Kings of underland a bri.., p.24
Kings of Underland: A Bride for Beasts, page 24
“I was,” Raiden admits freely, sitting up with a yawn and lifting his arms above his head. He’s got a tiny hat on, one that looks much like an upside-down teacup. Then I realize that it is an upside-down teacup, stuck to his head with a spell like any of his other hats. He lifts it off, turns it over, and offers up a steaming cup of tea to me. “To help you regather your strength. It’s only boosted for energy and vitamins and stamina.”
“Stamina?” I ask with a raised brow and a roll of my eyes. I take the cup anyway and sniff it, orange blossoms and vanilla tickling my nose, and then I gingerly sip at it. He’s not wrong about my needing stamina. Just to calm him and North down after battle was a feat, let alone doing it after having defeated a kraken.
“You did well yesterday,” Raiden tells me, and even though I don’t want to be so pleased at such simple praise from him, I am. Because he’s a mercenary and a badass, and even if he’s a vampire now, he was a human before. He was from Topside. This is big praise coming from him.
He reaches out with a hand and tucks some hair behind my ear, and damned if my heart doesn’t go into a Frenzy of its own, beating so quickly that I know he can hear it. He is a vampire, after all. Can’t they sense that sort of thing?
Raiden throws his feet over the edge of the bed and stands up, flashing his carved-from-alabaster ass. My eyes get caught on the firm tightness of his butt cheeks and the dimples in the small of his lower back.
I turn my gaze back to the covers, forcing myself to drink the tea and keep things relatively chaste. I’m still exhausted after yesterday, and we’re supposed to pull into port later. I want to be dressed up and ready to meet my … subjects.
My subjects.
Wow.
I take another sip of my tea as Raiden kicks open a trunk and squats down to dig for clothes.
“Female,” North grinds out, turning over his shoulder to look at me. My attention slides his way, and I try to rationalize that the masculine god lying next to me is also the same guy that ate a giant squid atop a forest of coral blooms. It’s basically just calamari, am I right?
“Good morning, male,” I grind out right back at him, and his eyes flash with heat. I was being facetious, but I guess he likes it. He sits up, blankets tumbling down to his lap and covering what’s shaping up to be a very healthy morning erection. “How was the kraken last night? Did it taste like san-nakji?” I tease, referencing a Korean dish made from raw baby octopus.
“It was delicious,” he admits, rubbing at one of his curved black horns. “I’d have saved you some, but I wasn’t in my right mind. Please forgive me, Duchess.” He serves a half-bow that knocks the blankets just a little bit further down his waist. I can almost see his cock, but not quite.
Personally, I’m all bundled up in sweatpants and a tank top. They have those sorts of things here, you know? Underland is a mixed bag. Half medieval Europe, half modern-day gothic freakshow, and half fairy-tale romance. And that’s okay that three halves make one and a half. In Underland, math is relative.
“Thanks, but no thanks. I had more than enough kraken blood in my mouth yesterday.” I shiver at the memory, finishing off my tea and offering Raiden the cup back when he approaches the bed. He accepts it, shakes it out in his hand, and out comes a top hat. It unfolds from the cup until he’s grasping a shiny black hat with a red ribbon and a pocket watch tucked beside the crown.
Raiden places it back on his head just as the door opens and Rab appears, slouching lazily against it, hands tucked in his pockets, ears half-flopped into his face. He’s wearing sweatpants and nothing else, dressed as casually as I am.
“We’ll be arriving in Eighth Square in about an hour. Might want to get up and grab something to eat.” He studies me, reaching up to tug on one of his floppy ears in a mildly suggestive manner. “Cook’s so grateful to be alive, he’s served a veritable feast.” Rab hesitates, like that isn’t all that he wants to say. “Also … there’s something you might want to look at.”
“Besides my cock or my genteel manners or the possibility I may have given the Alice our very first heir last night?” North sounds so absurdly full of himself that I almost gag. And that smug look on his face? I should’ve let the kraken take him.
Rab doesn’t respond. Instead, he turns and takes off, leaving that tempting morsel to hang in the air behind him.
