23. It’s Payback Time
23
It’s Payback Time
Aliza
I crept into the dark suite, numb from cold but somehow brimming with feeling. The blue fire still burnt, and after a quick glance confirming Anwir was ensconced in his bedroom, I strode to my chest of belongings. Dropping to my knees, I dusted the last traces of snow from my skates and buried them beneath the tangle of fabrics.
With the evidence of my excursion hidden, I grabbed the first pair of pyjamas I found and I rose slowly on my torpified legs.
Idris’ words chased each other around my head in a jumble until I was no longer certain that he’d actually said them, or if I’d dreamt them up. The actions, those kisses, were clear enough, though, as was the beautiful throbbing in my chest.
Was this… love?
I crossed to the sofa, dragging it closer to the puddle of blue light. Anwir had left a folded blanket and a single measly pillow for my comfort. I couldn’t find it in me to care. My skin was cold, pink wherever it had been bared to the frigid air, but inside I basked in the glow cast by Idris’ words. They would be enough to warm me through the night, and beyond.
I shrugged out of my clothes, exchanging them for pyjamas and thick, fluffy socks, and settled myself flat on the couch, the blanket tucked up to my chin as I stared at the high stalactite encrusted ceiling. In the faint light of the flames, it glittered silver and blue, but I didn’t see it. I saw only Idris, flailing on the ice, smiling as though nothing awful had ever happened to him. Instead of the thin blanket, I felt the prince’s body flush against mine as we clung to each other for balance and maybe something more. Instead of the crackle of flames, it was his words that filled my ears.
You exist in nobody’s shadow.
Whatever may come, I want you.
A smile spread over my face. Maybe it was the bond, maybe it wasn’t, but either way, I couldn’t lie to myself. I wanted him, too. Why shouldn’t we give this a real chance?
The idea was alien to me. I’d never wanted a relationship, not beyond the brief and purely physical trysts I’d indulged in. Love was a distraction, and I’d dedicated my time to my studies, refusing to be sidetracked. Too many women had sacrificed their futures for a handsome face and a few pretty words. Idris was different. For the first time, I wanted to be distracted. I longed for those words I’d always held in such disdain. His face haunted me, waking and sleeping, and I didn’t mind at all.
Maybe I did love him.
Maybe.
My poor, stupid heart fluttered and somersaulted almost as much as my stomach, and that hook in my sternum ached, urging me to do something reckless but right. I’d never sleep like this. Was Idris lying awake on the other side of the ice wall? Was his head full of the same nonsense as mine? There was only one way to find out .
Before I could talk myself out of it, I threw back my measly blanket and scrambled to my feet. Only a few nights ago, I’d slept in Idris’ arms, safe from my nightmares, and now Anwir thought a couch would suffice. He was an idiot, and so would I be if I accepted his treatment when I had a much better alternative.
My heart ratcheted against my ribcage, eager for freedom as I crept back the way I’d come and eased out into the deserted corridor. Though it was the dead of night, though no flames burnt out here, it wasn’t dark. The ice seemed to glow with its own ghostly sheen, soft and pale against the lightless hour.
My socks made my feet silent as they carried me to Idris’ firmly closed door, only one along from Anwir’s. A foolish arrangement, or brilliant. Either way, I rested my fingertips on the handle and hesitated.
Was this the right thing to do? What if Idris was already asleep? What if the intimacy I had in mind hit differently, now I’d found someone who meant something?
Scrunching my brow, I shook away such nonsensical thoughts. He’d saved my life. He’d held me while I cried. He’d slept with his arms around me. Not to mention the feral kisses and touches we’d shared. All of it had felt right. This was right.
With a smirk, I slipped into the room.
I’d expected to find the sitting area deserted, to have to sneak into his bedroom to find him, but peridot eyes pinned me to the spot the moment I crossed the threshold.
The door whispered shut behind me .
The prince abandoned his lounging spot on the sofa, rising slowly to his feet, never taking his eyes off me. Never blinking. In the silence, broken only by the crackle of flames, our stares held.
His shirt, untucked and unbuttoned, revealed a rippling expanse of muscle that I’d seen before, but never in this context. Never with the reckless urge to trail my tongue over every ridge and dip.
Half-formed excuses for my arrival flitted across my mind like leaves in the wind, but none made it to my mouth. None were spoken. None of them mattered, not as Idris transferred a small glass of amber alcohol to the coffee table with a faint clink, freeing his hands, his movements liquid and slow.
Dimly, in the dusty recesses of my brain, I realised I’d forgotten my robe, and wore only my sunshine yellow pyjamas, the spaghetti straps of the cami doing little to conceal my skin and nothing to warm me against the cold radiating from the frozen door at my back. Something which had very little to do with my nipples pebbling, straining against the butter-soft fabric.
With the briefest flicker of his gaze, Idris noticed too. My skin tightened, anticipation sliding over it like the tip of a blade. Each beat of my heart was the thud of a war drum in my ears, until I could no longer tolerate the stillness.
I moved without thinking, stalking across the space, and without a word, our lips collided.
Gone were the tender, loving kisses of earlier. This was fire. Smouldering, burning, consuming fire. We were twin flames melding together, glowing all the brighter as we joined.
Idris’ hands were everywhere, grasping and squeezing and stroking as though he wanted to claim every part of me. I would let him, but not tonight. Tonight, I wanted to repay him for what he’d done to me last night; leaving me trembling and wanting more.
