36. Sunlit
Sunlit
At some point, I woke up in the dark, dragged myself to Leah’s bathroom to take a piss and down an unruly quantity of water, and collapsed back into bed without any of my higher brain functions rousing.
Alluin didn’t even move, dead to the world.
I put myself halfway on top of him and passed out again in seconds.
I woke much more thoroughly in the early afternoon.
Which early afternoon, I wasn’t sure, though by the general state of my body, I suspected I’d been sleeping for at least twenty-four hours, and probably more.
Every muscle I had was tired. I hadn’t washed, so every inch of me felt grimy and a bit gritty, and the exposed skin of my back felt weirdly tight and itchy.
“Nngh,” I said, less of a purposeful statement than the only sound I was capable of producing.
Warm fingers brushed the hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. “Afternoon, sleepyhead,” Alluin said in a fond voice.
I cracked open one eye to see Alluin sprawled out next to me, his face close to mine, wearing an easy smile. I started blushing as the realization of where I was and what we’d done settled into my waking mind. Kissing Alluin. Sucking him. Getting fucked by him.
Gods, what if he didn’t want to keep me, after all?
Maybe I was a terrible lay compared to the men he usually tupped.
I probably wasn’t any good at bottoming, and Lu was so gorgeous and so wonderful that it would be easy for him to find someone delicate and decorous to keep at his side.
What if, now that he had some sleep under his proverbial belt, Alluin had come to his senses and realized what a terrible match I was for him? I would never survive it.
“No scars,” I croaked out, trying to keep from turning into an anxious mess. He was here, wasn’t he? Alluin wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to keep me. Right?
“Oh, um, no.” Alluin tucked a curl behind his ear. “I’ve been glamoring them for tens of thousands of years. It takes significant effort not to at this point.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” I worried my lip with my teeth, not quite meeting his eyes.
Wanting…something. I wasn’t sure what. Reassurance, maybe?
Something to let me know that we weren’t only friends anymore, that this wasn’t the normal sort of waking up in bed with him, and that everything I remembered with such vivid detail was really going to be the rest of my forever.
His throat clicked as he swallowed. “Are you regretting this?” Alluin asked, fear creeping into his posture. “Me?”
“What? No!” I said, shocked. I shoved myself up in outrage, managing to brace myself on my elbows to look down at him before my exhausted arms gave out.
“I’m worried you’re regretting this. I’m yours, remember?
Completely, pathetically in love with you?
The First General’s dog? Whyever would you think that I would regret you? You’re so—”
Alluin leaned up and cut me off with a kiss, his mouth moving against mine.
I fell into it with a whimper, all but collapsing on top of him when he drew me back down to the bed, my lips parting and tongue brushing against his mouth.
Apparently I was completely unable to be normal about Alluin. Embarrassing neediness, only.
He laced his fingers though my hair and cupped the nape of my neck, giving me his tongue as I all but crawled on top of him.
My nervousness vanished in the face of his open affection.
Lu kissed me with comfortable ease, the grip on my neck a lighter version of how he’d scruffed me when I’d attacked Nyland, his whole body fitting to mine.
I loved the feeling of his hand on my neck like that.
It was even better than the taste of his tongue or the press of his body—and I was addicted to both already.
Alluin huffed out a laugh when my arms started shaking and took my face in his hands, dropping another soft kiss on my mouth before resting his forehead against mine with a warm smile on his face, letting me sprawl my weight on him.
“I don’t regret any of it, love. I’m so happy that it’s still hard for me to believe this is real,” Lu said.
“I spent the morning all fluttery while I painted my claim on your back with henna. If you’d changed your mind and didn’t want that after all, it was going to be a dagger in my gut to know you’d be wearing it for weeks. ”
My eyebrows shot up even as Alluin’s words made my blood fizz with happiness. “Henna? Where’d you find henna?”
His skin started rouging. “There was some in Leah’s cosmetics kit,” Alluin said, squirming a little with embarrassment. “I, ah… borrowed it. I didn’t think she’d mind, and it seemed less likely to smudge than calligraphy ink.”
