Chapter 32
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
My body was weak, my limbs heavy. Not like Taland would let me move, anyway. He liked to take charge when we were like this—when we used to be like this. He said my pleasure was his pleasure, and the only time when he allowed me to move freely was when his dick was in my mouth or when I was sitting on his face.
I had no complaints whatsoever because I always came first no matter what, and my each and every need was more than met.
That hadn’t changed, apparently. Taland was still the same guy, and I was still the same girl I used to be, always hungry for more, always craving him like the purpose of my existence was to be naked with him forever and always until death took me away from his world.
Taland grabbed me and flipped me over again while I still breathed like I’d been racing and hardly saw his face in the dark. My body could have been made out of liquid, and the grin on his face said he still liked to take every ounce of energy out of me like this.
“Are you happy now?” he said, grabbing my legs and spreading them to the sides as he slowly climbed higher between them, on his knees. He ran his hands up my thighs to my pelvis, his thumb pressing on my clit casually because he knew exactly how to fire me up again, just like that.
I moaned just as I was about to speak, my hips trying to shoot up, but he stopped me.
“Are you happy to have my face between your legs again, sweetness?”
Fuck, no, I wanted to say, but then he kept teasing me with his thumb and words kept slipping away from me constantly.
“You fool me so perfectly,” he whispered, his other hand reaching up to grab my boob. “You spin me around your little finger within the day.”
No, I wanted to say, but the best I could do was look at him, at that small smile on his face while he played with my nipple and my clit.
“Then you betray me, and you lock me up, only to have me throw everything out the window and end up on my knees for you again.”
His voice became harder, louder, and at the end of it he reached down and thrust his thumb inside me violently while he squeezed my boob so hard it hurt. It fucking hurt like I was being cut wide open, but the pleasure was just the same, and I couldn’t move away, couldn’t ask him to stop for the life of me. I enjoyed this pain he brought me too much.
“I end up with my face in your pussy—and you know the funny part?” Taland let go of my boob and trailed his fingers down my stomach as I watched, then grabbed his cock while he teased my entrance with his thumb.
“The funny part is that I enjoyed every second of it more than before,” he said in a whisper. “The funny part is that I don’t want to fucking stop.”
“Taland,” I breathed because I didn’t want to stop either, and let’s never stop, let’s hide here forever, let’s never leave this building ever again.
But the sight of him touching himself like that while he touched me, and the way he increased the speed every second, and the way his cock looked so fucking delicious in his fist…
“Grab your tits for me, sweetness,” Taland said, and my hands moved even though I barely heard him. I barely blinked because I didn’t want to miss the sight of him jerking himself off.
He growled while I played with my breasts and tried to imitate the movement of his fingers on my nipples, but I never could get it quite right. His touch was something else, but I still tried as I moved my hips up and down, and I played with my boobs, and he played with the both of us.
Fuck, I wanted him with every fiber of my being. A voice in my ear whispered that someone could be watching us right now. That the whole world, all those people sitting around the playground of the Roe could be watching everything this very moment—and I still didn’t care. I still didn’t want to slow down or stop or even just take a second to make sure he’d wrapped us up in his magic.
No, nothing mattered except him.
“Put your hands on the wall over your head,” Taland said, and I let go of my boobs to do just that. “Push back when I thrust into you. ”
Oh, fuck, yes, yes, YES!
“Ready for me, sweetness?”
My response was a loud cry that morphed into a moan. Then Taland removed his thumb from inside me and thrust his cock in all the way.
All my stars aligned—and I’m not even joking. It all fit so perfectly, every second of every moment of every day that led me here. He completed me when we were like this, and it was the only time in my life when I wasn’t half. When we were connected with our bodies and minds the way we were now, staring into each other’s eyes, frozen in the moment for as long as we needed, it all just made perfect sense.
And then Taland grinned. “Heels up.”
He tapped his shoulders. My legs moved on their own, and I rested my heels on his shoulders just like I used to. We fit perfectly like this, always had.
Taland grabbed my hip with one hand and my thigh with the other, and he began to move.
Before I lost myself in the oblivion that he brought me each time his cock hit the deepest parts of me, my eyes caught something as if by accident, something I had been too distracted to notice until now—his chest. The tattoos there had always mesmerized me—I was convinced that ink just looked different on him than it did on everybody else. It looked alive, and he’d had six tattoos on him before, but this new piece that was on the center of his chest was new. I’d seen him get it on that footage at the IDD Headquarters, but I hadn’t seen what it was.
