Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
ALLETTE
Say you’ll let me .
I want to. Despite knowing all I know, despite our past and our future, stars, do I want to. But I worry. About me and my broken heart, yes. But more than that, I worry about Senan. What happened all those years ago may have broken me, but it shattered him. How will he fare when we’re ripped apart once more?
And how can I take this moment for myself without telling him the truth of what I’ve become?
He doesn’t even realize I’m no longer Scathian. That those humans stole the only things that put us on a semi-even footing.
My head and my heart are at war, but my heart has been broken for so long, weakened by seams stitched haphazardly back together.
“So, what? We just pretend you’re not about to marry someone else and move to another kingdom?” So simple. So logical. It’s going to hurt , whispers my heart.
Warm hands brush my hair back from my face, the dark dye concealing its true color the same way I hide my scars. “That is exactly what we do. I have too many regrets in this life. I don’t want one of them to be that we didn’t steal every last drop of happiness when we were given the chance.” His tongue darts out, swiping along full lips that I ache to kiss. His eyes plead and beg, and yet he says, “But what I want doesn’t matter if you no longer feel the same. Last time, I didn’t give you much of a choice. This time, I will follow your lead.”
The lust clouding my mind is making me waver. The longer I stare at my long-lost love, the louder my heart whispers, until I hear it as clear as a bell: It’s going to hurt either way.
Senan’s dark brows rise in silent question, and I answer the only way I know how.
By dropping forward and crushing my mouth to his. His grip on my neck tightens almost painfully, but nothing hurts as much as my heart knowing this isn’t a joyous greeting but a stubborn attempt to ignore goodbye. His tongue glides along the seam of my lips, and when I open for him, sweeps inside to meet mine, tasting and teasing.
My hips start to move, seeking friction, rocking and grinding, dragging a curse from his lips as Senan’s body hardens beneath the softest parts of mine, stroking where I crave him most.
Hips lift. Holds tighten. Tongues conquer.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs between wild kisses, hands untangling from my hair, gliding down my arms, anchoring on either side of my rolling hips. “Just like that. Not too fast.” He sets a less frantic pace, moving me deeper. “There you go. Nice and slow. We’ve waited far too long to rush.”
My elbows rest on either side of his head, caging him in, keeping him for myself.
His mouth consumes mine just as he has consumed my heart, wholly and without reservation. Teeth nip my lower lip. My chin. My jaw. Devouring with a frenzied sort of hunger, as if we are starved for each other. Nails sink into skin, grasping at every piece of flesh we can reach.
I yank on the soft fabric of his shirt, desperate to see how the years have honed his body. “Take this off.”
His grin flashes, and he rolls me onto my back, taking charge. He reaches behind his head to tug his shirt up and off. His body has always been beautiful, but seeing the man he has become leaves me aching with want. With need.
The lean muscles of his chest and abdomen look as if they have been carved in stone by the finest sculptor in all the realm. The deep cut of his hips creates the perfect V.
My name covers his heart. My flowers climb his arms. Our story has been inked on his knuckles. My gaze falls to an intricate tattoo of a cage stretching across his ribs. At the bottom lies a prone blackbird, tiny talons raised, curled around nothing.
Goosebumps lift beneath my fingers as I trace the creature’s black wings, knowing in my heart who it represents. My prince is the blackbird. The castle is his cage. In this piece, he isn’t alive. He is dead.
Oh, Senan…
His fingers wrap around mine, bringing them to his lips. His soft, warm mouth touches my fingertips as he watches me with such tenderness in his eyes. “I love the way you look at me.”
“And how is that?” My chin lifts, desperate to feel his mouth against my throat.
“The same way you always have. Like you see me. Not my crown. Not my mistakes. Me.”
I trace the indentations below his hip bones until the tips of my fingers tuck into his waistband. “I do see you. Although, I’d like to see more of you,” I confess, giving his waistband a tug.
The corner of his lips lift into that cheeky grin I love so much. “You first.”
My pounding heart skitters to a halt.
Your scars!
He’ll love me anyway.
Are you certain?
Senan’s betrothed is the picture of perfection, a princess with an entire kingdom at her disposal. How could he possibly want me after he learns the truth?
I can’t do this. I can’t.
I shove his left knee, setting him off balance. He seems to understand that I need space and falls to the side, letting me escape from beneath him.
Everything is happening so fast. I didn’t come here to be seduced. I don’t even know why I came. Didn’t I decide to let him go? What am I thinking?
“Allette?”
I stumble away, but then I see the picnic and the moonflowers and I’m so twisted up inside, so sick of indecision and second guessing, that I freeze, suspended in time, neither coming nor going.
When Senan’s hand lands on my back, I flinch. He jerks as if he’s touched a hot coal, his eyes shuttering. I hate that I’ve put distance between us, but I’m struggling and cannot pretend otherwise.
