The Centaur Queen (The Dark Queens #7)(46)

She grabbed my face, forcing my gaze to hers. Neither of us spoke for several long moments.

The night was rich with the scent of flowers, different ones this time, lavender and roses. The tinkling, bell-like sound of the fountain at our back seemed like a crashing wave to my ears.

“How could you possibly want me?” My voice cracked. I felt dejected and hopelessly in love with her.

Unlike satyrs, centaurs mated. But all of Kingdom knew that to be with a centaur, you must be his or her equal in everyway. I was clumsy and ordinary, a lumbering brute compared to her lithe, graceful beauty. She was so lovely, and there was nothing pleasing about me at all. My brain did not work as hers did. I did not think in the way she did. I was slow, only able to see connections after the fact.

“Someday you will wake up, Tymanon, and see me for what I really am.”

“Oh, my Petra, you are so very wrong.” A tear spilled out of her left eye.

My heart squeezed as I brushed it away with my thumb. She should never cry. Not over me.

“I love you,” she said softly. “And you are my equal in every way.”

I shook my head. “I did not understand these challenges, so I failed, and now I can see why. I never thought ahead like you. I didn’t see the bigger picture.”

“Maybe not, gída, but you are brave and fearless and bold. You are honorable and my rock. I could not save us from that Minotaur. Not today. It was you, my love, all you.”

A trembling breath rolled through me. “I know centaurs do not lie, and yet I find it hard to accept your words.”

Her eyes closed, and a pained expression crossed her face before she said, “Someday you will. Someday I’ll prove to you that this is real for me.”

“For now, Tymanon. It’s real for now, and I can accept that. I just need you to know that when the time comes—”

“It will never come,” she said in a rush.

I clenched my jaw. I was stubborn, I knew that. But I also knew that my Tymanon was innocent in so many ways. Satyrs were not built to love deeply. It was why we were one of the few creatures in all of Kingdom unable to perform the Veritas ceremony.

I could not bind my soul to hers, nor could she to me, which meant there would be no magical bond to keep her with me, to make her believe I truly was the man she thought I was. Without that ceremony, she would awaken someday and see my flaws, and she would leave me.

“Just know that I will never blame you for it, my álogo.”

“You stubborn goat,” she said with a half laugh, half sigh of exasperation. But then she was threading her fingers through my hair and finding the nubs of my horns, making me tremble, making me forget my fears and my worries for tomorrow.

I sucked in a sharp breath when she held them tight and began to rub them softly. Pleasure spiked like a drug through my veins, and my eyes rolled to the back of my head as my cock sprang instantly to life and a moan thundered out my throat.

“Look at me,” she said, voice scratchy and rough with lust.

I fought to open my eyes and watched as she drew up on her knees, her hot center poised just above the tip of my aching cock.

She wet her lips. Her eyes were dewy with lust but also more, infinitely more. I wanted to hang onto this moment forever, wanted her to look at me this way always.

“I will want you until my heart beats no more, until I take my final breath and become dust in the earth. You may be a satyr by birth, but you have a centaur’s soul, a centaur’s strength. There is no male that could draw my eyes away from you. You are my world, and I will fight every day until I’ve convinced you of that. And once I do, my stubborn, prideful gída, I will never stop telling you just how very much I adore you. If you are broken, than I am broken too, for I am a centauress madly in love with her beautiful satyr male.”

I shook. Her words pierced my heart like an arrow, and all I could do was laugh even as shameful tears spilled out my eyes.

“You see, my love, you are touched in the head, for there is nothing remotely beautiful about me.” My words danced with laughter even as my heart twisted painfully within me.

“Ah.” Her brown eyes sparkled. “But I see you through the lens of love, which means you are utter perfection to me. I love your horns.” She rubbed them again, before her hands trailed down my face. “I love your face, the craggy dips of it, the shaggy brows, the rich green eyes that remind of heavenly pastures. I love your nose—” she kissed the tip of it, making my blood boil, and I swallowed hard “—and this strong, impossibly gorgeous jaw.” She kissed the corners of it.

My hands slid up her spine. She leaned heavily against them, opening herself up like a flower before me.

Trailing a finger down the line of my throat, she murmured, “I love to watch you eat, to swallow even. I love the way you form your words. I love when you call me your ómorfo álogo. I love that you knew I called you goat, and you never told me so.”

She laughed, and the sound reminded me of a choir of bells.

“I love all of you, Petra. Your body. Your goat’s legs. Those wonderfully different hooves of yours. I love the way you look at me. I love the way you make me feel.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “How? How do I make you feel?”

Her smile was soft, but her words shredded me. “Like a woman. I have never felt that way before. I’m a warrior and scholar. But no one has ever seen me like you see me.”