Entreat Me

by Grace Draven

She lifted one of her husband’s pistols from its silk-lined compartment, turned and took aim. Jimenin’s eyes rounded. “Get out,” she said in a low voice. “And don’t shadow our doorway again.” He tried for a taunting grin, ruined by his chin’s nervous quiver. “That’s not loaded.” The click of the flintlock’s hammer made him blanch. Louvaen’s heartbeat thudded in her ears. “You think not?” Her finger curled around the trigger. He backed slowly toward the door, his features sharpening with hate the closer he got to safety. “You and me, bitch. We’re not done.” Her arm hurt with the weight of the pistol, but Louvaen’s grip remained as steady as her voice. “We will be,” she promised.

The sorcerer had earlier proclaimed that Cinnia’s sister “possessed the disposition of a badger poked with a sharp stick.” Ambrose made plain his dislike of their newest guest,

Louvaen Duenda had an answer for most things and an argument for everything else. She didn’t debate; she went to war.

Fascinated, he succumbed to the temptation to tease Mistress Duenda and maybe render her tongue-tied. “What do I wish of you?” He paused, his gaze sweeping over her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes peeking out from her hem. Her hands, long-fingered and pale, gripped her upper arms. “You, in my bed,” he said.

“What a fine thing to know the caress of such hands,” he said in a low voice.

Louvaen sighed and burrowed deeper beneath the blankets, wondering how it might feel to have him beside her. If his body were as hot as the skin of his face and neck, she’d be in a sweat in no time. “Madness.” She slapped one of her pillows over her head, refusing to think more on the potential of such a scenario. “I am in hell,” he’d said in a voice almost as tortured as the cries she once heard him bellow in a cell. He wasn’t alone.

“I’m going to learn this lovely body and beautiful face, Louvaen Duenda.” The rough pads of his fingers rubbed her nipple. Louvaen clutched his shoulders and bucked against him. “And if I’m in hell, it’s a torture I’ll gladly suffer.”

Louvaen frowned. “Probably something he made with the venom and scales of the world’s most evil viper.” “Oh, you have a twin?” This time Ambrose took a long step out of striking range.

“You’ve finished me.” He slurred the words. She rose to her feet, her grin as unapologetic as her smile had been lascivious. “I believe that was the idea, my lord.” She leaned closer to kiss him, sucking on his bottom lip.

“And what look is that? The cat who’s stolen the cream?” “Nothing so tame. More like the wolf after a successful kill.” She threaded his hair through her fingers. “You may be called many things, Ballard. ‘Prey’ will never be one of them.”

“The red sovereign is truly a tyrant,” he grumbled. She shook in his arms with silent laughter. “Don’t complain so. You’re not the throne upon which she sits once a month.” “No, only the miserable supplicant who kneels before her.”

“It’s fortunate I’m a man of fortitude and sense, Mistress Duenda, because you test both. The next time you appear in my hall garbed like that, I will hoist you onto the table and take you amidst the plates of apricots.”

can’t accept this, my lord. It’s too fine a gift, and I am no queen.” Ballard gently pushed it back to her. “You are, Louvaen. You’re simply uncrowned.”

“Will you lock me in now, my lord?” He eyed her with a mock scowl. “Do I need to?” “Hardly. There’s food here, and I’m starved enough to gnaw on this table.” She offered a suggestive smile. “I should warn you though; your virtue is now in jeopardy.” “Is that a threat or a promise?”

His features softened, and he squeezed her fingers until the tips turned white. “Beautiful fishwife, how do you do that?” “Do what?” “Give me back my dignity.”

More baleful mutterings and a third thwack made the planks quiver under Ballard’s palm. “What are you doing?” Ambrose’s voice, heavy with disapproval, halted her cursing. “What does it look like? I’m opening the door.” Ballard’s lips twitched at the sarcasm in her tone. “Give me the axe, mistress.”

“Wife of my soul,” he said softly.

“She’ll be fine, dominus. You should come inside. The light’s almost gone.” No, he thought. The light is gone.

“I’d challenge gods and queens to make you mine, Ballard. Conquer a kingdom or two if necessary.” He didn’t smile at her declaration. His fingers followed her scalp line and passed through the locks that had come loose from her haphazard braid. “You’d find me outside the kingdom gates, my belongings at my feet and a note pinned to my cloak for you that read ‘Better you than us.’ They’d be wrong. Far better for me. The answer is yes. You didn’t even need to ask.”

“Nothing horrible. Only that you were going to castrate me, decapitate me, dismember me, drench me in boiling oil, douse me in hot pitch, and set me alight.”

“Thomas,” he said. “His name is Thomas.” The silence grew as she stared at him for long moments, the gray of her eyes deepening to charcoal. She finally spoke. ‘You must live another four centuries, Ballard, as must I. Any less and I’ll feel cheated of loving the finest man I’ve ever known.” Ballard dragged her into his arms and buried his face in her hair. “My beauty,” he whispered in her ear. “If we lived a thousand years, I’d still feel cheated.”

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