“I’m sorry, Allette. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” He adjusts his thick erection inside his trousers. “Being near you again makes it difficult to discern the past from the present. I shall endeavor to control myself better. Please don’t leave me yet.” His eyes glisten and he starts blinking rapidly. “You haven’t even had any cheesecake.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.” If anything, I am too comfortable, lulled into a sense of rightness I have only ever experienced with the man standing a breath away. Everything with Senan is too easy—and that is what makes this so bloody hard.
His brow furrows. “Then tell me what I have done so that I might fix it.”
I want to tell him that nothing is wrong. But I can’t lie, not to him. So I draw in a fortifying breath and tell him the truth. “I don’t want you to see how broken I am.”
His gaze softens, and his quiet sigh fans against my cheek as he holds out his hands. For the first time, I realize how many scars track across his palms. Not just our mating bond but others, small and large, mangled and straight. He must’ve been glamouring them.
Hiding his pain the way I’ve been hiding mine.
And I love him anyway.
Senan holds them out toward me, open and empty. “Let us be broken together.”
He is giving me the choice, and he deserves the same. Slowly, I turn, allowing him access to the laces at my back. My voice hitches when I tell him to take off my gown. Those scarred hands gather my hair, lifting the heavy waves over my shoulder, tracing the square back of my dress to the laces.
The gown loosens and falls away, leaving me in a thin shift, white undergarments, and a body riddled with scars.
He draws one sleeve down my shoulder, replacing the cotton with kisses that linger. Kisses that warm. Kisses that heal. My body yearns to melt into his, and yet I remain rigid. Waiting. Terrified. Hopeful.
He does the same to the other sleeve, but then he stops.
His harsh intake of breath leaves me cold. “Allette…”
He has seen them… He knows… The tears burning my eyes spill free, slipping silently down my cheeks.
I feel him touch the top of my scar, where the base of my wing used to rest between my shoulder blades. “Who did this to you?”
His voice is low. Lethal.
I step out of his grasp and turn, but I’m too mortified by the hideous marks to look at his face. “Humans. Those wings you saw in that shack were mine.”
And now he knows the devastating truth.
“Allette, open your eyes.”
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
“Please.”
The brokenness in his plea gives me the courage to peer through my lashes.
Tears spill from Senan’s eyes, making them glitter all the more. “I need you to understand something,” he says, his voice catching. “There is nothing you can say, nothing you can show me, that will make me love you any less. You have no wings? I will give you mine. You have no magic? I will give you that as well.”
I press my hands to my eyes in a useless attempt to clear the dampness there. “You don’t mean that.” He can’t possibly.
Warm fingers slip around my wrists, pulling my hands away. “I do.” This time, his voice does not catch or waver. “I gave you my heart the day we met. What makes you think I wouldn’t give you everything else as well?”
Time. Distance. Change. Her .
“Do you remember what I said to you the night we exchanged our vows?” he asks.
I remember everything. Every single word and promise we made to each other.
“I said, ‘I will love you?—‘”
“‘Until the sun implodes and the stars stop shining,’” I finish.
“And last I checked, the sun still rules our days, and the stars still decorate our night.”
As if the sun itself hears our words, the light in the garden seems to brighten.
I raise my lips to his and whisper, “I love you, Senan Vale. Whole or broken.”
“And I love you, Allette Vale. Whole or broken.”
To the world, I may be Allette Rittey, but here, in this magical place, I am Allette Vale, wife of Senan Vale, third son of the late King Taranis of Kumulus.
Senan takes me by the shoulders, his thumbs sweeping along my bare skin. “Turn around.”
I do as he says, my stomach clenching and breathing shallow. His warmth presses close as his mouth meets my scar. “You are as beautiful today as you were in that market. These are not marks of weakness but proof of your strength.” Another kiss. Another promise. “And if I were in the human realm, I would carve out the heart of every last man who hurt you.”
Those men are dead, and ruminating on their terrible deeds only exhumes them from their shallow graves. This is no longer a day for looking back. No longer a day for looking forward.
This is a day for now.
So I turn to face my love, lace my hands in his hair, and tug him down. I don’t know who falls first or how it happens, but we end up on the softest carpet of grass, Senan hovering over me, silhouetted by the sun that does, indeed, shine. My legs lock around his hips, dragging him against my aching center. My hammering heart pounds when I feel him swelling once more, straining against his trousers.
My nails bite into his shoulders each time his teeth nip along my jaw. My throat. My collarbone.
This isn’t about making love. This is about taking for ourselves what fate and the stars stole from us. There is still so much left unsaid, but my desire for more drowns out everything else.
Senan lets go to slip his hands up my thighs, catching the waistband of my undergarments and tugging them off. Bracing my weight on my heels, I lift my hips, making it easier for him to drag the white cotton down my thighs and toss them next to our abandoned picnic.
Senan’s hair tickles my cheek, my chest, as he trails burning kisses down to my breasts. “More beautiful than I remember,” he murmurs, capturing one stiff peak between his lips.
I claw at his hair, wanting him closer. Needing him inside me.
His playful tongue teases one breast, then the other. One hand envelopes mine above my head as he braces his weight on his elbow. His other hand locks around my hip, holding me in place as he grinds into me until I’m sure to combust.
His trousers are still on. Why are they still on? “Remove your trousers.”
