Chapter Twenty
C HAPTER T WENTY
Very few aspects of Talasyn’s life had ever been as lovely as this moment, Alaric’s bear hug of an embrace keeping out the worst of the wind, his mouth so warm slanted over hers, the surf and her heartbeat pounding in her ears. At some point during the last few seconds, she’d looped her arms around his neck, clinging to him else the world spin away from underneath the soles of her worn boots. She deepened the kiss and he rumbled a sound of approval in the back of his throat, his fingers tracing the spur of her hip.
This kiss felt different from before. There was a lick of anger in the way they moved, yes, but there was also something that Alaric was trying to tell her with his lips and his tongue and his hands—something that her own body echoed back to him.
I need you.
Let’s forget everything else for now.
Talasyn was certain that they would have stayed like that forever had the rain not started pouring down in earnest. A loud clap of thunder heralded the deluge that cascaded from the sky in heavy sheets, and she untangled herself from her husband with a sound strangled somewhere between a shriek and a laugh, with water dripping into her eyes and the spray from the turbulent waves pounding into her side. She glimpsed a trace of genuine amusement on Alaric’s face before they broke into a run—back to his lopsided airship, where they shielded themselves from the downpour under the overhanging portside that now served as a roof.
He wasn’t done with her. With a gleam in his dark eyes, he mouthed at the slope of her neck and her knees threatened to collapse as her toes curled. She leaned back against the shallop’s battered wooden interior, running her fingers through his hair, the blood in her veins wild like thunder, caught up in the giddy delight of it all.
“You should never flirt again,” he said. “It might be the end of me.”
She’d have been far more embarrassed if his tone weren’t so unsteady, if he weren’t falling upon her like a man starved. “I don’t know, something tells me it was a success.”
He nibbled at her throat. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
Talasyn pulled at Alaric’s hair and claimed his mouth with hers. As sheets of rain poured down on the deserted beach, his hands greedily explored her figure while she practiced this kissing thing with a concentrated enthusiasm that she usually reserved for learning new aethermancy techniques. She impatiently worked through the clumsy clacking together of their teeth and the inopportune gulps of much-needed air, forging ahead with a crazed determination that he matched until they rediscovered the rhythm from their wedding night. His large fingers ran over her spine, stroked her thighs, cupped her bottom—and eventually they latched onto the hem of her tunic.
And tugged it upward.
She let him, in service to some primal instinct that clamored for closer , more . The fabric bunched between her collarbones and her chest, and his fingers crept up her exposed ribs, leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake, stilling once they reached the bottom edge of her breastband.
“Take this off, Lachis’ka,” he whispered.
Talasyn should have bristled at being ordered around by the likes of him.
She shivered instead.
Alaric watched with hawklike eyes as Talasyn unwound the band that covered her chest. Even though the plain, practical undergarment was a far cry from seductive, seeing her take it off made every drop of blood in his veins rush south. He fought to maintain what little composure he had left, but when the band fell to the planks at her feet and— gods, at last —he had an unobstructed view of her chest, it was all he could do to not come in his trousers right then and there.
The woman he had reluctantly married was in possession of the loveliest breasts on Lir. Granted, his opinion was hardly that of an expert, but he would gut anyone who wished to posit the contrary. They were small and shapely and, to his never-ending delight, dusted with freckles here and there. He could have studied them for hours, and perhaps he would have had Talasyn not started to cross her arms, a nervous intake of breath parting her lips.
“No,” Alaric said hurriedly, all dignity forgotten. He was going to die from anguish if he couldn’t look some more. He caught her wrists and dragged her hands back to her sides. Even in the storm’s gloom he could see that her dusky nipples had pebbled—perhaps from the cold, perhaps from the need to be touched.
Figuring that he might as well cover all his bases, he blew into his palms and then rubbed them together to create more heat, and Talasyn gasped when he cupped her breasts, a tremor running through her as though she couldn’t make up her mind whether to jerk away or to strain further into his touch. She mercifully decided on the latter, and he tried to be gentle at first, of course he did, but it was just so—
— fascinating . The suppleness of her skin, the smooth swell. She fell forward with a sharp cry, clutching at his shoulders for support. This brought the most beautiful breasts in the world mere inches below his mouth, and he was suddenly struck by the greatest idea of his life.
