Chapter 41
TRAVELING LIKE THIS while his thumb is there is much less disorientating. Aware of those places where we’re together in the fluttering dark, I don’t feel like I’m falling apart. The points of contact between us are anchors, reminders of reality and of my body—of what’s real and true.
Things I can hold on to.
We land in his bedroom and he wastes no time crushing me against the wall and grinding me to within an inch of my life. All the while, his thumb circles, tearing at the threads of my sanity, even though his touch is tempered by the sheer silk of my underwear.
He slips a finger under the fabric and into me, stealing my breath. “You like that, don’t you? I can see you do—it’s written all over that pretty face.”
I hate him. Hate what he’s doing to me. A little. Love it more. As he adds another finger, I can’t think, not even nonsense.
I whimper against his throat, cling to the back of his neck, drive against his hand, a servant of the pleasure building inside.
I bow to it. Break apart on it. Spill over and into the sweet, dark surge of a fathomless ocean, where I drown over and over.
The world’s spinning as I return to it and his satisfied smirk.
“I’ve barely begun touching you.” He laughs, a low rumble against my chest. “Ah, Annon, you’d be so easy to ruin.”
I barely take in his words and the delicious promise wrapped between them when he walks me to the bed and turns me to face it.
There, he takes his time unbuttoning my dress, peeling it away from my back as he does.
My skin lights up just as it did when he fastened the high-necked gown before, but this time he’s baring me rather than covering me, and I’m conscious of air reaching my shoulders, my back, the tops of my hips.
I don’t realize I’m holding up the front of the dress until he pulls my hands away.
I let go.
It spills from my shoulders and pools upon the floor, beads rattling together softly. Only a scrap of silk covers me, tied with ribbons at the hips.
“Look at you. Shy yet eager. Blushing and wanton. Such a delightful contradiction.” He makes short work of the bows, then tosses my underwear to the floor.
Breath held, I wait. I don’t dare look back in case that breaks some unwritten rule and he stops.
He doesn’t touch me, but I feel the weight of his gaze. Instead of being bowed by it, it makes me stand tall.
“Aren’t you exquisite?” His hands alight upon my hips, thumbs circling the dimples above my backside.
“Such a perfect little creature. I should keep you like this all the time. Bare. Thighs slick. Ready to open for me.” His palms plane up and forward over my ribs until he’s cupping my breasts.
He pulls me close, so I feel the rhythm of his breathing at my back.
“I hope you understand how lovely you are, sweet sunshine.” His words ghost over my neck, sending a shiver of pleasure through me.
It isn’t just the sensation. It’s the feeling of being held. Of being protected and precious. It’s the vulnerability of being utterly naked while the roughness of his jacket on my back tells me he’s still fully clothed. It’s the fact that, despite that, I feel safe.
Somehow, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it should that he’s the one who’s tormented me in the labyrinth. That he’s a killer. That he’s the King of Death.
He’s holding me, and I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. For now, at least.
He kneads my breasts, kindling molten fire low in my belly. He toys with my nipples, driving it hotter. I arch, urgency taking over.
Unable to take it any longer, I turn in his embrace, finding him barefoot. Wordlessly, I start on his buttons with trembling hands.
He smirks. Of course he fucking smirks. He’s not just King of Death, he’s King of the Bloody Infuriating.
But dimples mark his cheeks, so I feel less like something he’s playing with and more like something he treasures. Like sweet sunshine.
He nudges my hands out of the way and takes over on the buttons, working much more quickly. I take in each inch of flesh as its revealed.
His gaze snaps to my lip caught between my teeth. “That mouth is going to be the death of me.”
I shiver, wanting that—to be the death of him as he has been the death of me. Greedy to feel his strong body, I go to slip my hands under the fabric.
“You’ll wait.” His order comes cool and clipped, and I’m before the king once more.
He holds me still with his gaze as he shrugs off his jacket then peels off his shirt.
In the training yard, I hadn’t spotted the fine, dark hairs that spread across his chest nor the coarser line of them leading from his navel down to the waistband of his trousers. But now I follow them, enjoying how they emphasize his appearance of supple strength.
The unbuckling of his belt is a fascinating thing. I can’t say why, only that I can’t look away from his deft fingers pulling, flicking the prong, sliding leather from metal. Maybe it’s the way he does it at a tormenting speed.
