41. You Should See Yourself From My Point of View
forty-one
You Should See Yourself From My Point of View
I showered in Lucais’s bathroom.
We still had a fate to seal of our own, though the bloodshed in the courtyard wasn’t much of a turn on for me.
I would have liked to wear something nicer than the blood of the men who had harmed me when the High King and I bared our souls to each other and damned them to an eternity of servitude in Faerie, but there was a thin layer of blood around my nails that I couldn’t scrub away.
I was still trying when Wrenlock came back.
Striding straight into the bathroom, he went to wash his hands in the marble sink and didn’t glance up at me until he reached for a towel to dry them.
Finding me immediately, his dark eyes settled on my reflection in the large mirror spanning the entire length of the wall.
When he turned around, Wrenlock leaned back against the counter, tossing the towel aside before his gaze snagged on my hands.
“What did he do now?” he asked, his tone clipped but weary.
Abandoning my endeavours, I tilted my face up towards the shower spray and let the warm water massage it as I considered how to reply.
Wrenlock didn’t know even half as much about Lucais or me as I’d originally thought.
He had no idea about the prisoners in the dungeon or the extent of my childhood trauma, and I was reaffirming my belief that some things might be better left buried, so I simply sighed and shook my head at him.
“You have dirt on your face,” I said.
Eyes widening, Wrenlock immediately began the process of blindly scrubbing at random places on his face and then checking his hands in an effort to remove it.
I laughed gently. “You’d better get in the shower.”
“Are you sure?” Wrenlock paused with his fingers smoothing over the bridge of his nose. His eyes skimmed the bathroom as he took a step forward and slowly dropped his hands. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about last night.”
“I’m fine. Last night was great.” I hoped he didn’t think the lack of animation in my voice was reflective of my feelings about it.
The post-murder adrenaline was a very different bodily experience to post-sex adrenaline.
“You know we have to do it again, though.” I bit my lower lip. “Well, we don’t, but we…can.”
Steam rose from the hot stone floor as I waited patiently for Wrenlock to peel his clothes off and step into the shower with me, the heat radiating from his body almost hotter than the water.
He made quick work of washing away the lingering traces of dirt and dust. I considered asking him where he’d been, but ultimately decided against it because I didn’t want to prompt him to ask me about the blood on my hands again.
When he was clean, Wrenlock opened his arms for me, and I gladly stepped into his wordless embrace.
The bare, warm skin of his body provided a welcome comfort, and I relaxed against him even as I felt certain parts of his anatomy beginning to stiffen.
With a light sigh, I slid my hand down his side, tentatively exploring the lean, hard muscles of his abdomen as his dick twitched against me.
The sound of footsteps and a door slamming echoed in the main bedroom.
It wasn’t like the time the High King had interrupted us in the hallway.
Neither of us jumped out of our skin or even made a move to disrupt the intimate peace we had crafted against each other.
We simply held one another under the water and waited for him to join us.
“Don’t stall on my account,” Lucais declared, striding into the room with his shirt already halfway over his head.
He splashed his face with water at the sink.
“Enyd cornered me,” he went on, bracing his hands on either side of the counter and staring down at the drain.
“She’s got trust issues like you wouldn’t believe.
” He made a pinched face in the mirror and began to mimic her with a squeaky tone of voice I felt was actually kind of unjust. “‘ Why are there caenim in the throne room, Lucais? Why didn’t you tell me Aura hadn’t accepted the bond yet?
Are those statues in the courtyard new?’ Fucking Elements, I wish she wasn’t our closest ally so I could send her home. ”
“If you scare her off with your bad attitude, I am going to hurt you,” Wrenlock stated calmly, arms still draped around my shoulders as we stood halfway beneath the steady stream of water. “You need someone like her on your side.”
Lucais scoffed, turning to face us. “Oh, relax. I’m well aware—” He broke off abruptly.
His golden eyes heated as they drifted over my body, lingering on the curve of my ass, the cascade of wet hair falling down my back.
A smile took shape on his mouth around the same time as his posture softened, and all of his political frustrations were forgotten. “Bookworm.”
“I hate it when you look at me like that,” I lied.
