Cemetery
He passed by several options. All that marble looked uncomfortable.
He settled on a patch of creeping thyme hidden between a cluster of large marble crypts, bordered by rosebushes heavy with red blooms. Their scent hung thick in the air.
Math set Kai down and dropped to one knee, circling a Wood spell to coax the thyme into bloom, until the whole area became a soft red carpet.
He shrugged off his coat and laid it on the ground.
“Take off your clothes,” she told him fondly.
“You really liked that, didn’t you, back on the train?” Math asked. “When I was naked and you weren’t?”
“Truth, you were a lovely sight,” Kai admitted. She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair, tossing them aside—probably into the rosebushes. “Must I tell you a second time?” Her lips quirked and her eyes sparkled.
“No, ma’am.” He yanked off his clothing as quickly as possible.
Kai was slower to undress, but she was undressing. Her eyes raked over him as she did, sighing happily.
Math sat down on the coat, weight resting on his heels as he gazed up at her. “This will be new for me,” he said.
She paused, her thumbs hooked into the waistband of her gathered pants. “Oh?”
“Being able to see my partner’s face,” Math said. “What a delightful novelty. Please. Allow me.” He beckoned her closer.
She did, then made a small, wonderful sound as he slid her pants down her waist, over her thighs, and to the ground.
Math didn’t just hear the sound, but felt it, a ripple through their bond that was hot and breathy and not entirely hers.
It felt like another kind of physical touch, low and electric. Their pleasure was mutual, mirrored.
His own arousal surged in response, wild and hungry, and he knew she’d felt that, too.
Her hands tangled in his hair as he kissed his way up one thigh, paused at her hip, then slid over her taut stomach. At the other hip, he started back down.
“Oh, you ass,” she murmured—more amused than upset.
“I’m sorry,” Math said, lifting his mouth just enough while stroking the backs of her thighs. “Did you want something? You only have to ask.” He gently bit her leg.
“I want you inside me,” she said.
“Eventually.” Math paused, suddenly serious. “That would be okay, right? Actual, you know…”
“Vaginal sex?” Kai echoed, making the phrase sound far lewder than it should. “Of course, I—” She searched his face, hands coming around to cup his cheek. “Nonprocreative sex, you said. You really haven’t done this before.”
With eyes like hers, it was hard to tell if they were dilated—but Math could’ve sworn her pupils widened.
“No, too risky. Too much chance of … um. Oh, there’s a thought. Do you have a way to stop yourself from getting pregnant?”
Kai grimaced and chewed her lip. “Oh, Math. There was never a need.”
Math lightly banged his head against her thigh. In a world where conception was virtually impossible, why would you learn contraceptive magic? And with what he now knew about wild magic, he wasn’t sure he trusted an improvised attempt. Not with Kai’s observation that fertility rates were rising.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m okay with it. I’m perfectly happy to—”
He grunted as Kai crouched, shoved him back with surprising force, then followed, straddling his waist and settling her hips against him.
He could feel—oh, Tri-Mother—he could feel her pressing against him, her slick heat rubbing against his very hard cock.
“I am not,” she told him. “I am not okay with it. If this is goodbye, then let it be sweet enough to make you want to return. Nothing would please me more than to leave this night carrying our child—”
Math began kissing her again. This time, their lips met with fierce, fiery kisses that sent tingles straight from his mouth to his groin. His fingers dug into her sides, tearing off the rest of her clothing with such violent need he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t ripping fabric—and didn’t care.
He’d meant to linger between her legs, tongue working against the folds of her sex, but the momentum left neither of them willing to pause for foreplay. Or at least, not that sort, because she seemed happy to tease him into a state of rabid animal fervor.
He felt her—naked, slick—slide over his length, pausing as the head of his cock caught at her entrance before she raised her hips and began the whole process over again. He made wild noises into her mouth as she teased, wet and deliberate, against him.
Math didn’t stop her. Didn’t catch her hips and push into her.
Not yet. Holding back wasn’t just about control anymore.
If he gave in too soon, the shared rush might burn through them both—too fast, too hard.
Already, he could feel the echo of her need bouncing through the bond, wrapping around his own until he couldn’t tell whose pulse was whose.
He shifted to her neck, biting and sucking as her cries grew louder, more lewd. Then he cupped her ass, fingers wandering down to slide into her beautifully wet sex.
Kai let out a choking gasp of surprise. She pushed back against his finger.
He laughed and buried his face in her hair before working that finger in and out, then adding a second, then a third.
She wasn’t a virgin, but she wasn’t large either—hurting her was the last thing he wanted.
He withdrew his fingers, shifted position, and returned them to work while his other hand rubbed her clit.
She pushed up onto her arms—whether to protest or give him better access, he wasn’t sure—but he took the chance to admire her now-bare breasts before craning down to capture a nipple in his mouth, flicking his tongue across the tip before sucking hard.
Kai threw back her head and cried out. Math was almost disappointed when she pulled away from his mouth to reach down and stroke the length of his cock.
“Oh fuck me,” he said, although it was closer to begging.
“Such is the plan, my fair knight.” She kept her hand on him, but this time it wasn’t to caress but to aim, guiding his dick to her entrance and pressing down against him.
She was hot and wet and almost painfully tight, but more than that, the feel of her pressing down around him, taking him in, was sublime. It was all he could do not to roll them over and start thrusting, but he had just enough presence of mind to go slow.
