Chapter 68
A primal instinct tells me to be terrified. Yet my heart skips a beat. My whole body feels light, despite the blood of my enemies that covers it.
This man might be a monster, but he is my monster.
A wry smile crosses my lips. Perhaps I have truly gone mad, but I say, “And you are mine. Who else could I destroy the world with?”
Kaelis’s eyes widen, and his lips part. But no words come. I’ve truly shocked him.
In one fluid movement, Kaelis rises to his feet and envelops me in his arms. He pulls me to him, his mouth on mine; the kiss is as fierce as the way he grips me.
One hand is on the back of my head, holding me to him, as the other is wrapped around my waist, clutching me as though I might disappear at any moment.
He tastes like desperation. Like tears unshed.
He holds me as though I’m the last real thing in his entire universe.
Magic washes over me like the pulsing, radiant heat of his body.
I feel it rippling under my clothes and caressing my skin.
Sweat and grime and gore are magically swept away from us both by his command.
I try to find purchase against him, but my arms are pinned between us. All I can do is grip his collar as the daylight is blotted out by shadow and night. Behind my eyes, a thousand stars bloom and fade to dust.
I push forward and forward still. We tilt, off-balance.
Maybe he expected my next movement. Maybe he had a different plan.
I’ll never know, because I act first. The Chariot barely has time to rise from the deck at my thigh and bloom into ribbons of silver and white light that’s quickly swallowed by his radiant shadow.
We slip through the veil of reality. We’re standing near the edge of the Clan Hermit crater one moment; the next, we’re falling into his bed.
Kaelis breaks apart and grabs my hand once more, kissing my knuckles, licking down my palm, and biting my wrist. He kneels over me as his cards clean our bodies—worried about blood on his sheets until the last.
“I will worship you through this morning,” he growls against my hot skin.
“It is well past morning,” I needlessly remind him, though I’m not sure why; the last thing I want him to do is stop.
“I didn’t mean ‘this morning’ as a couple mere hours ago…
I meant this coming morning. I meant you shall not escape me for the rest of the day or night.
” With his other hand, he frames my jaw and runs his palm down, gripping my neck, then moving between my breasts.
Kaelis leans back, admiring me. “I’m not stopping for anything. ”
“Do your worst.”
He unclasps his cloak, then unfastens his shirt underneath. He could remove it with magic, yet he doesn’t. He moves slowly; he wants me to wait, to watch.
“Do you have any idea what my ‘worst’ might be?”
“I want to find out.”
He slips out of his shirt, revealing the familiar expanse of lean muscle and faint scarred lines I know well. Kaelis leans down, kissing me deep but brief. “I want to treasure you, worship you. Yet I also want to wreck you. Now, spread your legs.”
I do as I’m told.
Kaelis shifts between my legs. He drags a finger down my neck. “Are you afraid of my power?”
“No.”
“Some would call you stupid for that.”
“Yet you’d call me ‘wife.’ ”
He growls at the idea of it. At the notion of what we once could’ve been—what we were in another world. What we will yet reclaim.
The Knight of Wands rises over his shoulder, twists, reverses, and bursts. I let out a sharp gasp as purple-black flames dance across my skin. My whole body is on fire. But it’s not pain that has my body tensing. It is a pleasure unlike any I’ve ever known.
I force my eyes open, chest heaving. Breasts exposed. I don’t remember him removing my clothes, but perhaps the flames burned them away. My body is throbbing, cunt dripping. In an instant, I’m panting like a bitch in heat, and I can’t control it—I don’t want to.
Pure and raw magic moves within me. More than tongue or fingers or cock. It is as if he is penetrating my very soul.
“That’s it.” Kaelis’s voice feels as if it’s in my mind. “Give in. Surrender. Let me make you mine. So wholly and completely. In all the ways I’ve wanted to for years and never could.”
His eyes on me are almost too much. Knowing he’s watching me writhe, watching me moan and ache without even being touched.
Yet, I want more.
Kaelis beckons, and an unseen force lifts my body. My hands find his face, fingers threading through his hair. Purple flames dance across his body, grazing my skin. Everywhere they touch is ecstasy.
