The Prince and the Ice King by Amanda Meuwissen

Chapter 6

JOSIE LOOKEDhuman.

Normal.

Just like her portrait.

The curse was broken!

“It’s only at night!” Josie cried, sitting up fully while holding the sheets to her chest. She was radiant—blue eyes like her brother, wavy locks of soft brown hair, and youthful glowing skin. “The curse still stands, but what we hadn’t yet told you, Reardon, is that we get reprieve when the sun sets.

“I’m sorry. We’re vulnerable after dark, so we always wait a full two weeks to reveal that secret to newcomers, ever since… we were betrayed.”

Josie’s sorrow made Reardon sag and hug Pillars of Virtue more closely against him. “The thief,” he whispered. She clearly meant the statue in the garden of the thief who’d tried to run after killing one of their own. They couldn’t risk someone untrustworthy discovering that the court could be killed too if the time was right.

No wonder they were still sane and able to rule well if, after dark, they existed as they once were and could touch those they held dear. Barclay hadn’t fallen in love with someone out of his reach. He already had her.

Which meant all the other members of the court were human now too!

“Reardon!” Barclay called, as Reardon turned and fled back into the tunnels.

He ran anyway, returning to the entrance into Barclay’s room but moving past it, certain in his use of the tunnels lately that he knew how to reach each of the court members’ chambers. Or at least how to get close enough to find their wake trails, like Josie’s tunnel was covered in gold.

He had to know. He had to see for himself if the same was true for all of them.

First was Liam in the alchemist tower. He and Branwen both left scorch marks, but Liam’s were finely focused like jagged lines of lightning. The closer Reardon got to the tower, the more concentrated the scorches became until they suddenly stopped.

Pushing on the wall where they disappeared, Reardon revealed another doorway, leading into another bedroom, this one filled with alchemist tools overflowed from the laboratory.

And another pair of moving bodies on a bed, hidden by covers.

Reardon hadn’t hoped to find the same type of interlude, but given the circumstances, he couldn’t say he was surprised.

“It is true!” he cried, hearing a feminine yelp and rustle of sheets before Shayla appeared with her usually pinned hair wild and curly about her head.

“Reardon! How—?”

“What are you doing here?” Liam shouted.

Shayla sat atop his hips, keeping the sheets around them, but Reardon could see Liam’s face. He never would have known it was Liam if not for his voice, but that was indeed the wizard. He could have been a brother to the fletcher, really, if not for his elven ears. He and Oliver shared the same blond hair and blue eyes.

These eyes didn’t give Reardon pause, however, or wonder at Barclay’s vision, since he knew this man was another one spoken for.

“You were all so obvious, yet I didn’t see it,” Reardon said, unable to keep the smile from his face, even if he was being terribly intruding, because the court was not made of the lonely creatures he’d thought. “Nigel…,” he said in realization and turned once more to dash back into the tunnels.

“Where are you going?” Shayla yelled after him.

“Wait!” Barclay cried, not far behind, as he and Josie gave chase.

Still, Reardon ran, elation fluttering in his chest, finally understanding what Barclay’s friends had in common.

He didn’t know where Zephyr’s chambers were, but he knew Nigel’s. It only dawned on him now that he had seen evidence of a wind elemental in those tunnels and in Nigel’s room more than anywhere else—grooves in the stone like decades of erosion.

There wasn’t a tunnel exit directly into Nigel’s room, but there was one outside it. As Reardon burst into the room through the main door, Nigel spun around wide-eyed, in the process of changing for bed.

“What is that rack—ah!” Zephyr appeared—naked—from the wash area and clutched a robe he’d been carrying between his legs. “Don’t you knock?”

He had blue eyes too, though Reardon had dismissed Zephyr long ago, fair though his face may be, and clearly, he was also taken.

With color filling his usually translucent form, his cheeks held a warm glow, dark hair messy and damp from bathing, with the otherwise same slender form Reardon had seen floating.

“You were fighting about me,” Reardon said, “because Zephyr kept saying lewd things to me!”

“Nigel forgave me for that!” Zephyr defended.

“Reardon….” Nigel dragged a hand down his face. “We—”

Reardon spun on his heels to continue his journey, pushing past Josie in a silken robe and Barclay in a barely held up pair of trousers.

Only he couldn’t reach the tunnels this time, because Shayla and Liam were coming out of them, equally half-dressed, and Liam looked far less understanding than everyone else. His physique matched the fletcher’s too, but Reardon didn’t have time to admire it.

Sprinting the other way, he mapped out in his mind which tunnels would best lead him to the basement. He vaguely remembered from his drinking with Branwen that the master of arms said his chambers were down there, close to the wine and ale. Now Reardon knew why: he had been waiting for nightfall so he could drink when the sun dipped below the horizon.

“Stop!” Barclay tried again, but Reardon knew his stamina would win.

He had three couples chasing him as he worked his way to the lower levels of the castle, finding larger scorch marks with smears of blackened soot along the walls. When at last the scorches stopped, he found the expected door.

“Reardon!” Caitlin yelped—from a desk, thankfully, with a large, imposing man standing over her shoulder, both fully clothed.

This room was more utilitarian but covered in parchment and scattered tomes, which surprised Reardon, as it seemed Branwen was dictating to Caitlin.

“She’s my scribe,” he growled, like some hasty defense.

Branwen was as broad and burly as Reardon would have imagined, with mild scruff, a mostly shaven head, and pale eyes that also looked blue. Every single member of the court had blue eyes, but none of them were the eyes that mattered to Reardon.

