Currency in Flesh

Chapter 23

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

T his kiss was not like the rest. Lady Cora’s tongue was gentle, delicate. She asked for my affection, rather than demanding. I wasn’t sure what to do. It felt unfamiliar. Yet, it felt good, it felt right . So I kissed her back, tipping my chin up and letting my hand cup her warm cheek. She leaned into me with a soft sound that made something tender and unknowable unfurl within my ribs. I drifted forward, pressing into her, and she wrapped her arms around my waist with unexpected ferocity.

“Lady Cora, I?—”

She silenced me with another kiss. I moaned against her mouth, my back arching with desire. I knew I wanted this, wanted her, and I was honored to be giving her whatever it was that she needed in this moment.

But it wasn’t what I wanted.

As though sensing the shift in the air, she straightened her shoulders and pulled me tightly against her chest. My eyes fluttered open to find hers staring back at me, twin shards of bottle-green glass, glowing in the dim light. “Grace…” My name was a plea on her tongue, and I yearned to give it to her. To give her my name, my soul, my being. I would have given her anything she asked for, she only needed to ask.

She knew it, and with a quick twist of her hand, the glinting silver chain of my collar was wrapped around her palm. “Do you want me to fuck you, blossom?” she asked in a rasping, gravel-rough voice. She dragged me to the edge of the spring, the stone beneath my feet slippery.

“Yes,” I replied, and she jerked her wrist with a sharp ferociousness. “Yes, Your Highness,” I panted.

“Or,” she began, cocking her head to one side. “Do you want to fuck me?”

I nodded, lips parting and mouth watering at the thought of tasting her. God, I wanted it so badly. There was a deeply buried part of me that wanted to claw its way through the soil, to rake its claws across the earth and bare its long-hidden truth for all to see. There was a wicked woman there, who wanted to lose herself in pleasing another, to delight in all the things which were once weaponized against her. She wanted to be used, to be defiled, to be treated like an object—and then be recognized as gold. The clandestine whore shrouded in my shame knew that this time, in this way, at the end of it all, she would be revered.

“Please, Your Highness,” I begged on a breathy moan, “I want to please you.”

“Oh, my lovely girl, you please me so well already. What more could you do to show me praise?” Her hand found its way into my sweat-damp hair, pushing through the tangled curls and waves.

Her raised brow spurred me on, giving me confidence. I didn’t talk like this, nearly never said crass and filthy words, but I wanted to.

“I wa-want,” I stammered. She gripped my hair more tightly, my scalp searing beneath her strong fingers, the collar seeming to tighten around my neck even as she dropped the chain.

“What do you want, pet? Tell me.”

“I want to please you.” I knew it wasn’t enough. I was stalling, and she knew it too. The silver chain had settled between my breasts and I saw her eyes follow its path.

When she looked back up, she moved so quickly, her palm striking my face with disorienting force. I stumbled, watching in slow-motion how the silver leash whipped through the air between us. The steaming water splashed, droplets flying up and peppering us both as I fell into the spring up to my knees. Righting myself, I braced my hands on the edge of the pool. Bright pain and heady pleasure filled me, and my body promptly responded. I was drenched with wanting, even beneath the heated water.

“ How do you want to please me? Be specific, Grace, or I’ll give you nothing.” She looked down at me from where her toes met the edge of the pool.

“I want to taste you,” I begged. “I want to feel your wetness on my tongue. I want to drink you in. I want you to come against my mouth and give me every last second of your release.”

She chuckled, and it was low and wicked. “Oh, you liked that, did you? Have you never been with a woman who could squirt?”

My cheeks flushed a deep red, and I broke her gaze, eyes falling to the water. “I’ve never been with a woman at all.”

Lady Cora’s head fell back with a loud, boisterous laugh as she took slow, languid steps into the steaming pool. “You look so mortified! Did you think I was unaware?” she asked, voice teasing. “Darling, I know everything about you. Every single secret, each and every filthy desire. I saw far more than the darkness within you, I reveled in your desperation—your repressed wants and your unrecognized needs. I chose to keep you because tangled with that darkness was a feverish, ferocious fire. You fucking burn for me and I want to watch you combust.”

I clenched my thighs, a little noise escaping my lips. “I do,” I panted. “I want this so badly, Highness. Please, please let me worship your body. Let me worship your soul.”

Her answering laugh was wry and dark, the water now coming up almost to her thighs. “I have no soul, Grace. Will you want me still?’

“You’re wrong,” I answered, bracing for a response. When nothing came, I continued. “You have a soul—it’s just been threaded through the fabric of this place for so long that you have forgotten what its fiber looks like. I see it. I see it in the kindness you show the women who arrive here in pain. I see it in the vicious way you avenge them. I see it in the part of you that screams for justice below a world that is unjust.”

Her steps quickened, and she stood before me. Her hand pressed against my lips. But I was emboldened, not ready to give up on this moment of very naked honesty. I shook her off, knowing I would pay for it later. “I see you,” I choked out. “I see you in the little moments of softness you show me. In the way you abhor Sean. I am not so foolish as to think that you hate him because of who he is or whatever bargain he failed to fulfill. You hate him because of what he did to me. Deny it all you want, but I know the truth.”