I ache and have to clench my hands to keep them from reaching out again. The taut lines of his muscles beg to be touched. That trail of hair invites my fingers to walk down it. Even the V over his hips points downward, more of it revealed as he unbuttons his trousers.
Trimmed, dark hair. The base of his cock. Then he frees his length. It springs to attention, sending a thrill of anticipation through me. There’s also fierce pride, baring its teeth, because I’ve made him this way. He’s hard because of me.
Now, perfectly naked, he cups my cheek, and I reach for him.
He catches my wrist. “I said you would wait.”
I huff out my frustration and try to tiptoe up for a kiss, but he pulls out of reach.
“Annon. You know better than that.”
Blinking up at him, I remember the warning I’ve known all along. He doesn’t kiss, even if I yearn for the taste of him, the pressure of his lips on mine.
I fancy there’s something sad in his eyes. But realistically, that’s just me seeing my own disappointment in him.
I thought this would be something soft. Something special.
I thought I was something special.
He seemed to have thawed and opened up.
The corner of his mouth raises. There are no dimples. If anything, it’s apologetic as he ducks and kisses my brow. “I’ll still show you. I’ll still make you come until you forget yourself and know only me.”
My body burns for his promise, unquenched by this distance that’s opened between us. It fluctuates, a little closer with the kiss to the brow, a little further as he turns me away from him, closer again as he envelops me in his hold, the heat of his flesh upon mine searing.
It’s like there’s a leash between us and he keeps pulling, testing its length, then springing back when he finds its bounds. But he’s never quite as close as he was when we were dancing and shared our secrets.
My mind snaps back from that moment as he kisses my neck, nibbles, licks, like I’m a delicious morsel he wants to make last. His cock presses into my back as his hands explore my breasts before one rises to take my throat, and the other glides down over my belly, finding its home between my thighs.
Suddenly distance doesn’t seem so important any more. And I can understand it. If he lost her, he might not want—
“Oh!” I buck at the finger slipping inside me.
“That’s it. That’s what I want from you.”
It feels good for my body to not be found wanting. For tension to coil in it without pain or exhaustion. To simply enjoy being a physical creature.
It strikes me that I should be embarrassed by how quickly he has me writhing against his body, his hand, straining at the grip around my throat.
But the heat and the pleasure don’t care, they only demand more.
I ride them higher, higher, bright and sparkling like one of Moonburn’s flares about to split off across the sky.
I fly. Cry out, only kept on my feet by his strong arms, kept in this world by the pretty, filthy nonsense he whispers in my ears.
When the aftershocks stop, he lets me wilt on to the bed on hands and knees before the headboard. The mattress dips as he kneels behind me, and I’m grateful for the chance to catch my burning breath. He takes my hips, his hold firm, sure. Strong enough that I can trust myself to it.
His fingers flex on my hips. The blunt tip of him nudges at my entrance. There’s a pause that aches.
I hang there, breathless. Afraid. Have I done something wrong? Has he changed his mind?
I wait, the pressure of him its own torment.
Then he growls, low, torn, “Fuck,” and the world spins as he flips me on to my back.
All I see is him. Hear is him. Know is him.
A hissed breath in. The blowing wide of his pupils. The clench of his jaw. Like the sight of me beneath him is some exquisite torment.
One hand in a white-knuckled grip on the headboard, he eases between my legs. He looks like a drowning man clinging to flotsam.
“Lift your hips.” The rawness of his voice sounds wholly unlike him, but I obey, and, kneeling, he slides his thighs beneath me, so my hips are raised, my legs parted by his body.
I’m exposed and more than a little helpless, my weight on my shoulders and in his lap. All I can do is lie back as he aligns himself with my entrance, golden gaze fixed there a long while.
“Look at you, lying there, open for me. So eager to take it, aren’t you?”
I nod, then remember how he likes to hear an answer. “Yes. Please.” Desperation wrings my voice, a tightness in my throat.
There’s a hint of his self-assured smirk as he presses at my entrance, but it vanishes as he slips inside.
The stretch is exquisite, a filling sensation I’ve missed in all these sexless years.
The look on his face is even better, though—a clenching of his brows, the fluttering of his eyelids, the dropping open of his mouth on a wordless groan.