“If you’re with Bran, then…. He doesn’t have anyone, does he?” Reardon asked Caitlin, turning equally imploring eyes to Branwen. Hearing the others pour into the room behind him, he turned to them as well. “He doesn’t, does he? I know he doesn’t. He can’t.”

“Reardon,” Barclay said with a sigh, reaching out to touch him—only to gasp.

A vision, Reardon thought as he surged forward, realizing then that he still clung to the king’s book, and Barclay’s slack expression made him clutch it tighter, like salvation. “It’s him, isn’t it? It has to be him.”

“I… I don’t know.” The strange expression on Barclay’s face didn’t change, but he blinked the vision away and gave Reardon’s arm a firm squeeze. “I didn’t see the same thing just now. I’m not sure what I saw…. There was a woman with dark skin in brilliant finery, and… and someone in armor of the Emerald Kingdom, bookending you like a prize between them. You guarded someone from them that I couldn’t see.”

“The king,” Reardon said without falter. “It’s him, Barclay. It has to be, and I stand before my love, between my kingdom and the past.”

“Your love?” Josie repeated, stepping from the others—Liam and Zephyr, who looked annoyed, and Shayla and Nigel, smiling in delight. Josie’s robe was neatly tied now, black silk trimmed in gold.

“Just as all of you found someone,” Reardon said, “I am meant for him. That’s why I’m here. My purpose here. I’m sure of it.”

“Hang on,” Branwen said, no change to his gruff voice even when lacking flames. He held a goblet, finally enjoying his wine. “Don’t get any ideas that we’re together like that.” The faintest color filled his cheeks as he said it, and he wouldn’t meet Reardon’s eyes, something mirrored in Caitlin which told Reardon that, despite their protests, they clearly wanted what they hadn’t yet had. “She helps get my ideas down, that’s all. Nothing like these rutting maniacs.”

“Rutting?” Liam threw back. “Shayla ignored me for a week because of this princely brat. Who is useful,” he amended when Shayla glared at him, “and not all bad most days, but I’m allowed my ire!”

“Maybe sometimes you take for granted what you have,” Shayla shot back. “You don’t need Reardon’s presence to require occasional reminders.”

“Sounds familiar,” Nigel muttered.

“You forgave me!” Zephyr cried again, looking rumpled in just the robe he’d been clutching earlier.

Nigel pulled Zephyr against him, quieting him in such a sweet, reflexive manner that Reardon had kept his smile. He was right. He had to be right. They’d all had lessons to learn, but they’d needed someone to melt their hearts as well, someone who had nothing to do with this place in the beginning—a sacrifice freely given.

Wasn’t true love always the epic end to a curse?

“I only found Barclay a year ago,” Josie said, taking his hand to pull him close too. “They’ve all had each other for decades. I’ll rut as I like.”

Barclay blushed far darker than Branwen or Caitlin, a beautiful hue, because Reardon had never seen his friend so happy.

“Four days left, and we have to do this in my room?” Branwen grumbled, taking a gulp of wine.

Reardon turned to him, to all of them, understanding that he had broken the rules, however unintentional at first. “I’m sorry I made you all run, but I had to be sure. I understand now why you said fourteen days. Any shorter could allow a swindler to betray you as that thief once did.”

A solemn expression touched each of the court members as it had Josie, but she was the one who spoke. “We told her the truth after six days, so certain she posed no threat, just another one of us welcomed into our company. But then she knew, you see, that we were vulnerable at night.”

“But… the king did freeze her,” Reardon said, confused, as the implication was that she had betrayed them while they were flesh and blood.

“She planned her theft for early morning, just before the sun rose, but she should have given herself more time. Before she reached the gate, the sun was up, and Jack caught her. Before then, she still got to one of us.” Slowly, Josie pulled aside the edge of her robe to reveal a scar beneath her collarbone.

“The king said she killed an elf.” Reardon scrunched his brow in further strain. “Someone with beautiful magic.”

“It was beautiful,” Josie said softly. “The most powerful healing magic of anyone here. The thief got to me first, knowing my chambers held the most gold. I gave chase, even with my injury, and he saw us in the halls. He tried to stop her, but she was too swift.

“I was already weak, but I struggled to help him, and sweet thing that he was, he still tried to heal me, even as I was trying to stop his bleeding, flowing so much more freely than my own. I… I was still touching him when the sun came up….” Her delicate hands clenched into fists, and Reardon didn’t have to ask what her touch had done.

Barclay slipped an arm around her waist, and she leaned gratefully against him.

“I understand why Jack wanted to wait with you, Reardon,” Josie said, “as we have with everyone else since then, but I also don’t want to let the past haunt me. None of us do.”

As Barclay held her, the others all vigilantly silent, Reardon recognized why the princess had only found love so recently, despite two hundred years having passed. It was too difficult for her after causing someone such awful harm. Though Reardon also believed she had needed to wait for the right person.

He had not seen any statues made of gold in the king’s ice garden, but now he wondered what had become of the… accidents.

“I swear to you that I am not your enemy,” Reardon said. “I never will be. I don’t only want to understand your curse and change my kingdom. I want to break the curse and save everyone.”

“And you think loving Jack will do that?” Branwen asked skeptically.

“Could have skipped the interrupting-us part,” Liam muttered, and Shayla smacked his chest.

“I don’t even know his real face, yet I feel….” Reardon stroked the cover of the book, holding it out in front of him to look at the carved leather. “I know the days have been few, but as each one passes, I find myself more amazed by him. With our audiences, I always want them to last longer.”

“You love the king while he looks like that?” Zephyr sneered.

Reardon couldn’t truly say he loved the king, but the draw he’d felt for only a scant few, it was the same for Jack as for anyone he’d ever lusted after. “If not yet, then I think I could. I need to see this through, to know his feelings in return. To truly know mine. Only then can I be certain if it’s enough to break the curse.”

