Chapter 29

29

T he woman straddling my lap would be the death of me, of that I had no doubt. Mariana teased my pants down with a mischievous grin, licking her lips when my cock shot upward. That same pink tongue darted out to touch the tip, and I almost came right then. Ten years with nothing but your hand didn’t exactly do wonders for one’s control.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I told myself to slow things down. To talk to her. She’d been through so much and the cracks were starting to show. But then her lips wrapped around my cock, and I lost the ability to speak. A few leisurely pulls and my balls were already full to bursting. I gripped the back of her head. “Is this okay?”

She hummed against my length, and it was all the approval I needed. My grip tightened and I thrust upward, groaning with pleasure as she took me deeper still.

Ten years.

Ten painfully celibate years.

Stars painted the back of my lids when I exploded.

She took it all, swallowing it down and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand while I lay there, blissfully spent for the first time in forever. The angel between my knees.

My bloody, fucking heart.

“You’re the gods-damned sun, you know that?” I rasped, unable to take my gaze off her gloriously flushed face. Her lips parted, and I would swear I saw something flash in her eyes, something deep and exquisitely vulnerable.

“Somehow when you say it, I can almost believe it’s true,” she whispered, sounding uncharacteristically shy. The tips of her ears burned crimson, and she turned her head, rolling off my stomach onto the mattress. She glanced toward the head of the bed. “Also, I’m really glad that curse bunny didn’t come back. That would have been super awkward.”

Ah yes. The classic humor as a way of distraction technique. A poor attempt, but I’d go along with it if that’s what she needed. At least until we were safely back down the beanstalk. Then I planned to slip a bonding ring on her finger just as soon as she let me (and pray that she didn’t castrate me for losing my own down that damn well.) Sitting up, I made a show of peering around the room. “Speaking of awkward, what happened to that golden egg you laid in your excitement?”

That earned me a swift jab to the ribs. “Hilarious,” she grumbled, sliding off the bed.

I grinned, leaning back while I watched her rifle around the floor, the top half of her blouse gaping open in a spectacular display of brown, freckled flesh. Now this was something I could be happy doing for ten years straight.

“Where is that stupid—ha! Gotcha.” Mariana popped back up, and my grin stretched even wider as her tits bounced right along with her. She narrowed her eyes when she saw me, lips pursing as she followed my gaze downward. “Enjoying the show?”

“Every second.”

“Voyeuristic ass.”

“Brilliant goddess.”

“Go on.” She plopped down on the bed and tossed the golden egg into my lap.

I lifted it up, turning it this way and that as I looked it over.“Sweet angel?”

She snorted. “Not likely.” Leaning over, she traced a finger along one of the thin seams that ran from the top of the egg to the bottom. “What do you think this is, anyway? Some kind of ornamental figurine?” She wrinkled her nose. “Seems odd for a kid to keep something like this in his bed.”

“You’d be surprised what you can find in a kid’s bed. Mine was always full of rocks and shiny bits of things I’d find around town. Treasures I wanted to keep close.” I’d slept with one of her hair ribbons tucked beneath my pillow for a solid year when I was sixteen, but I wasn’t about to mention that. Or the way I’d wrap the satin strand around my hand when I… thought of her.

Definitely not going there.

“Treasures, huh?” She tossed the egg in the air. “It’s light. Not solid gold, but probably still valuable.” She tossed it again, higher this time, and it landed on her palm with a loud pop, the entire thing springing open like a sliced apple.

“Holy shit.” Her eyes rounded as she stared down at the splayed egg, and I leaned forward to get a better look. Sooty, black streaks stained the egg’s interior. I reached out to touch it, but Mariana slapped my hand away with a harsh, “Don’t!” She carefully set it on the bed and wiped her palms on her pants.

I eyed the tarnished egg warily. “What is it?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but… this might be what we’ve been looking for,” Mariana whispered. She fumbled with her belt, opening her satchel of magic tools without looking while she stared at the egg with growing excitement. “The source of the curse.”

My heart sped into a gallop. “Holy shit.” I wiped a shaky palm over my mouth. “Are you saying you can use this thing to break it?”

She shot me a sideways look before carefully plucking the egg up with a square of purple cloth pulled from her bag. “Maybe. Like I said, I can’t be sure. If I’m wrong, and I try the same spell over again…” She grimaced as she squeezed the open pieces back together so that they clicked into place, then wrapped the rest of the cloth around it and tucked it inside the satchel. “In order to guarantee the spell doesn’t backfire again, I’ll need to know for sure that this was the original vessel.”

“Okay.” I glanced around the messy room in a bewildered daze. “Any ideas on how we go about confirming something like that?”

She bit her lip. “To be honest, I’m not sure that we can. But we can at least try. One thing we can probably assume is that the owner of this room was the one to release the curse.”

“Given the drawings on the wall and the fact that this is a main room in the castle and not part of one of the outer villages, I’d say it most likely belonged to the young prince,” I reasoned.

Mariana nodded slowly. “That egg was designed to open on contact. Someone could have planted it for the prince to release. But who? And why?"

“Only one way to answer that.” I slid off the bed and grabbed my shirt. “Let’s turn this place out.”

We hastily threw our clothes back on before stripping the bed of its blankets and checking for more hidden “treasures”. When nothing came up, Mariana moved to the opposite side of the room, and we systematically picked our way through the mass of trinkets and toys. I was starting to think we were wasting our time when my gaze snagged on some writing scribbled on a wad of brown paper. I smoothed it out and read, “To His Royal Highness in celebration of his tenth birthday. May you receive everything you deserve and then some.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Well, that’s ominous.”

“Sounds like someone could have had a grudge,” Mariana agreed, working her way through the mess. She took the paper from my hands and examined both sides before folding it up into a square. It joined the egg in her satchel. “Too bad it doesn’t say who it’s from.”

“It doesn’t,” I murmured, my gaze shifting to the wall of tacked-up drawings. “But I think I know who we can ask.”

Mariana followed my gaze. A slow smile curved her lips, and we exchanged a look as our voices blended together.

“Harp.”