29. Reznyk
Chapter 29
Reznyk
DANGEROUS WORK
T his woman is going to kill me.
I’ve tried so hard, damn it. I sleep on the floor; I never touch her. I’ve been so very good at keeping my hands to myself and my eyes off Kira’s ass. And her chest. And her lips.
Partly because of some whisper of intuition that says getting physical again wouldn’t be a great idea, but mostly because I have no idea how to proceed. I’ve had friends and a lover, but never in the same package. Kira started as a lover. She’s gotten dangerously close to being a friend.
No. If I’m being honest, Kira is a friend. Hells, she’s more than a friend. I’ve had friends before; Syrus, Aveus, and Pytr, the three other Elites in the Towers. I never told them what brought me to Silver City.
I’ve never told anyone about Blackwater.
It should have sent her screaming. Instead, she acts like it doesn’t even matter, the smoldering trail of destruction that seems to follow me no matter where I go. I should find it infuriating, the way she dismissed what I just told her.
But it’s hard for me to feel anything over the constant throbbing of my desperate cock. Gods, I can’t drain that bastard enough. Just listening to Kira catch her breath next to me is enough to keep me hard.
Kira’s fingers slip under my shirt and trace a path up my chest. My brain shuts down, all of my best intentions vanishing like mist before the rising sun. A moment later her lips meet my neck. My eyes snap open, catching wisps of clouds as they tangle together in the sky. I try to say something but it comes out as a strangled groan.
“Mmmm,” Kira purrs against my ear as her fingers dance across my chest. “Tell me something, Reznyk?”
“Anything,” I manage to say.
“I think I forgot where the Port of Good Fortune is,” she says.
Something flashes in her eyes, and the explanation I was about to offer dies on my lips as the memory of that little room in the hunting lodge comes rushing back. Kira’s naked body on the bed, my tongue tracing an imaginary map through the mountains of her breasts and the valley between her legs.
“Oh?” I stammer. “You need me to show you where that is again?”
“I might be able to find it,” she replies. “If you take off your shirt.”
I obey, because I’m an idiot and because it has been a very long time since a woman told me to take my shirt off. When I lie back down on the grass, the sun filters through Kira’s fiery hair as she grins at me.
“Right,” she says, tracing a finger over my collarbone. “This is Cairncliff, then.”
“Cassonia,” I reply.
Her smile widens, and then she bends down to run that wicked tongue over my skin.
“Like I said,” she replies. “Cassonia.”
I groan as her lips trace a path down my chest. One of her hands toys with my nipple, and I grit my teeth against the sudden impulse to roll her over onto the ground and drive my tongue into her sweet mouth.
“The Iron Mountains,” Kira says, before she closes her mouth over my other nipple.
I try to say yes, but it comes out as another moan. Kira grins at me like a hunter standing over her fallen prey as her hair fans out across my chest, silk over my skin. Then she looks down at my chest and frowns.
“Damn,” she says. “You have a lot of scars.”
“It’s dangerous work, being a magistrate,” I say.
“You’re not a magistrate,” she replies.
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
Our eyes meet. The air between us burns. Her fingers drop below my chest, tracing a path through the tangled curls toward my abdomen.
“Right,” she says. “So here’s Silver City.”
She kisses my navel, then lower, and lower. I close my eyes as my entire body throbs with her touch. Gods, maybe this is a mistake, but I wouldn’t stop her for all the shills in Silver City.
She stops at the waistline of my pants, then rubs her hand along my cock as she argues with the lacing.
“If Deep’s Crossing is here,” she says, tugging my pants down to kiss the top of my left hip. “Then that must mean?—”
She pulls my pants down to my knees, then lets her lips trace a line across my trembling skin, from my hips to the base of my shaft.
“Oh, here we are,” Kira says. “The Port.”
And she takes me in her mouth.
I make a sound that’s not even remotely close to human speech. Kira’s fingers wrap around my shaft as her tongue flicks over the soft head, and then she’s swallowing me, sucking me off like she never wants to do anything else in this world.
