyar,” he said.
“Nyar?”
“It isn’t very handsome, is it?”
“No, I like it,” I said. “I would have liked to have had it earlier. My name is Sabela.”
“Sabela…”
Hearing my name in his ear seemed to change everything. I understood in an instant why he didn’t want to exchange names. Names made things real. It was harder to kill an animal if you named it. Maybe it was also harder to leave a man. Or lose a girl…
“I could fuck you all night, Sabela…but then you would have no energy left to think of breaking curses…”
It was hard to believe, in such a moment, that I would ever have energy again.
He wrapped his hands around my thighs, being very careful of his claws, and stood up, so I was impaled on his cock, his hands on my legs the only other support. I had to reach back to grab his arms for fear of falling forward, and he steered me around so I could grab one of the bed posts. He let my legs drop and drove into me. His lust had an animal quality. My arms were burning from grabbing the bedpost and yet the sensations of his body inside me were so strong that I thought I could hold the bedpost all night if he wished me to. My nightgown hung tattered around me.
“I want to stay here forever,” I gasped.
He put his hand over my mouth, as if he didn’t want me to say such things. But it had just slipped out.
When he finished, he pulled out of me and stripped off the rest of my nightdress, tucking me into bed, my bare skin between the sheets. I smiled at him sleepily.
“I may have made a terrible mistake tonight,” he said.
“What do you do between times?” I murmured.
“Probably much the same things as you do. I have a meal. I keep up with my sword and fighting exercises. I try to read, or take a walk in the moonlight.”
“I’d like to come with you some time.”
“‘Some time’, you say…as if we have much of that.” He wrapped a lock of my hair around his finger, almost absently. “If you were the one, Sabela…”
“Why don’t I stay up at night and spend more time with you?”
“You can’t. We would get nothing done. Don’t you understand?”
“The curse forces you to be alone,” I said. “I see.” Clearly, when he was around me, he was almost overwhelmed by his urges. It must be so with every woman, and meanwhile his subjects were given inanimate forms so they could give him meals and clean clothes and well-kept quarters, but no companionship.
He shook his head. “Sleep, for now. I will return when I must.”
Chapter Six
Nyar