Chapter 33 #2
“And when I told you I was going to bring you here, undo the silver in your hair, and take that dress from you, you thought about this.”
His hand slips between my thighs.
The first touch tears a sound out of me before I can stop it. I grip his wrist, but I don’t push him away. I don’t even try. His fingers move, finding the places that make my body turn soft and restless, all at once.
“Open your eyes,” he whispers.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
His other hand closes gently around my throat, tilting my head back against his shoulder. There is no pressure, no force, only the weight of his palm, the claim of it, the reminder of him everywhere.
My eyes open.
In the glass, I watch myself come apart for him. My head tips back. My lips part. His hand stays between my legs, his mouth at my throat. The dark shape of him wraps around me while the whole of Nightward lies beneath us, the sea breaking silver against the cliffs far below.
It should feel exposed. It should make me want to hide. Instead, the sight drives the heat deeper. His fingers slide into me, and my knees buckle. Cairn catches me easily, his arm tightening around my waist.
“There you are.” The words are low, rough with satisfaction.
I make another sound, louder this time, and his mouth curves against my skin.
“That’s one.”
I can barely think beyond the movement of his fingers inside me. “One what?”
“One sound you tried to keep from me.”
My nails dig into his wrist. He moves his fingers again, slow and deep, then draws back to circle the place he’s made impossible to ignore. My body jerks against him and I whimper.
“That’s two.”
“Stop counting!”
“I have no intention of stopping anything.”
He turns me in his arms, and I have a second to see his face before his mouth takes mine again. This kiss is rougher than the first. Less patient. His hand stays between my thighs, working me until I’m making sounds into his mouth that I can’t swallow fast enough.
My hands clutch the front of his shirt, needing him closer, needing the fabric gone, anything between us gone. My fingers fumble at the dark fastenings at his throat. He catches my hand and lifts it to his mouth.
“Not yet.”
A frustrated sound breaks out of me, and his eyes flare burnished gold.
“That, I like.”
He lowers himself in front of me, stealing whatever I was about to say. My breath stalls.
Cairn is kneeling at my feet like it’s nothing. Like the Eldráfn of the Nightwild Guard belongs there, fully dressed and looking up at me with the marks under his skin swirling and a ravenous look in his eyes.
I reach for his shoulders because I need something to hold onto. He turns his head and presses his mouth to the inside of my wrist.
“Look at me.”
I do. I can’t do anything else.
His hands slide up the backs of my thighs, then he draws one leg over his shoulder.
“Cairn.”
“I told you I would make you scream my name.”
That’s the only warning I get before he puts his mouth on me.
My hand flies to his hair, and the sound that leaves me is too loud for the room, too raw, and he groans as though he’s been waiting all night to hear it. His tongue moves slowly at first, almost cruelly so, learning every response and leaving me nowhere to hide.
The glass gives everything back. The arch of my body. His hands holding me open. His dark head between my thighs.
I can’t look at it.
I can’t look away.
The first wave hits too fast. I feel it building and try to breathe through it, try to stay quiet, try to keep some part of myself under control, but Cairn’s fingers tighten on my thighs as if he knows exactly what I’m doing.
He lifts his mouth just enough to speak.
“Don’t.” One word. A command. Then his tongue returns, and I break.
His name tears out of me as pleasure snaps through my body, hard enough that my fingers lock in his hair and my leg trembles over his shoulder. He holds me through it, relentless and steady, drawing every second out until I’m saying his name again, softer this time and ragged around the edges.
He rises before I have recovered, and I barely feel the movement before his mouth is on mine, making me taste myself on him. The kiss is deep and claiming, his hand at the back of my neck, his other arm lifting me.
I wrap my legs around his hips because there is nowhere else for my body to go.
He carries me to the bed. The furs are cool against my back when he lays me down, and the sky stretches above us, through the glass ceiling, dark and scattered with stars. Cairn stands at the edge of the bed, looking down at me.
Then he starts removing his own clothes.
I watch every piece go. The shirt peels away from his skin like shadow. His pants follow. The marks along his throat and chest pulse brighter.
When he’s finally bare, the sight of him steals whatever breath I managed to get back.
He climbs onto the bed slowly. Too slowly.
My body is still trembling, still sensitive, and somehow he knows it. He sees everything. The way my thighs press together. The way my hands twist in the furs. The way I look at him and forget that I was ever afraid of wanting him this much.
He catches my ankle and tugs me toward him. “Say my name.”
My voice comes out unsteady. “Cairn.”
His eyes darken. “My name.”
I lick my lips. “Lu-Luchairn.”
His expression changes, and there is nothing controlled about it now. He lowers over me, one hand braced beside my head, the other sliding beneath my thigh to part my legs. And then he’s there, hot and heavy against me. My entire body tightens in anticipation.
His forehead comes to mine.
“Tell me,” he whispers.
He doesn’t have to explain. I know exactly what he means.
Even now. After everything. The choice is still mine.
I cup his face. “Yes.”
The word is still on my lips when he pushes into me. The stretch opens my mouth. My nails dig into his shoulder, and his jaw locks hard. Inch by inch, he eases into me, his breath harsh against my lips, his body shaking with the restraint he’s still somehow keeping.
When he’s fully inside, neither of us moves, but the bond opens wide.
For a moment, there’s too much of him. Heat. Hunger. A possessive, aching tenderness that makes my eyes sting. I can feel what it costs him to hold still. I can feel how badly he wants to drive into me until every thought leaves my head.
But I can also feel him waiting.
For me.
I turn my head to press a kiss against his jaw, and tilt my hips beneath him.
That’s all it takes. He surges forward. The first thrust drags a cry from me. The second turns it into his name. He catches the sound with his mouth, then gives it back to me harder and deeper, until the bed shifts beneath us and the stars blur above my head.
I cling to him. His shoulders. His back. The hot, living strength of him under my hands. The glass room fills with the sound of us, with the sea below and his breath in my ear, and my voice breaking again and again around his name.
And as I fall apart beneath him, one thought remains.
He was right.
I no longer know where his name ends and mine begins.