He bent his head and took her right nipple between his lips. Oh , how she jumped at that, how she raked her fingers down the back of his neck as he sucked. This was the most amazing thing, the only thing, using his mouth to elicit such startled mewls of pleasure from his fiery little wife. He slid his hand over her neglected left breast, rolling the tight bead of her nipple between forefinger and thumb while he laved at its twin with the flat of his tongue, tasting ocean and sunlight on her skin. Her cries grew louder, the husky scrape of her voice forming the shape of his name while the monsoon raged all around them, sound and fury piercing through their little shelter of wooden boards and canvas sails.
By the time both her breasts were flushed and wet from his ministrations, Alaric couldn’t take it anymore. He swept Talasyn off her feet, cradling her in his arms. She showed him exactly what she thought of his oafish maneuver by biting his bottom lip. It was the kind of pain that sang, and he snarled as he tossed her onto her back, there against the inward curve of the lopsided airship’s hull. As good a bed as any.
Talasyn propped herself up on her elbows to glare at him. “What did I say about you manhandling me?”
“I’ll stop when you learn to be gentler with your teeth,” Alaric retorted, kneeling between her spread legs. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, the smear of blood she’d drawn dark against his skin in the faded day.
“Little hellcat,” he muttered, lost in her narrowed eyes flashing with hints of gold. “Claws out even while you purr.”
“I don’t hear any complaints from you,” she said, with a pointed glance at the tenting in his trousers.
He bent down and stifled a sardonic laugh in the junction of her neck and shoulder as he peeled her breeches down her glorious legs. She kicked them off the rest of the way, and then it was a blur of sliding against each other, squirming together, lips catching in open-mouthed kisses, his hand fumbling until it found its way home between her thighs, thumbing the gusset of her underwear aside, a finger sinking in.
She was as tight as he remembered. Wet and warm, pulsing around the stretch, eager for him. Let me have this, he thought, through the intoxicating muddle of sensations, through the roar of the storm-tossed waves, through the pounding of blood. Just for a while.
Talasyn was well aware that she was digging a deeper and deeper hole for herself with every moment that passed. With each kiss, with each caress, some distant corner of her mind screamed that no good could come from this, that she was betraying Sardovia and Nenavar, that there were some things that would always be unforgivable in whatever light. But somehow she could not be swayed from responding to Alaric, the haze of desire clouding all considerations of the future.
The last time they’d done this, she’d climaxed so quickly, unused to being touched after a lifetime of loneliness. But now her body knew what to expect, was drinking it all in, demanding more. And Alaric, as in tune with her in this as he was when they dueled, kissed his way down to her breasts, his clever mouth latching on yet again as his finger prodded and curled .
She was so focused on the circuit of pleasure afforded by him lavishing attention on two different parts of her body that, when he added a second finger, she almost didn’t notice until he started to thrust. How she loved it, though. How her hips canted to meet his wrist, how she clawed at his bicep, how—
“Ouch!” Talasyn yelped. Alaric had wiggled his fingers perhaps a bit too ambitiously within her walls, the sudden sting similar to that of a pinched nerve.
He raised his head from her chest, his expression a mixture of horror and guilt in the half-light. “Too much?”
“Your fingers are clearly bigger than mine, and it’s not like I’ve ever had anyone else in there before you—” she started to rant, only for the rest of it to die in her throat as the swift understanding that dawned in his eyes gave way to a burning possessiveness.
He leaned in and slipped his tongue between her lips, rolling it underneath the roof of her mouth as his fingers moved more gently inside her, figuring out what she liked. Before long, her pleasure had mounted again as though it had never been interrupted in the first place. Another strong gust of wind sent a curtain of heavy rain thudding against the airship, the racket echoing the jagged drum that her heart had become as it beat frantically, in near-perfect sync with how she throbbed and ached for him. He’d tucked his ring finger against his palm and the cool golden edge of his wedding band brushed against her with every downstroke, adding another layer of debauchery that threatened to overwhelm. And surely she was almost there, surely just a little more—
“That’s it, Tala.” Alaric pressed a feverish kiss to her temple, then another one to her jaw. He sounded as broken as she felt, that deep rasp of a voice guiding her higher. “Come all over your husband’s wedding ring.”
