The First Loss: Vaelor x Elora (Rogue X Ara Book 3)

Chapter 23

Goddess, his mouth.

My cheeks heated, but what else could I have done but nod? Because he sure as hell wasn’t wrong.

The tightly leashed, respectful Vaelor had disappeared before my very eyes, morphed into this beast of a man, one my body screamed to get well acquainted with.

His smile turned devilish, and the blush spread down my neck but didn’t stop there. My skin felt too hot, too tight, like if he didn’t touch me and douse the flames, I was going to combust.

As if my thoughts were written on my forehead, his hand resumed its motion. When his fingers curled inside me, my eyes threatened to roll back, my legs trembling.

But it wasn’t his fingers I wanted tonight—well, not only his fingers.

I slid my hand down between us and palmed the front of his trousers, biting back a gasp at thesize of him. He ground into my hand with a groan, and the sound wound through me, straight to my core. I clenched around his fingers, and he moved faster.

“Oh…” I moaned, breathless as I continued to stroke his cock through the fabric. “Oh, Goddess.”

“Goddess?” he whispered into my neck, sending a wave of chills over my skin. He was everywhere, touching, tasting, feeling, consuming.“Sun ray, if you must call out to a deity, call out my name, because I’m the only one who will answer you.” He pressed his lips to the hollow of my throat. “The only one who will savor you.” Another teasing kiss. “The only one who will feel this cunt around my fingers, my tongue, my cock.”

My breath hitched, and his lips found the swell of my breast. Take it off, rip it, shred it. I needed the fabric between his mouth and my breasts fucking gone, burned, destroyed.

He gripped the neckline of my thin dress, and I nearly melted when his gaze found mine, molten silver. The corner of his mouth ticked up, and he tore the fabric effortlessly.

I’d never been more thankful to be in a shift than I was at this moment.

With my breasts exposed, he held my gaze as he lowered to his knees and brought my nipple into his warm mouth. A loud moan left my lips of its own volition, my hands tangling in his hair, but he released me too soon. The bud hardened in the chilled air as he kissed his way to the other. “If you must pray, pray to me, the king on his knees for you.”

“Vaelor…” His name left me on a pant, and Goddess damn me, the heat in his eyes at the sound of it could’ve brought me to my knees—or burst us both into flames, but fuck, at least we’d die in bliss.

My head fell back to the wall as he licked and sucked and swirled his tongue. I repeated his name over and over, the only word left in my head, breathless and begging—a prayer, as he said. Although, it felt like he was worshiping my body instead, kneeling at my altar while his mouth proved his utmost devotion.

Suddenly, he slipped his fingers from me and slid his hands around my thighs. I yelped when he stood, lifting me with him, and my legs wrapped around his waist on instinct.

A laugh bubbled in my throat. “I could’ve walked.”

He nodded as he opened the back door and stepped over the threshold. “You could’ve.”

Our soaked clothes dripped on the floor as he kicked the door shut and carried me to the bedroom, my heart racing harder with each step. My chest heaved, my nerves frayed but excited.

I wanted this. I wanted him.

Still, nervousness bit at me and he seemed to notice as he laid me gently on the bed. He moved up my body until our faces were mere inches from each other. His head tilted to the side as he slid his hand into my hair, his touch soft as he cupped the nape of my neck.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry it took me so long to admit that, but damn it all, I do, Elora. I love you so much.”

My eyes burned, and I swallowed hard against the rising knot in my throat. My fingers wound in his hair as I replied between kisses, “I love you too.”

He braced himself on one hand and lifted up, trailing his fingers down my neck to slide my hair back and reveal the hollow of my throat. “I want to be yours, and I want you to be mine, but I won’t mark you without hearing you say the words. I need to know you want this too because it’s a choice—your choice.”

My heart swelled, and a tear slipped down the side of my face. With one palm on his cheek and the other over his hand at my neck, I whispered, “I’ve wanted you for a very long time, Vaelor, and this is just one more way to have you. I want you. I always have and I always will. Please.”

