Chapter 26
Lyra
PUSSY LEAKING ALL OVER CAIRN’S table, I lean forward and drag my tongue across his glistening head.
Immediately, his cock throbs in my hands, and if he was about to say something else, to tell me to stop or that it’s time for me to go back to the castle or that we really shouldn’t be doing this, the words die on his tongue.
I stroke him slowly at first, alternating between swiping my thumbs and my tongue over his tip.
The veins in his shaft are engorged with blood, and it looks so good that I drag my tongue along those as well, making him gasp for breath.
I wish I could take all of him into my mouth, but when I try, I can only just barely get his head between my lips.
With both hands still stroking him, I suck on him gently, swiping my tongue along the thick tissue on the underside of his tip.
Then Cairn’s hands are in my damp hair. He twists the curls into his fingers, and I can feel his desire to pump my head, to force himself deeper into my mouth, but he doesn’t.
He just grips me, hands and knees shaking, his head tipped up toward the ceiling.
When I glance up from between his thighs, I find the veins in his neck bulging, his every muscle coiled tight.
In my hands, his cock gets harder. He’s almost there.
My tongue finds his tip again, and he’s leaking so much precum that I have to keep lapping it away, making him groan with each pass of my tongue over his head. Wrapping my lips around his dick, I suck and lick and keep pumping my hands.
And finally, with a rumbling moan, he cums.
And it’s shocking, to say the least.
I try to catch it in my mouth, but I’m quickly overwhelmed, and I have to sit back, watching as ropes of cum spurt from his cock, covering my borrowed sweater and dripping onto my bare thighs.
His hands are still in my hair, but after he drains everything he has onto my body, he softens his hold.
When he looks down and meets my eyes, I make a very obvious show of swallowing the cum I’ve been holding in my mouth.
He growls, more beast than man.
And then both of us look at the sticky mess I—and the table—have become.
We’ll both require a good cleaning.
“Are you okay?” Cairn asks at long last. His cock is still hard but slowly losing its demanding firmness. His chest rises and falls as he breathes heavily, his nose ring catching the light from the fire in the sitting room.
“I’m more than okay,” I whisper. “That was . . .” Words evade me, so I just laugh.
This makes Cairn crack a small smile. “It was,” he agrees. One of his hands finds my face and cups my cheek. His thumb strokes my skin. “Your freckles are beautiful,” he says softly.
My lips pull up in a smile. “I didn’t used to think so.”
“But you do now?” His thumb continues to brush along my skin, as if he’s trying to remember every constellation on my face.
“I’m learning to,” I whisper.
His brown cheeks are flushed, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead and shoulders. But his heavy breathing is slowing, and we both seem to have caught our breath.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Instead of standing up, I hold my arms out to him and tip my head. “Carry me?”
His dark eyes flash with surprise, and then a smile curls across his bearded mouth. “Really?”
I continue to hold my arms out.
With a roll of his eyes, he stoops to wrap one arm under my knees and the other around my back. I let out a little squeal when he scoops me off the table. I feel weightless in his arms, as if I’m floating on clouds.
Curling myself into his firm warm chest, I allow myself to feel safe and secure and like nothing in my outside world is going wrong. And for a moment, Cairn helps me believe it might be true.
THE TUB IN CAIRN’S WASHROOM is huge—I suppose it has to be to fit a minotaur. But to me, it feels more like a swimming pool than a basic wooden bathtub.
Cairn brought water in from the well outside, and I used my fire magic to heat it until it was steaming like a hot spring.
Now we lounge in the warm water together, Cairn leaning against one side with his legs stretched out, me leaning back against him, my head resting comfortably against his chest.
Tipping my head up as I lean back against him, I admire his horns and the way they catch the light from the candles I lit on the shelf beside the tub.
Cairn takes the bar of soap and works it along my body slowly.
I close my eyes and breathe deep as he massages it into my shoulders, my breasts, down my abdomen to the place between my legs.
When he touches me there, a pulse of desire goes through me, but my pussy is already sore from him fingering and stretching me.
“Cairn,” I say as he moves the soap to my thigh.
“Hmm?”
I watch the soap bubbles floating atop the water, catching the light from the candles and gleaming with little rainbows of color. “How long will it take?”
He continues to work the soap into my thigh, then behind my knee, leaving no spot unscrubbed. “How long will what take?”
