Chapter 23 #2
A muscle ticks in his jaw. He leans in, letting the distance collapse as his breath skims my cheek, then the hinge of my jaw. He drops his mouth to the crook of my neck without touching, hovering there, heat and the faint rasp of his breath dragging over my sensitive skin.
“You didn’t retreat with me in the library.” The roughened words vibrate against the place where my pulse won’t slow. He inhales shamelessly, the scrape of his lower lip almost-kissing the tendon on my neck. “You stayed.”
A tingle blooms low and cruel. He’s right, and I hate him for it. Hate myself even more for the way my body stands its ground now, heat licking the space between us.
“We can still finish this,” he breathes, the words warm against the thin skin under my ear. His mouth ghosts lower, a slow, deliberate press that isn’t quite a kiss until it is, feather-light. “You and I.”
His hand slides from my cheek to the back of my head, fingers threading into my hair, holding me steady without forcing.
“You get him to lift the crown, and I will do the rest,” he murmurs, lips shaping the vow against my neck.
“I will make sure you get what you came for, Elara. Your brother breathing, your mother safe.” Another kiss, a fraction higher, a fraction deeper. “Together.”
My pulse drops between my legs, flooding warmth there in a way I never felt before. Annoyance, too. “I hate you.”
His lips curve. “Then it’s a good thing the curse isn’t reversed.” He faintly chuckles against the shell of my ear. “The crown will be pleased because I happen to find you quite…enthralling. So practical, so cynical. So at ease around death.”
A lick of his tongue at my lobe, along my cheek, toward my mouth—patient as a thief at a lock.
He tastes the edge of me, slow, testing, and when I don’t bolt, patience turns into pressure.
His mouth covers mine, warm and deliberate, claiming in a way that makes my breath hitch, misbehave, start anew… only to falter again.
Heat rises. Anger follows.
Fine.
If he wants a willing accomplice, I can wear the shape of one. I can be soft in his arms. Let him mistake it for surrender. Let him think I’m the puppet of his performance. It serves both of us.
So, I kiss him back.
For a split second, he freezes—just the tiniest arrest of motion, a stutter in his assault. Then the grip on the back of my head tightens, fingers tangling brutally in my hair as he angles my face, refusing to let me pull back even an inch.
Vale groans, a dark, rough sound vibrating against my lips. He deepens the kiss, drowning out the world, the room, and the struggling fire until there’s only the wet, hot slide of his tongue sweeping against mine, claiming everything I offer and demanding more.
His other arm snakes around my waist, banding like iron, hauling me into him until every inch of my softness is flattened against the unyielding wall of his chest. Beneath the courtly silk, he’s terrifyingly solid: a landscape of hard muscle and rigid tension I’ve never been close enough to map until now.
Vale grinds his hips forward, the distinct, heavy ridge of him pressing against my stomach, undeniable even through the layers of our clothes.
The shock of it—the sheer, physical proof of what I’ve done to him—sends a jolt of liquid heat straight to my core, wringing a low, needy moan from my throat that vibrates against his tongue.
His low chuckle trembles against my lips. “No retreat with me, not even an inch.”
“Don’t be pleased with yourself,” I manage, but it comes out on a gasp I don’t mean to give.
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly. Not with how I’m currently so very pleased with you.
” His hand moves again, impatient now. It sweeps around to my front, finding the heavy fabric of my skirt and bunching it upward.
“How you lean into my touch. How your body writhes in demand for more.” His fingers graze the bare skin of my thigh, scorching a path higher. “Let me oblige you.”
When his fingers reach for the heat between my legs, a hint of white finally flares, sharp and sudden, piercing the haze of lust. It’s one thing to offer a mouth to keep a monster distracted, but it’s another entirely to let him inside me like this.
My fingers dig into the silk at his biceps, bracing, my muscles locking up as I struggle to shift his touch. “No.”
“No?”
His hand slows, but doesn’t withdraw. Instead, he flattens his palm, letting his fingertips graze my soft down of hair, letting tingles spread over my mound.
“Did my brother manage to make you feel like this? Did his hands make you grind your body for more? Did his fingers make you burn like this?” He slowly shakes his head on my behalf.
“He didn’t; he couldn’t.” His voice drops to a rough murmur.
“But I can. I can take the fear away, Elara…” His thumb works a maddening, feather-light circle just against the sensitive slickness I’m trying to hide. “Let me take it away.”
I can’t. I have to stop him. To give him this is to give this liar a piece I can never take back, a part of me that can’t be renegotiated.
Yet, as his thumb brushes the sensitive, silken skin of my lower lips, the protest dies in my throat, tangled in a web of curiosity and a terrible, traitorous want. “Vale…”
“Why aren’t you freezing up, Elara, hmm?”
