Chapter 3 #2
“Who would have thought I’d owe the bastard my life?”
“You don’t,” I say, reaching up to cup his cheek.
“Because you already paid my brother’s price.” His voice is low. Harsh.
“I would have paid anything,” I say, remembering my hours with Adric. The price I’d paid for his blood. And yet it had felt like no price at all.
“Tell me you’re still mine,” Chase demands, as his hands find the fastenings of my dress—the midnight silk that Adric transformed from my clothes before the dragon ride.
“Yours,” I say, my heart pounding as his fingers work the clasps. “Always.” The fabric loosens and slides down my skin, the sensation somehow wildly erotic.
And then, when the air brushes my nipples, I feel a jolt of pure, desperate need.
“Please.” It’s the only word I can manage, and it’s heavy with want, though I don’t even know what exactly I need. His hands? His mouth?
Yes. All of it. And more, too. Because right then, I think I might die without his touch.
His fingertip teases my breast, and I somehow manage to pull his shirt over his head, and then it’s just skin and firelight and the sound of our ragged breathing.
His hands slide over my body, every touch sending waves of pleasure coursing through me. Every curve, every dip, every place that makes me gasp and whimper and need.
“More,” I whisper. “I need you, Chase.” And it’s true. So very true.
But I want Adric, too.
That, however, is a desire I’m happy to push away for the moment. Because this is about Chase—alive and healed and fully mine, just as I’m fully his. At least for this one last night.
“I need you, too,” he says, his lips brushing my ear. “And I need you to know that this is real. This is the truest thing I’ve ever—”
“I know,” I say, pulling back to face him. “Now stop talking.”
He almost laughs. Almost. Then his hand slides between my thighs, and I stop thinking about everything but him.
His fingers are slow as he teases my core, finding my clit in a way that makes sparks dance over my body, the sensation driving me insane as those sparks spin and whirl and send me higher and higher.
“Look at me,” he orders, and I open my eyes just as he thrusts his fingers inside me, and it’s the heat in his eyes and the wild dance of his fingers that takes me straight to that magical precipice. “Yes,” I beg. “Chase, please, more.”
But instead of taking me over, he draws his fingers back as I writhe and whimper and beg for even more.
“I like that,” he says, his lips brushing my ear as he whispers. “I like hearing how much you want me.”
“Desperately,” I say, utterly shameless in my desire. “Please, Chase. Please, more.”
His fingers return—slow and deliberate, sending heat coursing through me in a way that has me bucking against his hand while he holds me steady with his other arm, his mouth hot on my breast.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, his body tight and hot against my skin. “Let me hear you.”
His voice alone almost undoes me—low and rough and so full of need that I can’t think.
I can’t even try. My entire world is reduced to the feel of his hand between my thighs, his fingers doing something unholy and patient and perfect—and the slow, wicked pressure keeps building until I’m sure I’ll splinter from it.
I want him. All of him. I want this to never stop.
I want to lose both of us inside this wild and wicked longing.
And even as my body begs for more and my hips rise to meet his hand, I come with his name on my lips and his fingers still moving inside me, drawing it out until I’m shaking, my back arching off the mattress as something inside my chest cracks open and I cry out his name, begging him to both stop and to never, ever stop.
I gasp for air as he watches me fall apart, and when I return his gaze, it’s devotion I see in those golden eyes. Raw and terrifying and so true it steals the breath I’ve barely gotten back.
Before I’ve fully come back to earth, he shifts above me, and I wrap my legs around him, pulling him close. He pushes into me slowly, watching my face, and the feel of him inside me after coming so close to losing him—after knowing that I can’t be fully his—is almost too much.
“Cora.” He says my name, but I hear I love you.
“Yes,” I murmur, both in answer to the unspoken words and to the magic he’s working on my body.
“More,” I whisper, and he doesn’t disappoint, building a deep, steady rhythm that feels like a wave gathering strength.
I grip his shoulders and match him stroke for stroke, my hips shamelessly rising to meet him, wanting more, needing everything he has.
He gives it. Harder now, his control starting to fray, and I can feel the urgency in him—not just lust but something frantic underneath it.
I know what it is, because I’m feeling it, too.
The knowledge that this is borrowed time.
That in a few hours I’ll be standing across from another man, agreeing to be his bride.
“You’re mine,” he says, the words like a low growl.
“Always,” I tell him, as that heated tension builds again. “No matter what happens. Yours, always.”
He thrusts deep, and the feel of his cock inside me, combined with the heat in his eyes, sends me over the edge.
I shatter around him—pleasure crashing through me in waves that I ride for what feels like a beautiful eternity, and it’s only once those waves leave me gasping that he follows me over, my name ragged on his lips, his whole body going taut before collapsing beside me and pulling me against him.
We lie tangled together, my breath coming hard and my heart pounding in my chest. His face is buried in my hair, and his arm is wrapped around me like he’s afraid I’ll dissolve.
“I love you,” I whisper.
He shifts just enough to look at me. “I know,” he says. “But you love him as well.”
I shake my head. “I don’t.” But what I don’t add is that I think I could.
He pulls me against him—my back to his chest, his body curving around mine with one arm across my waist, his breath warm against my neck, as if he’s a wall between me and everything else.
“Sleep,” he murmurs. “We’ve still got a few hours, and I want to hold you.”
I’m already drifting, so I close my eyes and let the rhythm of his breathing pull me under, warm and safe in the arms of this man who has guarded me since my mother died.
But as I drift, it’s not Chase I feel. It’s Adric. The weight of him above me in the tent. The silver of his eyes gleaming in the moonlight. The way he whispered my name as if it tasted of passion.
I’m in Chase’s arms, and I’m thinking of Adric. I’m sated and guilty and aching for both of them, and I don’t know how a body can hold this much want without splitting down the middle.
And to top it off, I’m getting engaged in just a few hours. For most women, that’s a fantasy come true.
For me? I honestly don’t know. All I do know is that I love Chase. I’m falling hard for Adric. And that, in some horrible way, the fate of the universe has settled onto my shoulders.