Free Snow by Deborah M. Brown

Then Alvarez was on me. He took me by the shoulders and dragged me out into the clearing.
    “Charming hit me. Knocked me senseless for a moment. When I came to, I was on the ground and he was kneeling over me. He hit me again.
    “‘Isn’t this a pleasant surprise? I was only thinking of having you beneath me the other night and now here you are. Such a pretty little spy.’
    “He kissed me, and that’s when I hit him. It was more luck than anything else, because my head was ringing and I could scarce see out of this eye.” Gault touched his swollen face with one fingertip. Ander wanted to kiss the bruised flesh around his eye. His swollen mouth. He clasped his hands together firmly. “He didn’t like that.” A laugh shivered through him. “He had my arms pinned above my head and he leaned forward and said, ‘When I’m finished with you, you will take my cock in your mouth and thank me for the privilege.’
    “He tried…he, he touched me. Tried to make me…but he couldn’t. He didn’t like that either. Alvarez laughed.
    “‘What price all your vaunted charm now?’
    “‘Do you think you can do better?’
    “‘With my hands tied behind my back.’”
    Gault fell silent.
    “He hurt you?” Ander prodded gently.
    Gault gave a despairing laugh and dropped his head to his knees once more. When he spoke, his voice was muffled, but Ander could still hear the self-loathing that laced his words.
    “Gods no. When he…there was nothing but gentleness in his touch. And pleasure. He made me want him… And I can never forgive him for that.”
    Even though Gault sat beside him, Ander could feel him withdrawing until the gap between their bodies might well have been a chasm rather than a hand’s span. He stared down at his clasped hands.
    And tried not to weep.

    He was weeping now. With a quick look towards the others, Snow White indicated that they should leave. Only Kaliko remained, his hand resting on her shoulder. She kissed the back of Ander’s hand. He gave her a bleak smile.
    “It will be all right. Gault will be all right,” she said softly. “You love him.”
    “Sometimes love isn’t enough, Snow. And there are some hurts that even love can never heal.”

The Queen
    Anais had noticed a cooling in the Snow Bitch’s attitude towards her betrothed. It was nothing blatant. Perhaps a tightening of the skin around her eyes or a thinning of her lips. A smile that never reached her eyes. There was wariness in Charming’s eyes too. A calculating expression on his face. They were nothing but polite in their dealings with each other, but Anais could sense a change.
    When she mentioned it to Rui, he had laughed it off as pre-wedding nerves. “Nothing has changed,” he said, kissing her roughly. “We need to keep moving. Entice him to your bed. We are so close to attaining everything that we desire.” He sounded angry, and there was anger in the way he made love to her that night too. Still, at the end, she clasped him to her, his hair soft as silk beneath her hands.
    “Must we do this?” she murmured. “I have no wish to lie with another.”
    Rui gave a furious exclamation and rolled off her to sit on the edge of the bed. “Are we to go over this again and again?”
    He was angry. Anais touched his shoulder, and he jerked upright and strode to the window, gazing out with a brooding expression on his face. Anais slid from the bed and wrapped her arms around him, pressing herself against his firm, warm body.
    “She will be queen this time next week. What makes you so certain the first thing she does won’t be to banish you and me from the court? What makes you so certain that we will even have a year in which to act?”
    He turned in her arms, and she stared into his face. “Charming will keep her so busy she won’t have time to think on you and me. She’ll be flat on her back.”
    “She doesn’t like him. In fact, I begin to think she hates him.”
    His hands dug painfully into her shoulders.