He slid his hands around, one resting on her hip, the other teasing her breasts.
She’d thrown her head back, eyes half-lidded, mouth open in the most delightful cries.
With each motion, she took him deeper—slowly, slowly—and he wasn’t sure she could fit all of him until he looked down and saw that she had.
He would never smell roses and thyme again without remembering that moment—the scent of sex and skin, her weight against him.
She quickened the pace, and he matched it, thrusting up in time with her. When she braced her hands on his chest, he caught them, lacing his fingers through hers as they both gasped, eyes locked. A soft slapping noise filled the air, rising with their cries.
Math fought not to come, which wasn’t exactly easy with the most beautiful woman in the world riding him like her favorite horse. He wanted to hear her scream. He wanted this forever. He wanted it to never end.
He reached down and rubbed her clit again.
That did it. She threw her head back and screamed loud enough to wake every corpse in the cemetery.
She tightened around him so hard it was all he could do to keep moving.
What he couldn’t do was stop himself from coming.
The sensation slammed into him from two sides—her pleasure rebounding through the bond just as his own surged forward.
It collided inside him, overloaded and brilliant, leaving him gasping.
He hadn’t—
Math paused, sweat dripping down the sides of his face. Perhaps he hadn’t fully appreciated the advantages of the magical link Kai had created.
He also wasn’t finished. If she wanted something to remember him by, he was damn well going to give it to her. Repeatedly.
Fortunately, he was Wood resonant. The joke about “wood” spells wasn’t a joke—they were all about healing and regeneration, after all.
“Oh god, Math, seriously?” Kai murmured once she could form thoughts again—and felt him still inside her, slower now, but still rock hard.
“Do you want to stop?” He already knew the answer.
“No, no. Oh, absolutely not. Don’t you dare.”
So, he didn’t. Not for a very long time.
Later, they lay together, wrapped in each other’s arms on his coat while listening to the wind rustling the tree branches. It wasn’t dawn yet, but Math knew he was running out of time.
“I’m going to talk to the Queens,” he told her, kissing the top of her head. “Maybe I can make them see reason, even if I can’t do that with the Order.”
A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead as she pulled back far enough to look at him. “No one can talk to the Queens, Math.” Concern and worry rippled through her. “You’d have to let yourself be killed and absorbed—”
“No,” he told her. “I don’t. I’ve been able to hear them from the start, Kai. I can understand them. They don’t speak out loud exactly, but I swear I can understand them.”
“Truly?” She sat up straighter and slapped his chest. “Why didn’t you reveal that as one of your capabilities?”
“I don’t know if you remember this, Kai, but there was a point where you weren’t exactly sure of my loyalties. I didn’t think revealing that I could mentally hear the Queens would help my case.”
Her lips twisted. “Perhaps not.” Then, instead of saying anything else, she pulled a necklace from around her neck and looped it around Math’s. “That will aid you in sensing danger.” The bracelet she’d re-enchanted on the train followed the necklace. “And this will protect you from fatal injury—”
“You need that one. That saved your life when the train crashed.”
“Take it before you upset me. I will make a spectacle of myself and wake everyone in the neighborhood.” Kai removed several rings before she realized that nothing she wore would fit Math’s fingers.
She settled on another of her larger bracelets, made to wear high enough on her arm to allow it to fit Math’s wrist.
“And what does this do?”
“For your purposes: energy,” Kai told him. “It can also draw and erase gravings, but you won’t know how to activate that magic. The energy is easier. Pull from here instead of from the wild source and you should stave off the risk of burnout even if you exceed your limits.”
Math touched the metal. It was cold to the touch, even after having been worn on Kai’s arm for the entire time he’d known her.
“Thank you.” Then he sighed. “I suppose we should dress.”
“We don’t have to,” she told him. “What if we chose instead to sleep in and missed the massacre?” She let out a very put-upon sigh at the expression he gave her then.
“Fine. I didn’t think you’d say yes. Foolish, stubborn, beautiful man.
” She stood up and began peeling her clothing off the rosebushes, dressing herself.
Math paused as he noticed the look in her eyes.
It matched the emotions he could feel bubbling through her.
Worry, yes, but more than that, determination and defiance, uncompromising conviction.
Not at all the emotions of someone who was going to light a candle in a window and wait for their knight to come home.
But he never would’ve fallen in love with her if she had.
“Kai.” He finished pulling up his trousers and tugged on his boots.
She raised her chin. “Yes?”
“Don’t let the knights notice you following us. They won’t react well.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Then the corner of Kai’s mouth quirked. “Do you take me for an amateur? They’ll never see me.”
Math snuck back into the barracks and ran smack into Alik Nuhzar.
Who’d clearly been waiting for him.
“You’re up early,” Math said, as if he’d done nothing at all wrong.
Captain Nuhzar squinted at him. “You smell like flowers.”
“Huh,” Math said. “Yeah, that would be weird, me smelling like plants. Totally unfitting, considering my manifested weapon. I went for a walk. Did you need something?”
“Did anyone see you?”
Math threw him a scathing glare.
Nuhzar frowned, but then after a moment, nodded. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Did you?” Math was willing to bet the answer was no, even if the reason was substantially different than Math’s.
“No,” the captain admitted.
“Right. Then I guess we’re ready to do this.”