Chapter 15 #2
He huffed a laugh as he leaned down and kissed the tender skin of my ass, a soft, warm counterpoint to everything the paddle had done, and he started again.
I stopped counting. The numbers had become irrelevant.
What mattered was the build, the crack, the bloom of sensation, and the slow, terrifying loosening of everything I had held shut.
And pleasure built with the pain, growing so intense that I couldn’t stop myself from tipping over into orgasm, crying out as my cock spurted beneath me onto the sheets.
By the time he finished, I was covered in cum and tears, crying openly, every muscle shaking, my face wet, five years of locked-down grief spilling out of me onto the sheets of this beautiful room in Highmark.
He rubbed at my sore muscles until I was floating in a foggy, comfortable space that I did not know existed until this moment.
“Are you ready to talk, sweetheart?” He moved away for a moment, and when he came back, he was naked, his skin warm against mine, gentle on my ass, soothing, massaging the heat away.
“I did not want to cross Bryndala’s bridge.” There was nothing holding words back now, no walls left inside me.
“Why not? Didn’t we cross one of her bridges by your house?”
“This was her final project.” My voice broke, but I kept going. “It is a feat of engineering, magnificent and beautiful. Or so I’ve heard.”
He gasped softly. “Greymere Gorge. It’s that bridge?”
“Yes, that bridge. There was rain high in the mountains, and the canyon is narrow, all that run-off in one place, you know.” Tears were flowing openly now, and Sky pressed close, kissing them away.
“The bridge was so brilliant that it survived. Water crashed over it, washing Bryndala and her workers away, but the damn thing they were building, it survived. So it’s always there, taunting me. ”
Sky’s hands glided up over my face and looped around my horns, letting me feel him. Through the trolgar, his anger had dissolved, like a wave pulling back from shore. What replaced it was fiercer than pity, fiercer than sympathy: it felt like being held, even though his hands had stopped moving.
“Would she want you to live like this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and the words tore something. “I don’t know what she would want because she isn’t here and I cannot ask her.”
He brushed his lips against mine. “Perhaps not, but I have a feeling that she would be proud to know the bridge still stands. Wouldn’t she? It is a testament to her skill and innovation, isn’t it?”
“She was very proud of her bridges.”
His thumb pressed gently into the trolgar point and I closed my eyes, letting the emotions flow.
“Mm, so she would want her accomplishment celebrated?”
“They have celebrated it. The whole bridge is dedicated to her, and I believe there may even be a statue. They call it Bryndala’s Bridge.”
“But you’re afraid to gaze upon the statue?”
“Yes,” I said. “Or afraid to let the statue gaze upon me. I am not the man she married, Sky. I’m not a sweet, kind daydreamer, not the author of books about adventure and romance. I’m something else, something more broken.”
“Something more real,” he said. Then his lips were against my shoulder, kissing a path up my neck. “It’s okay to mourn her. But you need to face your demons before they eat you up. You need to keep living, sweetheart.”
“The pain helps,” I said. “Is that strange?”
“Not strange at all. We’ll take the long way around, if that’s what you need.”
“But your family.”
“They’ll be okay. They’ll learn that I’m fine, and they’ll be happy again. And right now, I don’t want to pressure you if you’re not ready.”
“And Pip?”
Sky chuckled. “Something tells me he’s behind this requisitioning.
I can’t say for sure, but Pip has a way of drawing people in and making them want to fight for him.
It gives me hope that someone else is investigating the same thing we are.
I have to believe that he hasn’t been alone this whole time.
So, if you need to go the long way, we’ll go the long way.
And we’ll keep going the long way until you are ready. ”
No troll would have said this. Trolls did not take their time with feelings. We built our cities into mountains, barreling through any obstacle without a second thought, and the same went for our emotions. Everyone expected me to forge on, make a life, and bury anything that got in my way.
Sky didn’t, and that almost broke me harder than the spanking.
“I’m sorry I took the long way and didn’t tell you,” I said. “I should have known you would understand. I’m not so used to the human way of doing things.”
“We’re just learning each other,” he said, leaving his hand on my horn. “It hurts me to think I’ve been gone for so long. My family is on the other side of that mirror, running tai chi for grandmas without my help, mourning me, or maybe even searching for me.”
“You’re close, you and your family?” I asked.
“Yes, I am. I’m a middle child with too many siblings, so it’s not perfect, but I love them all. Connor, my older brother, is my favorite. We share an apartment. Are you not close to yours? Your sisters certainly meddle. What about your parents?”
“My parents passed when I was young, I don’t remember them much.
My sisters raised me, hence the tendency to meddle.
But like you, I hate thinking of them fretting.
” The guilt of understanding what his family must be going through was specific and earned and I would carry it.
“That’s part of why I made the soulmate story up. I knew it would ease their worries.”
Sky smiled and nodded. “I love hearing all of this, understanding all of it. I just wish you would share it right away. You understand that, right?”
I wrapped my arms around him, and he slid his hands down to my jaw, holding me in place while he kissed me, long and slow.
The tenderness in his expression stayed, but a warmth crept underneath it.
The kiss deepened, growing hungrier, and the ache from the things he’d been doing to my body returned.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s have a bath, soothe the ache from your spanking. And then, if you’re a really good boy, I might fuck your hole.”
I stared at him. My cheeks went hot and my cock, which had been softening during the confession, surged back to full attention with a speed that was frankly embarrassing.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
I sprinted to the bath so fast that Sky was still laughing when he caught up with me, a grin on his face and a look in his eyes that promised the thing I had been thinking about for days: his cock inside me.
I was still crying a little, and I did not care.
For the first time in five years, the stone in my throat was gone.