Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
“You’re lucky that they made the railing this high,” he says when he sits back down after waving to the crowd. “Or I would’ve given everyone more of a show than they bargained for.”
His silken Selaran pants, like my dress, leave nothing to the imagination. The bulge of his cock is incredibly obvious as he takes his seat.
“I’m lucky that the men around here seem to want everyone to take a look. These pants are driving me crazy. They’re obscene.”
I watch his cock rise with my words, and it’s immensely satisfying to see.
He drops his voice low and leans to speak directly into my ear even though no one is near to hear us. “Says the woman whose entire breasts are on display. I can see the exact shape of them. I can even see your little brown nipples. Look, they can hear me.”
They tighten under the thin fabric at his attention.
“Fuck you,” I whisper.
He chuckles, looking free and happy for the first time in ages.
Then, just as suddenly as it arrived, the smile fades from his face. His hand tenses on the armrest. He doesn’t want to ask me this, but he can’t help himself. “Are you staying?”
“For tonight? Or—”
“I don’t know,” he says, taking my hand. “I don’t need you to decide right now.”
It’s a lie. I can feel it. I can feel how much he wants me to stay with him, how terrified he is that I’ll just walk away from him again after tonight.
And I am terrified too. Terrified of being with him and what it will mean, but far more terrified of losing him.
I can’t lose him.
I lean over the handle of his chair to whisper in his ear. “I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me.”
I don’t lean back yet. There’s something else I need to say to him. I swallow, pushing my heart back down out of my throat. I can do this. I need to do this. After what I’ve put him through, he deserves to hear this.
The truth is, he’s too good for me. I don’t know if I’ll ever deserve him.
But I want him. Only him.
I belong to him.
“I’m yours, Ronan,” I say to him, forcing myself to say the words despite my fear. I don’t want to leave it as a feeling for him to interpret. I want him to know it, to be certain of it. To know that there’s no one else for me but him.
“Darken the shadows,” he replies.
“What?”
“Just for a moment. The show has begun. No one will notice.”
“Alright, but—”
I darken the shadows over us. It would be incredibly obvious to anyone not shadow-born, and the shadow-born would be able to see, but I don’t think Ronan cares.
He places his hand on my cheek and pulls me to his lips, softly and slowly. “Sylvie, I’ve been yours since the day you arrived.”
Then he kisses me deeply, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before, not even with him. It’s the beginning and ending of everything, of everything I am, of everything I came here to do. I’m being reborn on Ronan’s lips. I’ll never be the same again, and it doesn’t matter.
All that matters is us.
When I finally pull away, I take a long moment to look at him before I let go of the shadows.
I asked Larus once what being in love felt like.
He told me he’d only ever really been in love once, long before he came into our service, but that he knew it when he looked at her and he believed, truly believed, that she was the most wonderful person in the world.
That no one else could ever compare to her, and that he felt sorry for every person who didn’t get to know her because they were missing out on the best that the world had to offer.
He said it was pure delusion. He knew it couldn’t be true because everyone must feel that way, and only one person in the world can be the most wonderful, by definition.
And yet, he told me, when you’re in love, you believe it anyway. Even when they annoy you. Even when you hate them. There’s a part of you that keeps on believing that the most wonderful person is still in there, waiting for you to find them again.
That’s what love is.
Looking at him here, looking at Ronan. My Ronan.
I can’t imagine anyone, anything, in the world more wonderful than him.
I force myself to look at the stage when the torchlight of the theatre reaches my eyes again.
There are about a dozen people down there in costumes, some ancient warriors, some tree spirits or something else vaguely floral.
They sing in the Selaran common language, but their voices are so exaggerated that it’s difficult for me to understand the words.
I’m sure it’s beautiful, or I would think so if I’d paid attention to any of it so far.
“Are you regretting saying you wanted to watch the show?” Ronan mutters without turning.
“Maybe.”
“Would you like to regret it even more?”
He slips his hand over the arm of my chair and grazes his fingertips on my thigh. The dress I’ve borrowed from Quinn has a slit that he’s dangerously close to reaching.
I say a silent thank you to her for making me shave. “Yes,” I whisper back.
His fingers glide over the thin, silky fabric.
It’s soft and impossibly smooth on my skin.
I feel a prick of realization from him when he finds the overlap in the layers.