While his hands roved, mine slipped between us. He’d already removed his belt, leaving easy access to his trousers. My fingers were sure and steady as I unbuttoned them. When they skimmed over something long and hard, his hands tightened on my arse, crushing me to him. My hand, trapped between the press of our bodies, splayed over his cock, and he groaned into my mouth.
The deep, rumbling sound shot straight between my thighs. My toes curled inside my socks, and I grasped his length through his underwear, closing my fingers around him, tight.
He broke away, snagging my lower lip between his teeth with another groan. What other sounds could I wring from him? There was only one way to find out.
Taking advantage of the broken kiss, I sank to my knees, hooking my fingers into his waistband as I went.
“What are you doing?”
I lifted my eyes. “You’re as old as dirt. Don’t act naive.”
His eyes narrowed in warning, belied by the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. For the first time, it occurred to me that I didn’t know his true age, only the years he’d spent under the curse. He had to be three hundred years old, at a minimum. My mouth dried up. I ran my tongue over my lips, working it into the show as I held Idris’ predator-sharp stare.
“Don’t pretend,” I continued, peeling his trousers and underwear blindly over his hips and the generous curve of his arse, “that you don’t know exactly what, or who, is coming. ”
His eyes widened briefly before his cock sprang free. I didn’t give him a moment to form another thought before I plunged him into my mouth. Didn’t give myself time to think, either, to contemplate his impressive and slightly terrifying length and girth. My jaw stretched wide around him. They certainly didn’t make them like this amongst the men I’d encountered before, but Idris was a male, not a man. Fae, not human. Everything about him was new and, well… better. And mine.
I would make him mine.
I withdrew, my mouth puckering in a kiss over his head before I twirled the tip of my tongue around him. His eyes fluttered, his head tipping back with a groan as I took him back into my mouth, and my lips tightened around him in an attempt at a smug smile.
He prodded the back of my throat, and I drew in a deep breath through the nose, angling my head just right before driving him deeper.
“ Fuck .” He jerked, and I sank my nails into those perfect, muscular cheeks, holding him deep inside my throat as I worked back and forth along his shaft. The tell-tale sounds, something between a gag and gulp, had my core fluttering and aching for attention. Not tonight. Tonight was about Idris, and sweet, sweet revenge. About yielding. Showing him exactly how I liked it.
My eyes were streaming when I pulled away, heaving air back into my desperate lungs. My chest rose and plunged with every breath, and I filled the moment of respite by slipping my straps down over my shoulders and baring my breasts to the chilled air.
Idris was panting too, his eyes darkening as they roved over my exposed chest. If he was blessed in the trouser department, I matched him with my own assets; something I was acutely aware of as I gathered my breasts in my hands, squeezing the ample flesh.
My sigh left me on a breath, and it took all my willpower to keep a hand from gliding down my belly and between my thighs, to where I was soaking wet and all but humming in a demand for attention. Instead, I wrapped one around the base of Idris’ cock, guiding him back into my mouth.
His hand shot to my hair, gripping at the root. I hadn’t yet brushed it after my fun on the lake, and I had no doubt I already looked like I’d been tumbling around the bedsheets for hours. A dishevelled, wet-faced mess. In other words, as hot as hell.
I wrapped my hands around Idris’ wrists, not to pull him away, but to hold him there, relinquishing control to him. He groaned again, bucking into my mouth. I let him squeeze back down my throat, bringing a fresh wave of tears over my cheeks as my mouth flooded with saliva. When I tightened my grip in silent permission, he shuddered and began to thrust.
His first attempts were cautious, tentative, but when I didn’t struggle or pull away, his fingers tightened in my hair, and he tossed restraint aside. My body thrummed as he pounded into my throat. My head swam with the lack of air, my brain bouncing around my skull with every thrust. What would it be like to have him claim me in other ways?
Idris withdrew, allowing me to suck down a string of rapid breaths before he gathered my hair into something like a ponytail, angling my head before continuing in his quest for pleasure. His hisses and grunts told me all I needed to know, as did the lightning threading over his arms and chiselled abdomen, dangerously close to my face. It hummed along my skin, never touching, but calling to me, luring me in. Its glaring light blazed into my eyes, all but blinding me as Idris’ ragged breaths picked up pace.
“Aliza,” he panted. “I… fuck… ”
Gripping his taut hamstrings, I refused to let him pull away, not that he showed the slightest inclination of wanting to. The lightning sputtered and flared. Any second now.
I raked my nails down the backs of his thighs, and with a strangled yell and a final, brutal thrust, Idris spilt wave after wave of his thick, warm liquid down my throat. Pride and triumph glowed in my chest, swirling with my molten blood.
When he loosened his grip on my tender scalp, withdrawing with a shudder, I rose to my feet, making a show of licking my lips clean. His eyes were dark and heavy as he stared at me, broad shoulders heaving with every breath.
“Aliza.” He was as breathless as me. “That was…”
I grinned, dashing away the tears smeared over my face, and pulled up my cami. “I know.”
He huffed a note of laughter, reaching for me. I caught his hand before he made contact and lifted his fingers to my lips. His eyes dropped to my mouth as I ran my tongue over the digits, then laid a brief kiss there.
“Get some rest,” I said. “We have a busy day tomorrow.”
Even though my body throbbed, urging me to stay, to claim payment tonight, now , I dropped his hand and turned away.
I threw one final glance over my shoulder as I slipped out of the door. Idris stared after me, dumbstruck, trousers bunched at his knees, his glistening cock still jutting. I blew him a kiss and closed the door, my smile spreading wide.
He was mine.