49. Mmhmm
forty-nine
Mmhmm
W e had two questions, and absolutely no answers.
Who burned down the cottage that night, and why?
The Forest would have read the intent of arson in the mind of the visitor if they required the Forest’s help to find the cottage. I was sure of it, even though it meant the Starfires had to have escorted the arsonist to their destination personally—or at least given them directions.
Batre floated the notion that it might have been Gregor, but Morgoya was dubious.
I enquired about Blythe’s relationship with Lucais and his parents back then, but again, the High Lady was not convinced there was a motive.
According to her, Lucais’s parents had not integrated well into the political landscape, but that was a good thing for their social lives.
It meant they were on friendly terms with all of the other rulers because they were never equipped to take point on contentious issues—so they never made enemies within the Courts.
Eventually, we drifted back to my magic training, though the atmosphere was a little darker and more suffocating than it had been before our conversation.
“Visualise something that you want to bring into the room with us right now,” Morgoya suggested. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
I stared at the chalk cross she’d marked on the stonework as a guide for our summoning practise, and my mind went blank.
We’d tried vanishing to no avail, and I wasn’t having any greater luck with its counterpart.
Destruction was next, but I was afraid to even attempt it in case I finally succeeded.
“I’m frustrated,” I admitted after a moment. “How do you materialise frust—”
Lucais appeared in the middle of the cross and sketched a bow. “I heard you were summoning the things you want,” he announced, winking.
“That’s how,” Batre muttered, and I covered my mouth to conceal a small laugh.
“I know that I did not just magic you in here,” I stated, forcing my lips to flatten. I shot him a reproachful look, pointing at the chalk. “I wasn’t even thinking about you.”
He gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps it worked backwards, then. I was thinking about you.”
The space between my hips heated, a molten liquid pooling in my core. “I’m busy.”
“You’re about to be, yes.” With an atrociously attractive wink, he whirled on Morgoya and Batre. “If you don’t mind, the High Queen is required to attend to some urgent business before dinner this evening, so I’d like to take her to go and…finish it.”
Morgoya frowned at him, but Batre began to pack up the supplies from the magical cart.
“We have been at it all day.”
That was all Lucais needed to hear, but I didn’t miss the urgent look that crossed Morgoya’s face before he snatched my hand and we disappeared.
When we materialised in his bedroom, I wasn’t at all surprised. The three of us had slept in the High King’s bed every night since the afternoon we had spent in the training room together, but nothing else had happened, and I’d barely seen either of them during the days.
Morgoya and Batre kept me busy from dawn until dusk with their magic exposure therapy.
According to the faint grumblings that came out of Lucais’s mouth whenever he traipsed into his room late at night and collapsed into bed next to me, Enyd had been doing a similar exercise with him and Wrenlock, demanding they spend lengthy meetings together to discuss their plan of attack for the Malum and the Court of Earth. Wrenlock was equally fatigued.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t ask me for this again,” I reminded him, even as my voice strained while I watched him undo his pants with haste. They fell to the floor, and the sight of his erection springing free had me sighing unbidden.
“I thought you said I broke that promise,” he countered.
“Technically, no.” I adjusted my shoulders as my nipples hardened, incredibly sensitive against the fabric of my shirt. “I asked you for it last time, but this”—I gestured to him as his hand went to his length, stroking it once and then again as he stifled a groan—“looks a lot like you’re asking.”
Lucais pumped his fist along his shaft and grinned at me like a man on the verge of total chaos and collapse. “Take it or leave it, bookworm, but I am going to stand here and get myself off to the sight of you right this fucking second because if I don’t, I am going to commit a murder.”
“Enyd?”
He closed his eyes. “Do not speak the wretch’s name.”
My eyebrows elevated as I pulled in a deep breath, but I gradually lowered myself to the ground. It was cold and hard beneath me as I crawled towards him on my hands and knees, preparing to surprise him by taking him in my mouth.
“Fine. What has the wretch done to you now?”
He stilled, and I almost thought he was listening to me approach until he finally said, “She’s taking me away from you.”
“Oh?” I tried to suppress the tremble in my voice. “I would’ve thought you’d be thanking her for that.”
“Maybe before,” he allowed, still fisting his cock.
“Not anymore. I can’t think when I can’t see you, even if I know where you are.
We had to move our meeting room all the way over from the other side of the palace to be closer to you because I was going out of my fucking mind—” He let out a small gasp as I stopped at his feet and licked the slit on the head of his cock, causing a dribble of arousal to trickle out.
I licked that, too, and then I sucked his tip into my mouth and moaned a little, “Mmhmm?”
“I cannot stop thinking about you,” Lucais admitted as I wet the entirety of his length with my tongue.
“I’m in these damned meetings all day being pushed to make hasty decisions.