“What do you intend to do now?” Josie asked.

“I intend to see him. Would any of you stop me?” Reardon hugged the book once more.

There was a shift of glances between them all.

“That’s the book the king had me scouring for in the library,” Zephyr said.

“Yes, and place on my bed.”

“I didn’t place it on your bed.”

Reardon’s eyes snapped up from looking at the cover again.

“The sun was already setting,” Zephyr explained. “He ordered me out of the library after I found it. If it ended up on your bed, Emerald Prince, then he’s the one who put it there.”

The resolve in Reardon strengthened, knowing the king had been in his room, risking getting caught after nightfall.

“You are a wily one,” Liam said, trying to pull Shayla against him like the others, which she allowed after a weak show at struggling. “You might even be right.”

“He means mad,” Zephyr said, and then when Nigel elbowed him, added, “but we’re certainly not going to stop you.”

Branwen and Caitlin were different—quiet, stubborn creatures, maybe only commiserating, though Reardon did wonder what the master of arms had Caitlin writing for him. Still, they were hopeful sentries, with Caitlin rising from the desk to stand beside Branwen, both offering encouraging nods.

Lastly, Reardon looked to Josie and Barclay, his first friend among the court and his oldest friend of all. Whatever Barclay saw when he touched Josie, it filled his face with peace and fondness that Reardon hoped to one day know for himself.

“Wish me luck,” Reardon said and turned, one last time, for the tunnels.

JACK’S REALchambers, his private rooms that he never entered during the day, saving them from his horrible ice trail and frigid touch, sprawled beyond his frozen throne and the main entrance into the hidden passageways. No one else was allowed there, ever, but especially at night, when his earned isolation was absolute.

He couldn’t bear to see his own face, his own form, so no one else could either. While the rest of the court looked as they once had when night fell, Jack, just as his curse was different during the day, doomed to leave an icy residue and stomp upon the ground like a plague, wasn’t the same when he was human either.

He was human, but the damage….

Sitting beside his bath as it filled with heated water, he hated what little of his skin he could see, sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

His rooms were warm, as warm as he could make them, but he still started most nights with a soak. He never seemed to get warm enough, no matter how hot the water or how many layers he wore or blankets he piled on his bed. He rarely slept anyway, since the need was gone with the clutch of the curse. He dreamt, though—daydreams of what might have been if he hadn’t been such a fool all those years ago.

The washroom had steps up to the large bath and many wardrobes around it, and continued farther on to his bedroom, where Jack’s large bed sported four ceiling-high posts and heavy bedcurtains. Closer to the door was his antechamber and study. Josie loved her gold, but Jack had always preferred silver, even if it was less kingly. His rooms were the same, covered in those colors, in stone and cool woodgrains and varying shades of blue.

The rug that adorned his study led beneath several bookcases and his desk. Behind the desk wasn’t a normal chair but his original throne, which had once been in the other room where the frozen throne now stood. Jack had moved it here as a reminder, closeting away what he hadn’t been able to live up to.

The throne wasn’t wood but polished white stone painted in gold and silver. It was too grand to sit behind a desk and as tall as Jack’s ceiling, blocking much of the view toward the bedroom and bath. Jack preferred it that way, to be blocked off from everything.

He ran his fingers through the warm water, deeming it high enough to turn off the pump, and tried not to cringe at the sight of his ruined skin.

Closing his eyes, he attempted to think of anything else, something good, something sweet—and wondered if Reardon had discovered the book yet.

“Majesty?”

Jack’s eyes flew open.

THE DOORwasn’t locked. Why bother, Reardon supposed, since no one would dare do what he was doing now—ignoring the very serious mandate to never disturb the court at night.

Well, once someone was trusted, the court wasn’t off-limits, Reardon knew now. But the king never allowed anyone in, and he was encroaching on the king’s privacy anyway, untidy without his doublet and clutching an old leather book.

“Majesty, I know you’re here,” Reardon called again, softly shutting the door behind him.

This was a king’s chambers indeed, the grandest Reardon had seen tonight. The rooms seemed to go on forever beyond the antechamber, with an overlarge throne behind an ornate desk. And it was so warm, the coziest room in the castle, contrasting starkly against the chill on the other side of the door. Only the door itself and a bit of the floor right in front of it remained wet and cold, where the king must stand as his form changed.

“Please, Majesty, I didn’t mean to discover your secret. I only went to speak with Barclay and found….” Reardon trailed off, nervous amidst the silence that greeted him. Still, he crept forward toward the desk with its elegant throne. “I saw Josie. I’ve seen everyone. All that remains is you.”

Even as Reardon came around the desk, he heard no sound. Maybe the king hadn’t returned yet. He’d been in Reardon’s room. He might have gone somewhere else. But then the barest peek toward the washroom showed that the bath was filled with steaming water, ready for someone to sink into it.

“Don’t be angry. You can’t leave me this gift and not expect that I’d want to say thank you. There is so much I want to say to you.” Without any rustle of noise or answering voice, Reardon sighed and turned to the desk, his back to the washroom as he moved beside the throne and set the book down, peering over the desk’s contents.

In the center was a crumpled piece of paper smoothed out, like the king had thrown it away and then changed his mind. Reardon picked it up.

The noble prince went on his quest—

The air was knocked from him as a body slammed up against him from behind, arms wrapping around his own to pin them to his body and cause the rumpled paper to drop.

“You come into my room and rifle through my things?”

The king, his voice unmistakable—with his arms wrapped around Reardon.