“Uh-huh.” I kissed him on the nose and rolled onto my side so I could look at him without having to hold myself up at all. “I think you saw henna, realized that it would last for weeks instead of a day or two, and all your possessive instincts kicked in.”
Alluin made a face. “Yes, I like that it’s going to last for weeks instead of a day or two, and yes, it’s because I’m a possessive mate.
I want to wrap myself around you and snarl at anyone who dares to look at you, but I’m restraining myself.
” He ran the backs of his fingers down along my side, eliciting a shiver of pleasure.
“I was wondering if you might like to put some on me, too?” he asked hopefully. “I saved some for you in case you did.”
The idea of putting marriage-marks on Alluin, even ones that would only last a few weeks, was rather daunting. Whatever he’d painted on my back was probably gorgeous. He was artistic and meticulous. I was…not.
“They won’t look very good,” I warned him, pushing myself upright. My whole body protested the movement. My muscles didn’t want to engage enough to keep me vertical. “I’m a shit artist, and my hands hurt so much from holding weapons for days that they’re surely gonna be shaky as fuck.”
“You don’t have to,” Alluin started, blushing harder.
“Oh, I’m gonna,” I said, flashing him a grin. “It’s probably for the best that it’s henna. You’ll only have to wear whatever horrors I’ve wrought for a couple of weeks.”
Alluin sat up, looking shy, his ears held lower than usual and his chin ducked.
He was still naked, the long expanse of his body bare.
A few flakes of dried blood still clung to his skin in a dark halo around where he’d had a tree branch through his liver, but his skin was flawlessly smooth beneath it.
He reached over to the bedside table and picked up a small twist of waxed cloth. “Here,” he said. Alluin bit his lip, then rubbed his hand across the front of his right shoulder, baring the chaos burns. He looked up at me through his dark lashes. “Is this still what you want?”
“Mm-hmm,” I hummed in reply, taking the henna out of his hand. “Lie down, though, alright? I’m too wobbly to hold myself up and do this at the same time.”
“Alright,” Alluin said, his voice soft. He sounded painfully shy, his brown skin still flushed as he arranged himself on his back, not quite looking at me.
I sprawled down on top of him. “Hold still,” I said absently, chewing on my lip as I started figuring out what I was going to paint on Alluin.
He made a tiny sound of pleasure in the back of his throat when the tip of the twist of henna scratched across his skin, his brows pulling up and pinching in an expression of enjoyment.
Alluin’s breathing got rougher as I continued.
His hips started shifting restlessly, and it wasn’t long before I could feel the heated press of his erection against my upper thigh.
“Really?” I said, pitching my voice low.
I kept working, leaving henna painted on his skin.
“You’re getting turned on from this? I didn’t realize you had a marriage kink.
” Alluin getting hard was making me hard, my cock filling where we were pressed together.
I had to shift, reaching down to flip my stiffening length up against my stomach, lying alongside his.
“Fuck, Zhi, don’t stop,” Alluin said in a groan, grinding his hips up against mine. His hand crept down and tunneled between us, pinning our cocks together. He let out a sharp breath and rocked his hips again, rubbing us together.
I let out a harsh pant from the surge of pleasure, my skin flushing and my pulse becoming an insistent throb between my legs.
I stuck my tongue between my teeth and forced myself to focus on what I was painting instead of the feel of Alluin’s precome smearing along the underside of my shaft with every shallow thrust.
“Are you— seriously— frotting me— while I— marry you?” I got out through panting breaths. My vision was going a bit cross-eyed, everything hot and hazy, and my lines had gone from wobbly to distinctly off-kilter. Having Alluin getting himself off using my hard prick was extremely distracting.
His pace picked up, one hand clenched around my bicep in a vise-like grip and his hips angling harder against mine. “Keep going,” he said in a moan. “Just ignore me.”
“Fucking black night, Lu, you’re torturing me,” I groaned, giving up on trying to put together coherent thoughts and letting my head hang as I focused on the slide of his cock against mine.
His hand was so strong and the stiff heat of his cock felt amazing.