Wrenlock wants me to draft proposals to our prospective allies, and Enyd is demanding I make commitments to an invasion strategy should we fail to talk sense into Gregor, if we can even—” Lucais broke off, groaning as I pushed his hand away from the base of his shaft and slid my mouth along it, taking him as deep as I could manage.
When I felt him nudge the back of my throat and my eyes watered, I compensated with my hand for the inches I couldn’t quite fit any further down.
“Fuck, Aura, forget it. Keep doing that.”
Pulling him all the way out of my mouth, I kept one hand around his girth and tilted my head to peer up at him. “No,” I protested. “I want to hear about your meetings. I want you to tell me why you were so desperate to kidnap me from my own commitments.”
Especially because I was up there trying to help you.
Gazing down at me, half a smile on his face, Lucais shook his head with glimmering adoration.
“Put your mouth back on my cock, start sucking on it, and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.
You want political secrets? Blackmail material?
” He grunted, the sound low and gravelly.
“Do that thing with your tongue again, bookworm, and they’re all fucking yours. ”
With a little laugh, I did exactly that, twirling my tongue around the tip of his cock, sliding it beneath the base of the head, and then applying pressure as I jerked him off with my hand and lapped up the trace amounts of his excitement pooling in the line at the end.
Lucais’s moans were a series of sexy sounds that spurred me on, beautiful and vulnerable as they echoed through his bedroom and dove inside my heart.
Moving my hand down to the base of his shaft again and squeezing, I sucked until my cheeks hollowed out and the taste of him was the only thing I could remember ever having on my tongue.
“All I can think about is the way it feels when I’m with you,” he rasped.
“Fuck the Court of Earth. I want to bury myself inside you so deep that I’ll never be able to crawl back out.
” His hand slid into my hair, pushing me a little deeper onto his erection and groaning when I obeyed, though I gagged and tears spilled down my cheeks.
“I don’t want to go to war,” Lucais breathed, his voice shaky as my movements increased in speed.
“I want to go to bed with you. I want to rail you until you can’t walk, until your pussy has coaxed every last drop of come from my body.
I want to make you see stars. I want to make you”—he grunted as his release spilled into my throat—“ fucking ”—he took my head in both hands and held it in place while he pushed one last, long thrust into my mouth as deep as he could go, so far that it forced some of his come to spill out of the corner of my mouth—“ mine .”
My heart did a pirouette as I swallowed the taste of his climax.
Once he had pumped the last of his come down the back of my throat, Lucais bent down to wipe the mess from my chin and placed a kiss on my mouth.
Before I could even swipe the moisture away from my lashes, I was on my back on the floor and he was kissing his way down my body, ripping and tugging my clothes out of his way with nearly feral ferocity so his lips could clash against my bare skin.
A raging heat burned in my core. His teeth grazed my nipples, sucking them into his mouth as his hands fumbled with the waistband of my pants, clumsily pulling them down.
Then, he worked his mouth over my stomach until he had undressed enough of my body that he could force my knees apart, exposing me to himself and the cool bite of the air.
“This.” His eyes were a wild shade of gold as they devoured me. “This is what I fucking need.”
It would be a lie to suggest that I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. I felt it, too—an all-consuming, constant, maddening desire. Like I was incomplete until he was inside me. Like my vision was blurred until he came back into focus.
“You should have warned me it would be like this,” I uttered breathlessly. While he worked my pants free of my legs completely, I brushed the sweat-dampened hair back from my forehead. “I didn’t know it would be like this .”
“Oh, yeah,” Lucais grunted, spreading my naked legs all the way apart and sliding a finger down my centre until it was wet with my arousal.
He gave me a sardonic look as he slipped that finger inside of me, eliciting a quiet moan before he slowly bent his head between my thighs.
“Because I knew in advance from all of the other fated soulmates I’ve had. ”
Then, his tongue was on my clit, and I was unravelling again.
I was halfway through a moan, on the brink of an indelicate release when the door opened and Wrenlock strode over the threshold.
He paused, an unreadable expression on his face as he looked down at us, but it was enough to send me over the edge.
My squeal of surprise as I stared at him upside down morphed into a moan of ecstasy as Lucais’s mouth and hand brought me over the edge, and I was grateful that Wrenlock waited to speak, watching with delayed interest while I settled into the aftershocks.
“Enyd is demanding that everyone has dinner together,” he said, looking a little regretful. I couldn’t tell if it was because he’d missed out on our bedroom floor activities or if it was because he didn’t want to dine with Enyd, either.
Maybe both.
Lucais’s tongue gave me one final, lazy stroke before he lifted his head and groaned. “ Fine. ” He rose to stand, then scooped me into his arms. “After we’ve cleaned up, we’ll come downstairs to meet the wretch. What’s her favourite food?”
“Uhh…” Wrenlock shrugged, his mouth turning down at the corners. “I think she’s partial to seafood?”
Tutting under his breath, Lucais carried me into the bathroom, and shouted over his shoulder, “Make sure we serve anything but that!”