112. Rorax
Rorax’s chest heaved in angry breaths as she glared at Ayres, trying to keep any evidence of her hurt out of her eyes. He was standing there, looking as beautiful and deadly as ever. His hands were on his hips, and he was standing in front of a pile of shattered glass. Why was he here in this shitty little office? Why wasn’t he with her?
Ayres turned slowly around to face, tension coiled in his shoulders. “I’m working, Ror.”
The meaty part of his palm rubbed his forehead. He looked tired, drained, as if he was not getting nearly enough sleep. But that wasn’t why she was here; she wasn’t here to care; she was here to get answers. His eyes roamed the length of her body, as if drinking in the sight of her, savoring it, and it made her anger hotter.
“Have you been avoiding me, Ayres?”
His eyes and mouth went hard but said nothing and it caused Rorax’s heart to pinch.
“Are you punishing me for being angry about finding out you”re the Prince?”
A muscle in Ayres’s jaw jumped. “What? No, of course not.”
She bared her teeth at him, feeling her fledgling power screaming to unleash it on him, to hurt him the same way she was hurting.
Before she did anything rash, she turned towards the door, wanting—needing—to get away from this man. Rorax’s hand was almost at the handle, when a wall of black shadow and red lightning cut in front of her, zapping her fingers away.
He wasn”t letting her go.
Rorax’s heart leapt at the implication, which made her scowl with anger at herself for her pitiful hope. Ayres bit out a low laugh out at the look on her face and he moved towards her. Every single slow step he made had a predatory intent that made her instincts urge her to flee. There was nothing between her and the Death Harbinger’s power but a long black dress she had put on before coming here. For the first time since she had met him, she could actually feel it—the hint of power that everyone had mentioned to her before now. The amount of power that he must hold was almost unimaginable, like Kiniera’s.
Rorax pushed her fear down and rolled her tongue over her teeth, wanting to punch that smug grin off his face. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”
He stopped in front of her, making a little tsk, tsk, tsk sound with his tongue. “Don’t lie, Little Crow.”
Despite her instincts telling her it was a bad idea to provoke the Death Harbinger, the very, very short leash she had on her temper snapped in half.
She tried to punch Ayres in the face, but he turned a shoulder away from her and her fist sailed right past his head into the waiting air. He took her fist, twisted it behind her back and shoved her face first into the wall so hard the picture frame above her rattled.
“I’ve missed this.” Ayres’s eyes were fixed on where he had one of his powerful thighs pressed between both of hers to pin her against the wall. Her dress was riding up and had bunched in the middle of her thighs. He leaned closer until his lips brushed against the sensitive skin of her neck right above her thrumming pulse. “I’ve missed you.” He nipped her earlobe with his teeth.
Fuck. Her body jerked before a paralyzing, erotic current shot through her, straight to her core. She hated the little wet spot she could feel blooming there.
Rorax grunted and turned her head away, so the back of her head was in his face. His nose tickled the strands of hair on the back of her head as he breathed in her scent, and it made her nipples tighten under her dress.
She hated him. Truly.
Her back arched involuntarily and part of her wanted to persuade him—wanted to beg, bribe, threaten—anything to convince him that having her spread out before him where he could put tongue, teeth, and fingers in her was the only thing he could do for the rest of the day.
Rorax chanced a glance up at him and his gaze was silver. It would only take one push—one more small little arch—to snap his control and he would take her, right there.
She maneuvered out of his grasp and stepped back towards the door. “Let me out.”
Ayres ignored her, and instead rested his fist against the wall where she had just been standing. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his fist, as if he could still feel her against him there. He looked like he was both longing and in mourning, like she had left him, like she had put this barrier between them.
Gods, he was infuriating. Rorax glowered at him from across the room, her hands balling into fists so tight she could feel her nails threatening to pierce her skin. “I’ll kill you.”
Ayres turned, slow and predatory, his eyes trailing to her. He grinned, showing all his teeth in more of a snarl than a smile, and before she could blink, he was on her. Ayres kissed her hard and fast, his arms encircling her and hoisting her up from the ground. He slammed her against the stone wall so hard she cried out in shock.
Taking the open opportunity, he started to kiss down her neck.
“You don’t want to kill me, Little Crow. That’s not why you came to find me.” His right hand simultaneously pulled the low neckline of her dress and bra down, releasing her breasts. She had to wrap her arm around his neck, one hand gripping his shoulder so hard she was probably going to leave bruises. The other hand was at his wrist, pulling it closer as he kneaded one of her breasts and pinched a nipple roughly. She whimpered into his mouth and arched her back greedily, pressing herself more fully into him.
“Ayres,” she whimpered. “I need more.” He laughed darkly as he released her nipple and used that same hand to shove her dress even farther up her legs, so it rested above her hips. His belt clinked against the zipper as the button of his pants came undone and she felt a rush of excitement. He moved her panties to the side with his fingers and pressed inside. She rocked her hips on him, riding his fingers for a moment, showing him how wet and ready she was, how much she desperately wanted this, before his fingers disappeared and she felt him guide his cock inside her.
He slammed his full length into her. There was a twinge of delicious pain, and she screamed his name.
“Fuck, Ror,” he clipped out, gripping both of her knees in support so he could watch his cock slide in and out. “I have been waiting for days to be right—” he pulled all the way out of her, “—here.” He slammed back in.