His irises crackled, and butterflies released in my belly—hot, tingling, needy little butterflies. He licked his lips when I slowly pulled his hand away, and his gaze locked onto my throat. When he lowered, his irises grew brighter, blinding, casting the entire room in silver.

My chest rose and fell quicker with each passing second, and when he skimmed his lips over my skin, I gasped.

“Relax, love,” he murmured and kissed the spot again. “Breathe.”

I inhaled slowly and tried to relax, but he was about to bite me—break my skin with his fucking teeth. How could anyone be calm knowing that? But I couldn’t deny how enticing the idea was, how depraved and delicious it sounded.

His teeth grazed along my skin, and I closed my eyes, winding my arms around him. Another breath, and he sank his teeth in with excruciating slowness.

I felt everything, all at once, pain instantly drowned out by ecstasy in its truest form.

My muscles tensed, my mouth falling open and back arching, as his lightning raced through my veins, caressing and claiming every part of me, every inch, before settling in my core and setting me on fire.

He growled, his hand lowering between us as he did exactly what I needed. He yanked his trousers off and slid the head of his cock along my soaked entrance. My knees fell to the side, hips lifting, and he pulled his teeth from my skin.

“I can smell you, your need, and my, my…” He clicked his tongue and inhaled deeply before pressing a warm, wet kiss over the stinging wound. He kept teasing his cock at my entrance, teasing and teasing and teasing, and I wanted to fucking scream. My hips hitched, my nails digging into his back. “Aren’t you a needy little thing?”

“Vaelor!” I shouted in frustration, which rewarded me with an inch—a wide, stretching inch that sucked the breath from my lungs.

He let out a slow hum and grabbed my jaw to tilt my face to his, forcing me to meet his molten gaze. His lips were coated in red—my red. That should’ve disturbed me but instead, I felt myself growing impossibly wetter, hotter.

He flashed me a wicked grin and wrapped a hand around my throat as he growled, “Fucking mine,” then fused his mouth to mine, his tongue and cock thrusting into me all at once.

He swallowed my moan, and I was lost.

“Yours,” I panted, helpless to say anything else. My legs wrapped around his back, and he slid his hands under my ass to lift me while he sat back, pulling me with him. When he eased me down onto his cock, my head fell back as my breath left me. I was impossibly full. “So…yours.”

With my hands rested on his shoulders and knees planted on either side of his thighs, I lifted myself and slid back down on him, taking every inch, and the sound that left him was so deliciously erotic, stars sparked in my vision.

I wanted more of that. I wanted to hear him, watch him fall apart beneath me. I wanted him to lose control, to explode, to destroy me for anyone else. I wanted to destroy him for anyone else, to make him so utterly mine that no one else existed.

My eyes fell to his mouth, still coated in my blood, the mark his teeth left still stinging, and I grinned.

He already was mine. Permanently.

“Fuck me, love.” His large hands swallowed my waist as he started to move me again; I hadn’t even realized I’d stopped. “Let me watch you chase your pleasure, because you look fucking magnificent doing it.”

I repeated the motion on his cock, and he hit that sensitive spot inside me, sending a shock wave through my body. Once I got the angle right, I did exactly what he commanded—chased my damn pleasure with the cock I’d wanted for way too long.

“This is mine.” I held the side of his face, running my thumb along his mouth. I held his gaze, lips parted and hips rolling, and he smirked. “My mouth.” I sank on his length, taking him as deep as I could. “My cock.” I kissed him and held him there, tasting and licking and nibbling until I wound tighter. My breaths grew uneven, movements sloppy. “My mate.”

He groaned and wound an arm around my waist. In one swift motion, he flipped us so I was on my back again, and he didn’t miss a beat. When he thrust into me, it was powerful, much harder and faster than my movements.

Better,I decided. Fucking better.

With one brutal thrust after the other, I shattered around him—stars and flames and tidal waves, all of it.

I fell apart, clenching around his cock as he pounded into me and dragged out my orgasm as long as possible. Only when I was quivering and gasping beneath him did he wrap his fingers around my throat and hammer into my overly sensitive pussy. I screamed at the onslaught of pleasure, feeling oddly free—more so than I ever had before. This had all been my choice. More so, I fought for this, for him, for us.

