Page 62 of Wickedly Ever After
There was no hot tea. Belinda came knocking a half hour later and delivered a pan of greasy meat gravy, a few hardtack biscuits, and something that might pass for coffee, if one was drunk. By then, Ida had composed herself.
Clearly, she wasn’t as immune as she’d hoped to be. But it didn’t matter. In a few days, all this would be over and she could go back to her regular schedule of hating Hector and hexing him by mail, not wishing that the distance between them could be like that bed instead of the wide gulf dividing good and evil. She’d have to remember it existed the next time she faced him alone again, which hopefully wouldn’t be soon.
Tinbit and Hector were gone. Cear, in salamander form, sat on the edge of their firepot, preening their bright coal-red skinwith a delicate orange-colored tongue. Large eyes as blue as the deepest part of a fire gazed at Ida reflectively for a moment, and blinked. Hari sat on the couch, wrapped in a blanket.
“Did Tinbit go with Hector to see to the coach?” Ida picked apart one of the biscuits, searching in vain for butter or lard to make it more palatable.
“A few minutes ago,” Hari said.
“Are you feeling better?”
Hari made a sound like a sob crossed with a laugh. “In myself, yes. In my heart, no. It hurts. It hurts to look at him, to know he doesn’t feel that way about me now. I didn’t mean to sleep with him last night, but I was cold, and he heard my teeth chattering and asked. I’m sorry.” He stared at his hands, shamefaced.
She wanted to pull her neatly coifed hair out by the roots. “He was simply being kind, Hari.”
“I know. It’s not him I’m apologizing for. It’s me. I couldn’t lie beside him and not want more. I didn’t touch him, Ida, but I wanted to. And I wanted him to touch me. I can’t forget the way his whole body trembled when we made love, like I was the one thing he most wanted in the world.”
“You’ll make yourself sick dwelling on that,” Ida said. “Don’t.”
“I’m trying not to,” he said. “Tell me when this is over, we’ll go home right away. I can’t stand to be near him and not have him.”
“We will.”
Not only for Hari did she promise. If she spent much more time with Hector, she’d be as unhappy as her gnome, torn between the professional hatred she had to maintain and the feeling that, if it wasn’t there, every other barrier would melt away like wax to his flame.
29
Hector
Happily-Ever-After is the most important task a Cardinal Witch oversees. I’ve been honored to participate in every one of them. The one thing I can say with certainty is they are never the same. Therefore, each obstacle must be tailored to the participating prince and princess and never duplicated. Invention in this case is mothered by circumstance rather than necessity. For instance, I’ve found great success in creating a deeper emotional bond between the couple by interrupting the honeymoon period known as Only-One-Bed in some circles.
You’d be pleasantly surprised what an attack of bedbugs can accomplish.
A Thousand Years of Wickedness: A Memoir
Hector West
Hector could not leave the room fast enough. As soon as Ida left the bed, he bolted, frightened by the thoughts burning through his head and in far more distant locales.
How soft and pleasant she was to hold tenderly, to touch, to feel. When she’d nestled into his arms and wrapped her leg around his, he’d been unable to think about anything but thesurging need in his groin. Oh, this wasn’t happening. He was a wicked witch. That should make him immune, heart or no heart.
But it certainly didn’t feel like it. Ida was right about what he’d missed in those long years alone—companionship. What must it be like to sit down at breakfast with an equal, spend a day in happy magical work together, and fall in bed with them at night, knowing the next day and the next would be full of the same peaceful communion of purpose? A horrible understanding had dawned as he gazed at her. If Ida North had lived closer, he could never have been celibate.
It was lust. Only lust. That at least was a wicked feeling. He stomped the others out of himself as he descended the staircase. Ida might soften at the touch of magical love, but not him. A squirming, pleasurable feeling twitched through his unruly body.Oh, no, my man, you certainly didn’t soften.
“Gods save me.” He crumpled the reply he’d received from Sebastian as he went out to the stable. What did he mean, “I’ve only the Honeymoon Suite available at such short notice”? It was the old ghoul’s attempt at a joke certainly and in very poor taste.
Well, if he wasn’t immune, he’d simply have to fight it. Love had always been for others, never for him. There could be no ever-after when one outlived one’s lovers by centuries, and no happily with inequality. The idea that he’d even considered, if only for a moment, that after all these years, he might actually have found someone who he could consider his equal made him almost as queasy as the time a venerable gentleman dragon insisted on serving him a special meal of rare knight, roasted over an open flame.
He didn’t wait for the coachman to oil his bones. He wentout and started harnessing the horses himself while the old skeleton fixed his trick knee.
He was leading Napoleon out of the stall and into the traces when Tinbit appeared, groggy and miserable. Wordlessly, Tinbit readied the feed bags for the horses already in harness, and fixed them in place before grabbing the seat brush to clean out the coach for the day’s ride.
“I’d like to reach the castle by midafternoon,” Hector said when he’d finished harnessing Napoleon.
“Then don’t stay for breakfast or we’ll be stopping every half hour,” Tinbit said. “I smelled it cooking when I came downstairs.”
“I ought to at least sample it. A thumbs-down of mine carries a lot of weight.”
