Wintersong(61)

My hand threaded through his hair tightened with impatience. He let out a slight hiss of pain. Moans of pain, moans of pleasure—to my ears, they were all sung in the same key. His fingers buried in my secret crevices tightened in response and I gasped—or tried to—my inarticulate cry lost in his stranglehold about my neck.

My other hand—the one guiding his course across my thighs, my hips, between my legs—reached behind me to touch him. I slid my hand down the length of his hardness, the proof of his desire unmistakable through his leather breeches. His hips bucked and a long shudder ran through him. I gripped him harder, staking my claim on him. Mine, I thought. Mine.

But he was shying away from my touch, pulling out of my grasp and away from me. I growled in frustration, but suddenly he wasn’t there. I opened my eyes and turned around.

The world tilted, and for a moment, I could not find my equilibrium. The Goblin King stood only a few yards from me, but the distance was infinite. His feathery hair was a bird’s nest of ratted tangles, his lips swollen, his cheeks flushed. His wolf’s eyes glowed.

“Enough, Elisabeth.” He was short of breath. “Enough.”

I massaged my sore throat and gaped at him. “Enough?” I rasped.

“Yes.” He nodded. “No more. Not tonight. I will have your attendants escort you back to your chambers.”

“What?” The question burst from me before I could help myself. “Why?”

“Because,” he said again. “I don’t want this. Not now. Not like this.”

The humiliation of his words burned. The flimsy silk of my wedding gown would go up in flames from its contact with my skin. Humiliation, shame, lust, desire, all burning. I was burning. How could he send me away? The room smelled of our mutual passion, musty and warm, and I had held the proof of his wanting me in my hand.

An old wound opened up inside me, and all my feelings of worthlessness came pouring out. I was bleeding shame. I should have known better than to place my heart before him; I had exposed my innermost self to someone I trusted once before, only to have it ridiculed for being untutored, unschooled, unremarkable.

I hid my face from the Goblin King so he would not see me cry.

His hand touched my shoulder, and in his touch I felt nothing but gentle consolation. That hurt most of all.

I threw him off. “Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “You don’t get to touch me. Not like—not like that.”

“Like what?” His voice was kind.

“Like—like you don’t care.” My skin was raw. Everything was tender to the touch, my entire body yearning and reaching for sensation and meeting nothing but rejection. I smoothed down my wedding gown over my hips. My wedding veil—that diamond-spangled gauze—had fallen off during our embrace, and it lay pooled at my feet.

“Elisabeth,” he said. “I abstain because I do care—”

“Then why won’t you touch me?” A sob hitched in my throat and I hated myself for my weakness. “Why won’t you take what is yours?”

“It’s not mine to take,” he said, much more fiercely than I expected. “It’s yours to give.”

“And I’m giving it to you now!” I gathered the fallen wedding veil to me, as though I could hide my humiliation in its spangled gauze.

“And I do not want you,” he said quietly. “Not like this.”

It was so unfair. Despite the evidence of his lust straining against his leather breeches, he hid it all behind a cloak, behind a mantle of sarcasm and a disaffected air. I could have screamed.

I turned around. “You said you wanted me—entire.” I hurled his words back at him with all the bitterness I could muster.

The Goblin King closed his eyes, as if he could shut out my words along with the sight of me. My heart thudded in my chest—was I truly so distasteful to men that not even a king of hobgoblins wanted me?

“This is not you entire,” he said. “This is you, desperate.”

His words were salt in my wounds.

“What do you want from me, then?” I was desperate, but I was beyond the point of caring now. “Why did you marry me, if not for this?”

This time it was the Goblin King who stumbled back, as though I had slapped him. “If you thought that I wanted—”

But I did not want to hear what he had to say.

“Perhaps you are now afflicted with buyer’s remorse,” I said. “Perhaps you should have taken the beautiful sister instead.”

“Elisabeth,” the Goblin King said warningly. “Stop.”

I should have stopped, but I did not want to stop. My tongue, once loosened by goblin wine, could not be tightened back into submission.

“Well, mein Herr,” I said. “You married the ugly one. And,” I continued with a high, shrill titter, “you’ve made your bed. Now you’d better sleep in it. So come, my lord,” I said coyly, running my hands down the curves of my body—what few I had. “Come sleep with your new bride. If you can stomach it.”

The Goblin King made a disgusted sound, a sound that shattered what little confidence I had left. A lump rose in my throat and I swallowed it back with a hiccough.

“Go to bed, Elisabeth,” he said. “You’re drunk.”

Was I? I had drunk wine and beer before, had even stolen a little bit of the schnapps Constanze kept in her secret cupboard when I was a child, but I had never drunk myself into indulgence. Not like Papa. Never like Papa.