Chapter 46

ChapterForty-Six

Gluttony grinned at the sound of Katherine’s moan echoing through his ears. They’d holed up in his castle for a long time after their painful adventure. They assumed everyone needed a little space, and that had led to a ridiculous amount of time doing... this.

She reclined in his arms, her back pressed to his chest. Though her hands clutched at his wrists like she could push herself away from him. Or closer, he supposed, considering the things his hands had just done.

He had never been more happy than this moment. His woman, sweaty and limp in his arms, the powerful knowledge that he’d just given her so many orgasms he’d lost count at seven. All in front of a giant window that showed their kingdom spread out before them.

Breathing hard, Katherine tilted her head on his shoulder to peer up at him. “Are you quite finished yet?”

“With what?”

“Murdering me.” She wriggled in his arms, arching against him to press her bottom against him. “And you have yet to enjoy yourself at all, husband of mine.”

“Ah, well, sometimes the enjoyment is merely in listening to your cries.”

Gluttony lifted one of her hands up to the sunlight. A bright day had blessed their kingdom for once, and he watched as the sunlight sparkled off the stone of her ring. The clear crystal cast rainbows on the wall, and he watched them dance over the window.

It was a human custom, she’d said. And he was more than happy to have her wearing his mark for all to see. More than just the wounds on her neck that never quite healed. Thanks to Envy’s magic, she was never too bothered by them either. But now there was an additional mark, one that wasn’t made in blood and violence.

Although, he supposed he had killed a few traders for her ring, but he hadn’t told her that. His soft hearted wife was certainly too kind to continue wearing the ring if she knew he had murdered people to get it.

Besides, he still didn’t trust strangers coming into his kingdom. Not after what the last strangers had done.

“Wife,” he said quietly, letting the word roll over his tongue. “It has a nice ring to it.”

“I suppose it does. It sounds as lovely as husband, although I think I might call you my prince.” Katherine pressed a kiss to his neck.

“Prince?” He craned his neck to look at her. “Why prince?”

“Because you’re the prince in my story, Gluttony. The fairytale ending, just like the books we read together. My demon prince.”

Her little signs of affection had bloomed throughout his chest and turned him into a different man. He’d never thought such affection would soften him, but oh, it did. He would do anything for one of her kisses or soft smiles.

With a soft smile, he ran his nails up her thighs. Goosebumps rose in their wake, and he knew how much she loved to be touched like this. Feather light, almost as though she couldn’t feel him touching her at all.

And he just liked to touch her. Any way and any time that he could. It reminded him that she was real, and that none of this had been a dream.

She was right in front of him. Right here. Nothing would change that, even if people came to his castle to attack them. She was his forever, no matter the cost.

“Gluttony?” she asked, shifting in his arms until her hands were placed over his wrists again. “Do you mind answering a question that might be a little uncomfortable?”

“Now?”

“Well, it’s on my mind.”

He nuzzled into her hair, breathing in the scent that was so uniquely her and so comforting. “Anything, my love. You know there is nothing you could ask that I am not willing to share.”

“You said when your brothers met their partners that they...” She paused, swallowed hard, and then charged forward into the question like she was afraid of what he’d say. “They changed what spirits they were underneath. I know you all still refer to them as Lust and Greed, but you said they are no longer those spirits or... emotions.”

“They are not.” He had an idea where she was going with this, but he wanted her to ask it. “Lust is now Love, and Greed is now Benevolence. Both of them were changed once they started to spend more time, a considerable amount of time, with someone who thought differently from themselves. Us demon kings are not known for asking for others’ opinions very often and, apparently, that has been holding us back for a very long time.”

“Ah.” She traced patterns onto his wrists and up his forearms as she thought about what he said. “Are they happy as different spirits?”

“I think happiness is subjective. They are who they are, and they are happy in their current lives.” He hummed low in his breath, trying to find the right words to describe it to her. “If you take someone out of their life here, a mortal, put them into this castle that is so different from what they previously lived, and then ask if they are happy, are they?”

“It depends on the circumstances and what their life is like. Some people will be happy, others won’t. There’s just not enough details there to know if they’re happy or not.”

“The same goes for my brothers.” He curled his arms around her a little tighter, hugging her close to his heart. “The same goes for me. I am happy because you are here. Because we are working on making this kingdom a little better, day by day. Because you have woken me from my slumber when I was slowly rotting and allowing this castle to crumble along with me.”

“So they are happy, then?”

“I believe they are. Some days, they are probably less happy than others. There will always be a part of our spirit that remembers what we used to be. Changing from one spirit who has lived that way for over a thousand years into another... It’s hard not to still have the old thoughts. They’re just duller.”

“Oh,” Katherine said quietly. She hugged his arms around herself as well, unconsciously drawing him even closer to her before she sighed. “I wanted to ask if you had changed, but I also don’t want to pressure you to do so. I love you the way you are. And I have loved you for a very long time. I know that there are circumstances in your life that make it very difficult for you to change. And I don’t want you to think that I love you any less, or think less of you for not doing what your brothers did. I just...”

She trailed off, her words falling like drops of water on a still lake. He could almost see the ripples moving through her mind.

She didn’t want to make him feel bad, but she also felt a little bad about it herself. What was it about Selene and Varya that had changed their demon kings? Was Katherine lacking in some way that she couldn’t get him to change who he was?

All those thoughts and more likely played through his wife’s mind, and he’d have none of it.

