Chapter 25 #2
Never in my life had I heard Bellamy ramble like that. Clearly, I had misjudged how we looked. I hadn’t yet told Soren that things had taken a turn toward the physical with me and Esme, and I didn’t know what she’d shared with Bellamy or Freya. In any event, our rumbled state was clearly a shock.
Bellamy recognized well enough what was going on, maybe enough to know that the burgeoning grin on Soren’s face was in serious danger of getting knocked right off it.
“Yep, sounds good!” Esme said, voice at a higher octave than I knew her capable. A second later, the door was shut again and Esme made a firm point of locking the door.
The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back on the center of the bed, Esme falling down on top of me.
Right as a question built on my tongue, her mouth fell against mine and held there until I abandoned whatever I was going to say and tangled my hands in her hair.
It was the Bond’s incessant pounding in my head, not at all appeased by the beautiful woman I had on top of me, that got my mind back around to order.
“Esme,” I said against her lips, getting nowhere. Based on the way she was moving her hips, we weren’t going to have any sort of productive conversation—not that kind of productive, anyway—if she kept this up. “Esme.”
With an adorable little growl, she ripped her mouth away from mine. “What?”
“You do realize we weren’t subtle right?” My hands squeezed her hips, if not to try to maintain some grasp on my own sanity. “We’re gonna have to go explain what happened earlier, and they’ll probably bring this up, too.”
“Oh, like I care. I wasn’t planning on keeping this a secret,” Esme said, running her hands up my chest in a way that made it very, very hard to remember why I was restraining her.
She leaned down, lining our noses up together.
“Now, shut up and kiss me. We only have thirty minutes and if we don’t make good use of that time, the Bond might make me kill someone for looking at you. ”
I’d asked Esme for honesty at the beginning of all this, but I’d clearly only prepared myself to hear the dark, anguished secrets she’d been hiding. This open acceptance of our Bond, of me, was not something I’d contemplated.
Clearly, seeing as I felt like she’d just shot me through the chest with a few simple words.
As shocked as I was, I wasn’t stupid. I knew what I held in my hands. I knew the fact that she was opening herself up to me was a precious gift that I’d be damned if I ruined.
My hand went for the silk tie at her waist, finding it as easy to loosen as I’d thought.
“Off,” I said against her mouth, though I was doing most of the work to push the robe off her body and toss it away.
She was doing the same to the towel still looped around my waist, pulling it away from me and bringing our bodies flush together once again.
The groan that left me at the feel of her warmth against my cock was louder than I was proud of, but it only seemed to kick Esme’s desperation up higher. One of her hands moved to grip my length, giving it a cursory stroke as she lined us up and sank down on me in one swift motion.
My breath caught in my throat as the feel of her shot through my body. I had half a mind to tell her to take things slow, but she wasn’t asking for slow and I wasn’t about to make her feel cautious when she didn’t need to be.
She was an adult. I’d done my job in preparing her well to take me. Our fucking souls were tied together. I’d seen the little pinch of pain in her expression when I’d first entered her, but that, admittedly, was likely due to my size than anything else.
My only job was to not go too insane and try to keep her trapped her in this room while I wrung her dry from pleasure. It was a single-minded goal in that moment, more important to me than my own heartbeat, to see her shaking with an orgasm.
My thumb found her clit and I used my other hand to tip her hips forward, changing the angle on her. The way Esme’s breath caught in her throat on a whimper was enough to power me through the darkest of nights.
Scratch that, the way she breathed my name would do it. Like a secret, one only she could tell me.
I buried my hand in her hair and tried to quell the burgeoning emotion in my chest. Terror was threatening to push in on all sides, old wounds scaring me into thinking that if Esme was that precious to me, surely she’d be taken away right before I could fully have her.
I had her now. Not just physically with me, but her trust. Hopefully her heart.
That reminder didn’t stop my hands from pressing in tighter, the cant of my hips punching up deeper, pouring everything I had into her.
?
“I really don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I’m ready.”
“Of course, you are.”
“No, I’m not. I don’t think this is going to go well.”
"Ford, you’re a big boy. You can do it.”