I was so hard I was leaking, a steady pulse of precome that left me feeling swollen and desperate for release.
His cockhead rubbed against my sensitive frenulum with every thrust, silky smooth and slick with arousal. Fuck, it felt so good—
“Zhiolas,” Alluin growled at me. “Keep going.”
I whined and forced myself to focus on the pattern I’d drawn on his shoulder through the pleasure hazing my vision.
I couldn’t even remember what I’d been writing.
I’d never learned most of the oldest and most formal ways of marking contracts, marriages included, but I knew enough glyphic Faery to at least write something that looked fancy.
Home… self… tree… I deciphered as I started trembling from the haunting pleasure tensing my groin and lower back.
“I make my home in the branches of your tree,” I mumbled, letting out another sobbing sound of pleasure when Alluin swept his calloused thumb across the tip of my cock.
The sharp spike of need made my gems go tight and left my lower back tingling, but I forced the sensations away, making myself relax.
A long swoop. Two little lines. A curve.
One dot. A cross-mark. A… a… oh, fuck, oh holy gods—
Ecstasy struck me like a stooping falcon hitting a dove.
My vision whited out and my breath caught in my throat, my whole body dedicated to pleasure.
Come spurted out of me in thick ropes, my cock bucking against Alluin’s grip with every clench of my orgasm, slicking his fingers with my seed.
He rubbed faster, using my spend for lube as he frotted our cockheads together.
I was making tiny desperate noises, couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, my whole body tight and shaking as Alluin used me. He let out a guttural sound of want, fucking his cock through his hand and against mine.
“Tell me you want me,” he demanded.
“I w-want you,” I said in a pleasure-soaked sob, my hips jerking as the rough strokes of his hand went from glorious to overwhelming.
Alluin panted through his teeth. “Tell me you love me.”
I let out another sharp sound of ecstasy. “I love you. I— I— Gods, I love you, Lu—”
“Tell me— Tell me—”
“I love you,” I sobbed out desperately, grinding my cock against his, chasing the high of orgasm that still jangled through my overwrought body. “I love you, I’m marrying you, I’m yours, you’re my— my gods-damn husband—”
Alluin cried out his release in the same moment that pleasure slammed into me again, sharp as a sword.
I came with a shout, my hips driving hard through his hand.
My whole body jerked with each surge of come that spurted through me, my gems emptying and my cock throbbing in time with Alluin’s thrusts as he came with me.
Our seed mixed together into a slick mess between us.
The feel of it made me shudder with pleasure. Him. Me. Us.
I came down whimpering, feeling my pulse through my whole body, my exhausted muscles trembling and bliss settling into my veins. Alluin panted underneath me, breathing hard, his expression dazed with pleasure.
“Why do you have so much more stamina than me?” I moaned, still shuddering from my orgasm, bracing myself over Alluin. “I have had so much sex.”
Alluin laughed and gave my over-sensitized cock a stroke, making me gasp and whine before he let me go and flopped his arm back onto the bed, going boneless underneath me.
“It probably has something to do with the fact that I already came twice before you woke,” he said, starting to blush as he gave me an embarrassed smile.
“I, um… Well, I was awake the same amount of time, but I did a lot less physical work than you, and I’m recovering more quickly. I didn’t want to wake you.”
I breathed a laugh, eyeing the blob of henna I’d accidentally squeezed onto his skin next to my glyphs while orgasming. “But you have a marriage kink, and were so turned on by tattooing your marriage-marks on me that you had to orgasm to think straight? Twice?”
He went ruddy out to the tips of his ears. “Yes,” Alluin muttered, not meeting my eyes.
Still breathing hard, with semen going sticky between us, I scraped the excess henna into a bird-like shape, going for a dove and ending up with something more akin to a sickly duck.
“I really, really love you,” I said with a silly grin.
“That’s such a ridiculous kink, and I’m so very delighted to indulge it. ”
“Whatever,” he said, still muttering the word, but his mouth kicked up into a smile.
I dropped a kiss onto his temple. “I love being married to you, too, Lu,” I said, beaming down at him. “Let’s go get some married breakfast.”