25. I Want to Eat You
25. I WANT TO EAT YOU
RUSH
El’s legs spread for me automatically as if we’d been doing this all our lives. I kissed her again, and this time my kiss lingered, deepened. Her tongue swept out, searching for mine. I responded instantly, and we both moaned as the heat of our tongues met. I pulled back just enough to murmur against those deliciously plump, wet lips of hers.
“Now that I’ve satisfied you that nothing else is going to eat you, I want to eat you .”
She dragged her teeth across her lower lip, wove both hands behind my neck, and pulled my mouth hard against hers. For long minutes, we lost ourselves to our kiss, before she pulled away to press her forehead to mine.
“You haven’t even started to satisfy me yet.” It was only then that I noticed my choice in words. “But, by sunshine, I literally can’t wait for you to get to it. I’ve wanted you inside me since the moment you left my rooms at the palace.”
The ardent fervor that had flooded my body stuttered as memories washed over me like a bucket of ice water. I’d been made to forget her— her, my mate —I’d had to fuck Talisa and allow her ladies to put their hands and mouths all over my body. I’d betrayed my mate and myself, and all for what? I hadn’t achieved anything, not really. I hadn’t protected a single person I loved, not in any lasting way.
El’s hands were cupping my cheeks, her thumbs rubbing gently along my chin. “No, Rush,” she whispered as if even in this glade what we shared was too precious to extend beyond the two of us. But that preciousness was precisely what I’d endangered by giving in to Talisa. By?—
“Rush, no ,” she repeated more firmly. “Don’t you dare blame yourself. Don’t you dare . Not even for a second.”
My eyes stung with unshed tears when I hadn’t allowed myself to cry over anything since Ramana’s supposed death, when I thought my heart had hardened forever.
“Look at me,” Elowyn urged with a tender gentleness that burned my eyes. I’d been staring off, looking at nothing in particular in an attempt to wrangle my emotions.
She pulled my face down into a soft kiss. “You did what you had to do to protect those you love, to survive to fight another day. There’s no shame in that. If anyone should be ashamed, it’s her ,” she spat. “What you did took more courage and strength than I’ll ever have.”
When I next kissed her, I tasted salty tears on my lips. “You’re wrong. I’ve never met another female as brave as you.”
“That’s only ‘cause none of the females are taught to fight.”
“No. It’s because none of them is as fucking incredible as you are.”
One side of her lips slanted up. “Ah, well. Maybe that’s true.” Her eyes danced, and she giggled. “You could always show me how ‘fucking incredible’ you think I am. I think we’ve done enough talking given how little time we’ve got.”
The reminder of what was at stake was like another slap of frigid water.
“Oh no you don’t,” El said. “We’re doing this to bring back the map, remember? We’re actually trying to save lives here, so no guilt for enjoying each other along the way.”
“How I love it when you make such fabulous points.” Even so, some of the tension remained, stiffening my spine for the fight that was still to come.
“Rush.” The way my name rolled off her tongue sounded like a reverent prayer. It spread along my skin like warming fire. “Erase those memories. Let’s make new ones to replace them right now.”
For several beats I hesitated, but was there anything I wanted more than that? Not a chance . Against her lips, I answered. “Yes. Please.”
Staring into her eyes, I saw them pulse with understanding. She knew how much I truly did require this. I needed my mate to imprint herself over the sacrilege of her . My body and my mind needed to experience only Elowyn. Only my mate.
She trailed her tongue along my bottom lip. “So … what was it you said about eating me? ‘Cause ya know, I could be down with that kind of eating.”
She opened her mouth for more of that witty banter I’d wished for myself, only for her mouth to remain that way, gasping as I tore into action. Not with the countdown to our final battle against Talisa, but with the fervent desperation to join with her, I ripped apart the snap-shut clasps of her leather top in a single jerk of the wompa fabric. Her nipples instantly hardened as cool air touched them.
When I was able to drag my stare from the incredibly enticing swells of her breasts, after my thumbs already toyed with her nipples and her back arched in a silent plea for more, I finally took in the extent of the damage to her body.
Arctic chill replaced the heat that had cycled through my veins. My tattoos flared in a surge of light brighter than both my lumoons combined, and that was with most of my body covered. Myriad slashes of shiny, new pink skin scarred her perfect body. There were so many of them, mostly patterned in parallel lines, indicating ferocious swipes of claws. Given the width of the blemishes, the creatures who’d sliced her open had been huge. Where still-healing lacerations didn’t cover her flesh, it was discolored. Bruise after bruise in a varied array from yellow to red to blue to black dotted most of the rest of her torso. Her actual skin color appeared paler than usual against them.
And these were just the superficial injuries, dammit!
If whatever had attacked her had managed this level of damage to her outer layer, what had they done to her insides? Had they shattered bones? Shit, had they done worse?
A growl rumbled deep in my chest that wasn’t my bond-beast, it was all me. I examined a patch of pink skin as large as a lemon that was puckered tautly. It had to hurt.
“Tell me something didn’t take a bite out of you.” My voice sounded like that of a changeling, like my creature was about to take over and burst through my skin. Fuck, hadn’t she just finished telling me how worried she was that everything wanted to bite her? I hadn’t realized she’d meant it quite this literally and to this fucking degree.
“I’d love to tell you that,” she said with a quick grimace, “but I can’t, ‘cause something big and nasty absolutely did. And not just there, other places too.”
The growl that ripped through me next was all animal. “Where?” I barely got the word out. “Where else are you hurt?”
She sighed in resignation and pulled her open top loosely closed. “I can’t lie to you. I don’t want to. When I walked through the queen’s—Talisa’s—doorway, this is what was waiting for me. A mass of snarling, horrible monsters ready to shred me to pieces.”