He held my life in his hands, lungs burning and vision darkening, but I’d never felt more satisfied, more safe, more loved.

Fuck, I love him.

When I thought I couldn’t handle anymore, like I would truly crumble beneath him, he sealed his mouth to mine and slowed, throbbing in me as he came. I sucked in breath after breath, inhaling his scent so deeply, it was all I could smell: warm sea storms, leather, and…sex.

He pressed his forehead to mine, breathing heavily, and cupped my cheek, his touch soft like summer rain. “Are you all right, love?”

I chuckled, despite the warmth blooming in my chest. “More than all right, love.”

He smiled, his lopsided grin too handsome, too perfect.

I was blissfullywarm as Vaelor ran a finger up and down my arm, my leg thrown over his, my head on his chest. After cleaning up and drinking a tea that Vaelor said would prevent a pregnancy, we’d laid down and hadn’t moved in hours, felt no need to. No sleep came, but I didn’t need that either.

I’d been waiting years for this, to be able to hold him, bask in him, simply be with him with no restraints, time or otherwise, and I wanted to savor it.

Now, the room was silvery blue with early morning moonlight, hazy and calm, the waves lapping along the shore outside the open window. The sun would rise soon, but I wasn’t ready for our little bubble to pop. In this moment, we could’ve been the only people in existence.

“Can I…tell you about my parents?” I wasn’t sure why the words bubbled up, why they needed to be said right now, ruining our moment of peace, but I couldn’t stop them.

His hand stilled before resuming. “Of course.”

“Not Godrick and Emma.” I bit my lip and fought the urge to bury my face in my hands. “My blood parents.”

He gave my arm a light squeeze. “I knew who you meant.”

“I-I’ve never told anyone before.” My cheeks burned, and I closed my eyes, pressing my ear to his chest. His heart beat steadily, and I took a deep breath in an attempt to calm my own racing pulse.

He wrapped his arms around me entirely, holding me, surrounding me in a way that soothed my soul. He always had, because he was warm and safe and mine, and I could tell him. I could finally share them.

No amount of solace could soothe the slight shake in my voice, though.

“I don’t remember their faces,” was the first thing I said, and then the words flowed from me in unstoppable waves like they’d been waiting decades to be spoken. “I was a toddler when it happened. Godrick had been on the path to a peace treaty meeting of all things when I stumbled onto the dirt path in front of him, no more than two years old, crying, soaked to the bone, and bleeding from a cut above my eye.”

My fingers probed my right eyebrow, feeling the scar hidden beneath the small hairs. It never went away completely—my reminder that none of it was a nightmare.

“It didn’t take him long to find our carriage at the bottom of the ravine, halfway underwater. My parents died that night. They were dead before he ever reached them, but the door had been kicked open, the wood around the latch shattered, and my… Well, Godrick said it looked like my father had shoved me out before I could die with them.”

Vaelor listened, his hold steady and body still. He didn’t offer condolences or “you’re lucky,” or “it’ll be all right,” and I was immensely grateful. I didn’t want to hear any of the meaningless sentiments, because that was exactly all they were—meaningless. People didn’t know what to say or how to react to death, especially traumatic death, but Vaelor understood. I might not know how his mother passed, but I could guess.

“The accident is etched into my memory: being thrown about the carriage, rolling over and over until we crashed into the rocky ravine, the ice, the water.” A shiver ran up my spine. “All of that I remember clearly, hauntingly so, but not their faces.” I winced, a burn starting in the back of my throat, and Vaelor ever so slightly tightened his hold. “That’s what bothers me most and makes me feel so…guilty. They died, and I don’t even remember their faces. My father used his dying act to shove me from the carriage so I wouldn’t die with them, and I can’t remember his face. I can’t even….I can’t remember what color his eyes were. Were they blue like mine? Or brown or green? I can’t even place one color over the other when I try.”

I snuggled deeper into his bare chest and noticed his skin was wet beneath my face. I quickly wiped my cheeks, not knowing when I’d started crying, and bit back an apology.

