Chapter 35 - The Warmth of Skin
Wrenora
His eyes may have been hungry, but his hands were starving.
I hadn’t been prepared for how much pleasure I would feel from seeing this man’s chest heaving from the last vestiges of ecstasy, his muscles taut as if it took all his strength to hold himself back.
My head fell against the stone as his fingers found my center, gentle but demanding.
It might have been eight years, but he’d forgotten nothing about pleasuring a woman.
“Look at me, Wrenora.” His voice was a decadent baritone, compelling me to gaze down at his beautiful face.
A prince kneeled before me. He kneeled before...me. A thrall. A prisoner of war.
I wasn’t prepared.
He leaned forward slowly, pushing the fabric of my dress up, exposing me to the frigid air.
Fucking Nine Hells, I wasn’t prepared. I gasped at the sensation of his tongue making perfect, sweeping strokes over sensitive nerves.
I curled my fingers into his hair, greedily holding him in place.
He grasped my ass, lifting my feet from the ground before wrapping my thighs over his shoulders, pressing his mouth harder into me. His eyes held mine the entire time.
“Fuck...” My voice shook with pleasure from the pressure of his lips and his tongue plunging into me before he joined it with one of his fingers.
I cried out, unable to cover my mouth as my grip tightened on his hair. It was too much and not enough. I arched into him as he slid a second finger inside, his wicked tongue continuing its assault.
“Callan.” I lost myself in the building ecstasy, pulling the laces of my dress loose to allow his other hand to creep up and grasp my breast. “Fuck, Callan, it’s too...”
He moaned into me, the vibration of his voice throwing me over the edge, and still, he didn’t stop. He held me captive, slowing for a moment as I panted through the last waves of pleasure. But a moment was all he gave me, a single heartbeat as he pulled away.
“You taste like fucking sunshine,” he said before he licked his lips and plunged his tongue into me again.
My body was boneless as he held me wedged between his ruinous mouth and the cavern wall.
I might have tried to push him away, but I couldn’t catch my breath as pleasure pulsed through me again.
My voice echoed off the cavern walls as I whimpered, unable to restrain the sounds his tongue ripped from my lungs.
After another moment, he let me slip down the wall, carefully placing me on my knees before yanking me against him and kissing me, the taste of my own sex lingering on his lips and tongue.
And still, I wanted more. I squeezed his hair in my fists as I crushed myself against him, unwilling to let go.
This was madness. Only a few hours ago, we’d been fighting for our lives at his fortress. The beautiful brutality of him in motion, both mesmerizing and terrifying as he’d killed elves and humans alike, slammed back into me all at once and I pushed away from him.
“Callan.”
He buried his face against my neck, and I had no time to catch my breath as his hands pulled me into him again.
“Callan, please.”
He leaned back, his beautiful lavender eyes finding mine in the dying light, an unquenchable thirst in his eyes.
“What are we going to do? How are we—”
“It’ll be alright,” he said as he pressed soft kisses along my throat before I pushed away.
“That’s not an answer.”
He took a deep breath, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear and letting his eyes roam over my face to my lips. I was lost in his gaze as he shook his head slowly, his fingers exploring my exposed skin along my collarbones.
His throat bobbed as he stared at me with unyielding intensity. “I just need another moment with you before I have to be a prince again.” The pain in his voice was too real. “Please. Another moment.”
I cradled his face in my hand as my heart broke all over again, only to be reshaped as his words soaked into my soul.
This man had spent most of his life trying to be the ruthless monster his father wanted him to be.
Was he saying I had given him freedom? Freedom to be the man he actually wished to be?
The Callan that existed beneath his ice armor?
I leaned in, planting a chaste kiss on his perfect lips. “Always.”
He sat cross-legged before he pulled me into his lap, yanking my back to his chest. His hands made a delicate journey up my arms to my shoulders and back again, over and over.
Each time sending a shiver over my skin.
I turned, straddling him, my hands smoothing his hair back from his face before I drew the lines of his jaw and down his neck.
His eyes slipped closed for a moment as he took several deep soothing breaths.
When he opened them again, determination had replaced the anguish I’d seen a moment before.
“Magdala betrayed me.” He let the words settle around us. “My father is dead—”
“Your mother?”