“No,” I said, dipping down to bury my nose in Esme’s neck and earning a shocked little laugh out of her. “You’ve had practice.” The words were muffled against her skin, but she understood me.
Esme’s sigh made my hands pull her in even tighter, the Bond already launching off in a healthy tirade about how it’s really all your fault and I would never have done that to her.
“Just breathe through your nose and promise the Bond that you’ll appease it later.
” Her fingers reached up to pinch me in the side, causing me to jerk back with a scowl on my face.
Unlucky for her, I caught her off guard enough to lean down and pull her bottom lip between my teeth.
It was another minute before Esme finally said, “At least this time it won’t be a lie. ”
Rather than fall to my knees in front of her and beg forgiveness for all I’d put her through, I grabbed her hand and waited for her subtle nod. When she gave it, I led her around the corner and to the end of the hallway.
Soren and Bellamy’s door was already unlocked, waiting for us.
They’d said thirty minutes. It might have been closer to an hour, but I considered that an accomplishment all things considered.
Maybe I hadn’t needed to follow Esme into the shower, but at the time it felt like she was taking my access to oxygen with her when she walked into the bathroom.
The Bond was already growling in the back of my head as we approached, looking for any excuse to be unleashed and rip someone’s throat out for looking at Esme the wrong way. It was like while it was dormant all those years, it was saving up strength for when it inevitably awoke.
Esme seemed calm, which made me feel worse. I hated that she’d had to learn how to hide this so easily. It was a thought I’d had many times over the past several weeks, but it was more obvious now, fresh after—
I had to forcefully redirect my focus. Figures, people I liked, were coming into view and it would not do well to make matters worse.
Especially not when Soren’s smug face materialized first. Then, in an act of self-correction that made me respect Soren tenfold as a friend, his face settled into a more neutral expression.
I’d venture to say he remembered how he felt in those days after wholly accepting the Bond.
There was something about the physical connection that made things seem very, very raw.
In Soren’s case, he’d also had to suffer through those early days thinking that Bellamy was about to run off and marry the Prince.
Bellamy and Freya matched his blank expression, though it was the latter of the two women who seemed to be having the hardest time restraining the glee in her eyes.
Esme was the first to break the ice. “Sorry we’re late,” she said, offering no further explanation.
“You deserved time,” Bellamy said, her words striking a cord from the events of the day and the eight years prior.
“Thank you,” Esme said, something so genuine in her tone that I felt my heart clench in response.
We moved to sit down at the table our friends were occupying. It seemed they had broken out a game of cards in our absence. I guess they really were waiting around for us to tell them what happened.
“One of you is going to have to remind me what we said right when we came back,” I said as we moved to sit. Esme only grumbled a little bit when I pulled her chair out for her. “I think I blacked out.”
Everyone laughed lightly, but there was still a healthy note of tension present.
“You did not seem well,” Freya said with a note of amusement in her voice. “You gave Elijah quite the fright.”
My expression clearly communicated how unlikely I thought that was.
“I’m serious!” Freya continued. “He looked scared. If that’s what that weird jaw-pulsing expression was. When Bellamy asked him about it, he just muttered Caspian’s name and ran off. He sent a note that they want to speak later.”
I snorted a laugh. “Yeah, I’m sure they do.”
It was Esme who had the more verbose response. “I can imagine they are rushing to figure out a way to prove they weren’t involved. That would put quite a wrench in peace negotiations. It’s clear there are some protesters. Maybe it was just that.”
I squeezed Esme’s knee, only realizing in that moment that I was even touching her. Her skin felt like an extension of my own. “That protester in the temple was one thing. That woman was trained.”
Esme wrinkled her nose up, considering.
“Why don’t we walk through it from your perspective. Now that your heads are, um, clearer,” Bellamy said, a rare slip up in her words. Esme squeezed my hand under the table.
I sat up a little straighter on instinct, as if my body was prepared to defend itself and its mate if a threat magically materialized in the room as we recounted the story.
Holding onto Esme’s hand under the table to offer silent strength, she took the lead. “We were on a ride with Sky and Shadow. Went into the tree line just to the left of the waterfall.”
“Oh, that’s a good path!” Freya interjected.