Reardon didn’t dare move but couldn’t help leaning subtly against the warm body pressed to him, not some large, hulking figure, but a man, about his own height, with tan arms, much of the skin visible, as the sleeves of a simple shirt were rolled up.

“Forgive me,” Reardon said, holding still and forgetting the parchment as he made to turn his head.

“Don’t. You will not look. You will not see me. If you do, I swear I will throw you from the window you first climbed through.”

The words were cold, but the body was warm as he held Reardon. He held Reardon, touching him, which had to be the first time he had touched anyone since—

The king squeezed so tight, Reardon gasped for reprieve.

“P-please! I won’t look!” Reardon promised, keeping his head forward but glancing down at the arms around him, at the glimpse of skin and humanity and….

Scars, countless scars, covering so much of the king’s arms that Reardon hadn’t noticed for how many overlapped and ran together.

“Is this what you wanted?” the king roared, shaking him. “To see the true, ugly me? Ugly and earned, have no doubt about that.”

“No, I… I could never think you ugly, Majesty, no matter what the rest of you looks like. Please, I have seen too much beauty in you to see ugliness.”

The hold on Reardon slackened but did not release. “Then you are a fool. You learned our secrets early, which means I can choose to cast you out or imprison you, maybe freeze you come morning.”

“You won’t.”

“So bold and foolhardy, little prince?” The king’s voice was ice where his touch was not, sharp and biting, but Reardon saw through him.

“No, but if you had such hatred for me, you wouldn’t have left me that book. You left it, Zephyr said, not him.”

A puff of air disturbed the hairs on Reardon’s neck, as warm as the room and enough to make him shudder. “Damn gossip.”

Reardon smiled, because the king hadn’t denied it, and his hold was loose now, just their bodies flush and those arms around him. No one had ever really held Reardon before, besides a brief embrace, and certainly not like this, intimate and caging. Reardon should have been unnerved by it, but the king never instilled that feeling in him.

“I won’t look if you do not wish it, Majesty.”

“I do not. But I also do not believe I can trust you anymore.”

“Then let me prove myself again. Let me know you. Isn’t that what we promised?”

“You broke our promises.”

“I didn’t mean to! It was an accident. You can ask the others.”

“Was coming here an accident too?”

“No. But I hoped you might make an exception for that.”

Another silence, as if the king wasn’t sure what to do or whether he dared release Reardon—and honestly, Reardon did not want to be released. He felt improper stirrings low in his belly at being so securely detained by the mighty Ice King.

“May I ask…?” he ventured quietly, still looking at the scars and seeing a hint of the king’s bare feet too. He was otherwise dressed like Reardon by the feel of him, in only a shirt and trousers.

“Part of my punishment,” the king said, hot and close at Reardon’s ear. “I don’t feel pain. Or if I do, I have grown too used to it to notice. The others become their element at sunrise, but I am trapped inside. Every day, these two hundred years, the ice cuts deeper. I don’t have wounds come nightfall, only the scars.

“If you came here looking for a handsome face that only looks unfortunate in sunlight, you will be disappointed.”

The harshly spoken words did not change the stirrings Reardon felt. “That does not matter to me. It wasn’t your face that first showed me who you are. A face is not what warms someone the way knowing them can. The way… a touch can.” He lifted his hands just enough to alight a soft caress on the king’s forearms.

A howl was the only precursor to Reardon being slammed onto the desk, the king releasing him but for a hand pressing to his shoulder and another at his lower back, keeping him down. The king’s hips were close at the curve of Reardon, bent to his will.

“I will not touch you,” Reardon swore, biting back an unbidden moan, “but if you asked… oh, Majesty, if you asked… I would, and I would welcome you touching me.”

The grip on Reardon faltered. The king wasn’t hard behind him but very present along Reardon’s backside. “You know not what you say.”

“I do. Believe me, I do.” Reardon arched backward, as bold as the king had accused him of being. His captor might not be hard, but Reardon was, twitching in reaction to being pinned when he knew there was no danger. “Please,” he said, shifting his legs to spread wider and splaying his arms across the desk.

“I saw you,” the king said in answer, and for the first time, Reardon felt the king tremble. “I… watched you in the night.”

Reardon tilted his head, though not so much as to risk peeking over his shoulder.

“It was your second night in the castle. I watched you, I am always watching, but I saw something that night that I shouldn’t have and almost didn’t turn away. You undressed and retired without snuffing out the candles and reached down your body beneath the sheets.”

Recognition made Reardon throb at the thought.

“I didn’t stay beyond that moment, but that’s how I knew your desires, because I heard you speak them as I left, longing for a ‘him’ instead of a queen. You think you know me, but I have not changed since the days I bedded my stable boys.”

“But you have,” Reardon said, not sobered or ashamed as the king surely wanted him to feel with that admission. All he could imagine was those brilliant blue eyes on him. “I’m glad you told me, and I forgive you, because you did turn away like the good man I know you to be. All I ask is that you offer the same mercy to me. Forgive my coming here… and give me what I beseeched of the fates that night. If you want me, take me.” He flattened more wantonly on the desk. “Take me and let me know your touch.”

The hand on Reardon’s shoulder loosened like it might lurch away, but the one on his back shifted, sliding down his hip slowly, and then hungrily over his ass with a firm grip, as the king twitched tellingly where he teased between Reardon’s thighs.

“Yes,” Reardon gasped. “Please… let me be yours.”

“I forbid you to look at me.”

“Not once will I attempt to see you, Majesty, unless you ask it of me.”

“I will not. And I will not give in again. This is only for tonight.”

Reardon gave no answer to that, because he refused to believe it would be true.

He closed his eyes.