A tallarose.
For a moment, I was suspended in space and saw nothing but the lines that made every petal of the flower, and the stem full of thorns underneath, with the vines extending to the sides like they meant to protect the flower.
I saw nothing but us.
Taland and Rose against the world, hidden underneath a blanket in the boys’ dormitory despite the severity of the punishment if we got caught, whispering to each other, lips pressed together, hearts beating as one.
“…but it’s a highly poisonous flower,” I told him when he first called us that—a tallarose.
“But the most beautiful flower of all,” he said. “It’s not it that is poisonous, though. Only the vines and the thorns that protect it. Those are me . The flower is you.”
“Just because my name is Rose doesn't mean I’m a flower,” I’d said, not entirely sure I wanted the two of us to be some deadly thing that even the most skilled alchemists tried to stay away from.
“It’s not because of your name, sweetness,” he’d told me. “It’s because you are the most beautiful girl in the world, and you are also deadly—because of me.”
I’d thought then that he was joking, and I’d even laughed before we’d kissed, but tonight had proven he wasn’t. Tonight, I knew that he’d meant every word.
And now we were here, connected again just like we used to be, and when he thrust himself so deep inside me, I felt him in my center, the memory of old times faded away into nothing again. His tattoo remained on his skin, but with each new movement he took me farther and farther away from the world and everything that made sense in it.
“I need you,” I whispered, arms shaking as I tried to push myself to meet every violent thrust of his hips. I needed him close to me, needed to feel his body on mine and he knew it.
Slowly, he grabbed my legs and brought them closer, kissed my feet and ankles like he’d yearned to do so for years, then spread them to the sides again, running his hands up to my thighs. The way he looked at every inch of my body would have had me blushing if I wasn’t so high on him right now.
Taland lay on top of me, one hand on my boob, the other underneath my head. My arms were numb when I wrapped them around his neck tightly. We were mouth to mouth and chest to chest, not kissing, not moving for a good moment, adjusting to the feeling of each other in this position.
When he started to move again, he did so slowly, lips parted and breath held, half hooded eyes never leaving mine.
He was perfect, always had been, and I suspected he always would be to me.
Sadness filled me from head to toe so suddenly for those three words I couldn’t say to him, for having to bite my tongue and fight off that voice in my head that insisted that I needed to, that he needed to hear it, too. That it would be okay if I just said it out loud.
But, of course, I didn’t.
And Taland continued to move, to hold onto me, to moan that sexy sound that emptied my mind of everything else again within seconds. With every touch and every little kiss he showed me that I was the world— his world. No matter what had happened between us or what would happen after, in this moment we were us, and he breathed for me as I breathed for him.
It was poetic what we had, how we felt to one another. Pure and authentic and raw, even while I’d been lying through my teeth when we first met. It had been exactly like this every second of every day.
He’d never believe it, Taland. He’d never trust me again even if I bothered to tell him the whole truth, and that’s why I didn’t.
But in those moments as I held onto him and bit his lip, breathed in his scent, felt him as deep inside me as he could get, I really was undoubtedly his.
It caught us by surprise, the way we felt. Yes, we’d been like this before, but we’d also forgotten, and that orgasm hit us hard, both and at the same time, way too soon.
Neither of us had expected it because it wasn’t usual. We’d moaned but slowly—I was usually screaming my lungs out before I came. And he’d raised himself on his elbow to touch me, play with my boobs, then had gone lower to rub me the way he used to do while his cock slid in and out of me so easily.
When I came, he came, too, fell on top of me with his eyes tightly shut, wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me to his chest while I still struggled to find enough air to breathe.
We stayed like that until the high let us down. Then Taland slipped out of me, lay down on his back, and pulled me with him in one motion so that my head rested on his shoulder.
Just that gesture made my stomach twist again because I’d wanted it to happen so much, but I’d been sure it wouldn’t. I thought he’d just get up, grab his clothes, and walk away when we were done.
But no—he stayed. And he held me just like he used to so that the tallarose made of ink on his chest was right there in front of my lips .
We took a moment to just breathe, let our bodies cool down, our hearts slow the beating.
Eventually I started to trace the lines of the ink on his skin.
Why would you tattoo this on your chest? I wondered but didn’t dare say out loud.
