Chapter 17 #8
His other hand found my clit, circling it in time with his thrusts. The sensations were overwhelming—pleasure building in unstoppable currents within me. I wrapped my legs around his waist, digging my heels into his lower back as I met him thrust for thrust.
“Just like that,” he praised. “Take everything I give you. You were made for this. Made for me.”
The coil in my belly wound tighter, the pressure building. My vision blurred at the edges. His name fell from my lips like a prayer. Like a curse. Like the only word I remembered.
“Come for me,” he demanded, thumb pressing harder against my clit. “Come on my cock. Let me feel you fall apart.”
The world exploded into white-hot rapture. My body convulsed as waves of pleasure crashed over me. I screamed his name, tearing at his skin with my nails, leaving marks that would mirror the ones he’d left on my soul.
He followed me over the edge with a roar that shook the room. Flames erupted everywhere, scorching the walls as he emptied himself inside me. He held himself above me, arms shaking and face buried in the crook of my neck.
We lay there gasping our bodies still joined—still trembling from the aftershocks.
He pressed soft kisses to my throat, jaw, then temple. “Stay with me,” he murmured between each one. “I want you with me always.”
My heart splintered into a thousand pieces.
Dalkhan held me tight, his warmth sinking into my skin like the last remnants of a dying sun. I traced slow, thoughtless patterns over the ridges of his muscles, each movement a quiet plea to the Heavens—to let time freeze. To let me stay.
His fingers mirrored mine, drifting lightly along the curve of my bare shoulder, so gentle it was more like a memory than a touch. His body began to sink, inch by inch, into the haze of sleep.
I wasn’t ready. Not yet.
I scrambled to come up with something—anything—to keep me here longer. To stay tangled in his arms.
“You never finished your story,” I said loudly, startling him.
His body went rigid. The steady rhythm of his breath fractured. The pause before he spoke was a question in and of itself.
“What story?”
“The one about the Wielders,” I murmured, pressing my palm firmer against the flat of his stomach. “How they stole your power.”
His eyes opened slowly, dark slivers beneath heavy lids. Even drowning in exhaustion, something razor-sharp lurked behind them.
A smirk ghosted his lips, the kind that made my blood run cold.
“You really want to know?”
I nodded.
Anything to keep him talking. Anything to delay what came next.
He adjusted his position, spine finding the carved headboard as dark sheets pooled around his waist. I settled my head against his chest again, my fingers spreading wide across the planes of his torso as if I could somehow hold him together through touch alone.
“I should’ve realised what was happening before it manifested.
” His voice was smooth, but beneath it there was something else.
Something edged with old scars and quiet rage.
He resumed his lazy exploration of my skin, but tension lingered beneath the gentle caress.
“But I didn’t. When I look back now, I see the signs as clearly as the stars, but at the time, I was blind to them. ”
The muscles in his chest tightened. “They needed someone close to me. Someone whose loyalty I never questioned.” Each word dropped like stone into still water, sending ripples through the charged air between us.
“And they found her.”
The simple statement landed with devastating finality.
“She stood at my side for countless years, whispering poison disguised as devotion. She made me believe her faithfulness was absolute.”
His hands continued their journey across my skin, but his touch had grown cold. His gaze distant, as though watching it unfold all over again.
“She was clever,” he admitted. “I trusted her, though not fully. She hungered for power. Wore her ambition like jewellery. I knew she wanted more than I was willing to give, but I did not see her betrayal coming until it was too late.”
Dread unfurled in my stomach as his story wound deeper, each revelation pulling me further into the labyrinth of his past.
“She helped them.” His voice hardened. “They crafted a spell, one that required a foothold inside my mind. Something insidious enough to weaken the barriers of my power. And she…” His jaw locked with an audible click. “She was their key.”
My mouth went dry.
“She has power over dreams. She held my subconscious prisoner long enough for them to thread their spell into the very fabric of my being, weaving it so seamlessly I never felt it take root.”
The weight of his words settled over me like a shroud.
“They promised her my power, and she believed them.” He laughed bitterly.
“Expected them to simply hand over what they had stolen. But the Wielders never intended to honour their bargain. They used her, and then… they betrayed her. They cast one final enchantment, sealing my power beyond even her reach.”
“They betrayed her?”
“Of course they did.” His smile held no warmth, only cruel satisfaction. “She was a fool to think they would simply hand it over. They knew what she would do—that she would seek to claim it for herself.”
He paused, savouring the memory like fine wine.
“She came crawling back. Desperate. Furious. Begging for my forgiveness. Swearing it had all been a terrible mistake.”
I lifted my head, meeting his gaze as my own impending betrayal tormented my mind.
“What did you do?”
Something flickered behind his eyes.
“I let her go.”
I sat up abruptly, pulling the sheets to my chest.
“You just… let her leave?”
He let out a low, dark chuckle.
“No. I stripped her of everything—her titles, her standing, the power she held within my dominion, then I cast her out. I made certain she would suffer, wandering—grasping for something she would never find.”
His expression sobered, his voice dipping into something quieter, deadlier.
“But she never stopped searching. Never stopped scheming.”
His fingers went completely still against my skin. Suddenly the air in the room felt too thin.
“And now, after all this time… she has found another way to take what she wants.”
My stomach plummeted into freefall, something ice-cold slithering down my spine.
“I knew.”
My pulse thundered so loud it drowned out thought itself.
“Knew what?”
Dalkhan’s gaze never wavered, his expression unreadable.
“That you were sent by her.”
My body went cold—the air fled my lungs.
Dalkhan resumed tracing slow lines down my arm, his touch featherlight as he relished how I’d gone rigid.
“Did you truly think you fooled me, Elira?”
“I—” The words turned to ash in my mouth. “You knew. All this this time, you knew…”
His eyes gleamed with dark satisfaction.
“Of course I did. I know all.”
The confession struck me like a blow.
“I knew the moment you stepped foot into my realm,” he continued. “Zaheera’s scent clung to you like rot. Like the stench of old betrayal.”
He tilted my face up, fingers firm as they demanded my attention.
“Did you really believe you were playing me?”
Dalkhan’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“I let you think I was blind to it.” His fingers slid into my hair, tangling gently. “Because I needed you to find the stone.”
The weight of everything crashed down on me like a tidal wave. Every step that had led me here—every nightmare that had carved itself into my sleep. The terrible, inescapable truth of what I had been about to do to him.
“Tonight… I… I—”
The words were thick with shame. I couldn’t even recognise my own voice, so small and fragile.
Dalkhan’s expression sharpened like he had been waiting for this moment, waiting for me to unravel.
“I know.” He leaned closer, breath ghosting across my skin. “But you won’t.”
My eyes drifted over to the small wooden table in the corner—to the bowl sitting innocently on it.
I was being suffocated, pressed down on from all sides. His fingers whispered over my collarbone before he settled his thumb above my erratic pulse.
“You believed it would bind my soul. That this stone would take me from you.”
I gripped the sheets tightly, as though it could anchor me, but the truth was already sinking in. Slipping into the cracks I had been too afraid to see.
“It was never my soul the stone was meant to imprison.” His words fell like drops of poison. “It was my power.”
The stone—that pulsing, shifting thing I had carried—it had always been a part of him.
The dark swirls that moved within its depths. They were him.
Every time it trembled in my hands. Every time it turned frantic, warning me. It was him.
When I had placed it against my chest, and it had hummed in response…
It was him.
I tried to scramble backward, to put distance between us, but his iron grip held me captive in the circle of his arms.
He seized my face in his hands, eyes burning as they bore into mine.
“Now, little flame.” His voice turned deadly. “Where. Is. The. Stone?”