He swallowed hard. “I’ve been given a choice. I can accept execution for what I’ve done—”
“Or?”
“Or, I can have my magic shackled with the sapphire you imbued and execute my mother to show my fealty to the uprising.”
All the heat flooding through me a moment ago was gone as goosebumps pimpled over my skin.
“No.” I shook my head with vicious denial, as if this alone could change what he’d said. “She’s done nothing wrong.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I know.”
“Why would they execute her?”
“Because she’s my father’s queen. Because she did nothing to stop him.”
“That’s not a good reason. That’s like saying all humans deserve to be slaves.” I paused...shaking my head. “Wait, you said you would have to execute her?” I could barely see him in front of me now as the sun continued to set.
“I would die a hundred agonizing deaths before I would ever execute my mother.”
“But then that means...” I let the words settle between us. The realization of what he was saying too hard to speak into truth. “You can’t.”
“I must.”
“Callan—”
“It’s the only way to keep my mother alive so humans can be freed from their shackles. It’s the only way to end this winter blight. It’s what I deserve—”
“No. You deserve to live your life as you wish instead of as a weapon to be wielded against your father’s enemies.
” Because that’s what he’d been. The single greatest force our continent had known.
“You deserve to find the other frost elves, to learn how to control your magic and cure the blight the right way. The way that won’t require meaningless death. ”
He didn’t move—didn’t speak—and in the low light, I could no longer see his face to know if he was still gazing in my direction.
“What will you do?”
“What I have to.”
“Callan.”
“Wrenora.”
“Don’t do this.”
He helped me to the side before he lay down, pulling the other cloak closer. “We need to sleep.”
But I shouldn’t sleep. Not now. Not knowing there was a very real possibility he would go to his death, willing to give himself up to save his mother. To save our continent.
“Sleep, Wrenora.”
He was right. We needed the rest.
I lowered myself beside him, letting him wrap strong arms around me and pull me into the sanctuary of his embrace. The exhaustion of fighting, the ride across the permafrost—everything—stole any energy I had left. Warm breath brushed across my ear as he settled his head beside mine.
If you had asked me weeks ago if I thought I could ever care for someone again, I might have said no.
There was nothing left in my heart but hatred for my enemies, my captors.
And now? All I could see in my mind was his beautiful face looking up at me from his knees.
The want in his eyes. The desire in his voice as he begged me to tell him I hated him.
“This conversation isn’t over, Callan,” I finally said as my mind settled, the warmth of him against my back so deliciously perfect. “I won’t let you ignore me.”
He chuckled, his rumbly deep voice lulling my eyes closed. “Let me? As though you can stop me.”
His words were far more hostile than his tone. I smiled and pulled one of his arms to my face, kissing over his forearm to his hand. My lips dragged over each of his knuckles slowly, savoring the way his breath caught.
“I might not be able to stop you from ignoring me, but I can make it very hard.”
He hummed, squeezing me tighter to his chest. And that was where I stayed as the darkness swallowed us whole.
––––––––
I slept in the cage of his arms all night in a deep, dreamless sleep.
Something I hadn’t had in years. Not since joining the army.
When I woke before dawn, my thoughts were immediately racing.
His unyielding muscles against my back didn’t help, though I had to admit he was exquisitely warm.
It might have been the first time in months that I’d stopped shivering.
His head was nuzzled so deeply in my hair I worried he’d never find his way out. When I tried to move, he squeezed his arms tighter, a feral growl erupting from him in warning.
“Not yet,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
I pushed against him, twisting in his arms so I faced him, finding his lavender eyes wide with surprise. I gave him a tender kiss, and he blinked a few times before he tucked his chin over my head.
He might have tried to ignore that there was a woman in his arms, but his body did not.
Heat plunged between my legs at the feel of his erection against the hollow of my hips.
I arched into him without thinking, and he sucked in a sharp breath.
The friction was delicious, and I pressed into him again, a moan escaping his vigilance.
“Wren.” He tightened his arms around me as my fingers explored the taut muscles along his sides.
It had been eight years since he’d been intimate with anyone.
It had been a year for me. I’d had a companion during the war out of desperation—to keep me sane when so much around me was death and sorrow.