“So, who was he?” Taland said after a minute, and my eyes closed at the image of Ben on the floor choking on Blackfire magic. Fuck, that had actually happened.
“No, don’t tell me,” he said after a minute. “I don’t have time to go kill him.”
“Damn it, Taland.” He said it so calmly, no hint of remorse in his voice.
He pretended I hadn’t said a single thing. “There is a place I suspect is built upon graves on the east side of Night City,” he continued instead. “I have to check in the next loop to make sure.”
I looked up at his face, and my fingers moved to trace the line of his jaw all on their own. And it occurred to me… “How are you shaved?” He was always shaved, and we’d been here a while, hadn’t we?
Taland shrugged just slightly. “I brought a razor blade.”
Laughter burst out of me—of course, he did. I didn’t think I’d ever met a person more neat that he was about his body.
“We’re stuck in loops,” I said when my laughter died down, and Taland didn’t let go of me nor did he loosen his grip around my body. He didn’t kiss me, didn’t laugh with me, but he didn’t move away, either.
I took it.
“Yes, but they’re not normal loops,” he said.
“Three-hour loops,” I said with a nod .
“Five and a half,” said Taland. “And that tends to change based on how close you are to finding your key.”
“Oh.” I kept forgetting he’d already finished this challenge. I kept forgetting he was in the Greenfire challenge, too. “What did you get in the Tree of Abundance?” I wondered. “What animal did you bond with?”
“Eagle,” said Taland. “He found me soon after you left.”
“Eagle,” I repeated, and it fit. Somehow the image of an eagle fit Taland perfectly. “Was it hard?”
“We danced around for a bit. We fought a little. In the end, we both won.” I could be mistaken, but he sounded a bit sad about it.
Just as sad as I was to remember the beautiful vulcera that had almost cut my throat when I failed to show her my magic.
Magic that I didn’t have.
Just like that, the reality I lived in was slowly leaking into my mind, drip after drip, memory after memory, to remind me just how fucked up this situation I was in, was.
Mud, the Iris Roe, the impossible challenges, Taland…
“You escaped the Tomb,” I said, choosing to distract myself with this burning curiosity, at least for a moment.
“I did,” he simply said.
“ How ?” Nobody just escaped from the Tomb. Nobody.
“I have my ways,” said Taland, and again, he spoke about it with such ease that it shocked me. He was just so… unreal, yet here he was. And I wanted to press him to give me an answer, but why in the world would he trust the same girl who’d put him there?
“What about the Blue House? What is that place? Who are those people?” I remembered it only hazily—the walled in community, all these people who’d been there, eating and listening to music, dancing …
But Taland said, “Why didn’t you tell them about it?” My eyes closed for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell the IDD about the Blue House, sweetness?”
I would never, were the words at the tip of my tongue, but of course, I didn’t say them. Even I wouldn’t believe myself after everything.
But Taland took it a step further. “Why didn’t you tell my brothers how you found the Blue House?”
Stabs at my gut, at my heart—everywhere. Again, those words: I would never.
I would never betray you, Taland. I would never get you in trouble with your brothers. I would never tell the IDD how to find you, even though I was so sure you’d kill me the moment you saw me…
All those words weighed so heavy on my shoulders.
Those questions I could never answer for him—and wasn’t that sad?
“Did you…did you pay Michael to kill me, Taland?” I asked a moment later, my heart breaking because there was a teeny tiny possibility that he’d say yes , and that, together with the fact that he’d stood by and watched and smiled while his brothers had tortured me…
“No,” Taland said.
A long, loud breath left my lips.
I believed him with all my heart—and that was awfully sad, too.
He wanted to say something to me, something else. I could feel it in the way the muscles of his torso tightened just slightly, like he was gathering up the courage, preparing—but then his lips opened and he said nothing. He just closed them again and smiled a heartbreaking half smile that looked so magnificent from down here.
Impossible to help it. I raised my hand and traced the line of his lips, too. It was the only way to convince myself that he really was real. He really was this perfect.
He didn’t let me for long, though. Before I knew it, he moved, flipped me, and put me on my back. He climbed on top of me and began to trace my entire body with his lips.
Fuck me, I was turned on within a second, even though I was still full of his cum. He never kissed me, never licked me, never touched me with his hands, just with his lips. Slowly. Gently, with his eyes half open.
Until he reached below my boobs, he didn’t speak at all, and I was too busy trying not to die right there on the mattress as I watched him. He looked so, so good, so fucking dedicated with every new curve of my body he explored with his lips.