“I seem to recall promising to make you pay for a certain splashing incident.” Those lips trail lower, and his tongue dips into my navel on his way down, down, down.
“Senan, please.”
His eyes fill with dark promise as he looks up at me and his scarred palms meet my knees. “Show me how wide these go.” He urges my legs apart, leaving me bare and spread for him. “That’s my girl.”
I expect him to remove his trousers and give me what I crave. Instead, he eases forward and flattens his tongue against where I ache most. Something between a moan and a gasp falls from my lips. My hips buck involuntarily. I don’t know if I want to press him closer or shy away until my mate finds my core with a very, very insistent tongue and blackness swarms the edge of my vision.
He is a man possessed, never straying, wholly focused, until my legs, still splayed, begin to tremble and I’m about to burst. I don’t want to fly alone. I want to fly with him.
“Stop,” I breathe. He keeps going and my eyes roll back in my head and— “ Stop .”
His mouth departs from my flesh, his gaze lifting, brows arched.
“I need you inside me.”
He drags a hand across his mouth, clearing the wetness from his lips, and smirks down at me as he unfastens his trousers and shoves them down his strong thighs covered in a light dusting of dark hair.
His stiff cock springs free.
A Pegasus, indeed.
His eyes stay locked on mine while he fists himself and strokes. “Is this what you want, wife?”
I replace his hand with my own, curling my fingers around his solid shaft. “Yes. Don’t make me come alone.”
A deep, feral growl rumbles in his chest when I urge him forward, swiping the head of his cock against my soaked folds. With one long, slow thrust, he is fully seated, stealing the air from my lungs and every thought from my head.
“A perfect fit,” he rasps against the shell of my ear, sending tingles down my spine.
He spoke those exact same words the first time we made love, before I understood how my body could accommodate the sheer size of him. “A perfect fit,” I agree, the final word becoming a moan when he starts to move, hitting deep over and over. Our bodies collide with reckless abandon, filling the perfumed air with an orchestra of whimpers and moans.
“Yes.” I cling to his shoulders, holding on as he sets a demanding pace, taking and giving, pleasure with pain. He finds my clit with his thumb, flicking and pressing, bringing me ever closer to the sky. “Senan….”
His eyes become molten, dark and dangerous. “Louder.”
“Senan,” I moan, begging for the fiery release building in my core, coiling in my stomach.
“Louder,” he rasps, sweat beading on his brow, the muscles in his stomach flexing with each demanding thrust. “Let the stars that have damned us hear you screaming my name.”
I call his name until my throat grows hoarse and the breath evacuates my lungs. When stars burst behind my eyes, Senan follows me into bliss, crying mine.
He falls forward, chest heaving and body shuddering. Here, in his arms, I feel wanted. Loved. Safe. When he rolls onto his back and pulls me into him, my head falls to his chest, and I commit to memory the sound of his heart pounding against my ear.
“That was far better than I remember.”
His chest rumbles beneath my cheek. “How dare you criticize young Senan’s lovemaking.”
“I’m not criticizing young Senan. I’m praising old Senan.”
“You did not just call me old,” he scoffs, giving my hair a hard tug.
“Sire?”
Senan’s head snaps toward the sound of his guard’s call. In a blink, my face is no longer pressed to skin but to grass. Senan grabs his discarded shirt, draping it over my naked form. “Step through that door, Bilson, and your head will be on a pike by nightfall.”
The soft white cotton smells like him. If I could wear this instead of my dress, I would. “You really should be nicer to him.”
There is no trace of amusement on my love’s face when he looks down at me. “No man sees what is mine.”
I would love to express the same sentiment, but now that the fog of lust has cleared, reality is beginning to seep into our peaceful, sunny bubble. Another woman will see what is mine. Senan’s actual wife.
“Sire, it’s almost dinner time. You know what the king will do if you do not return.” Bilson sounds quite exasperated. And who could blame him? Surely he must’ve heard what just transpired in this solar.
My cheeks warm, and it has nothing to do with the sun beating through the glass.
“I don’t want dinner.” Senan glances sidelong at me, those eyes making a slow, careful drag down my body. “Perhaps I’ll tell the king I’ve already eaten.”
He is ridiculous…and I wouldn’t have him any other way.
By the time we dress and pack up our forgotten picnic, the sun is sinking below the far-off horizon. The thought of returning to those dark caverns fills me with such dread. But since that is my fate, I must accept it.
Senan catches my hand. I can’t bring myself to look at him lest he see the misery on my face. “Come to my room tonight.”
And wait in his bedroom like some shameful secret while he dines with his betrothed and the rest of the nobility? I know that isn’t what he means by the offer, but that is how it feels.
I slip my hand from his. “I’m afraid I have plans.”
His face falls, but he does not push. “When will I see you again?”
“I will come to you when I can.” Tomorrow, perhaps. Once I’ve had time to sleep and sort through all these conflicting emotions invading my heart.
Although he looks like he wants to protest, he nods and presses a kiss to my chest, right above my heart. “I will be counting the minutes until then.”