Chapter 25
Sky
The inn at Norloch had great rooms, and ours was at the end of the hall with a huge bed, a deep tub, and a door that locked. The last one was all I really cared about, because I needed my bare skin against his bare skin in order to survive another minute.
He made me take a bath, and I relented, but only because I could use the time to prep myself. And when I came back out, he was sprawled on the bed, naked and waiting.
So I did what I do. I reached for control.
“Hands up.”
And my big grump went without a single question.
He lay back on the inn’s creaky bed, put his wrists up against the headboard, and let me loop my leather cord around them, checking to see that they were snug.
This I could run. This had rules. You don’t have to feel the weighty thing if you’re busy being in charge of it.
“There,” I said, climbing over him, straddling those huge thighs, skin against skin, both of us already hard, that gorgeous troll cock heavy against his stomach. “Now you’re going to be good and quiet and let me—”
“How did you escape the dragon?”
I blinked. “What?”
“The dragon.” He was looking up at me, calm as anything, tied to a bed with his cock out and his eyes absolutely level. “How did you escape, Sky.”
“Oh, we’re not doing that.” I rolled my hips down, dragging myself along the length of him, and watched his jaw tighten. “We’re doing this. Need you inside me. Missed you inside me.”
I drizzled oil over his cock, then lifted up, lined him up, and sank down onto him, taking that thick troll cock inch by burning inch until I was seated full, stretched, gasping, and the look on his face, the want, the surrender, the way his hips wanted to buck and he held them still for me, almost made me forget I was hiding.
It almost did.
“Sky. You’re avoiding the question. And I’m the king of avoiding questions, so I know. He said he stole you to fuck you. How did you escape?”
“I’m riding your dick, big guy, try to keep up.” I started to move, slow and filthy, working myself on him, and I leaned down and bit his collarbone and clenched around him to feel him groan. “You want to talk about dragons? Now? When I’ve got you exactly where—”
“I can feel you.”
I went still.
“I don’t have my hands on your horns,” I whispered.
“And I can still feel you, Sky,” he said. “That’s a big deal.”
“You’re trying to maintain control, but your emotions are chaos right now.” His voice gentled, and that was so much worse than if he’d pushed. “You can tie me to every bed in the county, Sky, and I’ll still feel it. You’re terrified.”
“I’m in charge.”
“You’re terrified, and you’re in charge, and those can coexist.” He pulled at the cord, and it creaked, and I should have known then, I should have known what was coming, because nothing in nine counties was going to hold Moerrven Mossren if he decided he was done being held.
“I have all night. How did you escape the dragon?”
And I don’t know if it was the calm of him, the want of him, or the unbearable patience, but I panicked, and I leaned down to put my mouth on his to shut him up, and that was when he moved.
He didn’t strain. He set the muscles of those thick arms, and the tie gave way like wet paper, like it had never been anything, like the only thing that had ever held him was the sheer power of my will.
His hands were free and on me before I’d processed that the rules had changed.
One huge palm spread flat across my back.
The other gripped my hip. And he held me still, seated all the way down on him, buried to the root, pinned there on his cock by a strength I had spent this entire relationship politely pretending he didn’t have.
I could not move. I was held in place like a kitten by the scruff, full of him, gasping, and the realization went off in my chest like a flare.
He’d been letting me, the whole time. I knew that, but the power with which he held me now made it completely clear.
Every time I’d pinned him, ridden him, tied him, called him my good boy, he’d been choosing it, lying there and handing me the wheel because he wanted me to have it.
His surrender had never once been weakness.
It was a gift, and I’d been too busy steering to see the size of it.
“Moerrven—”
“How,” he said, holding me impaled on him, even as I tried to move, his eyes blown black and steady on mine, “did you escape the dragon.”
“I’ll punish you,” I said, and it came out wrecked, breathless. “I’ll — you can’t just. I’ll make you wait a week, I’ll—”
He didn’t move. He held me there, buried deep, and waited, and looked at me like he already knew, like he was only going to make me say it because I needed to hear myself say it. The fight went out of me all at once.
“He didn’t want me,” I said.
His brow lifted.
“The dragon.” My voice had gone small. “He could’ve kept me.
