Page 66 of The Black Table
“Sure. Bunk with me.” Cal’s face doesn’t change.
“Thankyou,” I say. “Now, can we all scatter to the four winds and clear the area?” I’m already going to get a reaming from Luther, and possibly Kingston, over the shopping spree. The last thing I want is another problem they can blame me for.
Because they will. It’ll always be me.
Neither of them moves.
“Now,” I bark.
That works. They scatter.
And I walk her, quietly as I fucking can, up the stairs.
Lanz’s room is, in fact, much cleaner than mine—his bed is actually made, for one thing, which leaves me to kind of shove the covers back with my foot so I can set Gwenna down more or less on the sheets.
Her breath flutters over my arms as I lower her down, pull back my arms. I stand a second, panting a little, and look at her.
At her dress.
Fuck. She can’t sleep in that.
I mean, she can, but…
I eyeball the swirls of silk, the corset sides of the bodice. It can’t be comfortable. And…I mentally think back to the itemized receipt the shoppers had sent me. If this is the Valentino, that’s a $7,000 dress. And while it would really drive the point home to spend all that money and then ruin what it bought, I don’t want to. Not for her sake. Not if she liked it enough to pick it and wear it.
Honestly, I wasn’t even sure she would do it when I made the offer. Just liked the idea of fucking with Daddy Pendragon’s head. But now…
I stare at her there, thinking through my options. Probably something she can wear in Lanz’s bureau. Just have to get her in it. And out of this.
I’dhave to get her out of this.
Shit. Shit. As gentlemanly as I can force myself to be, with every fiber of my self-restraint on point, I still feel…awkward about this.
Gwenna stirs a little, pulls her head from the pillow as she rolls over, eyes still closed.
“Too hot,” she murmurs.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, I think. I’m really going to do this. Really going to undress a girl who I can’t touch not only because she’s unconscious and unable to consent, but because I have to be a pious, chaste little swordboy for the foreseeable future.
I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry.
“Hang on,” I whisper, “hang on.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.How the fuck does this thing come off?
Gingerly, I ease her shoulders forward a bit, looking for a zipper at the back, and mercifully, there it is, although not without a series of tiny buttons the size of a pea leading down to the pull-tab from the…turtleneck part of the top, or whatever it’s called.
“Shit,” I whisper through my teeth. I crouch by the bed and start in on them, fumbling their slippery surface through my fingertips, suddenly clumsy as a goddamn puppy. Each one needs to go through this infinitesimally tiny loop of silk fabric, and it takes me a good five minutes just to get all seven of them undone. But I do, and the red lace falls back, revealing the pale nape of her neck.
I swallow again.
Look but don’t touch, Kai.
Lord knows I’ve seen women in states of greater undress than this. Seen them naked as God made them, and gotten to touch them to boot. Run my fingers over every sweet curve and soft expanse of skin, inhaled their scent, tasted them.
But that was before. And this…this is all that and more.
Instinctively, blood rushes to my cock, because I’m a fucking animal.
