Chapter Twenty-Seven #3
Ravyn closed the door behind us and leaned against it, long shadows dancing across his face, the hearth the only light in the room. “I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t always this untidy.”
“I like it,” I said, my eyes lingering a moment too long on the bed.
It was jarring to go from having my hands full of him to this—him against the door, me in the middle of the room, unsure what to say or where to look.
I put a hand to my cheek to steady myself, but it had the opposite effect.
The touch of my own skin made me think of his rough, calloused hands, pulling at me.
Ravyn watched me, the invisible string tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Is this what you want, Elspeth?”
I leaned against the post of his bed frame. “What do you think I want, Ravyn?”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. He pushed off the door and came toward me. “I thought we weren’t answering questions with questions.”
It felt painful, saying what I wanted out loud, like flexing an underworked muscle. I wanted to make a joke of it—to play coy—to tease him—anything that would stop me from feeling vulnerable and exposed, the distance between us rapidly closing.
But I had kept too much of myself from him already. In this, at least, I could be truthful. I sat on the bed. With my good hand, I twisted my skirt, the fabric puckering as I pulled it up and over my knee, the quiver in my voice betraying me. “I want to be here. With you.”
It was difficult, removing his jerkin with only one hand. He helped me, bowed over me, his mouth on mine. After the jerkin came his tunic, ripped over his head and tossed atop the pile of discarded clothes. I ran my hand over the taut muscles of his chest—his stomach—stopping just below his navel.
He shivered and pulled back, sliding his hands up my legs, pushing my dress until it sat in the crease of my thighs.
His fingers caught on my wool leggings, easing them down from my waist over my curves, so slow I wanted to scream, his mouth a pace behind.
His facial hair scratched against my inner thigh, my knee, my calf.
When he slipped my leggings off and flung them onto the pile of clothes on the floor, his hands returned to my thighs.
My breaths came rapidly, far too shallow. I suddenly felt confined by my dress, my bodice too constricting, pinning me in all the wrong ways. I tore the lacings open, my fingers clumsy and wild as the long crimson cord released me.
The dress fell open. I took a filling breath, then another, my chest hurried as it rose and fell, covered now only by a thin chemise.
Ravyn’s hands moved to my hips, his gaze traveling up the curve of body. He looked me in the eye, kissed me hard, and yanked me to the cusp of the bed. “Can I kiss you?”
My voice shook. “A bit late to ask, isn’t it?”
“Not on your mouth, Elspeth.” His eyes turned wicked as he lowered himself to his knees, kissing the inside of my leg, the tips of his teeth edging over my skin. With a sharp breath he pushed my thighs open, wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. “Here.”
I put a hand over my mouth and fell back on the bed, my breath soaring out of me, caught between a sigh and a curse. The ache in my stomach moved lower, amber hot as it coiled, touch starved. I shut my eyes. “Yes,” I said, dropping my fingers into his hair.
Ravyn sighed into me, his hands on my hips tightening, holding me to him. When he kissed me below my skirt, my ache responded, tendrils of heat knotting themselves over and over deep within me.
I had no practice living outside my mind.
But here, pinned on Ravyn Yew’s bed, his touch searing over my skin, I was alive only in my body, as if leaning out an open window in the tallest tower of Spindle House.
I felt it in my stomach, the palms of my hands, the soles of my feet.
And with every kiss, every flick of his tongue, Ravyn was crumbling the window’s casement—pushing me toward an inevitable, ruinous fall.
He did not let me fall right away. By his sighs, the muffled, contented growls, he was taking his time with me. Laying waste to me.
“Don’t stop,” I uttered, squeezing my eyes shut.
I felt him moan and then I was falling, released from the casement, tumbling down the tower, every part of me caught in the fall. I cried out, pulling his hair, my legs flexing, toes curling.
He leaned over me and smiled, like he knew exactly how thoroughly he’d shattered me. His hand slid up my stomach to my chest, pressing over my breast, just above my heart. He bent down, his lips brushing mine. “Your heart is racing,” he said with a smirk.
Somehow we ended up on the floor, heaped among his belongings, tangled with one another. Clothes long discarded, I trapped Ravyn with my body, pinning him to the rug, taking my own time with him. He let me at first, ceding control, hands gripped tightly along my hips, brow strained.
But even he, with his abundance of restraint, could not hold back for long.
He flipped me onto my back in one fluid motion, never breaking our touch. His lips found my neck, and when he pressed into me, deeper than before, I let out an abrupt breath.
My name was a token on his lips, a barter, as if he was giving all of himself to me just to say it. “Elspeth.” He pressed his forehead to mine, his breath coming quicker. “Fuck, Elspeth.”
We lay, undone, on the floor and watched the fire with heavy eyes.
Ravyn ran a finger down my spine and I traced the lines of his throat, his jaw, his brow, his hooked nose.
When I could no longer keep my eyes open, he lifted me off the floor and carried me to the bed, wrapping us both in the thick quilt.
I pressed my head to his chest, lost to the sound of his heartbeat against my ear.
It stretched on and on, an eternal beat, a false promise.
As if all my woes would disappear if I remained there, naked, next to him.
As if I had all the time in the world.