A smile pulls on my mouth. The bathwater sloshes as I sit up and turn to face him. “Stretching me.” I glance down into the soapy water, where his cock is just barely visible through the soap bubbles, still impressively wide and long even when it’s soft. “How long until you can fuck me?”
His jaw feathers, and through the water, I can see his cock twitch, just a little.
“I don’t know,” he finally says, but he’s not meeting my eyes. “I’ve only . . .” Something like embarrassment creeps across his face, turning his cheeks a slightly darker shade of red than the hot water already did. “I’ve only done this once before.”
A collection of emotions goes through me.
Of course he’s been with other women—how could he not? He’s older than me, more experienced, and one of the most beautiful specimens of man I’ve ever seen. I know I’m not the only woman who’s wanted to feel him between her thighs.
Yet his words still make my chest pinch and my stomach squeeze. I don’t much like the thought of him stretching someone else, preparing her to take his cock.
“So,” I say softly, trying to pick my words with care instead of letting them spew out in a fiery volcano, like they usually do, “you’ve been with a human before?”
He nods once. “Yes. Though it was many years ago now.”
I reach for the bar of soap still held in his hand and ease it into mine. Then, with a gentleness I didn’t realize I possessed, I start working the soap into his chest, along his collarbones, and down his thick arms. “What happened?” I whisper, not looking up to meet his dark eyes.
Cairn doesn’t reply for a long time. When I do finally glance up, he’s not looking at me. He’s staring at a point on the wall, forehead furrowed slightly, as though he’s reliving old memories. His long curls hang loose, framing his face and strong jaw.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “I’d understand if—”
“It’s not that,” he says softly. One of his hands finds my bare back, and he begins tracing his fingers along my skin slowly, as if he’s lost in the past. “It’s just that I’ve not thought about it for a long time.
It’s . . . odd, unearthing what I’ve left buried.
” Now his eyes meet mine. He shifts slightly in the tub, stretching his legs out longer.
His head cants slightly to one side as he regards me. “I was engaged to be married.”
Another bolt of surprise goes through me. It serves to remind me of the age difference between us. It’s like he’s lived this whole big life, and mine is only just getting started.
“But you didn’t go through with it?” I take his hand in mine—it’s so big in comparison—and work the soap into his forearm, then his wrist, where I can feel his heartbeat through the tender skin.
“I would have,” he says. “But she decided not to. She called it off before we were wed.”
I’m not sure I like that answer. The silly, jealous part of me wanted him to say that he decided not to marry her. Keeping my eyes down so he can’t see the tangled emotions I’m working to unravel, I say, “Why?”
He sighs, long and low. Then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, he says, “Her family wouldn’t accept me because I’m a minotaur, so she broke it off with me.”
Now my eyes flash to his, and my hand stills with the soap. “What?”
The emotion inside me turns quickly to anger, heat flooding my veins. I know—have always known—that there are people in the world who judge others on how they look or where they were born instead of judging them based on their character. But how anyone could toss Cairn aside like that . . .
My mind flashes with images: Cairn raking leaves, the small smile that curled across his lips when the red fox licked his chin, the gentleness with which he prunes plants and tucks them into the soil to keep them warm for the long winter ahead.
Around us, the water grows warmer as my fire magic simmers.
“What an asshole,” I finally say, not pausing to consider how Cairn might respond.
But he surprises me when he lets out a hearty laugh. It makes the water slosh all around us, and for a moment, it’s like I’m a boat in a tropical storm, getting tossed this way and that.
His arms come around me, and he eases me into his lap, my knees spread along either side of his hips. Close up, I can see little water droplets clinging to his beard and glimpse my funny warped reflection in the winking metal of his nose ring.
“Thank you for that,” he says. His voice is buoyant, and his lips are pulled into a small smile. “I’ve wanted to hear someone say that for a long, long time.”
Despite my anger and simmering jealously, I can’t help but to smile. “Asshole, asshole, asshole,” I repeat. My bare arms wrap around his neck, and I press my chest to his. “I’ll say it as many times as you want.”
Again, he traces my back with his fingertips, making goose bumps rise along my skin. His eyes seem to search mine, though for what, I’ve no idea. Then his hand wraps around the back of my head, and he pulls me in, pressing his mouth to mine.
His lips are soft and warm, his beard ticklish against my skin. I hold tighter to him, hugging his neck like I’ll never let go.
When he pulls away from our kiss, his mouth is quirked into a smile. Softly, he says, “I have a surprise for you.”