CHAPTER 21
Kessian briefly startled like a spooked cat, going rigid against me, one hand poised on my arm as if to push me away.
Then he softened into the kiss, melted inch by inch closer, until he was flush with my body from hip to shoulder, arching and opening his mouth and taking that wrist he held to loop back around him.
With my fingers knotted in his hair and my tongue parting his lips, I couldn’t conceive of why I’d held back before.
Why I’d run away rather than risk this entanglement.
We were already enmeshed. I could feel it in the way his current of wild magic emulsified with mine, in the slide of his wet tongue like a glaze of slip to glue us both together.
I’d wanted him so badly, and now that I had him rubbing against my hip and gasping against my mouth, I couldn’t let go.
I swallowed every little sound he made. The shortened breaths, the heady little “mm” when I pushed his legs apart with mine, both so he could take more weight off his leg and so he could grind against my thigh.
“Inside,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“You’re asking me?”
“In the past you seemed uncertain about round two.”
A hidden insecurity undercut the words. “You thought I didn’t want you back?”
“The signals were mixed, you must admit.”
“I didn’t think I could let myself have you.” I swallowed thickly around all the explanations I didn’t know how to voice. “But I have driven myself half mad with how badly I want you.”
He kissed me viciously and tried to claw my shirt off at the same time.
We had to part to get it off, which he didn’t like, grumbling as I wadded it up and tossed it.
He was back in my arms at once. I toed the door shut behind us and bumped the kitchen table on our way past. He was still limping a bit.
“You’ll tell me if something hurts, right?” I ran my hand up his leg. “Or if we need to switch positions?”
“I’ve been trying not to jump you this entire time. I’m not fragile. I’ll make it work.”
“So you’ll tell me?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you,” he huffed. “Are you going to take me to bed now or keep teasing me?”
In answer, I turned him by the hips against the counter so his back was facing me, the bulge in my trousers fitted firmly against his arse. I held the nape of his neck with one hand and reached around to start unbuttoning his shirt with the other.
“Do we need the bed or can I have you right here?”
“I love how much more confident you are with your clothes off.”
“So here’s good?”
“You can have me wherever you want me, darling.”
He braced against the counter so he could arch his back.
The way his body fit flush against mine, the way his hair smelled, it all made me dizzy.
All his clothes were made of thin, flowy material.
A few buttons down, and his shirt slipped to bare one shoulder.
I kissed along that slope, up the column of his neck, nuzzling behind his ear.
He was so responsive to my every touch. Where my lips went, a trail of goose bumps followed.
As I slipped a hand into his half-unbuttoned shirt and brushed over a nipple, it hardened to a firm bud.
When I finished with the buttons and instead flirted with the hem of his trousers, he didn’t seem to know whether to arch his hips forward or back.
I made it so he didn’t have to choose, pulling him tight against me. I softly played my fingers through the hair on his belly before ripping off his belt.
Both our breathing came ragged. The anticipation was killing me. I wanted to draw this out, but he was widening his stance and turning his head to breathe against my cheek and kiss it, and he said, “Please don’t tease me.”
I stuck two of my fingers in my mouth and sucked to wet them. Kessian froze, staring at me with his blue eyes blown black. I didn’t know how to make it a show for him rather than a perfunctory action, but it didn’t seem to matter. Just seeing me suck on my own fingers did it for him.
After that frozen second, he took my wrist, pulled my hand to his mouth instead, then sucked the same two fingers in between his lips.
My hips jerked against him, a jolt of pleasure going straight to my cock as though that’s what he was sucking on.
He did make a show of it. Bobbing his head, swirling his tongue, getting my fingers as slick as possible. When he popped his lips free, they were shiny with spit, and I kissed them. Tonguing into his mouth. Letting him know how deranged he was making me while I slipped my hand down his pants.
He stopped moving so much when I ran my slick fingers over the firm bump of his dick. For a second he just froze, then he bent over the counter and shuddered, hips canting for more.
I rubbed him between both fingers, bowing over him to get more leverage, running my fingers lower, between the folds of his pussy. Deeper. Sliding past the first knuckle, and the second, until I could curl them.
He bucked. “Tal!”
I groaned against his neck. “You’re soaked.”
“Tal, please will you just finger me.” He wiggled his hips, trying to get me to move.
And I did. I pressed my fingers in and out. I rocked my hips like I would if my cock was inside him, and one of his hands flew back to try and pull me closer. It landed on my hip, scratching through fabric.
If he wanted me close, I’d give him no room to move.
He fit perfectly between my hand knuckles-deep in his cunt and my hips pressed against his arse.
His shirt hung off him by one button, and with my chin hooked over his shoulder, I could look down and see where my wrist disappeared into his pants.
I couldn’t see my fingers inside him, but I could hear them.
Kessian whined, “Tal … Tal, I’m close.”
“Good. I’ve got you.”
I had my free arm around his chest, my palm against his clavicle. He took that hand and guided it to the back of his head.
“Pull my hair again.”
“Oh my God. Okay.”
I grabbed a good handful so as not to rip any, pulling so I could kiss his neck, revitalizing the mark I’d left a few days ago. He shuddered when I used my teeth, thighs clamping shut around my hand. The pulse of his orgasm overcame him.
