Percival novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Thread

June stays, and the oldest wolf at Greyholt shakes under her hands through their first night, until Maisie knocks at dawn and says the whole east wing smelled it.

I did not need him to say it twice.

I kissed him again, harder, and he made that sound in his chest once more.

His hands went to the buttons of my outer cardigan and stopped.

They were shaking.

"June," he said against my mouth.

It was the first time he had used my name.

"Tell me what you're thinking," I said.

"That I will do this badly."

I laughed into his neck.

"Why?"

"It has been a hundred and sixty-one years."

I pulled back to look at him.

He could not have been lying, and he knew I knew it.

His face was bare, and there was color high on his cheekbones.

"A hundred and sixty-one," I said.

"The last was in eighteen sixty-five. I have not wanted anyone since."

"Not once?"

"Not until your foot."

I started to laugh, and then I did not, because he was looking at my mouth.

I took his hands and put them on the buttons myself.

"Then be slow," I said. "And be bad at it. I'll tell you what I like."

His throat moved.

"Please," Percival said, and he undid the first button.

He did it.

The second came easier.

By the fifth he was breathing roughly, and I pushed both cardigans off my shoulders and let them fall.

I wore a flannel nightgown under them, grey, with a hole at the hem.

He looked at it.

"I'm not what you've been picturing," I said.

"I have pictured you for four years."

The words came out of him flat and fast, and he went very still.

I did not catch the meaning yet.

I only heard the heat.

"Then you'll be happy," I said, and pulled the nightgown over my head.

I had never been shy about my body, and I was not going to start in a stranger's bed.

I am five foot three and a size sixteen, with a soft belly and wide hips and a heavy chest.

I sat in the grey light with the silver thread glowing on my wrist and let him look.

He did not say anything for a long moment.

Then his hands came up, shaking, and settled on my waist.

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen," he said.

"You can't lie to me, can you?"

"No."

"Say it again."

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." His thumbs moved over my ribs. "I would like to put my mouth on every inch of you."

My breath caught.

"Start with my breasts."

He bent his head and did exactly that.

His mouth closed over one nipple, hot and slow, and I heard myself make a noise I did not recognize.

I put my hand in his hair and pulled the tie out of it.

Dark-gold waves fell across my skin.

He moved to the other breast, and his tongue circled and pulled, and heat ran straight down between my legs.

"Percival."

"Yes," he said into my skin. "Say it again."

"Percival. More."

He gave me more.

He kissed his way down my stomach and stopped at the soft curve under my navel, and kissed that too, slowly.

I tugged at his shirt.

"Off. All of it. I want to see you."

He sat back and took off his waistcoat, and then his shirt, in the red light of the dying coals.

He was lean and long, with a flat stomach and shoulders that were stronger than they looked.

There was a scar low on his ribs, thin and old.

I put my hand on it.

"Seventeen eighty-three," he said. "A musket."

"You must hate this room being cold."

"I have not noticed the cold since you arrived."

He stood to take off his trousers, and I watched him, because I had every right.

He was hard.

He was thick and long and flushed, and I felt my pussy clench just from looking.

"You can stop being polite," I said.

"I do not know how to be anything else."

"Come here."

He came back to the bed on his knees, and I pushed him down by the shoulders until he lay over me.

His weight was warm and heavy and it felt like coming home.

He kissed me, and his cock lay hot against my thigh, and I wrapped my leg around his hip and ground up against him.

He groaned.

"June. I will not last."

"Then we do it twice."

His hand slid down between us, and his fingers found me.

I was soaked.

He felt it, and his whole body went tight.

"Tell me what you feel," I said.

"You are wet." His voice cracked. "You are so wet, and it is for me, and I have never been so grateful for anything."

He stroked me, slowly, one long finger sliding over my clit and down and back again.

I gasped.

"There. Again."

He did it again.

"Faster."

He did it faster, and I arched under him with my fingers in his shoulders.

He slid one finger inside me, then two.

"Oh, God."

"Is this right?"

"Yes. That's right. Curl them. Like that."

He curled them, and I came apart.

It was fast and sharp and it startled me.

I cried out against his shoulder and clenched around his fingers, and he held me through it with his other arm tight around my back.

"You are exquisite," he said roughly. "You are the most exquisite thing."

I was still shaking when I took hold of his cock.

His breath left him.

"I want you in me," I said. "Now."

"June."

"Now, Percival."

He braced himself above me.

He pushed in slowly, and I felt every inch of it, thick and stretching and so deep that I gasped.

He stopped, buried to the base, and put his forehead against mine.

His whole body trembled.

"Tell me," I whispered.

"You are tight and hot and perfect," he said. "I can feel your heartbeat around me. I am afraid to move."

"Move."

He pulled back and slid in again.

We both groaned.

He found a rhythm, slow and deep, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and held on.

The silver thread on my wrist glowed brighter every time he thrust, and so did the one on his.

"Harder," I said.

"I might hurt you."

"You won't. Harder."

He gave me harder.

The bed creaked, and the headboard knocked the wall, and I did not care who in the east wing could hear.

I dug my heels into his back and pulled him into me, and he said my name over and over.

Pleasure built low in my belly, tight and bright.

He slid a hand between us and rubbed my clit in time with his thrusts.

"Percival. Percival, I'm going to."

"Yes. Come for me. I want to feel it."

I came with a cry, clenching hard around him.

He lost it a moment later.

He buried his face in my neck, shuddering, and came inside me with a low broken groan that went on and on.

For a long time neither of us spoke.

He rolled onto his back and pulled me against his chest.

His heart was pounding under my ear.

"Was it bad?" he asked quietly.

"It was the best I've ever had," I said. "And I'm not the one who can't lie."

He laughed, a startled sound, and kissed my hair.

We lay there in the grey and the cold with the quilt pulled over us.

I fell asleep with my hand over his heart.

I woke to a knock that nearly broke the door.

"Mr. Wolcott?"

It was Maisie, and she was using her stern voice.

Percival sat up, with his hair wild and the silver still glowing on his wrist.

"The king wants you in the east hall," she called. "Right now. And, sir?"

"Yes, Mrs. Dunn."

"The whole east wing smelled it."

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