My bottom lip trembles.
I don’t know.
“Why aren’t you running off?” With a slow, reverent slide that steals the breath from my lungs, he slips one finger past the slick barrier.
My knees buckle when he sinks into my tight, wet heat. Vale catches me, holding me upright against him while his finger falls into a rhythm that is devastating in its gentleness. The shock melts into a pleasure so warm I have to bury my face in his neck to stifle another moan.
“You have no idea how much I want you,” he rasps against the shell of my ear, his voice thick with a wretched hunger that mirrors my own.
“It wasn’t part of my plan, you know, to crave you so.
I held back in the library. Told myself that I couldn’t compromise my plan by tasting you.
” He twists his hand, hitting a spot that makes my vision blur, and he inhales the scent of my arousal rising between us like it’s oxygen.
“Now, there’s no more reason for me to hide it. On the contrary…”
My head presses against his shoulder when he retreats and circles my overly sensitive bundle of nerves. His touch is maddening, causing my breath to come in short, ragged hitches.
I thought I was steering the moment. I’m not. It doesn’t matter…
I’m still controlling the plan.
I am.
His free hand drops from my waist to the front of his trousers. He undoes his buckle with a metallic clink while his fingers keep up that ruinous tempo inside me, dragging me closer to a crest, putting my mind into a haze while he works the buttons on his trousers.
“Let me take you to bed. I won’t hurt you,” he promises, lips moving against my jaw, hot and wet, eager. “You will enjoy it.”
The drag of leather and linen gives way. I feel the blunt, searing heat of him, pressing slick and hard against the naked skin of my inner thigh.
It’s that sensation—the slipperiness of it—that finally cuts through the fog, making my hips stutter in their lewd rhythm. As much as my blood is screaming to let him finish what he started, a cold shard of clarity drops into my stomach.
This is going too far.
I shift, subtly at first, angling my pelvis away from that threatening hardness, even as I chase the pleasure of his hand. “We can’t.”
“Shh…” he hushes. “Let me see if reality matches the torture of my imagination.”
When he tries to shift his stance, to guide himself toward the entrance he’s prepared so thoroughly, I clamp my thighs tight against his wrist, physically blocking the path. “Not inside.”
“Elara…” he groans as his slick head prods against my bundle of nerves. “I want your smell on my skin for days. I want to feel every part of you tighten around me.”
I can’t give him this.
It belongs to the only sliver of dignity I have left.
“No!” The word tears from my throat, ragged and desperate. I wrench myself away, twisting out of his grip with a strength born of frantic panic.
I don’t get far.
Vale catches my waist, spinning me around until my chest presses against the mantle. His arm comes around my stomach from behind, holding me pinned against the oak while his other hand dives back between my legs. He finds the swollen, aching pearl of my desire and abandons all gentleness.
“You’re so terribly difficult sometimes,” he growls against my ear, his breath hot, his hard cock pressing against the ruffles of cotton around my buttocks. But he isn’t shifting, isn’t trying to enter. “Hold still.”
His hand works me with ruthless, terrifying precision.
His fingers are a blur of motion, circling, pressing, rubbing the sensitive nub until white speckles my vision.
It’s too much sensation, too fast, brighter than anything I’ve ever known.
I throw my head back against his chest at the coil tightening in my belly, the pressure mounting higher and higher until it becomes a desperate, blinding need.
“That’s it,” he whispers against my damp nape. “So close…”
I’m there. I’m standing on the precipice, toes curled, my body arching like a drawn bowstring. The release is right there, a heartbeat away, a scream waiting to happen.
And then his hand vanishes.
I stumble forward, deprived of my anchor. My body gives a violent, involuntary twitch, searching for the friction that was just there, screaming at the sudden, brutal absence of it. I grab the edge of the mantelpiece to keep from falling, my knees trembling so hard they knock together.
“What…?” My voice is a broken croak as I turn, bracing myself against the stone, wild-eyed and gasping.
Vale is standing a few feet away, tucking himself back into his trousers, his face composed, though his pupils are blown wide, dark with unspent lust. He looks at me, watching the flush stain my chest, the way my legs shake, the humiliation wrecking my face.
And he smiles. Not kindly.
“If you want to save it for my golden-haired brother,” he says, his voice gaining its icy, smooth veneer, “then by all means, save it.”
He fastens his belt.
The click echoes.
“But should you change your mind,” he says, opening the door and looking back, “I’ll be in the eastern tower room, ready to oblige.”
He steps out, the door slamming shut.
I’m alone again—wrecked, wet, and aching with a need so sharp it feels like a wound.