Then he said, “Any ideas what to expect from Blue and White?”
It took me a good moment to make sense of what he was talking about. “None,” I admitted because I knew it would be useless to even try to think right now. Not while he was pressing those lips to my pelvis, and then slowly brought his hand to my thigh, fingertips sliding on my skin, slowly making their way between my legs.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
“I’d expect some sort of an agility test from Blue and something plain… evil from White,” Taland whispered, his mouth right over my clit, warm breath blowing against my soaked folds.
I moaned.
He brought his fingers to my entrance and picked up his cum that was surely coming out of me. He growled, then bit my thigh just a little, but enough to make me moan louder.
“The next time your memory gets foggy and you forget who you belong to, sweetness, think about this…” He sl ipped two fingers inside me, and my hips rose to meet his hand as my head fell back. “Think about you being so full of me that you’re dripping, baby. You’re fucking dripping.” Another bite on my other thigh and I cried out, but he took his fingers out of me.
He took his fingers out and he cursed under his breath as he continued to trail every curve of my legs down to my knees. I wanted to demand he go back up there between my legs and use that mouth and those fingers until I saw Iris again, but I didn’t dare for fear of what it would do to me if he did.
“Talk to me, Rose,” he then said. “Tell me where you were. Tell me what you found. Just talk.”
“I don’t…I don’t know,” I whispered, raising my head to watch him pressing those lips up my other thigh.
Taland raised his head, too, and met my eyes. “I thought you said you had a plan. Or was that a lie?”
A plan.
Fucking hell, I did have a plan, didn’t I?
“I…I do.” A bell rang in my ears and I was reminded of everything happening around me again, only this time it all had a lot more color.
“What’s the plan, sweetness?” asked Taland, his mouth still dangerously close to my pussy.
I knew that if he went there again, I’d be a goner.
“The plan?—”
A loud noise cut me off, a noise that made my heart skip one too many beats and made me sit up with a jolt.
It was thunder.
The room spun and Taland was already on his feet looking out the broken window, and I followed. We were both naked and my heart was thundering as much as that gray cloud that had taken over the sky of Night City .
A cloud—a gray cloud that hadn’t been there before.
A smile tugged at my lips. Holy shit, that was a storm waiting to come alive.
“What the hell is that?” Taland said, and I moved around him to get closer to the window just to make sure I was seeing right, that I wasn’t imagining it.
“That’s my plan,” I whispered, in awe of the fact that it had actually worked.
Goddess, it had actually worked!
“That’s your plan?” Taland was next to me, shaking his head, looking outside, too. “ Thunder ?”
“A hailstorm,” I told him. “I bought a hailstorm cloud from the Cloud Maker shop, and Refiq is a halfling so he could, technically speaking, prepare one of his clouds for the sky. He said he’d need time to do it, but I honestly didn’t think he’d make it. It looks like he did.”
Refiq had fucking made it.
Another thunder vibrated throughout me.
Wait a minute…
“A hailstorm?” Taland said.
“Yes, a hailstorm. To kill the birds. Naturally,” I said, looking at the rest of the darkness over Night City. “Nobody said we needed dead human bodies—just dead bodies. Where is the roundabout, Taland?”
Because that cloud was dark and angry, and it didn’t look like it was moving in the direction I was sure the roundabout was.
Suddenly, Taland grabbed my chin and turned me to face him. He looked…surprised. Shocked even.
“That’s fucking brilliant.”
I would have blushed any other day.
“It’s not moving, though,” I whispered. “Look at it—the roundabout is over there, isn’t it?” I pointed west, and Taland nodded. “The storm was supposed to hit the roundabout because if it kills the birds and they fall on top of buildings…” I shook my head.
“We can’t get to them because of the dragons,” Taland finished for me.
“Exactly.”
The roundabout, Refiq! I screamed in my head. The fucking roundabout!
Again, Taland grabbed me by the chin and came close enough to me so that our noses almost touched.
“Listen to me carefully, sweetness. We’re going to clean up and put our clothes on and run out of here faster than we’ve ever run before. That hailstorm isn’t going to last, and it’s looking like it will start any second. We only have a very, very short amount of time to find a dead bird. Do you understand me?”
I understood perfectly fine.
Less than five minutes later, we were out of the building and running toward the part of the city where the cloud had already begun to spit out ping-pong ball-sized hail.