We knew when the war was over we’d go back to our old lives, but a piece of me had hoped Traygor and I might try to see what a life together would look like.
Then I’d found him cold on the battlefield, his half-open eyes staring up at the sky.
The fear that I might never find true love settled deep in my bones that day.
And now I was in the arms of an elven prince who made breathing seem hard when he wasn’t with me. He made the thing I hated most actually bearable.
“If you knew all the ways I want you,” he whispered, drawing goose bumps out across my skin.
“If you knew all the ways I’d let you have me,” I said.
A piece of me wished he’d give in and bury himself so deep inside me we’d forget we were in a frozen cave somewhere on the permafrost of Telrain. Forget we were enemies, that we were opposites in every way imaginable.
He reached for me again, his kiss slow and tangled with the emotions we both fought. So much desire in the way he whimpered when my fingers smoothed over the bulge in his pants, stroking slowly.
“Why do you torture me?” His voice was tight with need.
I smiled as my eyes remained on his lips before I pressed into him, grinding against his erection, relishing how he stiffened, his arms wrapping around me instead of pushing me away.
“I only torture myself,” I said as I pulled his shirt up and over his head, knowing full well his fear of freezing me to death in the throes of ecstasy would outweigh the burning desire that yanked us together. I could only hope for a different outcome.
I traced the scars mapped across his flesh. They told of pain and sacrifice and healing. He flinched at first as my fingers traveled over his skin, his face tight. But the more I followed, the more he relaxed.
“Your touch is...” He sighed, his eyes slipping closed for a moment.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” The words slipped from me without my permission.
“I think you mispronounced the word scarred.”
I drew along one of the deeper lesions on his shoulder—one he’d likely stitched himself. “This is devotion to your people.” I let my fingers wander down to one on his stomach. “This is strength and sacrifice.” Back up to the one over his heart. “Determination. A will to live when all seems lost.”
He took my fingers in his hand as he leaned forward, kissing me again before pulling back, his eyes glittering with unshed tears. “I don’t know how you see these things in me.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t seem to see them for yourself.”
“I’ve spent my entire life trying to be the son my father desperately wanted, only to fail.”
“I’d rather think the man you’ve become is so much better than what your father wanted.” I drew my finger over a particularly deep scar that followed the line of his collar bone.
He squeezed his eyes closed. “I have to respectfully disagree with you.”
“I don’t particularly care,” I said, pushing him on to his back to climb on to him, my dress pooling around my hips.
With agonizing slowness, I memorized the lines of his muscles as he gripped my thighs.
His eyes drank in the swell of my breasts as they rose and fell with each breath.
He pulled himself up to my lips, the press of his warm skin so delicious.
I tangled my fingers in his hair and yanked him into me harder.
His kiss was a slow exploration with his tongue, igniting fire in my veins. He pulled back from me, his eyes holding on my lips as he shook his head.
“I worry...if we do this...”
“I know.” I swallowed hard. “And I don’t care.”
“I do care, Wrenora. I can’t—”
“If you freeze me to death, at least I’ll die in your arms.”
“I refuse to put you in dange—”
“And I refuse to leave this cave until you’ve fucked me senseless.”
He smirked, kissing my forehead and my nose before he kissed my lips again, claiming me with his deviously delectable tongue. “I guess I’ll leave you here.”
I raked my fingers through his hair, pulling his face back from me. “You wouldn’t.”
A wide smile broke across his lips, showing his teeth. “I would. I’d tie you up so you couldn’t wander out on to the permafrost and freeze to death.” He was still smiling. “You seem stubborn enough to chase after me on foot if I’m not careful.”
I couldn’t keep myself from smiling back at him. “You seem to know me so well.”
“I feel like I knew you the moment I saw you.”
“And still you held a sword to my throat.”
He shook his head, grinning. “Regrettable decision, but at least it was memorable.”
A laugh burst from my lips, and I slammed a hand over my mouth as he smirked.
The moment stretched long, his eyes glittering in the morning light as they held mine. His sweet smile eventually faded into the stoic prince he usually hid behind.
“We need to go. I need to do this.”
I swallowed my frustration with him. I refused to stay behind. He would indeed have to tie me up to keep me from following.