Chapter 8 #2
The bond gave me nothing—no threat, no alert, not even the sense of a magical peer. He would neither hurt nor help me. He had already decided something, and the something concerned me.
He smiled, very slightly.
It was not a real smile. The eyes did not move.
It was a detail for later, the only thing in the room I avoided looking at directly.
I found the others.
Lydia, hand at Wrath’s side, was scanning the hall, too.
She had seen him. Her face revealed nothing, but her body was braced for something.
Nora had gone stiffer, her dress less radiant in the white pillar light, her eyes narrowed to blue slits.
Rachel’s gaze darted over him and away, like a bird avoiding a shadow.
I caught his eyes, one more time.
Still on me.
Still flat. Still cold.
The king, on his throne, saw the whole thing and did not move.
I set it aside, for now, but I knew it for what it was:
A brother who would not bother to scheme unless the scheme was already finished.
A brother who, in a room full of future, had eyes only for me.
We did not linger at the dais.
Lucan took my hand, and we left the hall together, through a side passage that curved around the backs of the great columns and out into the cool air of the citadel proper.
He led me to his private chamber. No audience. Only the two of us, and the wine-red blanket on the bed, and the old stone floor that held the day’s warmth like a secret.
He closed the door behind us.
For a long count, neither of us moved. We just stood there, the length of the room between us, looking.
He looked at me as if the whole day had been a single breath he’d held until now.
I looked at him, and I saw the cracks.
They had not healed.
If anything, they were wider than before—the ones at the jaw, the one at the throat, the ribbon of white down his right forearm. But they did not look like wounds. They looked like a new kind of skin, a shell broken and shed, a record of what had been survived.
He crossed the room to me.
He undressed me himself.
He started with the pin at my collarbone, the one that held the dress shut.
He unhooked it, set it on the table, then slid his hands down my arms, smoothing the sleeves as he went, the deliberate touch almost ceremonial.
He let the fabric fall to the floor, puddling at my feet, and then he took the boots from my hands and set them on the chair by the fire.
He stepped back, just enough to see the whole of me.
I stood naked in the firelight.
He touched my face, then my jaw, then the old seam at my eyebrow, then down my throat to the place at my breastbone where the bond’s mark flared under the skin. He traced it with one finger. Silence.
I reached for the fastenings of his shirt, but he caught my wrist.
“Let me,” he said.
He undressed himself with the same methodical care he had used on me. The shirt, first, unfastened at the throat, drawn down over the arms, then the sash, then the trousers. He was already hard. The sight of it, of him standing there, hair down, was so beautiful I almost laughed.
He gathered me in his arms.
He carried me to the bed.
He laid me out on the blanket, and he lay down beside me, the length of his body against the length of mine, his arm around my shoulder, my head on his chest. The fire was low, but the heat of him was enough. The cracks glowed. The bond at my wrist glowed in answer.
We stayed like that for a long time.
I listened to his heart. It was measured, steady, heavy, a pulse that belonged to no other being in this or any realm.
His hands never stopped moving: one in my hair, combing it down, letting it fan across his chest; one at my hip, stroking the curve of me, drawing circles over the softest part of my skin.
We did not talk about the city. Or the brothers. Or the king.
We did not talk about the pillar, or the cracks, or the gold running riot through the whole of the domain. There was nothing in the world but the two of us, and the hush, and the warmth of being wanted, precisely and completely, by the man whose true name only I had ever known.
He shifted, after a while.
He pulled me up, so that I straddled his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs. His hands found my waist.
He said, “You are the most precious thing in all of my city.”
I said, “I believe you.”
I reached between us, and I stroked him, once, and a growl came from him—low, primal, not for anyone else’s ears. I felt heat flood me and my pussy, bathed in gold and marble, flooded with desire.
I said, “There is something I want.”
He nodded. “Anything.”
“I want something new.”
“New?” He raised an eyebrow. Through the bond, her already knew.
“Yes, Daddy.”
I languidly stroked the length of his cock. “I want this to go somewhere new. To feel the fullness of you in a new way.”
“You want—”
“I want you to fuck me in the ass, Daddy.”
The bond at my wrist went white-hot. The crack at his jaw widened, just a hair.
He bared his teeth, the almost-smile that had undone me in the gallery, in the study, everywhere.
He said, “You will have it. You will have everything.”
He rolled me onto my back.
He knelt above me, and he kissed my mouth, my throat, the old seam at my eyebrow, then down to my breasts, my stomach, the inside of my thighs. The heat of his body, the fire, the wine-red blanket, the air itself—it was all the same, all one heat, one color, one story.
He brought his mouth between my legs and worshipped me, again, until I was shaking, until I was slick and wild and clutching at his hair with both hands.
He sucked at my clit, and the bond at my wrist sizzled, and when I begged, he laughed, and he kept going until the orgasm rolled out of me like a wave.
He licked his fingers, then worked them in me—first one, then another, slicking the entrance with his tongue, the tip of his finger, with measured care.
“Are you ready?” he said, voice rough with wanting.
“Yes,” I said. “Please.”
He kissed my mouth, and I tasted myself, and I kissed him back, and I wanted him, all of him, more than I had ever wanted anything.
He kissed down my body.
There was no rush. He started at my throat, mapped every inch with his tongue, with his teeth, with the heat of his breath. He stopped at my breasts, sucking at the nipple until I arched for him, then moving down, down, his hands bracing my hips as he kissed and licked and praised every inch.
When he reached my pussy, he set a pillow under my ass. Lifted me, open, for him.
He looked up the line of my body and said, “Tell me what you want.”
I said, “Your mouth, Daddy, please,” and the bond hummed and burned hot.
He obliged.
He buried his face in me. He licked tentatively at first, working the slick through every fold, every ridge, then settling at the clit.
He sucked, the pressure perfect, not too much, not too little.
He licked into me, deep, then shallow, then circled the clit again.
The man had all the time in the world, and he used it.
I writhed.
It was not a performance. There was no one to watch, no one to land it for.
I squirmed, I moaned, I caught his hair in both hands and pulled, and he growled, and the growl vibrated against me.
The pleasure built, quick this time, urgent, needy, not the measured work of the night before but a fire, an impatience, a hunger for more.
He slipped a finger inside.
It was large—he was large—but he applied no force, only pressure, allowing the heat of his hand and the slick of me to open me. He curled the finger and the world went bright.
He added a second, and I gasped, and the bond sang.
He worked the fingers as he ate me, and when I started to come, he added the pressure of his thumb at the rim of my ass.
I bucked, hard. The orgasm crashed through me.