Page 13 of Queen Takes Camelot: Gwen
She paused, sensing the turbulent emotions tearing through me. Smiling over her shoulder, she took my hand and gave me a little tug until I started moving again.
“I’m Gwen in this lifetime.” She led us onto an elevator and pressed the button for the top floor. “This tower isn’t mine, but I hold it for my queen, Shara Isador, last daughter of Isis. She made me her sibling a few days ago, and that’s what broke Elaine’s hold on me.”
Hearing that name on my queen’s lips made my shoulders tense. As if Arthur wasn’t enough, Elaine was still alive too. Fucking great. No guesses where Arthur was headed this very moment. He’d regroup with Elaine and kill us when we went after Merlin. Again.
Bors cleared his throat roughly. “Is that why you couldn’t call us, my queen?”
“Yes. She made me swear never to call my Blood.” Squeezing my hand, she leaned against me, and it shamed me to realize she was trying to protect me. To make me feel better.
Because yeah, that woman’s name still made my stomach queasy, and I hadn’t even encountered her in this lifetime.
“I won’t let her have you,” Gwen whispered fiercely. “You’re mine, Lancelot du Lac. You’re my alpha. My Blood. My love. Nothing will take you from me this time. I swear it.”
“I love you more than my life, as you well know, my queen. But please, don’t make promises that we can’t keep.”
She straightened, her chin tipping up at a haughty angle that made pride roar in my heart. Her cheekbones were stark and proud, her lips lush but firm, her face so fucking regal. This was my queen. The queen of the ages. Forget King Arthur. The poems and idylls should have been dedicated to her. The Once and Always Queen of my heart.
“I fully intend to keep this promise, sir knight. I have many advantages in this lifetime that have never been available to us before. I’m older, for one. Elaine’s geas may have kept us apart, but it also kept us alive. I’ve dedicated that time to improving myself and my abilities as much as possible despite not having any Blood of my own. Now, I have a queen sibling who’s powerful enough to control this entire continent. With her help, I held off Arthur so that you could enter the circle. He didn’t kill you on sight. When has that ever happened before?”
“Never,” Mordred muttered darkly. “But we all know what his next step will be, and it’s an insurmountable obstacle.”
The elevator doors opened, and our queen started to step outside. Bors managed to slip past her first, while Mordred stepped up to block her exit. I expected her to be irritated at our interference, but she leaned back against me and slipped her arms around my waist.
“I forgot what it’s like to have protection. Thank you, my Blood.”
“Clear,” Bors called.
Only then did Mordred step aside, bowing as our queen passed. Bors stood several paces away, scanning back and forth between two doors, waiting for any threat to arise. She stepped to the door on the left, and he immediately took up position, waiting on her to unlock it so he could search the premises.
“This entire building is warded and protected by the Isador blood circle,” Gwen said. “Nothing could possibly harm me now.”
“Arthur was inside the circle,” I reminded her.
She scowled and heaved out a sigh. “True. But that was not my doing. He’d been allowed in by the previous Skye queen.”
“Who else could she have allowed inside? For all we know, Elaine Shalott could have been granted access.”
Gwen shook her head emphatically. “That I can attest against with one-hundred-percent confidence. No one of House Shalott is inside this circle.”
Except my queen. She carried Elaine’s blood. That was a new wrinkle in this lifetime. Would Elaine know the moment Gwen claimed me? Would she feel the surge in my queen’s power? The pleasure?
Because I’d fucking kill myself pleasuring our queen.
Gwen’s eyes smoldered, changing from a blue-green hazel to mossy green. Turning, she casually walked over to the massive bed centered in the room. Heavy wooden posts rose from the corners to hold aloft a ten-foot-tall frame swathed with white gauzy streamers. Pausing, she looked back over her shoulder at me, curling her right hand around behind to slowly unzip her dress.
The sound was loud in the room, the silence broken only by the heavy breathing of three enraptured men as the dress slowly fell off her glorious body.
I would have thought she was beautiful whether she was thin or curvy, short or tall. I’d loved her many bodies over the centuries—if given the privilege to see her, even from afar—drawn by her inner spirit more than her physical beauty. But I had to admit that this body had been carved with exquisite perfection by the goddesses.
I traced the lines of her shoulders, proud and strong yet still feminine, down the curve of her spine, the dip of her waist, the swell of her buttocks and hips, to the gentle curve of her calves. A small trickle of dried blood held my gaze a moment, before I dragged my gaze back up for another long drink of her body.
She wore thin white lacy scraps that enhanced the mounds of her ass and breasts as she slowly turned to face me. Her power hummed in the air, glowing from her skin as if she was lit from within by the full silvered moon. Even her skin was flawless, creamy silk.
“How many lifetimes have we never even laid eyes on each other? Let alone been in the same room together.”
I swallowed the razor blades in my throat. “Too many to count.”
“How many lifetimes have you tasted my blood and carried my bond?”