The king squeezed his backside again, and then brought both hands around the line of his untucked shirt. His palms raked up Reardon’s skin beneath the fabric, and though even his hands felt scarred, that did nothing to diminish Reardon’s wanting.

With an insistent tug, the king tore the shirt from Reardon’s head, returning his hands to travel down the same route they had gone up. Even without seeing him, the contact offered a promising thrill. Reardon didn’t care how many scars marred the king. In his mind’s eye, he conjured a powerful, faceless man with those intense blue eyes, wearing a blue doublet with white-gold embroidery. Before knowing the king became human at night, Reardon had already been making it for him.

Textured palms slid around Reardon’s waist, up his chest and down like had been done to his back, feeling him everywhere with slow precision. Long fingers spread over every part of him, applying the perfect pressure to make him shiver. With the king’s hips pressing in flush against Reardon’s, a lone hand strayed beneath the band of Reardon’s trousers, through the coarse hair there, and right to his burning flesh.

No frantic touch of his own could compare to someone else wrapping their fingers around him or passing a warm thumb across his slit. Reardon whined, hips rocking in reflex, which both pumped his cock into the king’s hand and pressed the curve of his ass against the hardening length behind him, but Reardon’s trousers were too tight for the king’s hand to move much while merely down the front of them.

“Take them off,” the king ordered.

Reardon fumbled to obey him, hands trembling uselessly, but once he got the ties undone, his trousers fell loose to his ankles, leaving him naked and still bent over the desk. Sordid tales of romance told Reardon what came next. Basic anatomy, secret whispers, the instinctive straying of his own hands—he knew what came next, and he longed for it in ways no solo pleasuring or pining after a man could satisfy.

The king was still dressed, though, still holding Reardon down and stroking him, making Reardon’s belly hot and his loins ache.

“Please, Majesty. Take me.”

“So impatient, you don’t even know how much more pleasure there is in waiting.” His grip tightened, but the movement of his hand slowed, an agonizing slide, as the king’s hips began to rock forward, subtle teasing of his clothed cock between Reardon’s cheeks.

“I have waited…. My whole life I’ve waited, please.”

“I will, but you need to slow down.” The king’s free hand pressed so hard on the middle of Reardon’s back to keep him in place, he had trouble taking a deep breath. “Do you want me to hurt you? Because it will not feel nice if I fuck you raw like you think you want. There is an art to this, little prince, like clothing crafted or a bard tale composed. Do you understand? Or do you want the culmination to be a disappointment?”

The warning came with immediate reprieve, the pressure on Reardon’s back lessening while the hand between his legs gathered every bit of slickness leaking free and pumped harder. “S-slow,” Reardon conceded. “Whatever pace you set.”

The whole of the king’s body molded over Reardon, the feel of soft fabric tickling his bare skin, and then breath tickled his ear as the king whispered, “Good little prince.”

REARDON WASa virgin, of that Jack had already been sure. Long as it had been since he’d known the feel of another’s body beneath his hands, he couldn’t simply take Reardon, thrusting like some drunk in the back of a tavern. But if the young prince was so needy, so full of lust and certain that he wanted Jack to be the first to ravage him, then this act was going to be savored.

Reardon hadn’t shied from his touch yet, not the feel of scars or the brief glimpse of them on his arms. Jack couldn’t bear for those emerald eyes to land on his full form, but he could accept Reardon’s body as tribute, eyes closed and unseeing as Jack devoured him, to make up for the slight of crossing his threshold.

After all, Jack was the monster of this story. He would take his tithe like a troll beneath a bridge, and it would only prove his point.

That was why he chose to give in, because he was owed, and Reardon had asked, and there had to be a balance, an exchange of power that kept Jack in control. If he gave too much to Reardon, he didn’t know what might happen.

Rolling up from lying over Reardon’s body, Jack brought the hand not touching the prince to the ties of his own trousers, letting them drop and his length free. He teased the budding wetness at its tip along Reardon’s crease, and the whine Reardon released was more enticing than any stable boy Jack had ever had.

“Reach back,” Jack commanded, much as he enjoyed Reardon’s arms akimbo on the desktop. “Touch me as I’m touching you.”

Pausing for breath, Reardon brought his arms in first to lift himself and not crush his cheek to the wood when he reached back, left hand grasping for Jack until he had him.

“Feel how hard I am?”

Reardon gave an initial shaky stroke. “Yes.”

“I’m not yet where I will be.” Jutting his hips forward, Jack dragged his tip along Reardon’s crease again so he would understand his size and that he was not yet full. “Keep on. Get me there.” Jack rocked into Reardon’s hand and against those parted cheeks, his arm coiled around him to continue offering similar strokes—an infinite loop of pleasure building.

Each pump from Reardon’s hand pressed his own knuckles against his backside, and the tip of Jack kept teasing there too. In turn, Reardon’s motion rocked him into Jack’s hand, with mewling whimpers and gasps spilling from his lips. Despite the pooling wetness between them, however, it wasn’t nearly enough.

And Jack couldn’t prepare Reardon the way they were now.

He stilled his hand and grabbed Reardon’s wrist with the other. “Do you want me to stop?”

“No!” Reardon cried. “Please, Majesty—”

“Then don’t open your eyes. I will stop and banish you from my sight if you do.”

“I swear.”

Jack released him and stepped back.

“Majesty—!”

“I am only disrobing. Stay as you are.”

The sight of Reardon’s body displayed with open thighs and cock dripping between them made it difficult not to stroke himself to completion just from the view. Jack kicked away his trousers and threw off his shirt.

“Get the rest of your clothes from around your ankles.”

Reardon did so without using his hands or shifting much from how he remained bent over the desk. He seemed to like that position, and Jack might have kept him there, but he had better supplies in the other rooms.