“You are magnificent,” I murmur, utterly entranced. Once more we’re sitting, chest to chest. My arms around his shoulders. I hover just off of him, the tip of his cock teasing my opening.
His hands grab my ass, and a wicked little smirk curls his lips. “Only you would find me as such,” he murmurs as I wrap my legs around him.
Kaelis lowers me, little by little. At the same time, light and shadow and flame dance. I feel him, not just within my body as flesh and power, but in my mind. It is as if for a second I see myself in his eyes.
I see my head thrown back as he rocks me up and down on him. The swirl of power that has my eyes rolling back in my head. I can feel what he does, the way my tight walls grip him perfectly. The way he throbs for me.
It’s more erotic than anything I could’ve imagined.
At once, it’s gone. I’m back in my mind as I’m pushed onto the bed. His hands on my thighs, he never leaves me. He never stops his thrusts into me.
Grabbing my face and pulling it toward his, Kaelis kisses me deeply. With every thrust I see a different world—his fantasies, I suspect—harbored and kept secret but now played for me in explicit detail that I not only see across my mind’s eye but feel as if I’m there.
I am tied up, spread wide and blindfolded, laid out upon some unknown altar as if I am an offering.
I am nestled in sheets of silk, and he spends the afternoon worshiping my cunt with his tongue. Orgasm after orgasm crashing upon me until I can no longer bear it. Until I’m begging him to stop.
I am bent over the railing of a balcony, Eclipse City in the distance, the cold stone grazing my erect nipples. The only thing I’m wearing is a silk robe of fabric so fine that it’s nearly transparent in the moonlight. Kaelis has pushed it up around my waist as he takes me from behind.
I am underneath a desk, his cock most of the way down my throat as he casually talks politics with advisers.
I am in a thousand places at once. Every vivid erotic fantasy played before me in detail. I see myself in every position, taken roughly, taken passionately in situations that range from tender and romantic to delicious and utterly depraved. Each is more intense than the last.
All the while, he keeps an almost ruthless pace. I feel every steady stroke of his cock in the vision, and in reality. His mouth meets mine, and we share a groan like we’re building to a climax in every lifetime.
Together, we reach it. We soar, gasping, moaning, clutching. It’s as though we’re falling from an unspeakable height back to the realm of mere mortals. Back to being two breathless bodies, clinging to each other in an ocean of sheets.
Kaelis rolls off of me, and we stare at the ceiling, panting. Neither of us says anything for a long stretch. What is there to say, after all that? After magic that shouldn’t exist for a love that was doomed by fate.
I look to him and find him looking at me.
“I love you,” he whispers into the air of the early dawn.
I twist and shift toward him. Kaelis’s arm limply wraps around my shoulders.
Mine drapes across his abdomen. We smell of sex; we ache and are covered in nips and bruises from the other’s hands and teeth.
This moment is so raw, I wish I could condense it into a powder to ink from.
If I could put this on a card, I’d admire it forever.
“You love me?” I whisper.
“I love you,” he repeats. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
I fight a grin and a laugh and lose. Tucking my head up onto his shoulder and underneath his chin, I say, “I did.”
Kaelis sighs, and it sounds like relief. After a long moment, he says, “You don’t have to say it back. I also already know.”
“You arrogant asshole.”
“You wouldn’t have me any other way.”
“Maybe in the next world, I’ll make you less of an asshole.” I shift to face him again so he can see my little smirk. “I’m the one who makes the wish, after all.”
“That you will be.” He runs a finger along my jaw, and I fight a shiver.
“Kaelis.” I put weight behind his name so he knows I’m serious. Kaelis tilts his head, shifting away slightly to get a better look at me. “No more secrets.”
“What more could I possibly be keeping from you? You already know my deepest secret.”
I draw a breath and ready myself. How he handles this question will tell me everything—how serious he is about letting me in, and the depth of his feelings for me. I drag my hand up his stomach and place it on the center of his chest, feeling his strong heartbeat.
“Tell me, what really happened to Clan Hermit?”