His eyes widen once he’s fully seated. He swallows and shakes his head, grip on my hip digging in. “Fuck.”
With a roll of his hips, he leaves me and bends forward in one motion, hair spilling around us in a curtain. My whimper at the sudden emptiness stirs the black lengths, then he plunges back inside with a whispered curse.
“You’re nothing,” he snarls, hand encircling my throat, strangling my cry as his rhythm falters. “You know that? Nothing.”
I don’t care what he says, because his hips snap hard into mine again, drawing my whole body taut with the sweet, hot friction of it. He can call me what he wants as long as he doesn’t stop treating me like I’m something.
He shudders.
“My Nothing,” he breathes an inch from my lips. “My Avellan. My—fuck.”
Then he’s kissing me.
Like it’s that simple. Like I’m just a fisherman’s daughter and he isn’t an unseelie king I should not, in any logical world, have ever met.
But our lips do meet. And he tilts my chin up so he can make that point of connection firmer. So he can claim me. Taste me. Tear me from time and space, so there is only him and me, his cock driving deep inside me, and his commanding grip on my throat.
I tremble, fighting for breath, for sanity, clinging to his shoulders, losing parts of myself.
I’ve never been kissed like this before. Fucked like this before.
Like I’m his to take. My lips are his to ease apart. My mouth is for him to make this small hum of pleasure into as his tongue meets mine.
Like he’s mine to give himself so thoroughly—every inch of his dick and the rest of him, too. The graze of his stubble upon my chin. The sweet taste of him, fruity and tart like fae wine.
I can only cling on, arch into his wild strokes, tighten around him, edging closer to bliss.
With a grunt, he seems to remember himself, tearing his lips from mine. He peels my hands from his shoulders and pins them to the bed, gaze skimming over my face. “What are you doing to me?” he asks, shaking his head as he rolls his hips, more controlled than a moment ago.
He releases one hand and reaches between us, thumb rubbing my clit as he thrusts into me.
I cry out. I can’t keep it in. Not when he’s filling me and stroking me and making my body feel like it’s going to fall apart into glittering shards. “Drystan.”
He stops, eyelids heavy as if making love has dazed him. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you say my name.” His thumb takes up its firm rhythm again as he pulls out of me. “Say it again.”
“Drystan.”
He drives in on the second syllable, making me shout it. A hazy, dimpled smile drifts over his face as he pushes me closer and closer to the edge. “That’s right. Come apart for me. For only me.”
I do. I say his name as I do it, eyes wringing shut on the word as I sink into the pure pleasure, washed away by it.
When I bring myself back from that place, there’s a wild light in his eyes.
“Annon.” He bends to kiss me, his tongue and thumb dipping into my mouth, the taste of me mingling with the taste of him. I’m high on the pleasure, lost in his merciless rhythm, torn apart by the way he worships me.
“Mine,” he whispers on my lips. “Avellan. You will be my wife, and I will do this to you every fucking day.” He punctuates those last three words with his thrusts, and part of me thinks being his bride wouldn’t be so bad, not if I got to have this whenever I wanted.
“I will have you.” He presses down on my belly, keeping me in place to accept all that he gives.
“Hold you.” His voice runs as ragged as his breaths.
“Break you apart and drink the sound of your breaking from your lips again and again.”
The promise, the feral ferocity of it, the punishing pound of him into me, does break me.
My whole body hums with pleasure, with buzzing energy, with the glorious overwhelm of his presence in me, around me, everywhere and everything.
And as I cry out, lost, he loses himself with me, fingers interlaced with mine just as his pleasure is.
Avellan. He says that word, breathless, again and again. I haven’t heard it before tonight, but it sounds like the old tongue. A nicer word for “Nothing,” I’m sure of it.
Avellan. It feels like it’s mine. Ours.
After, we stay in that curtained space, regathering the fractured pieces of ourselves. His gaze roves over me, a hazed softness to it that I haven’t seen before. He kisses me once more, softer now. Almost reverent. Fingers still locked with mine.
I smile up at him, body aching sweetly.
There’s the shadow of a dimple in his cheek as he straightens. Then his breath catches. His gaze jerks to the side.
I follow it and recoil with a breathless “Oh!”
Instead of a pillow, my head rests on a bed of flowers.