“Am I missing something vital here?” I mumble, trying to get out of bed and ending up being dragged back by the tail wrapped around my ankle. My entire body flushes warm at the sight of North’s gold eyes staring down at me. He reaches out with a claw and drags it down the length of my arm, leaving a tiny red scratch amongst the myriad other ones I received yesterday. “You couldn’t have gotten me …” I can’t even say the word.
North raises an eyebrow.
“Perhaps not yet, but if I stopped taking the potion, I could be impregnating you by the end of the week. Now that you’re Queen, it’s important we produce an heir.” He places his clawed hand on his overly broad chest. “While I’ve never tested the theory, I’m absolutely certain that my virility is unmatched. I’m swimmingly fertile.” He offers up a sharp grin that I ignore, pushing him back a few inches.
I struggle to sit up, groaning at my sore and aching body. It’s not just the wounds that I received during the melee either—it’s that thick ass dragon dick. Worse really, his tail. I cannot even believe I let him do that in front of the entire crew. Or that I let him do it all. Or most importantly how excited I am for him to do it again.
“I’ll give you some blood.” Raiden bites onto his wrist when he sees the state of my battered body. He was in no shape to offer such a thing last night.
“Go on,” North encourages, and I make a face as Raiden puts one knee on the bed, holding out his bloodied wrist for me to suck on. I wish it didn’t make such disturbing sounds when I did, or that they both weren’t staring at me like they’re ready for round two.
As soon as I pull away, swiping the blood from my lips with the sleeve of my hoodie, I start to feel all those little aches and pains fading to nothing.
“Better?” Raiden murmurs, and I nod, reaching down to carefully unhook North’s tail from my ankle.
“Better,” I agree, looking over at the dragon when he refuses to release the tight coil of black scales on my leg. “Didn’t you get enough last night?” I mutter, thinking about how bestial he was, how close he came to doing things with me in his dragon form. Like full-on jabberwock dick.
I can’t decide how I feel about that.
“It’s never enough, Duchess.” He locks eyes with me, reaching out to drag that same claw down the side of my neck. He hits the spot where Raiden left a bitemark on my neck, and pleasure arcs through me.
I scramble off the bed like I’ve been bitten, stumbling toward the shower in the corner and jerking the curtain closed before I strip down.
If I let these men have their way, I’ll spend the majority of this trip on my fucking back.
Not … that it’s such a bad idea.
Cook—he may or may not have a name besides Cook—truly has outdone himself. The long table I sat at the other night with Lory, Chesh, and Dee is outfitted with a spread fit for, well, nine kings and a queen.
“Oh, thank fuck,” I groan as I sink into one of the oyster chairs, picking up a golden fork and looking around for something that doesn’t look back. There are a lot of fish dishes on this table, most of them whole and sitting atop beds of sea vegetables. In one bowl, there’s a bouquet of steaming penises. I drop my fork as I gape at them.
“Geoducks,” Dee explains, flopping into the seat beside me and pointing at them with a knife. “Burrowing clams. They taste best when they’re steamed.” He reaches out and picks one up, slicing it into discs on his plate before offering a piece to me on the end of a fork.
Ah, gooey-ducks. Geoducks. They exist in the human world, too. And they really and truly look like dicks. Geo-dicks would’ve been a better name.
I taste the piece on the end of Dee’s fork, surprised to find that it isn’t too fishy. It’s nice and clean, almost sweet. I select a big, fat clam cock for myself and put it on my plate. It might look like a penis, but at least it isn’t smiling at me like some of the other dishes.
“This is all Wonderland fare,” Chesh comments, appearing on the opposite side of the table with his pupils blown wide. North offers him up a companionable pat on the head. “And so much fish. Pussies love fish, you know.” I ignore him as he piles his plate high, tail wafting gently behind him, ears splayed out to the sides like he can’t decide if he’s upset or pleased or both.
“Wonderland fare?” I ask as I look at the dishes in front of me. Steamed, baked, and boiled fish. Clams. Oysters. Muscles. Crabs and lobster. Sea urchins and penis-clams. It all looks fairly normal to me.