She stilled, fingers trembling ever-so-slightly against my chin. Steam curled around her, its milky fingers stroking her hair. When my eyes met hers, I found them wide—pupils blown and gaze focused. “Grace…” her voice was faint but devastatingly dark. With a small shake of the head, she straightened. She shoved both hands into my hair, grasping the strands in a near-frantic fervor. “You do not know me,” she growled.

“Yes,” I said without looking away. “Yes, I do.”

Her mouth crashed into mine with enough force to split my bottom lip. Blood welled, flowing from my mouth into hers and she groaned. The sound made my pussy clench. I would have come had she touched me, but instead she dropped my hair and pushed me backward. I staggered, losing my footing and falling on my ass. Hot water splashed around me, wetting my hair and dripping down my cheeks like tears. My hands scrabbled for purchase, and she stopped me with a stiletto pressed to my chest. The heel was sharp, biting into the soft skin between my breasts. I could see the rise and fall of her foot from my heaving breaths. She pushed, and I let her, leaning back in surrender, even as her red-bottomed shoe put bruising pressure on my sternum. The spring’s surface swirled around my silk-swathed tits, only my shoulders still above water. Lady Cora’s dress was soaked to her hips, plastered to her body and showing every lithe line. I couldn’t keep my eyes from running up her leg, tracing the muscular length of it from calf, to knee, to thigh…

To cunt, shimmering with want just above the water, even in the faint light.

I panted, entirely at her whim. She had me, and fuck I liked it. I wanted her to take out her emotions on me, to use my body to process the truths that perhaps I had forced her to confront. I opened my mind to her, and the moment she felt my mental boundaries drop, the glow of her eyes flared. I let her see every filthy thing I wanted from her, every way I wanted her to prove herself a true goddess. Her almost imperceptible smile was the only sign I got of her acceptance before she glared down at me, pressing her heel into my flesh hard enough to break the skin, and spit on my face.

Sean had been a spitter. When he was angry, it was his way of showing me precisely how little I meant to him. But now, with Lady Cora? It felt like I had been anointed. I wasn’t being degraded, I was being blessed. I licked the flecks of spray from my lips, smiling up at her in challenge. She met me, grinding the ball of her foot into my sternum, just below my collared throat. It pressed me into the stone and limited my breathing. I let a tiny groan slip from between my lips.

Abruptly, she removed her heel. Crouching, she brought her face down closer to mine, water lapping at her waist. Her dagger-tipped nails moved across my cheek, rubbing her spit and the mineral-rich water over my face with a villainous little smirk. “You like it when I treat you like my little bitch, don’t you, Grace?”

My nod was not answer enough, and she slapped me, the sensation clear and sharp. “Yes, Your Highness,” I panted. “I like when you show me.”

“Show you what?” she asked, brow raised.

“Show me that you are a Goddess , and I am nothing more than your plaything.”

Her lips softened into a true smile. “Have you learned nothing, blossom?” she asked. “You are precious to me, of unfathomable value. You want a Goddess? I am not a magnanimous deity, I am a Goddess of darkness and death. I would burn the meadows to blistered earth if only to keep you. I would snuff out every soul with a snap of my fingers. I would give a thousand centuries, allow unending, malignant evil to spill from the pit and flood this realm and the rest. There is nothing I would not do for you, Grace.”

I pressed my eyes closed, shaking my head from side to side. “I fucked up,” I replied. “I made assumptions, tried to tell you how to do your job. It’s not my place, and I needed reminding. I’m so sorry.”

“No, darling one,” she whispered, the collar vanishing from my neck. “ I needed reminding.” She placed her hands on either side of my shoulders, her hair falling forward like a golden, velvet curtain. Sliding one knee over me, she straddled my hips and lowered her face to mine. Her dress floated around us both, brushing my wide thighs with feather-light caresses. The heat of the spring was nothing compared to the heat deep within me. Every cell of my body burned, my hips lifting slightly to put our bodies as close as possible. I felt the beat of her heart in time with mine, and the steady rhythm was a silent symphony.

This kiss was what ancient men penned ballads about, the thing that sent nations to war and civilizations to ruin. Through her, I understood everything and nothing at once. In the smoked-currant taste of her, surrounded by swirling steam, we existed in multitudes.

And something happened I never could have anticipated. With the queen of the Underworld’s tongue against mine, near-scalding water lapping at our skin, I found forgiveness.

“Wait—” I panted, breathless. She pulled back enough to meet my gaze. “I don’t want this to happen with Sean still lingering in this realm.” The faint bubbling sound of the spring was the only noise.

Her forehead creased. “He is going nowhere, marigold,” she said.

“I know, but I want him to. I don’t need to keep punishing him for what he did. As long as his pathetic, whimpering ass still exists, he occupies a part of my mind. I don’t want him to have that anymore.”

“What would you like to do with him?” she asked, still sounding a bit uncertain.

“I want to end him, and I want the very last thing he sees to be us—together.”

A shadow of a chuckle buzzed through her into me, each place our bodies met humming with it. “My, my, my, such a diabolical little serpent you have become,” she said. “I was expecting a clever little mouse, but you have opened your jaws and swallowed her whole.”