A War of Three Kings (Dying Lands #2)

27. Aldrin

Chapter 27

Aldrin

I lose myself in the kiss’ intensity. Our lips slide against each other with passion and our tongues caress. I press the softness of her body into me, reveling in the way she wraps around my chest and hips.

The sweet scent of her clean hair floods me. I bunch up her dress to get beneath it and my hands run across the curves of her thighs, her ass, her stomach, all skin on skin. Then they dip in, toward the center of her, at a leisurely pace.

A tightness coils within my stomach, and my blood turns to fire as my heart pounds savagely. My cock hardens, then throbs. I forget all else.

I need to touch her.

To see if she is slick and wet for me.

Right as my fingers almost reach the heat between her legs, Keira pulls away, breathless, cheeks rosy. “You’re still injured. You need to rest.”

She tries to shift off me, but I hold her hips in place. A scowl forms across her beautiful face, but I don’t care. Her movement has brought those ample breasts right in line with my face. In a fraction of a heartbeat, I have the buttons of her neckline undone and my face pressed against them, kissing my way from one to the other. I pull the fabric open and glide my tongue across the peak of one nipple.

A shuddering gasp slips from her and her back arches, pressing her breasts even closer to my face. I ignore the aching pulse of my ear. The higher my arousal pitches, the less I feel it, anyway.

“Aldrin,” Keira moans. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” My hand grazes up her bare thigh, flicking away the lacy fabric of her undergarment. I smile wickedly as my fingers slide across her damp core and slip inside of her. Those inner muscles clamp down around them immediately. “You want me as badly as I want you.”

“Of course I do.” Her touch roves across my chest, exploring each divot through the fabric of my tunic. “But I don’t want to reopen your wounds.”

I curl my fingers deep within her, again and again, rolling her clitoris with my thumb. “Are you sure this isn’t what you want? Or would you prefer my cock instead?”

“I—I…” She closes her eyes and throws her head back. “I want it all, but?—”

A spell comes over me as I watch every line of her face, her body, with rapt attention, as she takes the pleasure I give to her. Her lips part and the flush across her cheeks grows with the ecstasy on her features. Her hips move and buck as she rides my fingers. Each breath makes her chest heave and those breasts shudder.

I will never get enough of this.

Of having any part of me inside her, giving her this high. It is the sweetest addiction, making her a panting, moaning mess. The tension in Keira’s body increases until she becomes whipcord tight, then it shatters all at once as she climaxes around my fingers. Those inner muscles convulse around me in that way that drives me mad.

When the shudders rippling through her finally end and her eyes open, I take those two fingers out of her and put them in my mouth, sucking the taste of her off them. Keira lets out a low moan.

My cock is so hard and stretched it is almost painful. She tries to climb down my body, opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue, ready to take me deep inside, but I pull her hips back up again.

“Fuck me, Keira.” My voice sounds feral, even to my own ears.

“Aldrin, I’m worried?—”

I place a finger on her lips. “Be as gentle or rough as you like. Just fuck me.”

Keira places a hand on my chest and forces me to lie back on the bed. A pinch of pain radiates from my ear as it connects with the pillow, but I don’t let it show. I will combust if she stops now.

In seconds, Keira pulls her dress clean over her head and tosses it across the room. All that stunning, creamy skin and those sweeping curves are revealed, pure artwork to my eyes. I press my fingers into the flesh of her thighs to see the deep, sensual indentations they make.

The sight makes all rational thought fly from my mind.

She shimmies to remove the rest of her clothing, then all of mine. I can’t help reaching out and stroking every bit of skin I can get my hands on as she moves, running my hands up and down her body.

Keira straddles my hips again, fisting me to line my hardness up with her entrance, but I place a hand on her stomach to stop her. “Wait, Keira. I want you completely exposed.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I’m not wearing any clothing, Aldrin.”

“The mask,” I grunt, as she slowly pumps my cock. She makes it hard to think straight. “Remove your glamour. I want to see all of you.”

Her hand stills as her body turns rigid. “I don’t want to. I’m…as stupid as this sounds, I’m afraid of it.” Her eyes flick away from mine.

“I know.” My thumb finds her clitoris and rolls it in slow circles to stop her from overthinking. I relish in the small jolts her body makes. “This is a safe space. Just you and me. Drop the glamour and let me fuck your most primal side.”

To prove it is nothing to fear, I allow the thin, branching horns of my primal form to grow like a crown of twigs upon my head. Keira groans and her hand tightens around my cock, her thumb circling over its head and shooting waves of pleasure through me.