He’s lonely, he’s so lonely, Moerrven, and he liked me, and he could’ve just — but he didn’t want me.
He let me go.” I swallowed. The thing was coming up out of me and I couldn’t stop it now.
“He didn’t want someone who was already in love with somebody else. ”
Everything went quiet.
I watched it land on him, watched his expression change as he processed it, the way my words went into him and broke something loose, some last careful stone, and his whole face, the grumpy, beautiful, guarded face I would have crossed any number of oceans for, came apart.
“Say that part again,” he said.
“I’m in love with you,” I said. “Obviously. Keep up.”
He flipped me.
The world turned over, and I was on my back in the rumpled bed with my legs shoved up and Moerrven settling over me, into me, his cock still buried deep.
He shifted his hips and ground in, and I sobbed at the angle of it, at the size of it, at the way he looked down at me like I was the only fixed point in a long and drifting life.
“Why is it scary to be in love?”
“Because, what if you want me to go home? What if you don’t love me back?”
“Of course I love you,” he said, and fucked into me, hard, deliberate, each thrust a word.
“I love you. I have loved you since Poppy first approved of you. I notice every time you leave a room. I can feel the room go empty. I waited five years to feel anything and then you—” His voice broke and he didn’t stop, didn’t slow, and took me apart with that relentless deep rhythm while he said it, the words and the body saying the same thing now, no door between them, no armor left on either of us.
“But losing me would have destroyed you,” I whispered.
“I am not afraid of losing you. Do you hear me. I would rather have you and lose you than spend another careful century not being destroyed. You are worth being destroyed for. I love you. I love you even if you need to go back home and see your mom. Even if I have to wait centuries for you to find a way back to Qoksmere.”
And I, the guy with a comeback for everything, the guy who narrates his own kidnappings, had nothing.
I surged up, grabbing his horns, pressing the spot that made him wild with lust, and dragged his mouth down to mine.
The kiss was wild, hungry, the fire behind the calm control that was Moerrven’s resting state.
He gripped my ass hard, fingers digging in, and pounded me into the mattress so hard the bed shook, then the frame broke, and I laughed as we slid sideways at an odd angle, but he didn’t.
He never stopped fucking me, never stopped kissing me.
His rhythm went wild, fast and disorganized, his cock pumping into my hole so fast I arched off the bed and screamed, and he held me close and buried his face against my throat, and I kissed my way to his ear as he reached for my cock and gave it a long, slow stroke.
“Are you waiting for me to tell you to come?” I asked.
“Always, my love,” he murmured against my throat, digging his teeth in just a little. I held on to his horns, fucking his hand while his cock fucked me, and let go, my cock spurting all over his hand and his stomach, marking him.
“Oh fuck, baby, I love you so much.”
He followed me a few thrusts later, buried as deep as he could go, a low broken sound tearing out of him as he spilled, his face pressed to my throat, both of us shaking, with nothing left to hide behind.
For a while there was nothing but breathing.
I lay there with him heavy and softening inside me, my own mess cooling on my belly, his weight pinning me to the bed like the safest thing in the world. I stared up at the cracked inn ceiling while my heart remembered how to do its normal job, and I thought: oh. So that’s what that feels like.
He lifted his head. His eyes found mine, warm and gray, blue flush still high on his cheeks, and we looked at each other for a second, breathing hard, undone.
Naturally, I ruined it.
“You know,” I said, dragging a finger through the mess on my stomach and considering it, “that was a lot of taking control, for a guy who’s supposed to be the well-behaved one.
Breaking my only tie. Fucking me into next week.
Saying devastating things while I was defenseless.
” I cupped his grumpy jaw and looked at him with the most serious face I owned.
“I’m afraid you’ve been a very naughty boy, Moerrven Mossren.
And naughty boys who take control have to be punished. ”
He huffed a laugh against my collarbone, a real one, ragged and warm, and pressed his face into the curve of my neck. His arms came around me and gathered me in like he was never planning to let the world have me again.
“I can’t wait,” he whispered into my skin. “Daddy.”
“Holy crap, I knew it. You like that nickname.”
He chuckled. “Maybe only while you’re spanking me senseless and calling me your whore.”