Her hips rolled as she gave herself over to the cresting, to the light, clamping down on him, shuddering, her hoarse cry drowned out by the swirling tempest. And he watched her the way one watched a sunrise.
Somehow, it wasn’t enough. Somehow, she needed more. After the pleasure tore through her, it left a space aching to be filled.
Alaric must have read it on her face, or guessed it from how she reached for him, limply, silently.
He sat back, leaning against the shallop’s bulkhead, hauling her into his lap. Talasyn went willingly, straddling him, his arousal straining against his trousers, the friction making her gasp. Lightning flashed at the periphery of her vision, but it was nothing compared to the look in his eyes. He was gazing at her with such sheer hunger that he looked like a man possessed, and she didn’t feel entirely like herself, either. Her breasts covered in love bites, her body bared to the howling skies and the furious ocean. There was a wicked wind blowing through her, through them both, through the currents of aetherspace, matching the intensity of the gale that beat at the walls of the ship.
Barely remembering how to control her limbs, her world floating in a blur of heated kisses and illicit touches, she helped him wrestle off her undergarments, then the bunched-up tunic. There was something primeval about being stripped down to only her boots in such an untamed landscape, her braid tossing in the wind, her man looking at her with fierce reverence. There was power here, sung to her by the swaying trees, by the crashing waves, by the rain that lashed at her exposed skin. She reached down, blindly, and it was the work of moments to free him from his trousers, to encircle him in half a fist. He was heavy in her palm, twitching, so long and thick that a spark of nervous delight rippled through her core. Her knees dug into the teak boards as she poised herself above him, and a shudder went through his broad frame as his tip grazed her entrance. He rested his forehead against hers, breathing harshly. His question unspoken, but unmistakable.
Yes, she thought, but couldn’t say out loud. She was afraid that the word would crack and her vulnerability would come seeping through. She was afraid that he would see the full scale of it, of what he was capable of doing to her. She—
—had hesitated too long. Alaric drew his head back slightly, peering at her through half-lidded gray eyes.
“ Well? ” he asked, his voice gruff.
There was a flush to his cheeks that quickly spread all the way to his ears. There was never anyone before you, he’d told her. They were both new to this, and she should probably be more charitable, but—
“What do you mean ‘ Well? ’?” Talasyn snapped, her own face growing warm. “I’m the one spreading my legs right now, aren’t I? If you don’t want to—”
“Gods,” Alaric muttered, through clenched teeth. He darted a quick, mildly vexed kiss to the freckles on her nose, and then his hands were on her hips, pushing her down, and she was gripping him by the base, guiding him in …
The breach of his first few inches was almost too much, despite how wet she was. It startled a cry out of her. One that echoed through the ship’s wooden confines before it was whisked away by the pelting rain. Talasyn was utterly mortified, but Alaric looked stricken .
“Stop?” he croaked, holding her waist tightly so that she couldn’t slide any lower. His sharp features were tense with fear. “We can stop.”
She rocked her hips experimentally, regarding him with an air of defiance as she sank down another inch. Something in his expression shattered and he gathered her close to his chest, the squeak that she let out at suddenly taking more of him muffled against his throat, and then he was scattering kisses to her temple, to the shell of her ear. Not to be outdone, she tugged at his hair and scraped her teeth along his jaw, and she swore that his eyes all but rolled into the back of his head before he buried his face in her collarbone. And drove forward the last few inches to hilt inside her.
At first, it was strange more than anything else. A pressure, a fullness. Talasyn’s breath emerged in rough little hitches as she adjusted to the sensation. She was unsure what to do next, but a sort of— wiggling —seemed as good a place to start as any, and it felt somewhat nice. It took the edge off the discomfort, this gliding of him along her inner walls. Intrigued, she shifted upward, then slid back down.
“ Oh ,” she moaned. And did it again and again, clutching at Alaric’s shoulders for balance.
It wasn’t long before she realized that those shoulders were strung as tight as halyards in the same gale-force wind that was roaring across the beach.
