Chapter 21 #2
But I felt the restraint in him, the way he kept himself on a leash even while he touched me like he’d been starving for it.
“Rhydian,” I breathed.
His mouth hovered at my throat, not quite kissing. Like he was waiting for permission he didn’t need but wanted anyway.
“Say it,” he murmured against my skin.
“Say what?”
“What you want me to do.”
My pulse kicked hard. “Don’t stop.”
“By the dead,” Rhydian breathed against my lips, the word rough, almost torn from him. “You don’t understand what you’re doing to me.”
The hum tightened instantly, responding to his voice, to the edge in it. It pressed closer, warmer, sliding over my skin like a promise it was keeping just for us.
“I do,” I whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth, then his jaw. “I feel it.”
His hand slid into my hair, not pulling, just holding, his thumb stroking my scalp like he needed the contact as much as I did. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he murmured. “Not when I’m already barely holding myself together.”
I smiled against his throat, felt the way his pulse jumped under my lips. “Barely is still holding.”
A low sound rumbled out of him, half laugh, half growl. “You want to see what happens when I stop?”
The hum surged, deeper now, vibrating through my chest, my hips, making my breath hitch hard enough that I had to brace myself against him.
“Yes,” I said, honest and shaking.
Rhydian pressed his forehead to mine, eyes shut, breath uneven. “I like that you trust me,” he said.
The hum wrapped tighter around us, responding to the crack in his voice. My body answered, heat pooling low, breath breaking as I shifted closer, fitting myself against him.
“I love the way you move when I speak,” he added.
“Then keep talking,” I whispered.
His mouth brushed my ear, so close it made my skin prickle. “You’re trembling,” he murmured. “And I haven’t even touched you properly.”
The hum dipped lower, coiling, deliberate now, sending a slow, aching pulse through me.
“Rhydian,” I breathed, his name catching like a plea.
“That’s it,” he said softly. “Say it like that again.”
“Rhydian.”
His breath stuttered. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to hear you say my name like that,” he said. “Like you’re asking. Like you’re choosing.”
“I am,” I said. “Right now.”
That broke something.
He kissed me like he was pouring every unsaid thing into the space between our mouths. The hum sealed around us, anchoring me fully in my body, in this place, in him.
His fingers traveled under my dress, slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world and every intention of using it.
The edge of his knuckles skimmed my inner thigh, just enough to make my breath catch and my stomach tighten. He teased the line where I was most sensitive, testing me, mapping me with patient cruelty.
I went still, not because I wanted him to stop.
Because I didn’t trust myself not to beg.
Rhydian’s mouth brushed my ear. “I love how you fall apart at my voice.”
“Stop talking and touch me,” I whispered, barely holding the words together.
“No.”
My pulse stumbled.
His fingers moved again, inch by inch, edging closer until my whole body went tight with anticipation. When he finally touched me where I wanted him most, it wasn’t rough. It wasn’t greedy.
It was devastating.
Like he’d been thinking about it for too long. Like he’d been holding back so hard it had started to hurt him, too.
The hum flared instantly, threading through my hips like lightning caught under skin. My head tipped back against the ground beneath me, my fingers clutching at his shirt.
“Rhydian,” I breathed, voice breaking on his name like it was a mistake I couldn’t stop making.
“I know,” he murmured, and his voice was all restraint and ruin. “I know, Elara.”
His eyes lifted to mine, dark and steady, watching my face like he wanted every reaction. Like he needed proof of what he was doing to me.
Then he moved his hand again, slow and controlled, drawing sensation out of me until my entire body turned into one throbbing, helpless yes. My breath came in fragments. My legs shook. I hated how quickly I unraveled.
I feared how much I trusted him to keep unraveling me.
“Look at me,” he said, rougher now.
I forced my eyes open.
“You’re so beautiful like this,” he murmured. “All that fight in you, and still you let me touch you.”
I reached for him, my hand slipping between us until my fingers found the buckle at his waist.
Rhydian sank over me at the same time, careful with his weight but not with the way his presence stole the air from my lungs. His hips settled between mine like they’d always belonged there, heat and strength and restraint pressed into one unbearable moment.
“Elara,” he breathed, voice strained, like my name tasted like sin.
“Don’t you dare stop,” I whispered back, tugging at him even as my hands fumbled.