“I only have two memories of them, actually, two sounds: one being just…horrible screams and snapping wood and crunching metal.” My hands trembled where they lay on his chest, and he rested one hand over them, holding them both in one of his while the other remained firmly locked around my waist. “And then my mother’s voice singing a nursery rhyme. I can hear her, the inflection in her tone, the soft whisper and smile in her voice, but I can never make out the words.”

I hummed the sound, tears rolling freely down my cheeks, but he didn’t seem to mind.

With my ear pressed to his chest, I heard his heartbeat jump, and I stilled into silence. He inhaled slowly and whisper-sung words that twisted my gut in knots. Sobs broke free, but he continued. I needed him to; I needed to connect her voice to the words, and these were it. I knew it in my bones.

When he finished, I cried like I’d never cried in my life, my tears seemingly endless, and he held me the entire time. Until the screams became wails, wails became sobs, sobs cries, cries hiccups, hiccups sniffles. Until the weight eased in my chest, exhausted but relieved.

For the first time in over twenty years, I felt better, lighter, like he somehow yanked me above the surface of that damned river that had been unknowingly drowning me all these years so I could finally breathe—I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding my breath since that night.

He didn’t have to say anything. I didn’t need his words. I had needed to say my own that had been shoved so far down, I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to say them aloud, but then, he created a space that felt so safe, my story begged to be heard, and he did exactly that—he listened. He felt. He understood.

And as it turned out, that was all I ever needed.

“My mother died of an illness,” he whispered a few minutes after I’d settled. “Two hundred years ago, and I’m still clearly…affected by it.”

He took a long breath and tightened his arms once again like he needed to know I was here now. “Before she died, she’d told me, ‘Everyone dies.’ I knew how she meant it, but those two words haunted me until they found their way into my very being, until they were the only two words my soul could hear, over and over and over. Everyone dies. Don’t fall in love, because everyone dies. Keep your circle small, your friends close, and your healer closer, because everyone dies.”

I’ll die.

My heart broke because I would die on him. I knew that. He knew that. “Vaelor…”

“Don’t.”

“But—”

“Don’t say it.”

I snapped my mouth shut and snuggled into him, my arm wrapping around his torso.

“You were right,” he said, resuming his motion along my arm, sliding up and down. “You’ve always been right. Life isn’t worth living if all you ever feel is fear. This is what makes all the bitterness worth it—perhaps even makes the good sweeter in comparison.”

My smile was shaky because he was right. Love did make life worth living, but the nagging thought still remained. I didn’t want him to have to experience that. I didn’t want to be the source of his suffering, his agony, his…grief.

Being the cause of this pain made me want to vomit. Would he be okay one day without me? A small part of me answered no, because I didn’t think he would be, but I hoped he didn’t stop living after me. I hoped he kept his heart open, that he learned to love and laugh freely.

I hoped he’d leave his fear here at the cottage once and for all, because no one, not even the mighty Storm Bringer, could stop time, and I was human. Death would knock on my door much sooner than his, and that was unavoidable. Time was unavoidable.

It was selfish of me to say everything I did, to push him, kiss him, fuck him, to lie here with him even now, but damn, I loved him. I loved him so much, and it made me selfish—stupid and reckless and foolish and so damned selfish—but I wanted to give him every single second of whatever time I had left in this realm. I needed to, because not doing so felt like asking my lungs to breathe without air, my heart to beat without blood. It would have gone against fate itself, against nature. I needed him to survive.

And he loved me too, enough to claim me, to devote himself to me, despite knowing the loss he would inevitably suffer. The scabbed wound on my throat was proof of that.

I was selfish, and he was selfless, and I had to be okay with that, because I couldn’t live without him, and he wouldn’t live without me, not right now, not yet.

We lay in silence for hours, in love and hurt and relief and maybe even a bit of fear, but we were together.

He was mine, and I was his, and that was it.

There was no question. No doubt. No regret.

Our hearts were bound, souls entangled, and fate would never have it any other way.