Reardon’s skin was a perfect pale swath of peach, lean muscles down his legs, taut shoulders, narrow hips, and a budded entrance waiting for a slick touch….

“Majesty?”

“Still impatient, little prince?”

“No. Well, yes, but… I will keep my eyes closed, but please, I want to pleasure you as well, whatever ways you want from me.”

Jack stepped toward him. “Being inside you will accomplish that.”

“Y-yes.”

“But….” Cupping both spread cheeks before him, Jack squeezed the flesh being offered, his cock bobbing forward with its ready tip. “Your mouth would be a good start if you wish it. Eyes closed.” He hooked an arm around Reardon’s knees and scooped him into his arms, eliciting a quiet gasp. Lumbering like an ogre had made Jack stronger, or perhaps Reardon, for all his height and long limbs, was simply that light.

The prince flailed to cling to Jack’s neck but kept his eyes closed as promised. Sure steps brought Jack into the bedroom, hard and weeping though he may be, and he laid Reardon upon the bed with his feet facing the top. Reardon seemed reluctant to be released and dropped his arms slowly from around Jack, fingers brushing lightly across Jack’s cheek. There were scars there too, but Reardon remained content without flinching as he stretched upon the bed.

Turning from him, Jack went to the bath to gather oils. Reardon didn’t disobey by trying to steal a glimpse, merely craned his ears and waited.

“Have you decided, then?” Jack asked when he returned.

“Majesty?”

Jack gave his length a few firm tugs before setting the items he’d gathered on the bed. The back view of Reardon’s prone form had been tempting, but like this, Jack could see the lines of his hips pointing to tantalizing hardness, wet and scarlet red. His lips were equally colored, pouty and parted, as if already answering Jack’s question, “If I may have use of your mouth?”

“O-oh….” Reardon blushed far too prettily, too virginally for Jack to not want to have those lips on him every way he could, but he needed Reardon to say it. “Yes, Majesty. Gladly yes.”

Climbing onto the bed, kneeling at the foot, with Reardon’s head between his knees, Jack began to lower himself. Reardon tilted his head back and opened his salivating mouth to take Jack in.

And oh, the heat—Jack had forgotten how good it felt to be enveloped by such warmth. He trembled as Reardon trembled, the prince’s hands clutching the sheets with nothing else to hang on to and sucking him in a good two, three, four swallows without stopping. Jack’s moisture was lapped up, but Reardon’s mouth’s own watering overflowed past the corners of his mouth, just as his eyes began to water too. Yet he swallowed Jack in again—and again.

“Slower.” Jack barely bit the word out, afraid the young man, supposedly inexperienced, would cause himself to choke. He had unknown talents, because he didn’t gag as he swallowed Jack deeper and then pulled off. “What was that… about never frequenting brothels? Perhaps not as a client.”

“I-I’d never—”

“I know, but then you are a natural.” Jack dipped to Reardon’s lips again, and Reardon sucked him in past the tip without prompting, farther, farther, and then off again.

“D-does that mean I please you, Majesty?” His mouth looked sinfully red and shiny with drool still leaking from the corners.

“You could please me more.” Jack dropped his hips more insistently, forcing Reardon to take half of him at once, but from there he let Reardon control how much he was willing to swallow. Inexperience gave way to instinct as Reardon found a rhythm, taking Jack in and out, in and out, a little deeper each time.

No bath, no clothing, no covers had made Jack feel this warm in centuries, rocking down between the pliant lips of the Emerald Prince.

“Keep on… but touch yourself while you do.”

A grateful hum responded, Reardon’s left hand twisting into the sheets while the right found his length with practiced ease and started pumping madly.

“Slower. But suck harder.”

Reardon whined, so close to finishing, Jack knew, because he could see his hips stuttering and stomach clenching with the need that wasn’t being met. Jack needed it too. He was having trouble keeping his thrusts into Reardon’s mouth civil. How easy it would have been to fuck that mouth raw, willing and open beneath him—but Jack wanted this to last, wanted Reardon’s thighs quaking from a much better connection.

“Up. Forward on your knees. Now.” Jack lifted away to keep from listing to one side as he calmed the mad thrum in his ears and reached for the oils.

“But Majesty—”

“Now.”

The strain in Reardon’s face as he stopped stroking was pitiable, but he simply didn’t yet know how much better this could be. He listened, lifting with effort to get onto his knees, head pointing the correct direction now, as he leaned onto his forearms, keeping his ass up and his knees parted.

Jack squeezed himself to still the growing ache, made no easier by that stimulating sight. He’d leave Reardon a blissed-out, gibbering mess if he did this right—and he intended to.

The oil he chose was thick and moisturizing for after a bath and smelled faintly of cedar and roses. The large bed barely shifted with his slow crawl toward Reardon, but he knew when Reardon was aware of just how close he got, because he thrust his hips backward.

“So warm…,” Jack said, cupping Reardon’s ass while his oil-slicked fingers trailed down between his cheeks, teasing lightly at the puckered skin.

Reardon mewled and thrust back harder into his touch.

“So sensitive and desperate, but you have to be patient… so you don’t spill all over my sheets when I first press—” Jack reached the waiting entrance that flexed at his approach, giving way the moment he pushed in the tip of a finger. “—inside.”

“Jack.”

The utterance made Jack falter. He’d heard Reardon say it before, but not directly calling him that. In such a plaintive voice, it made him want to wring more sounds out of the prince.

“Is this what you envisioned?” Jack twisted his finger in deeper.

Unintelligible murmurs replied.

