Chapter 28 #2
I lean over him, my lips finding his jaw, the pulse in his throat, the hollow beneath it, where the marks start black then break into color across his chest. I move slowly, exploring him the way he explored me, searching for the places that might break through his iron control and give me a reaction.
When I nip at his collarbone, his breath catches. Barely noticeable, except I’m listening for it. When I lick the dip of his throat, his pulse leaps against my tongue. And when I press my mouth over his heart, it’s slamming hard and fast, at odds with how still he’s holding himself.
I keep going. Down over the ridges of his stomach, where the muscle tightens and jumps beneath my lips. Along the cut of his hip, until a low sound escapes him. It’s rough, torn loose before he can catch it, and it’s the most unguarded thing I’ve ever heard from him.
I want more of it, so I do it again. Just to prove I can.
By the time I follow the trail of dark hair lower, my heart is pounding. I’ve never done this before. Never wanted to.
But I want it now.
I want to give him what he gave me. I want to find the places where all his control breaks. I want to be the one who takes him apart, and have him know, every second, that I’m choosing it.
I wrap my fingers around him, and he freezes beneath me.
I lift my head to look at him. His eyes are closed, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “Cairn?”
“Do you want to do this?” His voice is low, almost harsh.
And suddenly I’m back in that room at the inn, hearing the serving girl ask if he was available to rent. Treating him like his body was something humans could buy a turn with, and desire only ever mattered to the one purchasing him.
He’s told me a little about what human women did to him, but knowing about it and seeing what that treatment left behind are two very different things.
Horror flows through me. Everything he is—every pleasure, every desire—has been weaponized against him.
He’s so strong, so confident, that he makes it easy to forget he was a prisoner for centuries. But beneath the sarcasm, the arrogance, and the armor, he is still a victim who was abused by my kind. And his body still remembers what human hands did to him.
And right now, mine are on him.
“Do you want me to do this?”
The question hangs between us, and I force myself to wait.
Slowly his eyes open, burning gold and stripped of all that careful distance he keeps.
That look alone heats my blood and breaks my heart in equal measure.
Then his hand comes up, his thumb dragging slowly over my jaw like he needs the contact.
I reach for the threads linking us, and find them closed off and dark. Instead of retreating, I follow them, tracing along the silvery lines until I find him, and I stroke against the barrier gently.
His body flinches beneath me, then slowly relaxes, and with it the barrier cracks slightly. A jumbled mix of desire and fury leaks out before he snaps the connection closed again.
“Aethryn.” He breathes the word softly. I have no idea what it means, and I’m sure he won’t tell me if I ask, so I stay quiet. His lips tip up into a smile, and he lets his head drop back. “Do your worst.”
I stare at him for a moment longer, then slowly curl my fingers around him again. He’s hot against my palm, harder than I expected. When I close my fingers and stroke downward, his hips jerk up off the furs. He hisses a curse.
It’s my turn to freeze.
“Don’t stop.” The command is pure, arrogant Cairn, and I smile.
Lowering my head, I take him into my mouth. The taste of him floods my tongue—salt, and heat, and something that is just him. I take too much at once, and have to draw back, eyes watering and breath ragged, then try again.
I find the right angle by trying and failing and trying again. I learn how far I can go before it’s too much. I learn to wrap my hand around the rest. Then I discover what makes the muscles in his thighs jump, and what makes his fingers flex.
I’m clumsy and I know it. But every uncertain pass of my mouth drags another sound out of him, each one rougher, lower, less and less controlled. I chase them, greedy for them, until I forget to be cautious at all.
When I take him deep and flatten my tongue against the underside of him, he comes up off the furs with a groan that sounds like it’s being torn out of him. So I do it again. And again, until I’m drunk on the proof that I can undo him this way.
But beneath it all, there’s still tension. I can feel it in the rigid lock of every muscle, in the cords standing out along his throat. And in his hands. They’re knotted in the pelts so hard, his knuckles have turned white.
The bond between us stays shut off, his side of it dark, but I don’t need it open to know that part of him isn’t here in this shelter with me. Some part of him has slipped back into a memory I can’t reach. One I would tear apart with my bare hands if I knew how to find it.
So I bring my hand up from his hip, find that clenched fist, and press my fingers against it until it opens for me. Then I lace my fingers through his, and hold on to him. His grip clamps down like I’m the only solid thing left in the world.
I keep my mouth on him, and I keep my eyes lifted to his face, so every time he surfaces enough to look, he finds me looking back. He sees me. My face. My mouth. My hands.
And slowly, the old tension drains out of him. The death-grip of his fingers loosens. His hips rock in more fluid, helpless rolls up into my mouth, and the sounds spilling out of him change from restrained groans to something ragged and desperate.
His free hand lifts, reaching for my face, my jaw, my cheekbone, his fingertips tracing every line.
“Alleria.” My name breaks free, frayed and rough, half warning, half plea.
I don’t pull back. I hold his gaze, and take him as deep as I can, tightening my fingers around his, and I feel the exact instant the last of his control gives.
His spine bows up off the furs. His hand crushes mine hard enough to bruise.
He spills hot down my throat with a sound I have never heard before.
I take all of it, and when he’s done, shuddering and gasping beneath me, I crawl up him and press a kiss over his heart.
His hands find my waist, and he hauls me up the length of his body and wraps himself around me, burying his face into my hair, breathing hard. He doesn’t speak, but the bond between us opens up a little again, flooding me with an emotion that makes my eyes sting.
“Cairn?”
“Hmm?” He doesn’t lift his face from my hair.
“I forgive you.”
He goes very still. Then a rough, surprised-sounding laugh escapes him. “Do you now?”
“Don’t get used to it.” I burrow closer, pressing my face against his throat. “You still don’t get to terrify me half to death and call it a lesson.”
He laughs again. “Noted.”
I wrap my arms around him, the most dangerous creature I’ve ever known, in a shelter spun from magic, in a land filled with things that could kill me, and I’ve never felt safer in my life.