My gods, she’s good. I try to hold still, but my hips rise to meet her, my body responding no matter what my mind says. I have a moment to think about how long it’s been since anyone has done this to me, and then my thoughts are buried by waves of pleasure. I feel my climax building, hot and fast at the base of my cock, and hells, she’s so good. This is so good?—
And suddenly it’s not enough. My eyes snap open. I want more in a way I haven’t felt in years.
“Kira,” I gasp.
I twist my hips on the grass, pulling away from her sweet, soft lips. She looks up at me, mouth glistening, eyes wide.
She’s so beautiful it hurts.
Longing throbs inside me, a deep, pulsing ache. No, this isn’t enough. We’re not playing Questions above the hunting lodge anymore. She can’t stay here, and I can’t leave with her, but whatever this is between us, it’s more than just another tumble in the sheets.
I want it to be more.
I lean forward and run my fingers along her cheek. “Kira,” I whisper. “You’re?—”
But my voice fails me. I don’t have a word for someone who makes me laugh, who works by my side, and who is so godsdamned sexy she makes me ache. She’s more than a friend, more than a lover, much more than a night in a hunting lodge.
So I kiss her instead. She’s shy at first, her lips slow to open, as if she’s afraid she’s done something wrong. I lean back, pulling her into the grass with me, kissing her softly, slowly. Kissing her like we have nothing else in this life to do, as if the entire world will wait in sunlight and birdsong while I kiss the woman who has become more than my lover.
I roll over her, pressing her shoulders to the grass as I tug off my pants. Slowly, I run my hand down her body, pull her pants off, and spread her thighs. Her eyes fly open, as blue as the sky above the Daggers.
“Reznyk—” she gasps, as if she knows what I’m thinking.
I nod, then come onto my knees. Her legs spread out before me; my gods, men have killed and died for less than this. My breath catches in the back of my throat. My cock strains forward, like it’s trying to find the heat of her body with or without me. Kira frowns. The air between us trembles.
“Are— Are you sure?” Kira says.
I lean forward, my hands sinking into the grass above her shoulders, covering her body with mine. The heat of her rises to meet me; my cock brushes the curls between her legs, and I can’t stop the moan that rips out of my throat. My arms tremble with the effort of holding myself back. Somehow, I find my voice.
“I’m sure,” I whisper, in a voice as ragged as the edges of the mountains that surround us. “If there’s a child, I— I’ll?—”
My throat closes around the sheer impossibility of the thoughts rising inside me. It doesn’t matter what I say. If there’s a child, I’ll find a way to care for it. I’ll make a way with fists and blood, if I need to.
Kira’s head shakes against the grass, her hair tangling with the flowers. “The Towers,” she says. “I drink the tea.”
Of course. The nasty contraceptive tea everyone inside the Towers is forced to drink once a month, preventing any unnecessary complications despite the Towers’s loosely enforced policy of celibacy.
“Still,” I start, but my voice catches on something in the back of my throat.
Because, in that trembling heartbeat of a moment, I almost want to plant a seed that will grow. To have the promise of a future.
I shake my head, then begin to tip my hips forward. She’s hot, wet, and sweet, and she makes a noise as I begin to enter her, a sort of gasp. She watches me as I move inside her, as slowly as I can, letting her surround me.
Gods, she feels good. My muscles tighten with the effort of holding back, entering her slowly. I gasp for breath as my shoulders roll, every part of me burning, drowning. Something shimmers in the edge of my vision. I break Kira’s gaze, turn away for a heartbeat.
Magic dances in the air all around us. It’s rising from me like steam off a river, slipping free as my focus shifts to the dance between us. It looks like sparks, or stars, golden fragments of pure magic swirling around us. I close my eyes, ignoring the subtle pull of magic as I sink into Kira’s body.
Then I’m inside of her, fully inside. She makes another sound, a cry that’s almost my name. Magic races across my skin; for the first time since the old god died in my arms, I don’t try to hold it back.
I move my hips slowly, pulling out and returning in long, slow waves. When I open my eyes, sparks of magic wink and dance in Kira’s hair. Her mouth is open; sweat beads on her neck and chest. She reaches up and sinks her fingers into my hair.