“All of this …” Chesh points a claw down the length of the table. “This is all Wonderland sea life. Not to say that any of these things don’t exist in Underland—they do—but they’re not very common. All of these creatures thrived before the Riving.”
“When we pulled up the net last night,” Lory comments, sauntering in like she doesn’t have a permanent frown etched into her forehead, “this is what was in it. After all that, we had a full net o’ food. Tell me how that makes any sense.” She takes a seat at the table and starts helping herself.
“Is this what you wanted me to look at?” I ask Rab, watching as he hands a pocket watch to March.
“What day of the month is it?” March inquires as he opens the back of the watch, revealing gears and cogs galore. They don’t seem to be ticking, as if the watch might be broken.
“Too much seawater,” Rab explains when he sees me looking. “And yes. And no. This is and isn’t what I wanted you to look at.”
March shakes the watch and holds it to one of his rabbit ears, as if he’s listening for something in particular.
“It’s the fourth,” Raiden replies, pushing away the empty plate in front of him. He does eat and drink, like anyone else, but I wonder if he prefers blood over regular food or if he even needs regular food at all.
“Two days wrong,” March murmurs, picking up a knife and cutting off a square pat of butter from the end of a stick. He goes about smearing the butter across the gears and cogs as I stare at him, a bite of geoduck halfway to my mouth. When the two Rabbits catch me looking, they both swivel their ears in my direction. “What? I’m greasing the works. Don’t act like I’m as mad as, say, the Mad Hatter.”
March finishes his task, closes the watch with a snap, and then uses the chain to dip it into a cup of tea. When he removes it, he hits the gold stopper on one side, and the device begins to tick again. March grins, leaning his elbow on the table and getting in the other Rabbit’s face.
“Told you I could fix anything I set my mind to.” He hands the watch over and Rab takes it grudgingly, rubbing off the excess tea on his napkin and looking it over. “It only works if you’ve got the best butter—and only if no crumbs get in.” He raises a finger in warning and then goes back to piling food on his plate.
“What time is it anyway?” I ask Rab, and he gives me a weird look. Is this about Time again? Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.
“This watch doesn’t tell what time of day it is,” he explains, as if I’m the one that’s lost my mind.
“It tells the day of the month, but not what o’clock it is?” I murmur, squinting my eyes at him.
“Why should it?” mutters the Hatter. “Does your watch tell you what year it is?”
“Of course not,” I reply very readily, “but that’s because it stays the same year for such a long time together.”
“Which is just the case with mine,” Rab breathes, red eyes wide, and then he laughs, and March laughs, and Hatter laughs, but I have no idea what the fuck they’re laughing about so I ignore them.
Their remarks seem to have no sort of meaning in them, and yet they’re certainly in English.
I turn to Tee as he walks into the room with a pale face and shaking hands.
“Oh my God, Tee.” I stand up suddenly, offering him my chair. He waves me off and pulls out the stool next to it instead. Ah right. His wings would never fit in the oyster chair anyhow. “Did you eat anything last night?”
It’s hard to say how much blood Raiden took from him, but based on the way he looks this morning, I’d say it was a lot.
“I’m okay, Allison.” He cups the side of my face in gentle fingers, and then takes a seat. I gather up some relatively harmless looking food items—I think these are fried fish sticks—and push the plate in front of him. He has a hard time containing his smile as he takes it and picks up a piece of flaky fish.
The King is right behind Tee, but it takes me a minute to look past Tee’s pallid expression to his curious one.
“Would you accompany me to the deck after you’ve finished eating?” he inquires, and Rab points at him.
“On the deck, it’s the other half of the things I both did and didn’t want you to see.” He goes back to eating as I sigh. North growls at him; I appreciate the sense of camaraderie. If North weren’t also keen on fucking with me, I’d almost believe it.
“Sure thing.”
Brennin takes the seat across from me, giving Lory a dirty look, as if eating beside a pirate is just so outside the realm of propriety that he can barely stand it. We all ignore him.
Lar is the last to come in, shadowed by Captain Dodo himself.