I gave him a moment to come down, panting in his ear.
Then I slipped my fingers free, untangled my other hand from his hair, grabbed two glasses from the cabinet above him, and leaned over him to pour water from the sink.
I set the first on the counter where he’d collapsed forward onto his folded arms.
His voice sounded parched from panting. “Tal?”
“Mm?”
“Give me a second and I’ll get a drink straight from the tap.”
“If you prefer that to a glass.”
“That was a euphemism for blowing you.”
My knees didn’t buckle, but it was a close thing with all the blood in my body rushing to one place.
Kessian gulped down the water I’d provided, grabbed me by my belt, and started leading me down the hall to his bedroom, where he chucked a couple pillows on the floor and dropped to his knees upon them.
I tried not to fall to mine as he unbuckled me and opened my fly enough to place a damp, open-mouthed kiss against the head of my exposed dick where it peeked out of the hem of my briefs.
I tried to breathe evenly, but every exhale came out ragged, because his eyes were midnight blue and he looked up at me like he really wanted this. Wanted me.
“I know you like to hold back,” he said, each word hot and wet where he mouthed my cock through my underwear. “But I don’t want you to. Don’t hold back.”
“I—Kessian!”
“Don’t hold back,” he said again.
Then he freed me completely from my briefs, put the flat of his tongue against my balls, and licked all the way up. I held my breath. He pursed his lips, sucked on the head, then descended all the way down until he could nuzzle into my pubic hair.
I was going to combust like a teenage boy getting blown for the first time. He seemed to know it, because he pulled off of me, lips shining as they rolled my foreskin back over the head.
“I said don’t hold back.”
“I’m trying not to finish too soon.”
“That sounds like holding back to me.”
A few strands of hair fell into his face, and I thoughtlessly tucked them behind his ear, cupping his cheek. He leaned into the touch, somehow managing to look coy and innocent even with my cock leaking precum against his cheek.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll … try.”
He smiled and rewarded me with a far more chaste kiss to the tip. One of his hands held my hip, the other arm wound around my waist, trapping me against his mouth as he sucked me down.
Pressure built in my abdomen, pleasure spiking with each bob of his head. He was making wet, lewd noises, moaning like I tasted good, no regard for how sloppy we were getting.
My orgasm curled like a tongue of smoke, low in my belly. He guided my hand to palm the back of his head, and with a few thrusts and the silky knot of his hair in my fist, I knew I couldn’t hold out anymore. I stammered out a warning, but Kessian just moaned and relaxed into my hand.
I forgot to breathe so long that I barely made a sound when I came.
He swallowed. I reached for his hand and helped him up, pulling him into my arms so I could kiss him and fall back with him onto the bed.
“Remember when you told me you could be a tragic lay?” Kessian panted. “Never been so glad to call someone a liar.”
“Worth the wait?”
He beamed, nuzzling into my shoulder. “Mm. Not to sound like a desperate saddo, but when I woke up this morning getting poked by your erection, and you still didn’t fuck me, I gave up hope you ever would again.”
I covered my face with my hand. “Yes, that was …”
“Torture?”
“I was going to say ‘stupid,’ but ‘torture’ is more accurate.”
He laughed lightly, the bellows of his ribs against mine such a new, unique intimacy.
He softened, got quiet. “Why did you hold back so long?”
“I was … afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
I wasn’t good with words, but I needed to be now.
I needed to express to him why I had such a mental block around developing feelings for him.
“Afraid I’d have to leave again. I didn’t want to risk a painful goodbye.
My life has been so full of them. But …” I took his hand and kissed his knuckles.
“I’m done with running away. You’re worth the risk. ”
“The risk of what?”
“A broken heart.”
He looked at me with round eyes, quiet and searching, like he hadn’t expected that answer. His fingers clenched in mine and I squeezed back, leaned in to kiss him, but he spooked away.
His magic flared. I tasted silver. Not on his lips, which broke from the kiss in shock, but in the current between us. The air cooled like a storm coming off the back of a heat wave.
I had to squint to look at him because the stars on his cheeks and in his eyes flared with light.
“What’s happening?” he said. “I feel … strange.”
I was about to say I didn’t know, when the flare of magic and the taste in the air changed into something dreadfully familiar.
Damp, the rush of water, a piercing music sharp enough to draw blood.
I should have known too much time had elapsed, that the wraith would not let Kessian and I have this moment for long.
Frantically, I searched the room and the window for signs of a shadow, but almost as soon as the wraith’s magic had consumed the small bedroom, it dissipated.
Kessian’s glow dimmed, his own magic dormant once more.
We looked at one another, confused. Something buzzed from the floor, making us both jump.
Kessian’s phone. I got up to fish it out of his trousers.
A premonition of dread came over me as I handed it to him, Fae’s name flashing across the screen.
I could hear their voice though they weren’t on speaker.
“Kessian! Have you seen Tal?”
“Uh, yes. He’s with me right here. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No. You both need to come right away. Come to the spa.”
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“It’s the wraith. The wraith has taken someone again.”
My whole body flushed with cold. I’d known. As soon as I’d seen their name on the phone, I’d known.
“Who? Who’s it taken?” he asked.
“Amelia. It got Amelia.”