He spreads the slit in the dress with his thumb and forefinger, and it’s impossible for me not to think of him spreading something else.
That desire is mirrored between us. I press my teeth to my bottom lip to keep from sighing as his hand touches the bare skin of my leg. He rubs little circles there, and then his hand drifts lower.
I shift in my chair to give him better access. I’m wearing nothing under the dress; any of the undergarments that I own would have been visible. The space between my thighs slickens as he moves closer to it. He’ll feel it any moment. All he has to do is drift his hand a little bit lower…
“This part is funny,” he says, moving his hand to my other thigh and skipping the good part altogether. “Pretend to laugh when they laugh.”
“They” being the audience. Thank the gods for the box. No one can see where Ronan’s hand is, but they can certainly see the look on my face in response to it.
I laugh when they laugh, and Ronan tugs my thighs open, forcing me to gasp.
“Good,” he says. “Convincing.”
Gods, I love to hear it.
Then he trails his fingers up once more. I feel the moment his fingers touch the growing wet patch between my legs. The feeling runs from his fingers, up his arm, down his body, and right into his cock, which twitches in his pants. “Sylvie,” he says. “Is this for me?”
“All of it,” I say. I’m spread open obscenely in the chair, the fabric of the dress pushed aside for him. I take his hand and shove it back to the other slit. The one on my body.
He moans at my forwardness. “Take what you want from me. I love it.”
He strokes my lower lips teasingly, his fingers gliding over my folds with such tenderness that it makes me shiver. I want him in me, want him to press the heel of his hand against me as his fingers work in me. I want him to make me come.
But not yet.
“There is something else I want,” I say.
“Name it.”
I don’t. Instead, I reach over the arm of his chair and stroke him through his trousers. Those slutty Selaran trousers. So thin, so silky soft. He shifts and rolls his head back, then he covers the action with a stretch.
“Gods,” he says, his voice dark and husky.
He looks at me in disbelief as I stroke him through the fabric. I trace the outline of his length, feeling it grow in my hand as I wrap my fingers around it. Damn, it feels amazing to touch him like this. “Is this for me?” I ask.
“Only for you,” he says, pressing a quick kiss to my bare shoulder. “Whenever you want it.”
“How about now?”
“Done with the show?”
I am, but there’s a part of me that’s enjoying this too much to leave.
“Hang on,” he says at my hesitation. “I have another idea.”
He removes his hand from me, and I feel the lack almost immediately. And then the strangest thing I’ve ever seen happens.
Ronan slides down in his chair until he’s kneeling on the floor in front of it. But he’s still there in the chair too. The image of him is, at least.
“What the fuck,” I whisper.
He presses a finger to his lips to quiet me. It’s the same finger he was stroking me with. He licks my juices off of it, and I feel his primal pleasure deep in my core. “You’re delicious,” he murmurs, crawling until he’s in front of me. “I need more.”
The image of Ronan beside me smiles uncannily, watching the show.
The Ronan between my legs is cloaked in shadow and hidden by the railing, but there are people just on the other side of the walls of the box. It’s terrifying and yet deeply erotic to know that I’m spread open with people just a few feet away.
He must sense my fear because he kisses the inside of my thigh near my knee. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
Fuck, I want him to.
I put my hand in his perfect hair and tug him to me.
“Fuck yes,” he rasps, skimming the inside of my thigh with his tongue before pushing my legs open further.
Then he reaches back and grabs me by my ass, pulling me forward a few inches.
My mouth falls open, but I clench it shut as quickly as I can. Beside me, the image of Ronan sinks a few inches in the chair to hide my movement.
“You’re so beautiful. Every part of you. I’ve been thinking about this since that day at the baths.”
“You saw me?” I blush at the memory of me naked, scrambling for my towel with him across the room.
“Not nearly enough,” he says. “But enough for a fantasy or two. Now do your best to stay quiet. We’re nearly to the sad part. When I’m done with you, you’re going to look as if you’ve been deeply moved by the music. Very deeply.”
I moan as he parts my lower lips just as he parted the dress.
He places a soft kiss right on my clit. It’s so light, so gentle that it drives me wild with need. “Ronan,” I beg.
He tilts his head up as he teases me with his tongue. I look down and meet his eyes. They’re dark and full of longing. A need to taste me, to please me. I have to blink a dozen times to get myself to look up again.