“In all my years, ain’t never seen a kraken,” he murmurs as he takes a seat on my side of the table, nowhere near Lory. She pauses with a bite of fish halfway to her mouth and stares at him, like she thinks he’s gone mad or is simply too stupid to live. When she slams her fork down and shoves up from the table, Dodo looks after her like she is the crazy one. “What in the Nine Seas is wrong with that woman?” he growls out after the mess hall door slams behind her.
“She’s in love with you or she wants to fuck you or both of those things simultaneously,” Dee blurts out just before I elbow him in the side, and he chuckles at me.
“The fuck are you flappin’ your jaw about?” Dodo retorts, as if he isn’t speaking to one of the rulers of the kingdom he lives in. “Lory ain’t got eyes for men, women, or any other creature that’s sentient enough to date.”
Um.
I decide not to ask. I’m assuming he means … vampires. Angels. Jabberwock.
I shove a bite of food in my mouth so that nobody can see the strained expression on my face. Last night with North was … Well. It was interesting. And hot as fuck.
As if he can sense that I’m thinking about him, his tail snakes beneath the table and hooks onto my ankle again, offering up a lascivious stroke of scales that’s just one step too far past footsie for a breakfast meeting.
Lar sinks into the chair at the end of the table, wings drooping around him, and then I’m worried all over again, and fixing up another plate.
“Sunshine,” he murmurs, a gentle admonishment, as if he doesn’t think a queen should serve her king breakfast. “Thank you,” he finally adds with another sigh. As I peer at him, I can’t decide who looks more haggard: the Caterpillar or Tweedledum.
“Did the vision …” I trail off and gesture randomly, unsure how to phrase it. “Did it kick your ass?”
He offers me up a rueful smile, reaching up to tug at an earring.
“More than that. I can’t say what it is, but something is off. It’s as if …” He sighs heavily and then reaches for a pot of tea. I beat him to it, pouring a generous cup and passing it over. As I hand it to him, our hands touch, and my skin tingles in too many places to count.
I sit down in a fluff of blue skirts, having switched into a dress that looks remarkably like the one my sister bought for me before I ever left for Underland. It’s a sky-blue with a ruffled white petticoat underneath and a matching white apron that goes over the top. When I inquired with Dee about why I might need an apron, he had a simple, easy answer for me: blood.
Ah, yes. An apron to keep blood off the dress. How nice.
“It’s as if what?” Brennin demands, and I turn a glare on him. He might’ve been able to talk to Lar like that before, when he was his soothsayer and nothing more, but he’s my husband now and I won’t stand for it. The King notices me looking but offers up no apology, meeting my glare dead-on with his onyx eyes and forcefully buttering his bread with a gloved hand.
“It feels like someone is blocking me from seeing the things that I should rightfully see.” Lar finishes his drink and then stares into the bottom of his cup, frowning. “All I see are queens.” He knocks the cup onto the floor where it shatters, and then huffs out a breath, raking his fingers through his hair and looking very much the tortured faerie prince. “Everywhere I look now, it’s queens instead of tentacles.”
“Queens?” Dee echoes, and then he shivers all over. “Queen is a lovely word, but queens in the plural sounds absolutely dreadful. It’s one thing to battle a king, but to battle a queen?” He sighs and stretches his wings out behind him before folding them close. I’m still not entirely sure what he did when he kissed me yesterday, but I didn’t have a seizure and I killed the kraken, so that’s what matters.
“Beware the true White Queen, my love. The jaws that bite, the blood that sings. Beware the twisted king, and shun their frumious wedding rings.”
Lar’s words from the university singsong their way through my head, and I glance over to find him watching me. Tee notices us staring at each other and pauses, looking between the pair of us as if he can puzzle out what’s going through our heads.
I don’t want to mention anything about that prophecy with Dodo in the room, so I keep my mouth shut, but I know we’re both thinking it. The White Queen? What White Queen? As far as I know, Underland only has four kingdoms with any power or sway: Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, and Spades.
Then again, the White Knight calls herself, well, the White Knight.