“I hate it when you shower naked with my best friend,” he lied back. I could see the outline of his erection through his pants, so there was clearly a missing stipulation somewhere in his words, enabling it. “Do you want to do this in the shower?”
I shook my head.
“The bed?”
I nodded because his room didn’t have a balcony.
Lucais showered while Wrenlock and I dried ourselves.
I was busy repeatedly scrunching my hair, trying to drain the water out so that I didn’t dampen all of the pillows, when Wrenlock came over to me and took the towel from my hands.
His eyes held a warm smile, though his face remained smooth and impassive as he ran his fingers through my hair, gently massaging my scalp.
The pressure felt so good that my eyes fluttered closed.
I didn’t open them until I heard the shower shut off, and that was when I discovered that my hair was completely dry.
I looked up at him in the mirror and smiled. “That is so cool,” I whispered.
Wrenlock smiled softly as he fluffed a few of my curls. “Isn’t it?”
Lucais’s blond hair, darkened by the water, came into view in my peripheral vision.
I glanced towards him as Wrenlock’s hands trailed over me, cupping my face, and I watched on as the High King dropped his towel.
My eyes roved over him eagerly, taking in the full view of his naked body and finding things I hadn’t the night before.
I began at the towel, noticing a tattoo of patterns and markings curled around his ankle like a serpent as heat stirred in my core at the sight of his bare skin, and followed the ink as it drifted up and around his leg.
The space between my own legs pulsated with need when my eyes landed on his impressive and still somewhat intimidating erection, heavy and thick with a large vein on the underside.
I caressed his stomach with my eyes, tracing the dip of his hips and the ridges of his abdominal muscles, emphasised by the ink of his tattoos as the continuous design stretched upwards, over his chest and collarbone to the sharply defined column of his throat and the edge of his jaw.
The High King ran a hand over his face, wiping the last traces of water away, and his gaze met mine a moment before I turned back to Wrenlock and he pulled my mouth to his.
Hot and smoky, Wrenlock consumed me in a searing kiss, his tongue sliding over the seam of my lips before they parted to allow him inside.
Our tongues collided as he lifted me into his arms, and my legs automatically secured around his waist as he carried me out of the bathroom, pausing to prolong the kiss for an extra moment before his mouth broke away from mine and he placed me down on the mattress.
Wordlessly, he sank to the ground between my thighs, pushing my legs apart far enough to hook my knees over his broad shoulders, and then he buried his face between them without a blink of hesitation.
Gasping, I writhed against his mouth instinctively as his tongue made indulgent strokes across my entrance, lapping up my arousal, and then he slipped two fingers inside me while he nuzzled his face against my clit, sucking, circling, and occasionally making the most insanely sexy sounds that vibrated against my body and went straight down to my soul.
Lucais’s hands found my breasts while Wrenlock knelt between my legs, playing with them with less urgency and more curiosity.
He explored different combinations as he pinched and pulled my nipples, which hardened into extremely tight peaks under his attentive gaze, eyes alight with a fiery gold as he evaluated each of my reactions—one at a time, one after the other, both at once, and then harder, harder , harder —
My hands flew up to cover my face, but Lucais’s arms were in the way.
I clutched him instead, gripping his forearm like the ledge on a cliff face and turning my head to the side as an orgasm crashed into me with a wave of undiluted pleasure, starting in the centre point between my hips before clawing its way up my spine and shooting across every nerve ending in my entire body like strobe lights.
I came floating back to the ground like ash from an explosion beneath light and dark gazes.
Lucais tentatively stroked his length. “Do you want me to glamour it to adjust the size for you this time?” he asked softly.
“No,” I blurted. My cheeks caught fire. “No, of course not.”
That would be insane behaviour, even if he wasn’t already juggling far too many ongoing enchantments in the middle of a power struggle with an unidentified entity in the lapsus. I didn’t want to change anything about him, even if certain things took some adjustment for one reason or another.
“Do you want to try it in reverse?” Lucais suggested. “Not—” He let out a breathy laugh. “No, I mean, do you want to try starting with him this time?” He tipped his head towards his friend. “It might help you to feel…ready.”