Jack took that as permission to begin a gentle thrust. Reardon was tight but open enough that a single finger found its way inside without trouble, discovering the slick curves that would soon encompass Jack. Reardon stopped trying to hold himself up and became a limp and submissive puddle, weak sounds of discovered ecstasy catching in his throat as he rocked back and back and back to pull Jack in deeper.

Jack twirled a second finger over Reardon’s hole, picturing the way the prince’s lips had enveloped his head. He pressed a second digit inside.

“Ah!” Reardon’s head snapped up with a pained gasp.

Virgin, Jack reminded himself, returning to only one. “You’re tight.”

“Th-that’s… good?”

“It can be. But too tight hurts. I won’t be fucking you tonight, little prince.”

“But Majesty—!”

“I will not hurt you. But I can still give you a taste and take my pleasure too.”

Removing his fingers entirely, Jack dripped more oil to coat them, finding that the slide of two fingers, even eventually deeply thrust, made their way in more easily after a time. With each renewed twist, Reardon’s tension receded, any signs that it was too tight or painful banished, as his breathing picked up in their stead. Still, Jack could tell that anything more would be too much.

He started his thrusts slow but gradually began to increase the rhythm. Fresh whines floundered off Reardon’s tongue, fingers clawing into the sheets like before, with his forehead pressed to the mattress.

“Oh… oh… Jack,” Reardon moaned again, as Jack fucked him with a kind hand, his own length leaking rivulets onto the sheets behind the entrance he so wished to ravish. “Are you certain you can’t—”

“I am. But I promise the taste I do give you will be sweet.”

Thrusting deeper and harder and as fast as he could, Jack soon had Reardon crying out in unrestraint, made even more vocal by Jack reaching around him with his other hand to grip Reardon’s soaked member and pump in time to the twist of his fingers.

The dual touch upon Reardon brought Jack’s hips closer, his hardness finding refuge against Reardon’s thigh. The searing hot skin made Jack moan with Reardon, forgetting he was supposed to be the composed one. He wanted to come. He wanted to pull Reardon there with him. He wanted to fuck his sweet prince until stars exploded behind his eyes and they woke up somewhere else.

“Please… please…,” Reardon begged, and Jack’s mind went blank with his own need, fingers retracting to position himself at Reardon’s entrance and push.

Another pained gasp brought Jack to his senses.

“Please,” Reardon said again when Jack tried to pull away.

As a lesson, as appeasement, Jack returned his head and pressed just enough to risk its breach, waiting for Reardon to tell him no.

The prince took in several sharp breaths but said nothing.

Jack risked another shift forward, a faint pop resounding as Reardon gave way and encircled him fully around his head.

Reardon bit his lip as if to keep from crying out, rocking away from Jack to pull him with him, and then back again to bring him in deeper. The moan he released encouraged Jack, but the panted breaths sobered him. He couldn’t go any harder or deeper than this, but he could do this and drive Reardon over the edge with him.

Not once did Jack cease his pumping of Reardon’s cock, thrusting rhythmically behind him in turn but only as deep as his head. It was torture to not pound Reardon into the mattress but also bliss, because it had been so long, and no one had ever felt this rewarding to make sing.

Reardon’s utterances were like pleas for mercy, but mercy to be allowed to come, not discomfort. Once Jack’s urgency grew desperate too, he pulled out and slid his shaft up along Reardon’s entrance instead of in, seeking friction, wetness, warmth, and receiving all in abundance.

“Please,” Reardon continued to beg, but Jack would do no more, only increasing his pace and allowing every few passes of his cock to press its head in again.

Finally, Jack’s grip brought forth a yielding cry, and Reardon sagged, deadweight beneath him. Feeling the sticky proof on his hand, Jack kept on faster, seeking oblivion and the sweet relief that only another body could provide, and then—

Jack shot across the curve of Reardon’s inviting crease, staining his skin in opalescent streaks. He sagged as Reardon had sagged, collapsing atop him. At last he’d had his prince, not as fully as he wanted, but so… so good.

Pulling away to relax back on his ankles, Jack took in the sight of Reardon once more, face pressed to the sheets, eyes closed, with his ass ripe and used, now with Jack’s claim all over it. Nothing had ever looked so beautiful.

“You are a sight… little prince.”

Reardon smiled, half invisible against the mattress but as blissed as Jack had intended. Jack wanted to mold himself across that gorgeous form again, but first, it needed to be cleaned.

“Do not open your eyes,” he warned.

“Yes, Majesty,” Reardon whispered like an exhale. “I am content with your touch.”

REARDON HADnever known such pleasure. No touch of his own could compare. No other indulgence either. The limpness he felt without injury—well, without dire injury, for he would certainly be sore tomorrow—was indescribable and made him incapable of movement or protest as the king lifted his spent and soiled body from the bed.

A few short moments later, he felt himself lowered into a soothing bath, smelling of lilacs, whereas the substance the king had used to ease Reardon’s pleasures had been headier. The king’s release that had stained him was rinsed away, and Reardon went even more boneless, afraid he might sink right down, until a firm body climbed in behind him to act as anchor.

Like that, with the king wrapped around him, Reardon could feel his scars everywhere, but it stirred no wince or need to withdraw, only a deep pity for a man who did not deserve this punishment. Maybe once he had, but not anymore.

“Majesty… if I swear to keep my head forward, may I open my eyes to see the room?”

“I suppose.”

Reardon wasted no time, vision unfocused at first from keeping his eyes closed for so long. The washroom was dim but lit by candles, large and luminous, with multiple wardrobes filling the corners, the bath itself up on a pedestal, just as Reardon would have imagined for a king. His father’s washroom was not nearly so grand, however.

