Chapter 18 Basten #2
She moans, shifting her hips under me, and any worries about gaps vanishes. I roll my hips against her, so flush not a crack of daylight could shine between our bodies. Her breasts strain against her shift’s thin fabric, teasing my chest.
Raw energy pulses beneath her skin, so cold it burns.
I break the kiss to drag my mouth down her long throat, licking and sucking along her buried fey line. “Let go, little violet. With me, you don’t have to hide.”
Her body shudders, and for a moment I think she’ll show her true self to me again, but then she clenches her fists and shakes her head. “I want to do this together. As humans. Our first time as king and queen, like the first time we met.”
I’m not sure how I feel about her holding back. How long she can pretend to be something she isn’t. Especially now that the truth is out there.
Still, I slide her shift off her shoulder, replacing the fabric with my lips. Her skin is icy cold to the touch—the fey in her freezing both her veins and mine.
“Give me one minute,” I say. “You’re freezing.”
She protests, but I climb off the bed and strike a match to light the massive fireplace, which the servants have already stacked with wood.
I get where she’s coming from—a part of me wants to pretend, too. That we can be tethered forever, that the bond will never break.
As warmth rolls into the room from the growing fireplace, I climb back on top of her. I take a moment to stare down at her, so beautiful it hurts to look at, and gently move aside some of her tangled hair.
“My bride. My queen. My goddess.”
She wraps a hand around the back of my neck, locking her gaze to mine. “My everything.”
She leans up, and I lean in, and our lips crash together with a mix of warmth and cold, urgency and delicious patience. I reach down to slide her shift’s hem up her hips, dragging my fingers over her bare thigh.
I murmur, “I want your scent.”
Before she can protest, I move between her legs and pry her knees apart.
She lets out a small, guttural cry, but we’re far from the blushing virgin she once was.
There will always be something innocent about her, but now that she knows her passion, has bent it to her will, my little violet can be wicked, too.
I bury my face in the warm core between her thighs and breathe in deeply.
Finally, I can smell the sweetness of her scent on her damp underwear. It’s better than honey. Sweeter than violets. Like something I could lap at forever and never get my fill.
“Gods, you smell so much fucking better than incense,” I groan.
I hook my fingers in her underwear and slide them down her knees, then shove them off her feet. Her quivering body is open to me, the shift shoved up around her waist. She’s leaning up on her elbows, gazing at me with those hooded eyes that promise all kinds of tantalizing things.
“That’s sacrilegious,” she tuts, teasingly. “Incense is holy.”
I grunt as I grip her ankles, wrenching her legs closer to me, and purr against her belly, “Then let the gods punish me. Starting with you.”
I dive back in to devour her. I flick my tongue over her glistening clit, and when she gives the sweetest little buck in response, my muscles tighten in pride.
I close my mouth over her hot center and suck gently, then reach around from behind and press a thumb into her core, teasing the outer folds while punishing her with my mouth.
“Basten,” she gasps. “Oh, fuck. Don’t stop.”
I come up for air just long enough to murmur, “I had to get you to myself. All those damn diplomats vying for your attention, thinking they deserved a goddess—”
A muffled cough from the fireplace cuts off my words.
I freeze.
What. The. Fuck.
I whip my head around, my pulse suddenly pounding like a war hammer, brows pinned together.
I stare at the enormous fireplace; the ancient hearth with “VIRTUE” carved in the stone, the flames churning out a thin line of smoke.
Sabine sits up, sensing my alert, and blinks fast. “What is it?”
She didn’t hear the cough.
I keep staring at the fireplace. Fuck, am I losing my mind? Or did I really hear a—
Hmph-kff!
It comes again. Undeniable this time. Something—or someone—shifts position in the fireplace, trying hard to be silent, but my huntsman instincts snap into place with razor-sharp precision.
“Don’t move,” I growl to Sabine.
I roll off the bed, bare-ass naked, reaching for the closest weapon I can lay a hand on—a wine bottle resting on the table. I grip it by the neck, ready to slam it into whatever person or animal has crawled in the fireplace.
My mind reels.
Could Kendan have double-crossed us, sent an assassin?
One of Rian’s ever-loyal Golden Sentinels?
Or Vale?
“Basten.” Sabine leans forward, a strange glow to her eyes.
Once, she might have shied away from the hint of danger, pulled the cover up over her thin shift.
But that girl has evolved. Now, she’s the guardian of nature.
More comfortable in her naked, natural body than in the most elegant gown. “What do you hear?”
I approach the fireplace in slow, measured steps. I hold a finger to my mouth, signaling for her to be quiet.
Yeah, it feels a bit ridiculous to be brandishing a bottle when she could burn our intruder with brimfire with a snap of her fingers—but blue ashes might be hard to explain to the maids.
I cock my head as I take another step closer. There’s a rustle of fabric. Yep—something is in there. Hiding in the huge chimney. When I lit the fire, the smoke must have flushed it out.
I could wait for it to suffocate—but let’s be real, patience isn’t my greatest virtue.
I drop to my knees, reach into the fireplace, and latch my hand onto…a boot.
I give a sharp tug.
“Ow!” someone howls as they lose their grip on the inside chimney bricks and crash down. They fall in a jumble into the massive hearth, half in the fire and half out, a tangle of soot-stained clothes and flailing limbs.
I immediately grab them by wherever I can—the shoulder and thigh—and haul them bodily into the room.
“Ow, ow, ow!” the person wails. “I’m on fucking fire!”
I go still.
Gods, I know that voice.
I reel backward, letting go like I’ve been struck by lightning.
On the bed, Sabine claps a hand over her mouth to hold in her gasp.
Our intruder rolls back and forth on the rug to put out the fire chewing through his shirt sleeve, burning his flesh so that it smells like a fucking barbecue in here.
I don’t help put out the flames.
I can’t.
All I can do is stare…as Rian Valvere finally gets the fire extinguished, rolls over on his back, and looks up at me with a sheepish grin while a final wisp of smoke rises from his burned shirt and says, “Imagine the chances of us running into each other like this, Wolf.”