“Gods, these turn me on,” she breathes, running her fingers along the horns in a way that sends shivers down my spine.

I let out more of my primal side. Thick, black streaks akin to war paint appear across my cheekbones, down my neck and over my bare chest. My fingers turn black, but I hold back the claws that form in the heat of battle, because I want to touch her without restraint.

“Drop your glamour, Keira, even a little bit.” I run one hand down her face, never ceasing the motion of the other between her legs. “Accept your primal self. It will lift your block on your magic.”

She holds my eye, fingers tracing the lines of the war streaks across my chest, as she releases that tightly checked hold, bit by bit. Those sharply pointed ears are the first to show, making my stomach tumble at the fact that she is as fae as I am, even if she denies it.

Next, the tips of her hair become bright whipcords of burning fire that dance from yellow to orange to red. I grab a chunk of it and curl it around my wrist, roughly pulling until her lips meet mine, because I know there is no heat in her hair unless she summons her fire magic into it.

Every freckle across her body explodes into a glittering mass, like hundreds of stars are born on her skin. They reflect the fire raging within her.

“Fucking beautiful,” I growl in her ear. “You are breathtaking in every form.”

She smiles down at me, actually smiles, and it is everything. My heart swells until my entire chest aches.

Then she seats herself on my cock.

I throw my head back at the feel of that tight pussy clamping around me, taking all of me in, as a wave of sudden carnal bliss crests within me. There is pain in my ear at my careless motion, but it is an afterthought.

She leans down until her face is all I can see. “You stay still and let me pleasure you. I will stop if you threaten to open your wound. Understood?”

Her commanding tone does sinful things to me. My mouth dries out and I have to swallow multiple times before I can reply. “Yeah.”

Keira’s hips rock, gently, lovingly, passionately. The slow pull and tug of her core as my cock glides in and out of her is something completely different from the hard, brutal sex we have had in the past. It draws out the sensual intensity of every thrust, each building on top of the last in leisurely, teasing surges.

The roll of her hips has those generous breasts jiggling and pressing together, and I become fascinated by their movements. With each downward thrust, I delight inthe way her curvy ass seats itself on my hips and thighs, loving the softness and fullness of it. The way her fingernails dig into my chest where she holds onto me.

Tension coils tighter and tighter within me as the pleasure grows to an almost unbearable point, ricocheting through my entire body like liquid fire. Then her core tightens around me, and she tosses her head back, spine arching as her body shudders. A strangled cry peels from her lips as her inner muscles spasm around me. As she comes on my cock.

The ecstasy on her face, the fact that I can drive her to that point—it is the sexiest thing I have ever known.

It shatters me in the best kind of way, and my entire body stiffens as I am thrown off a precipice, spiraling down the intense bliss of my release.

I am left panting hard, sticky with sweat, and half blind as my vision turns white. Keira laughs. The sound is of elated, full of relief, and I drag my arms around her waist and cradle her against my chest, her legs still wrapped around me. We lie like that for a long time, feeling our heartbeats slow against each other’s chests.

I could die a happy man right here, like this, with her. But nothing short of our entire lives together would be enough for me. I can’t deny it was a relief when I discovered that her life span would be as long as mine.

Keira pulls back just enough to brush a light kiss across my lips, then she jerks up, reaching over me. “Dammit, Aldrin. Your ear is bleeding!” Her light touch grazes the bandage, causing the skin to sting, but her movement has put her bare breasts in my face again.

I place light kisses across her skin, anywhere that I can reach. “I don’t care if the entire cursed thing falls off right now.”

She sits back on her haunches, smirking down at me. “Is your lust ever satisfied? Or is it a bottomless pit?”

“Oh, you satisfy it very well, but then you go and stoke it up again almost immediately.”

She climbs off me and gets out of the bed. I leverage myself up as she dresses with agitation, her primal form slipping away and the glamoured mask of the woman I first met replacing it. I love both versions of her, but I rarely get to glimpse her rawer, less controlled side.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a healer to check your wound.”

My smile widens. “Maybe you should help me bathe first. As injured as I am with this nicked ear, I couldn’t possibly do it alone.”

Her hands freeze on the buttons of her long, thin dress, still leaving much of her cleavage exposed. “It’s more than a nicked ear! I saw how you looked when you rode in.”

“It was more than a cut ear. It hardly hurts anymore. Come back to bed.”

I endure her changing the bandage before she agrees to lie down beside me, curling into my side.