The king was not yet fully softened behind Reardon, a solid presence reminding him of how they’d intimately but also only barely connected. Reardon understood why. Too much had hurt, his body unused to such experiences. He’d only ever teased himself there before, but even that brief, small conquering from the king had been incredible.

Resting gratefully back against the body behind him, Reardon fought every impulse in him to not disobey and look. This close, however, with the king’s arms coming up to hold him in place, gentler than they’d held him at the desk, Reardon noticed something unexpected just out of eyeline.

A wisp of white hair.

Barely containing the smile on his face, Reardon settled more comfortably. “May I assume it gets easier with… frequency?”

“It does. Your body adapts. Is that why you came here tonight, little prince? For me to treat you like a stable boy?” One of the hands around Reardon’s waist drifted between his legs where he was spent. Still, the touch made him twitch in the king’s palm. “If you saw Josie and the others, I’m sure you caught them in similar states.”

“M-mostly,” Reardon said, mourning the king’s touch the moment he returned to merely holding Reardon against him. “Mostly that’s how I found them all, I mean, not…. That was not why I came to see you. If I had only wanted someone’s touch, I could have gone to another. I didn’t want another.” He pressed his head to the king’s shoulder. “I wanted my love.”

The silence that answered was as torturous as if the king had brought Reardon to the brink only to leave him cold. The cynical sigh he released as he drew his hands away completely was worse.

“Is that why you asked the night for a him, some… fantasy? I am not your love. We merely shared a night of passion.”

“You may think me foolish, Majesty, but it is not fantasy. Barclay had a vision.”

“What?”

The pull to turn and look the king in the eyes was strong, but Reardon held still. “Before Barclay was chosen as offering, he had a vision of my love. Well, what he saw was difficult to describe, he said, but it was… love, death, and blue eyes in a sea of white.

“There has been much death here, Majesty, but there is still hope. Your court has all found someone to love. With Branwen and Caitlin, perhaps it is something different or moving more slowly, but they all have someone, even your sister, so content with my friend, who never thought he’d find a love of his own. Don’t you understand what that means?”

“That’s why you said blue eyes,” the king murmured.

“Yes. It’s you. You are my love, and I am yours.” Reardon boldly reached to take the king’s hands, that had fallen away. “We can be the final piece to breaking your curse for good.”

“Close your eyes.”

“All right.” Reardon did so, unprepared for the sharp yank of the king’s hands and push forward as the body behind him got out of the bath.

“Wait—”

“Get out.”

“But—”

“You are going to dry off, get dressed, and get out of my chambers. And if you look at me, I will still throw you from the ramparts.” Those strong hands gripped Reardon’s shoulders and roughly lifted him to his feet, forcing him to stumble out of the bath.

“I-I cannot dress blind!” he protested.

Still rough and harried, the king brought a robe that he used to pat Reardon’s skin. Then he grabbed Reardon’s arm and dragged him down the steps leading from the bath, across the stones, until at last he pushed him forward and left him, just a voice over his shoulder. “Dress and stay facing forward.”

Reardon opened his eyes. He was back by the desk, where his and the king’s clothes lay in heaps. Much as this pained him, he grabbed his shirt and trousers. “Majesty, Barclay’s vision—”

“I am not your love.”

“But you could be!”

“You said your Lombard has blue eyes?” The way the king spat the name made Reardon stagger as he tried to pull up his trousers.

“Yes.”

“You hoped it might be him once, didn’t you?”

“N-no, I….” Reardon had, but— “He’d never want me—”

“If he did, you would have gladly taken him instead. And at least he could be with you during the day.”

“You can as well!” Reardon insisted. “We can break the curse—”

“There is no breaking this curse!” the king’s voice bellowed from only a stride behind him. “You are a silly romantic. Now get out. In the morning, you can leave for your kingdom.”

Reardon snapped upright, dressed now but shaken. The king was dismissing him, but he would not let this be the end. “No.”

“No?” the king challenged back.

“I am not leaving.” Reardon stood firm, clenching his fists in resolve. “The secrets of this castle were only part of our deal. I said we would know one another.”

“I think we know one another quite well, little prince.”

The memories of that, the smell of it lingering in the air, mixed with cedar and flowers, only made Reardon more certain.

The crumpled verses on the king’s desk made him certain too, though he hadn’t yet read them. With the king behind him, and Reardon at the edge of the desk, he reclaimed the book he’d brought, using that more visible act to hide how he snatched the parchment too.

“I said I wanted a way to save our kingdoms from all this madness. Breaking the curse will accomplish that, and I am not leaving until I do.”

“You—”

“I will prove you wrong,” Reardon cut off the angry rebuttal, moving swiftly around the desk for the door. “And tomorrow, I will be ready for our next audience. Thank you for the book, Majesty. Good night.” Without waiting for a response, Reardon escaped, knowing the king would not follow, and fell back against the door with a shuddered breath, clutching his prizes to his chest.

Right there in the chilly throne room, he read:

The noble prince went on his quest….

It was a sweet and simple tale that ended as theirs just had, only they hadn’t yet managed to release the beast as the pair in the poem did. Even so, it proved Reardon right, that long before tonight, the king had wanted him, wanted more, wanted freedom and connection and the love he denied himself. He’d nearly thrown away this parchment, judging by its creases, but he’d salvaged it. He did want what Reardon offered. His heart was merely frozen.

Smiling as he held the poem and book close, Reardon slipped behind the icy throne to return to the secret tunnels. Lombard might have been his choice once, but his were not the eyes that haunted Reardon, and now, while Reardon still did not know the true form of the king, he had a picture in his mind of blue eyes on a man with an un-aging, scarred face….

And white hair.