“Kat,” he said with a warm chuckle. “Are you trying to ask if I have changed? Or if you have affected me as much as their partners affected them?”

“I wasn’t going to be so blunt about it.”

“And yet you are worried that you haven’t done enough to convince me to change?”

“Well...” she grumbled. “There aren’t many of you with partners, and the other two have already changed their emotions. You can’t blame a woman for being a little disgruntled about it. What is so different between the two of us that makes you stay the same? Is it the blood? Is it the feedings? I don’t...”

All right, that was enough of her spiraling.

He scooped her up into his arms and lifted her, rolling so he could stand with her wrapped around him like a little monkey. Together, they strode toward their massive bed in the corner that was completely covered in red silk and velvet. It was her favorite place in the house, she said, and this was where they would have this conversation.

Gluttony tossed her onto the springy mattress, doing his best not to snicker as he saw her bounce hard in the air a few times before she caught herself.

She glared up at him through the wild tangle of her hair. “Was that necessary for this conversation?”

“Absolutely.” Prowling up from the bottom of the bed, he crawled over her and forced her down onto her back. “I want to look at you while I tell you all this.”

“Why do you need to do that?”

“Because I enjoy watching your expressions change and I think it’s best that you cannot hide from me by looking out that window.” He tucked a finger under her chin and forced her to look at him. “Katherine, I need you to really focus and not let that anxiety whisper too much in your ears.”

She set her jaw and nodded firmly.

“Brave pet,” he muttered, leaning down to kiss her once because he couldn’t not. “You are afraid that I have not changed, and I have not told you about these changes because I thought you had seen them already. You’ve already watched a spirit change into another being. That is my fault. I should have mentioned it while it was happening.”

She blinked up at him, and he had the wonderful experience of seeing her rare expression of confusion. “What?”

“I’ve already changed, you ridiculous woman,” he said with a chuckle. “You should have been the first person to realize that.”

“What do you mean, you’ve changed?”

“I think it likely started the moment you walked into this castle. My spirit was more than ready to take up something new. I was hardly the remnants of the Gluttony I once was, anyway. Just a shadow of an emotion and then in you walked, the dream I had always had for myself and yet never was allowed to touch. Not even if I wanted to.” He traced his fingers down the side of her face, following the outline of her jaw. “You made me dream of another life, another being, long before you even realized you loved me.”

“Gluttony,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

He felt his cheeks flame a dark red before he gathered his courage to respond. “My brothers changed drastically. Lust to Love is a singular difference of how he learned to see the virtue in finding out who a person really is. Greed changed to Benevolence because he realized that taking from his people only hurt them, and it felt better to give.” Again, the blush deepened. He could feel the tips of his ears flaming. “I apparently am still learning.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

He sank against her body, allowing her to take his full weight as he rocked his hips against hers. A distraction? Absolutely. And perhaps he needed to know that she was a little distracted so he could get the words out.

“I did not change all that much,” he murmured. “There are opposites of who we are. The opposite of gluttony is abstinence, and I am not interested in stopping what I desire. I enjoy food, and drink, and...” He eyed her neck. “You.”

“You know I wouldn’t ask you to stop feeding off me, even if you were someone else.”

“I know that. I do not need it to live. I merely desire it. So apparently I have yet to learn how to change all that much, because I have good reason to suspect that while I am no longer Gluttony, I still wish to enjoy the finer things in life.” He took a deep breath, quite certain she would judge him for what he was about to say. “I believe I am Restraint.”

“Restraint,” she repeated, running the word over her tongue before searing him with a brilliant smile. “I like it. And I think that’s quite a lesson for someone like you to learn. To devour everything without question or end, that consumes everyone and everything in your path. But learning how to have restraint that means you are capable of knowing when to stop. And when to see that you’ve had enough. That is impressive, Gluttony. Or do you wish for me to call you something else?”

Oh, the wave of relief nearly made him limp. Gluttony had been so worried she would judge him or say that it wasn’t enough. He’d been so afraid that he couldn’t be enough for her and to know that she saw the use in what he had learned? It just made him love her even more.

He had never known that love would consume him like this. That he would get eaten up by it and spat out as something new. Although, he supposed he should have guessed this would happen. He’d seen his brothers. He’d seen what happened to them when they finally gave in to the beauty of what their women could give them.

“No, don’t call me anything else,” he murmured, leaning down to drag his tongue down her neck. “It’s a relief, I’ll admit. And here I was, thinking you wouldn’t find the value in a man who hadn’t changed all that much.”

“Oh, but I liked you exactly as you were. Don’t you remember?” Katherine shuddered in his arms, already spreading her legs for him because she knew what he wanted now.

But then she palmed both his cheeks and drew him back up her body. She held onto him with a fierce grip, staring deeply into his eyes. “I loved you before you changed, and I will love you long after. If you change again in a hundred years, I will still love you. There is no storm I will not weather with you, and no form of you that I will not love. You are the other half of my soul, Gluttony, and I don’t ever want you to question that.”

This woman… how he loved her. More and more every day. She was the light, the wonder, the best part of his morning and the peace at night.

Rising over her, he kissed her with every ounce of love in him. Perhaps a little too passionately, a little too hard, but it didn’t matter. She always took the love he had to give, no matter what way, shape, or form he gave it.

And when they both breathed heavily, he drew back with a sharp inhalation. “I need you, Kat. Now and forever.”

She slid her hands down his spine, squeezing the muscles there, and then drew him into her. “And I need you, my love. My life.”