Chapter Eighteen #2
“It’s the perfect place for her,” I say.
I don’t say it to Ronan—I don’t want to worry him unnecessarily—but having her here does make me feel safer.
If someone tries to take me from the living chamber again, they’ll need to fight off an enormous, hyperintelligent bird monster to get me out of the palace.
“She missed you,” says Ronan. “I think she knew what I was trying to do when I took her to find you. She’s been upset for days.”
It’s insane to think it, but I do believe Ronan. He has a connection with her, an understanding of her thoughts and feelings that seemed ridiculous at first, but as with everything else about him, I’m learning more and more how right he is as time goes on.
Ronan yawns again, more loudly this time now that no one else is here to see it.
“You need to go to bed,” I say, turning and pushing him towards his bedchambers.
“Is that an order?” He grabs at my ass, and I squeal out of his reach.
“You need rest. You’re exhausted. We’ll have plenty of time for all of that in the morning.”
I march him forward, but just before his bedroom door, he stops and pulls me to him. The feel of him against me takes my breath away.
“Did you say something about waiting until the morning? Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”
But then he yawns again despite himself. Gods, he can barely keep his eyes open.
“Get in there,” I say, pushing him through the door. “Don’t make me tie you down.” My shadows flare, snaking around his wrist in warning.
His pupils dilate. He bites his lower lip in a way that sends heat through my entire body. “Sylvie, how dare you threaten me with a good time.”
I tilt my head in surprise. “You would like that?”
He reaches for me, but I restrain him with the tendril of shadow.
Then he moans. “Are you kidding? I’m the king. I do nothing but make decisions all day, every day. Everything is my choice, my responsibility. Everything is in my control.”
His eyes darken as he strains against my first shadow tendril, and then a second tendril that I wrap around his other wrist. “I would like nothing more in this world than for you to take what you want from me. Tie me up and take your pleasure from me, my darling. I beg of you.”
We don’t end up getting much sleep that night after all.
“Oh, gods, Sylvie. Don’t stop. Please. Please.”
It’s still pitch dark in the room as I ride Ronan, my hands resting on his hard chest, my lips moving from his lips to his neck to the tiny peaks of his nipples as he moans loudly. Shamelessly.
I have never felt more powerful than I do now watching him come undone beneath me.
My shadows hold him tight, four tendrils running from my chest to each corner of the bed, each pinning one of his limbs in place.
His body struggles and fights fruitlessly against my restraints, each tug on my shadow sending a pulse of heat through my body, which is already so hot from my need and the exertion of riding his cock that sweat is dripping between my breasts.
“I need to touch you,” he begs me, his voice strained, fighting to choke words out between gasps.
“Please. Gods, Sylvie, please. Look at you taking me. You’re so gorgeous when you ride me.
Fuck! I’m so close. If you won’t let me do it, you have to do it.
I’m begging you. I need to feel you come. Make yourself come on my cock.”
In truth, I’ve had to stop myself several times already. I know that the second I let go, I’ll drag him over the edge with me, and I’m loving keeping him at the edge too much, taking control of his body and mine, to let him finish.
But his words are undoing me, and he knows it.
The look in his eyes as he watches my breasts bounce on my chest, the way he bites his lip and sucks in deep breaths, his whole body rising and falling at war against me.
And the feel of him inside of me, hard as steel, the way he can’t stop himself from rising up to meet my body as I slam down against him.
The pressure that’s building in my clit as I grind it against him while he thrusts in so deep that I’m about to forget my own name.
It’s all too fucking much.
I lose my grip on my magic as I convulse around him, and he rocks forward, pinning me to his chest as he unloads within me, the spasms of his body unleashing something within me that explodes outwards in a tumult of darkness, waves and waves of shadow pouring out into the room even as his light flares and flashes beyond his control, our mutual climax crashing out of us into the world with the force and electrifying energy of a thunderstorm.
A hurricane of light and darkness, a vortex that spreads and consumes the palace, breaking as inevitably as the sea on the shore or the dawn over the horizon.
Seconds later, as Ronan clutches my back and arms for dear life, trying to find a way back to solid ground, trying to remember how to breathe, an urgent knock comes at the door.
I look at him, but he’s too incoherent to respond, his words coming out broken, his hands shaking. “Just a minute,” I call to the door, knowing that Ronan can’t.
“Are you alright?” calls Taran, his voice muffled and urgent. “Do you need help? Open up.”
I laugh at that, pulling myself off Ronan. The drip of his climax slides between my legs as I scramble off the bed, and something about that is so deeply arousing I’m practically ready to go again despite the soreness.
But for now, I need to explain that all of the screaming the guards must have heard was nothing to worry about.
I throw on my robe and open the door just as Ronan has regained enough of his functionality to cover himself with a sheet. “We’re fine,” I tell Taran, unable to look him in his eyes. A blush reaches my cheeks. “I’m sorry if we embarrassed you.”
Taran glances back briefly into the room, into the tangle of sheets and Ronan’s spent body amongst them, but he doesn’t comment on the situation. “Every candle and torch in the palace was just extinguished at once. You didn’t see it? The wave of darkness?”
Oh, fuck. I felt it, but I thought it was just the bliss of my body exaggerating the scale of the sensations. I didn’t think it could have actually happened. “Oh, gods. I think that was me. Or us, I suppose.”
I cover my face with my hand in shame. “Tell them we were trying to understand the limits of the magic or something.”
Taran looks at Ronan as he comes to the door, tying his robe around his waist. “You’re certain it was you? The alarm has been raised. We believed it to be a shadow-born attack. It reminded me of Diana.”
Diana. My mother. She had led a group of shadow-born in the last war, and their tactics must have been similar. That same group had nearly killed Ronan after her death, the responsibility for his survival resting, as it often seems to, with Taran alone.
“Check for intruders, of course, but I can’t sense anyone nearby. I can’t sense much of anything, to be honest. I’m drained.”
In more ways than one.
Either Ronan is still able to sense that feeling of mine, or he catches the unintended double meaning in what he said himself, because he blushes scarlet.
“Right away, sir.” Taran bows and backs away from the door, allowing me to close it behind him without so much as a smirk.
Oh, Taran, the consummate professional that you are.
My head is in my hands the second Ronan and I are alone together again. “Oh, God. I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe that happened.”
“I can believe it.” He walks behind me as I’m returning to the bed and pushes me back against him, his hand opening my robe and splaying on my stomach possessively.
“Fucking mother of light, what did you just do to me?” He rubs against me with his spent body, his other hand brushing my hair free of my neck to press soft kisses there.
“I’ve never felt anything like that before.
The release, the power. I’ve never lost control like that. ”
“I haven’t either,” I admit. “Not anything close to it.” I turn back to him, trying to summon a shadow but failing. My magic is completely spent, too. Drained. “Extraordinary power,” I whisper. “That’s what the palimpsest said.”
“I think it’s time to find out what that means before we hurt someone.”
“Or scare the palace half to death.”
He leans over me, glancing through the closed door. “The drill was likely good for them. I’m sure Taran will be grateful for the test of our defenses.”
“If he can ever look us in the eye again.”