He made a low sound against my throat, half warning, half surrender. “I won’t.”
“Good,” I murmured, and finally got the buckle loose.
The sound of it felt loud in the quiet, like the last lock giving way.
My knuckles brushed warm skin as I worked, his breath becoming uneven while he hovered over me like he was holding himself back by force alone. His jaw flexed.
Then he exhaled, slow and shaking, and dipped his head to my mouth.
His kiss was heavier now. Hotter. Less careful.
His hand caught my wrist for a second, not to stop me, just to hold me there, to feel the intent in it. To feel me.
Rhydian’s breath hitched, his forehead dropping to mine like he couldn’t carry it anymore. Like wanting me was a weight he’d been shouldering for too long.
“Say I can feel you,” he rasped. “Please. I want to sink inside of your tight cunt. I want to hear your sighs wash over my skin. I want to feel how you clench my cock, Elara.”
My hand slipped back to his waist, bolder now, tugging him closer until there was no room for hesitation between our bodies.
“I want you,” I repeated, and felt him shudder above me, the last of his restraint cracking with a sound that wasn’t quite a growl and wasn’t quite a prayer.
He slid inside of me slowly. Watching my face for signs of pain. Listening to the way my breath hitched as I felt the fullness of him. It hurt at first, like an intrusion I ached for.
We rocked on the cave floor. Two bodies seeking pleasure with death at our door.
Ice started to build while he moved over me.
Not in a sudden strike, not in a violent bloom, but in a slow, inevitable creep, like my magic couldn’t help answering the heat between us.
Frost laced the cave walls in delicate veins, crawling outward from the shadows, stitching silver patterns into the stone.
The air was glittering with cold, even as my body burned beneath his weight.
Rhydian felt it too. I saw it in the way his jaw clenched, the way his breath turned rough against my throat.
“Elara,” he warned, like my name was a prayer and a restraint at the same time.
“I can’t stop it,” I whispered, nails digging into his shoulders as the hum thrummed between us, deeper now, louder in my bones.
“Don’t,” he murmured. “Don’t you dare hold back for me.”
His words sank straight into my skin, and the hum answered them, vibrating through me so deliciously it made my vision blur. Every sound he made seemed to carry power, every breath threading into my body like it belonged there. Like it was meant to unravel me.
“Look at you,” he rasped, voice breaking at the edges. “So good. So beautiful.”
The praise hit harder than anything else, and my magic surged in response, ice racing across the ceiling in a frantic lacework, crystals blooming like stars trapped in stone.
Rhydian’s forehead dropped to mine. His breath stuttered, a fractured sound as the cold gathered faster, the cave tightening with it, the world narrowing down to his mouth and his voice and the hum between us.
“You’re such a good girl, Elara,” he breathed, every word vibrating against me like touch. “Taking me like this. Look at what you do to me.”
The last of my control snapped.
I came hard. Cold exploded outward in a violent rush, freezing the cave in an instant, frost flashing over rock, sealing the entrance, sealing us in like the world had decided we deserved to be alone in this.
And Anncestors, it felt like death. Like the supreme joy of existence.
Like paradise.
Like whatever afterlife mere mortals claimed to exist was pulsing through my core.
Rhydian’s body went still for half a heartbeat as it hit him too.
Then he spoke.
Not loud. Not cruel.
Just one shattered, broken sound of my name, threaded with echoweaving, poured into the frozen air like a command the world couldn’t refuse.
The ice cracked.
The cave rang with it, fractures splintering across the frozen walls like glass, then collapsing in glittering pieces around us, showering harmlessly to the ground in a storm of shattered frost.
And in the echo of it, in the warmth of him, in the ruin of his voice, I came back to myself with his name on my mouth and his magic humming through my bones like it was always meant to live there.
Rhydian rested his forehead against mine, his breath warm and uneven. “You’re here,” he murmured. “With me.”
And I was.
I was not a vessel. Not a crown. Not a battleground.
Just a woman being held by someone who saw her and chose gentleness anyway.
When sleep finally claimed me, it did so with my fingers still curled in his shirt, his arm firm around my waist, the echo of his magic humming softly beneath my skin like a promise that, for this one night, I didn’t have to survive.
I could just rest.
And believe, foolishly, that the world would let me keep this.