My breathing came out in furious pants. “How dare she hurt you like this?” Given the chance, Talisa would delight in spending her days tearing apart my beloved bit by torturous bit and feeding them to her pygmy ogres.
El clutched my hand. “I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, you know? I really did. I believed that was it for me. But I survived. And the scars will fade. Edsel took good care of me. I’m actually surprised the bruising is still there ‘cause I’ve started healing a lot faster now.”
The explanation dangled between us, accelerant to my righteous fury: her bruising remained because she’d suffered layer upon layer of devastating injury. Even a fae body could only heal so fast when there was this much healing to complete.
Her hands were once more on my cheeks, drawing my eyes to hers: “I survived her. You survived her. And now we’re here together.”
My tattoos faded a little.
“She’s already broken so much,” she went on. “But she hasn’t broken us. Not truly. We can repair everything she’s done, especially now that your sister’s alive.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but again she seemed to read my thoughts, beating me to say, “Yes, I know. Some damage is so deep it seems impossible it could ever be fully erased. But we decide what we make of our lives, don’t we? We didn’t get to choose what happened to us, but we do get to choose what we do next. And we’ve both gotten the fuck up, dusted ourselves off, and pieced ourselves back together. Sure, the pieces might not be glued in perfectly straight yet, but we’ll get there. And with time we might be able to see the fine lines of where the glue is, but we don’t have to waste our time looking too hard.”
The silver light of my tattoos receded entirely, then it was just the warm yellow glow of my lumoons across her face.
“We can’t determine what others do, but we can decide our own actions and reactions, right? That is in our power. That’s what Zako used to tell me. And right now I choose to not let her win. I choose to tell her to go fuck the sunshine off, because I’m gonna live my life my way—not because of her, but in spite of her. I love you, Rush. Against all odds, I ended up here and we found each other. Let’s not lose another moment of our lives together to her.”
I stared at her, love and amazement winding together in my heart to warm my body all over again.
“Make love to me,” she whispered, pulling me down over her body so that nothing but our clothing separated us. “I want to feel only you. To know only you. I want only you. Can you give me that?”
“I can give you that, my love. I give you all of myself. I’m all yours. Only yours.”
Whatever words might have come next, I devoured. I claimed her lips as if I owned them. I feasted on her body as if she’d always belonged to me. And when I drove inside her, I possessed her wholly, even as I felt myself surrender entirely to her.
I forgot about maps and dying fae captives. About the horrid, vicious false queen. I even forgot about all our losses and injuries. Because right there, right then, every desire was being answered.
The beast within me plowed into my mate until I pushed her over the edge of one powerful ethercrest after another and she lay limp in my arms, gasping and panting, shaking and crying. I clenched all over, shuddering at the pure ecstasy of our togetherness, and shot off into her in hot, spurting streams, her scorching walls squeezing my dick as it pulsed inside her, filling her with my very essence.
My beast and its possessive claim over my mate finally were sated. She and I were a single, entangled, sticky, sweaty, sloppy mess. Unconstrained joy bubbled up inside me, spilling out in laughter, no matter our circumstances. Her responding laughter was so bright, so joyous, and so free, that I understood then we’d already won at least one monumental battle. Despite all the damage done to us, we’d surged free of it. It no longer chained us—not unless we chose to let it.
Our clothing lay discarded in heaps around us. Ivar’s cutlass, my dagger, and throwing knives lay within easy arm’s reach. My leg was draped over El’s thigh, my arm along her stomach. Lazily, I circled one of her nipples with a finger.
“I could do this all night long,” she said.
“I could do this all life long,” I countered with a smug grin I didn’t even bother trying to contain. Elowyn was spectacular—and she was all mine.
“You’ve got yourself a deal. Just a few, tiny, little things to accomplish before then,” she said in what was perhaps the understatement of the millennium. After glancing down at her naked body, she added, “I don’t see a map.” She sighed.
“No, no map,” I said, resigned to facing the responsibility that seemed never to leave us for long.
“Well.” She grinned wolfishly. “It was worth a try.”
I grumbled in pure male satisfaction. “Damn right it was.”
She groaned, and the playful smile fell. “No map, no way to save the captives.”
“Unless the others have come up with an idea while we were gone.”
She perked up. “You think they might have?”
“It’s not very likely after all the discussing we’ve already done, but you never know.”
“Time to head back, then?” she asked with such obvious reluctance I couldn’t resist a chuckle and a long, languid kiss that pretended we had all the time we wanted already.
I added a final soft kiss to her swollen lips and relented, “Time to head back.”
With more laden sighs, we disentangled our naked limbs. I reached for our clothes and weapons. I unclasped a sheath from my borrowed weapons belt and slid my dagger inside it before passing it to Elowyn.
“Thanks. So much better than naked steel that keeps wanting to slide toward your ass crack.” She grimaced. “Definitely not the most pleasant feeling, but better than no weapon at all. You have no idea how much I miss my own blades.”
“Oh, I totally understand the sentiment. Talisa had my weapons confiscated when I was sequestered for the Nuptialis Probatio farce.”
“We have to weapon up before we head to the palace. Any ideas?”
Thinking of Ivar’s ensorcelled, expanding weapons box, I said, “I just might.”
And though the urgency of the battle to come was back to squeezing me, I took the time to dress my beloved, pressing a kiss to each of her healing wounds as I did. When she insisted on doing the same for me, I couldn’t resist the indulgence, and I delighted in the final moments of intimacy we got to share before the battle began.
Far too soon, we walked at a hurried pace back to the cabin. But our fingers weaved together the entire way.