She rolled her hips and Ayres lowered his head to her shoulder and started to pump faster and faster into her, so hard that the paintings on the wall rattled and threatened to fall. The combination of the positioning and how big he was resulted in him rubbing against places she didn’t even know could feel good.
She was going to explode; she was going to kaleidoscope into a thousand pieces, and she was going to love every second of it. “Ayres,” she whimpered, “Ayres, I”m going to come.”
He gritted his, pumping harder as her walls grew tighter and tighter.
She screamed his name again, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt as she came. One of the paintings fell off the wall as he continued to stroke into her, and she came again, one orgasm rolling into the next. She came so hard she saw stars.
His eyes were redder than she had ever seen, except for during her first hunt in Helfast when he had saved them, and she loved it. Loved that she could make him lose control, that she could push his buttons so hard that he could snap his precious self-restraint.
This was Ayres Sumavari. Death Prince and Death Harbinger. He had to have a legendary amount of discipline to be able to keep his power in check. And yet she, Roraxiva Greywood, was the only person on the planet she knew who could make him shed his discipline like a snakeskin.
“We’re not done,” Ayres snarled as he lifted her, away from the wall. With one arm around her waist, the other at her hip, he turned to the desk.
He pressed his mouth to hers and his tongue reached in to stroke hers and in one swipe of his arm, he cleared everything off the desk.
Still rock hard inside of her he dropped her onto the surface. He lowered his head to her neck as his cock slid out, pumped inside of her, withdrew, and then, as he drilled into her again, he clamped his canines onto her skin and bit.
Her body tensed as pain sent a jolt of electricity through her. It was immediately replaced by pure, unfiltered pleasure that made her see stars. She gasped out his name.
His teeth released the flesh of her throat and pulled away so that he could watch her fall apart.
She couldn’t move, she couldn’t do anything but breathe, whimper, and beg for more as he fucked her and used his thumb to rub over her clit. Ayres growled and at the sound, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she came again. Hard. Harder than she ever had come before in her whole entire life.
Waves of pleasure coursed through her blood and she felt detached from her body, floating away in a balloon of pure ecstasy.
Ayres made one more thrust inside of her and collapsed onto his elbows on either side of her. His dark eyes were hooded with happy satisfaction as he looked down at Rorax, almost nose to nose with her. She smiled softly, feeling so whole and relaxed and happy to have him back right here, connected with her, looking at her like she was everything is his world, his sun and his stars.
She completely forgot that she was still angry with him, until he opened his fucking mouth again.
“I was avoiding you, Ror,” he said, swallowing hard, pressing his eyes shut and breaking their connection. “Because this . . . you . . . I can’t think about anything else when you’re near me except how much I want you. Yet, I can’t find any relief when you are not with me. I ache for you. Always.”
Just as Rorax opened her mouth to say something snarky, Ayres opened his eyes and reached up to pluck one of her hair knives free.
Rorax could barely believe it when Ayres gently sliced into the scar where he had done the Blood Oath before slicing into his own thumb. He set her knife on the desk and lowered himself to his knees in front of her, looking up into her eyes as she sat up to watch him. “Roraxiva Greywood, I release you from your Blood Oath.”
She winced when it felt like her cut had been zapped but didn’t look away from his face.
“I should have done that long ago.” Ayres stayed on his knees, but reached out and grabbed her boot clad ankles dangling off the side of the desk. “I am sorry, Rorax. Forgive me. For everything. I should have told you who I was after you took those arrows for me on your first hunt, or after you saved both Cannon and Kaiya’s life and took that troll on by yourself. And most importantly I should never have forced you to take the Blood Oath once you figured it out. I am sorry for always making you feel as though you still have something to prove to me, ever after you already have. Time and time again.”
Rorax forgot to breathe as he raised himself to his feet and cupped her face in his warm hands. He tilted her jaw up to him and looked from one of her eyes to the other. “You are enough, and you have done enough, to earn my forgiveness, my protection, my friendship, and my loyalty,” Ayres said.
Rorax’s lip started to tremble, and he pressed a thumb gently into her lower lip.
“You have to survive this. I don’t want to live in a world where you’re no longer in it,” he said, his gaze moving over her face, the soft expression on his features reminding her how Volla used to look at Jia. “So, yes, I have been avoiding you, Rorax. You’re right, and I’m sorry for that, too. I just . . . I just needed some space, to try and focus.”
Ayres released Rorax’s face, and he stepped over to the desk he was using. She watched as he moved to the pile of books and papers he had flung off his desk, picking up a few and looking them over as he ran a tattooed hand over his short hair. “I have been trying to find a way to release you and Isgra from the Choosing, I swear I’ve searched through almost every book and scroll in this whole gods damned library but . . .” He looked back up at her and grimaced, eyeing the tears that had started to fall from her eyes. “Ror, what”s wrong?”
Rorax quickly brushed the stray tears off her cheeks and swallowed the lump in her throat. “You’ve . . . been here for the past month . . . researching?”
Ayres put his hands on his hips, looking over the stacks of paper forlornly. “Not successfully, Ror, but—”
Rorax launched herself from the desk and threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his neck. Relief swept through her like a wrecking ball. He hadn’t abandoned her. He had been throwing all his energy into saving her life.
She sagged, and Ayres tightened his arms around her waist, squeezing hard. “I am with you, my Little Crow.”