Dark and Stormy Knight by Nina Mason Read Free Book Online

slipped through the crack in the door.
    In a swirl of skirts, Gwyn went after him. Pulse quickening, she followed the loping cat down the broad oak staircase, through the paneled great hall, and into a room lined with towering bookcases. She paused in the doorway to catch her breath. In the center, atop a worn Persian carpet, a stately oak desk faced a fireplace. Books, papers, and an open laptop littered the desk’s broad surface.
    The cat jumped onto the ledge of one of the columns of shelves, rubbed against a row of books, and meowed as if trying to show her something. She crossed to where he was and skimmed the spines.
    The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
    Beauty’s Punishment
    Beauty’s Release
    Holy smokes. The cat had rubbed against The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy written by Anne Rice under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure. Erotic novels set in a medieval fantasy world, the books were loosely based on the age-old story of Sleeping Beauty.
    Very loosely.
    In more ways than one.
    In the first of the three, Beauty fell into an enchanted sleep after pricking her finger. Instead of kissing her awake, the prince stripped her naked and claimed her virginity. Afterward, he took her back to his kingdom, where BDSM was the norm. All of the beautiful young subjects of the kingdom did whatever their masters asked, from bondage to spanking to being ridden like ponies.
    She swallowed hard. Was Sir Leith the faery equivalent of Beauty’s prince?
    Now convinced more than ever the cat was not just a cat, Gwyn arched an eyebrow at the animal.
    “Does your interest in BDSM go beyond books?”
    Meow.
    Pulling Beauty’s Punishment off the shelf, she thumbed through the pages. Desire ignited deep in her belly as she skimmed an explicit passage in which one of the characters, now a sex slave, was being sodomized by one man while fellating another.
    All the while, the cat watched with an interest bordering on voyeurism.
    Unnerved by his stare and the tingling between her legs, Gwyn closed and returned the book to its place on the shelf.
    “You didn’t care for it?”
    Gwen gulped and did a double-take. The cat had not just spoken to her. Yes, she’d suspected he was more than he appeared, but suspicion and confirmation were two different things.
    She checked behind her to be sure nobody had come in when her back was turned. Nobody had. Looking back to the cat, she asked the obvious question. “Did you just speak or am I going bonkers?”
    “I did speak,” the cat returned, “though the fact that I can talk does not automatically rule out insanity on your part.”
    She blinked at the cat a few moments, wondering if she had indeed lost her mind. Perhaps her head injury was causing her to hallucinate. That was, of course, the most logical explanation, but she’d much prefer magic, not madness, lay behind the experience.
    Deciding to carry on as if the cat had truly spoken, she cleared her throat. “Forgive me for being dumbstruck, but I’ve never met a talking cat before.”
    “Strictly speaking, I’m not just a talking cat.”
    Aha! He’d as much as admitted he was a shapeshifting faery—just like Sir Heath in The Knight of Cups.
    “I gathered as much,” she said. “Now tell me why, out of all the books in your library, you showed me these?”
    “I will answer your question when you’ve answered mine.”
    She blinked at the cat, confused. “I would be happy to answer your question if I could remember what you’d asked me.”
    “I asked if you liked the book.”
    “I liked it fine.” This felt more like a kinky version of Wonderland by the second. “I just don’t appreciate being shown erotic literature by—” She hesitated, leaving the sentence incomplete. She needed to be sure she was dealing with who she thought she was dealing with before making accusations. “You are Sir Leith MacQuill, the laird of this castle, are you not? In the form of your alter ego, I presume, like the hero in your wife’s book?”
    “My