Her husband was a statue at first glance, his face still tucked against her clavicle. But closer inspection revealed that his every muscle strained with the effort of not moving, of not hurting her. Chagrined, she coaxed his head up—and found herself looking into silver eyes that burned with need.
“Tala.” He sounded almost broken, her name as urgent as a battlefield hymn. “I want to—may I?”
“Yes,” Talasyn breathed out. And this, too, was surrender. This, too, was letting go of fear. This, too, was free fall. “I think so. Yes.”
And Alaric was kissing her again, and then he began to move .
Tight, she is so tight, so hot and wet and all for me—
That was the one semi-coherent line of thought that Alaric’s mind had dissolved into; the rest was pleasant static, a whirl of beautiful sunlight girl.
Talasyn was mostly quiet as he rocked up into her with shallow thrusts, only the faintest sighs escaping her lips. She was more expressive with her hands, those nimble fingers digging into his biceps, tracing the sides of his face, disappearing beneath his shirt to scale the ladder of his ribs.
Soon she was grinding down on him, and he was delirious with the feeling. He had never felt anything like it before and wanted to feel only this for the rest of his life. He couldn’t stop kissing every part of her that he could reach. It would have been concerning if he’d had it in him to have concerns beyond the snug warmth that had become his whole universe.
It would have been concerning, too, the whine that left his lips when she pushed him away, but it swiftly melted into a groan when her small, strong hands pinned his shoulders to the bulkhead and she rode him.
This was how Alaric was going to die. Talasyn was truly going to kill him, with her brow furrowed in concentration like that, with her breasts bouncing like that . Naked and golden in his lap, she rose over him and sank back down with each roll of her slim hips, as though he were the shoreline that her waves broke against, her eyes fiery like high summer, her kiss-stung lips curving into a winsome smile. A smile that—
—that was perhaps a little too smug —
“Ruin looks good on you, my lord.” She had never looked more Nenavarene than in this moment. Or more maddening.
He pressed one hand to the base of her spine, holding her in place as he thrust roughly up into her. Her mouth dropped open in surprise and he gave that mouth no opportunity to scold him, kissing it as he palmed her breasts.
When she finally cried out, some dark and somewhat petty satisfaction swept through him. He clamped his arms around her waist, and she looped hers around his neck, and then they were moving together, the ship’s boards creaking, blood and magic shrieking, the Eversea tumultuous, and the skies ablaze with lightning.
Outside, like the animals.
In the storm, like they were made of it.
“Careful, little wife,” he murmured in her ear, for no reason other than to piss her off, “or I’ll start to think you like having me around.”
And the hellion bit him again , this time sinking her teeth into his shoulder. Hauling him dangerously close to the brink.
“I told you,” Talasyn gritted out, “not to call me that when—”
“When what?” Alaric took her by the hips, setting a fevered pace that had her panting, and had him seeing stars. “When I’m bouncing you on my lap? When you’re dripping all over me? You fuck the same way you fight, Lachis’ka, did you know that? No quarter. Chomping at the bit.” He hit a spot inside her that made her writhe , her walls squeezing down on him. He did it over and over again. “Deadly. Magnificent. The prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Alaric could tell, from the way Talasyn bristled, that she was gearing up to say something, probably to call him a name, but whatever it was emerged as a sound caught between a sob and a scream as her eyelids fluttered shut and the rest of her went still. Thunder rent the air as she dragged him with her headlong over the precipice.
For him it was an unfurling, it was breathing out for the first time in years, it was the world going white at the edges and the soul rushing south. He came snarling like the wolf, spilling inside his wife as she collapsed against his chest. Thrusting up into the wet heat of her, making her take every last drop. Allowing himself to believe, in this moment, that he would never be alone again.
I’m done fighting this. Another coherent thought, breaking through the fog of his mind. Here, at last, was something that felt right. Something real. Whatever else happens, I won’t fight it anymore.
And if that made him a monster, made him a traitor—then so be it.
He kissed her again.
I’ll never be the same.
The storm swept through and the waves spiraled up and Talasyn came down, Alaric’s lips soft against hers through her aftershocks until she slid lower along his body, utterly spent.
I will always remember this.
An errant tear streamed down her cheek, and she hid it against his throat, pulling him close.
Just him and me and the monsoon.