“Fuck,” she growls. “Fuck, don’t stop!”
Her hips rise to meet me. Magic flares and sparks down my arms. Pleasure burns at the base of my spine; my control is thin as the edge of a knife, sharp and cold. I bring one hand to the place where our bodies join and sink my fingers into the curls of Kira’s sex until I touch the hard, hot nub of her clit and she screams.
I move faster, panting as sweat stings my eyes. Kira gasps and trembles beneath me, her legs wrapped around my waist, my name coming out in broken gasps, and my gods, she feels good. I want more, more of her, more of this, all of this, forever?—
Kira screams again as she comes undone beneath me. Her sex pulls tight, closing as I slam into her hips, plunging deeper and deeper, ecstasy flooding my body, exploding from deep inside of me, seed pulsing through my cock in waves, filling her, a cry ripping through my throat that I couldn’t swallow if I tried.
My body curls forward. I collapse with my head against her shoulder, my breath ragged and uneven, the world spinning on without me as the last of my seed spills between Kira’s sweet legs. Kira gasps. Her arms tighten around my back.
“Are— Are you doing that?” she whispers.
I turn away from the safe haven of her neck. Magic spins around us like a field of golden stars.
“Shit,” I groan. “Sorry.”
“No,” she whispers. “It’s beautiful.”
I kiss the soft skin of her neck, then roll onto the grass and drape my arm across her stomach. The magic is dissipating; already the golden sparks look more like mist and less like stars.
“Does that happen every time?” Kira asks.
I laugh, but it comes out sad and low. “No,” I say. “I didn’t have magic until I killed the old god. This is their magic, trapped inside my body.”
Once again, this is the kind of statement that should horrify any rational person. Kira should react to this with shock, or possibly rage. Instead, she folds her arm over mine and watches me with those perfect blue eyes like she couldn’t care less who or what I’ve murdered.
Hells, this woman is insane. Suddenly, I want to do this all over again. Kissing. Pulling off her clothes. Sinking into her, losing myself so fully that the magic trapped inside my body escapes to dance against the clouds.
I sigh. “I tried to stop it,” I admit. “At first. When the old god was dying, I felt the magic leaving their body. I thought that’s what I wanted, for their magic to come to me. But, when it happened, all I wanted was to stop it. To keep them alive.”
I turn away. That’s yet another thing I’ve never told anyone, how my courage failed at the moment of my victory. How desperately I tried to undo the very thing I’d trained for years to do.
“Hells,” Kira whispers.
I blink at the sky. The magic is all but invisible now, just a slight suggestion of golden mist rising above us.
“I tried to set it free,” I whisper. “For months afterward, I tried to let it go. I ruined the Towers’s plan and ran from them, moving at night, hiding in the forest during the day and trying to get rid of it. I pushed magic into the world for hours, illusions and flames and spears, until I passed out. But every time I woke up, it was still here.”
I touch my fist to my chest and try to laugh. It comes out as more of a whimper.
“Maybe the magic didn’t want to leave,” Kira says.
I turn to frown at her.
“Oh, you haven’t considered that, have you?” she asks, with a wicked grin. “You didn’t think to ask the magic what it wanted?”
“Magic doesn’t want things—” I begin, but then stop.
Kira wouldn’t know. She’s never felt the pull of magic trapped inside silver chains or pipes. The Towers never trained her how to manipulate it.
But, some strange part of my mind whispers, that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. The magic inside of me doesn’t feel at all like the magic I used in the Towers, or the magic I freed from the silver chain to destroy the city of Blackwater. I’d assumed, when I stopped to think about it at all, that the difference was because this magic came from an old god while the magic inside the Towers came from other places I’d rather not think about.
But maybe it’s more than that. This magic is living, not trapped and static. It hums and purrs inside of me, instead of hissing like an angry caged animal.
I smile at the woman who’s surpassed every single one of my expectations. More than a lover, more than a friend. Whatever that is.
“Kira,” I say. “You’re brilliant.”
And then I stop her objections with a kiss.