“Thank you,” I whisper into her hair.

“For what?” She squirms until she is peering up at me, her head nestled on my shoulder.

“For allowing me to see and touch your primal form. For feeling safe enough with me to show that vulnerability.” I tighten my hold around her waist.

A silence stretches out while her nose crinkles. “Aldrin, why do fae have primal forms?”

I let out a long breath. “It’s a legacy from the gods. The fae gods that created us by breeding with humans, not the ancient ones. The Tuatha Dé Danann have primal forms that take shapes of the elemental magic they were born from. My ancestor was of the trees and beast spirits. That’s why I grow a crown of twigs and take on stripes and claws when I tap the depths of their magic within me, or their rage. Your ancestor was of fire and decay. We make a formidable pair—the new life of spring and the death of autumn for rejuvenation.”

Keira lets out a choked laugh. “I hate that my power is death. I would prefer the power of life, like yours.”

“They are much the same.” I wrap a fire-red curl around my finger. “One without the other would lead to chaos or ruin. All things that live must die to pave the way for the next generation. There is good and evil in magic that is born of life and of death. Only fae with the strongest of Tuatha Dé Danann blood have primal forms.”

“Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Why they abandoned our realms?” She turns those doe eyes on me, and I swear the ghosts of fires burn within them. “I have been thinking a lot lately about the Tuatha Dé Danann wanderer Nissien, who sired my line. Why he came to your realm when the rest of his kind had forgotten it.”

“I try not to ponder the gods who turned their backs on us.” I let the words hang, drawing idle lines on her arm. After an age, I let the thoughts darkening my mind slip out. “Sometimes, I wonder if the sickness in my realm originates from their world. If something plagues them. Something hungry. They sealed shut all the portals after their last visit, but if you touch the moonstone, there is an inexplicable pull of one’s magic into it, like there is a vacuum on the other side.

“When feeding raw power into the gods’ portals, it all disappears like it never existed and a person cannot retrieve it. We have been forbidden from opening the portals to the gods’ realm by the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves, but it must still be possible, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. I believe they are trying to protect us, their children, and it is a warning I will heed at all costs. Perhaps Nissien’s visit was to check how we fared without their guidance.”

A weariness drags down my soul.

I can hardly battle the monsters in my own court, much less take on the demons of the gods.

Keira shifts beside me. “I thought the fae created the portals?—”

I let out a deep laugh. “We may be more powerful than humans, but we do not have that much magic! We can open them at will, manipulate their paths and destroy them, but we cannot create them. The stone itself is from the realm of the gods. The fact that you have so many here shows how much they favored humans and this land. I suspect your order of Mothers of Magic started out as a cult to worship the gods, and in return they created the sanctuaries with many portals.” I tug on the lock of Keira’s hair. “Besides, you need to stop referring to fae in third person. You are one of us, whether you like it or not.”

A frown pinches her features. “Can I not be both? I cannot belong to the culture I was raised in and spent my entire life a part of, and belong to the culture of my blood? Must I reject one for the other?”

I let out a rough sigh. She is right.

“You can identify as whatever you want, Keira. Both. Neither. It is up to you to decide. I’ll support you, so long as you don’t make my entire race the villains in your story.”

“Never, Aldrin,” she whispers. “Never again.”

“Can I be completely honest with you?” I ask softly.

She raises her head to look into my eyes. “Always.”

My heart rate ramps up as I choose my words carefully. “I don’t want you talking about us fae in third person, I don’t want you to reject your fae blood, because I want you to be my queen. To embrace being a fae queen. It is not much I offer you—a crown in exile while I am hunted by my enemies—but I am a selfish man, and I want all of you.”

Keira kisses me lightly on the lips. “You are far from selfish, Aldrin.” Her smile grows. “I want to be your lover, your queen and your life partner. I want all of you and to give you everything I have. We will fight those enemies together and win back your crown, because your people deserve a just ruler as much as you deserve your birthright.”

My stomach tumbles. I pull her in to me and kiss her hard in a bruising of lips. When Keira breaks away, she is breathless.

“No more hiding what we are to each other, Aldrin. I don’t care if every lord, countess and foot soldier has a problem with it. I won’t hide the fact that I am madly, desperately in love with you anymore.”

I cup her cheek as a thrill ripples through me. “Marry me, Keira. Become my betrothed.”

A tear runs down her cheek and I catch it with my thumb and brush it away. “Of course I will, Aldrin.”

We fall asleep mostly naked and curled up around each other. It is the closest to paradise I have ever come.