Forty-Three
F ORTY - T HREE
ESTRELLA
I’d thought there would be an element of jealousy in sharing Caldris, in knowing that it wasn’t only me in my body as he worked his tongue through me.
But the hand that gripped his hair was all mine, the thighs he buried himself between all me.
In accepting Aella as part of me, the two halves of me no longer existed. In becoming one, I could feel Caldris more firmly. I understood the bond better for accepting her , for she was the part of me that had access to the magics that were beyond Estrella. Where I’d only had glimpses of our bond before, the faint wisps of what Caldris felt, now I had it all.
Now I understood.
I tasted myself on his tongue, felt the deep satisfaction he gained from my pleasure. It coursed through him as it did me, reflecting back to me like the mirror. The growl that lurked in my moan of pleasure was all animal, all monstrous, as my hand tightened in his ashen silver hair, pulling him tighter to my body as my pleasure drove higher. Feeling what I did to him was the greatest aphrodisiac, far stronger than whatever magic lingered in this water, and I wanted the sense of his satisfaction when he brought me to orgasm. I wanted to return the favor, wanted to take him into my mouth and watch pleasure overtake him.
He growled into my pussy, the sound vibrating like a hum against my flesh as if he heard the thoughts in my head. But I knew he couldn’t, not just yet, because his voice was a whisper on the wind, muffled by the bond we had yet to complete. I knew now what would come once he’d been inside me, once we joined together in the way the mate bond required.
The thought of hearing him in my head made me toss my head back, made me sink deeper into the way his tongue tortured my clit and worked it like the master he was. He knew my body as if he owned it, and I knew without a doubt now it was that it had been created for him.
Just as he had been created for me, long before I’d even come to be.
My orgasm lingered just out of my grasp, forcing me to bend forward and stare down at Caldris. He met my eye, smirking as he pushed back into my hand at the back of his head. The movement separated him from my core, drawing that wicked mouth away as he grasped me around the waist with a firm grip and dragged me over the stone. It scraped at my flesh, the bite of pain fading with a golden light that shimmered off my skin and lit the cove as Caldris guided me down. I sank into the water, the shimmering surface warming my insides as it surrounded me. The moment it reached the apex of my thighs, overwhelming, searing heat and desire flooded me, sinking into my belly as he lowered me until my feet touched the sand at the bottom of the pool. The water came to my chest, tickling the bottom of my breasts as I reached a hand between us to trail my fingers over Caldris’s abdomen. His muscles retracted at my touch, twitching with a deep inhalation of breath. My nails trailed over the surface of his skin, tormenting him as that hand sank lower and lower into the water.
His eyes darkened as he stared down at me, the shadows in his gaze swirling around the blue of his irises. He stilled my touch with a hand on my wrist, the grip tighter than he had ever dared before. Not treating me like I was made of glass any longer, I realized, smirking up at him as he guided me down to where his length was hard as rock and curved up toward his stomach. He trailed the backs of my knuckles over him, controlling my touch when I wanted to take charge of the moment. I pressed closer, until my belly slid against our hands, and I felt the heat of his arousal against me.
He growled a warning, leaning forward to trail his nose up the side of my neck. He breathed deep, inhaling my scent in a way that was all feral and territorial. It raised the hair on my arms as I shivered, turning to smile at him in a move that made his gaze narrow in on the more pointed teeth at the corners of my mouth. A flicker of surprise crossed his face as he studied them, as if he could sense all the changes in me that weren’t physical as well.
“You can play with me another time, min asteren,” he murmured, the words soft against my skin. Another shiver wracked through my body, as if his voice reached deep into my soul and stroked it through my flesh.
He spun me to face the stone where I’d sat on the edge, leaving me with little choice but to raise my hands to catch myself against the rough surface. I stumbled forward a step, finding grooves in the stone and a ledge at the bottom. Caldris guided me up onto it, clearly having discovered it when he’d buried his face between my thighs. It accommodated some of the difference in height between us as I stepped up, letting my mate shove my legs apart slightly. Pressing into my rear, I felt the hard length of him against my lower back, his balls heavy against the swell of my ass.
“What if I want to play with you now?” I asked, my voice breathy. In another time, I would have been horrified by the want that was so blatant in my tone. I would have been appalled to give anyone enough power over me to know how desperately I wanted them. The human sense of shame would have interfered with that desire, but as I thought back to that girl now, I could find no trace of her. The human mentality about sex and sin was gone from me, leaving me to embrace the primal connection I felt to the male behind me.
Nothing we did together could be wrong.
“The next time you take me in your mouth, you’ll be mine,” Caldris said, lining himself up with my core. He stroked his length through the tight space between my thighs, rubbing himself through me slowly with gentle, teasing rocks of his hips. He stretched over my shoulder, taking the knife he’d deposited on the edge into his hand. He teased the edge of the blade over my arm, dragging it up to the side of my neck in a move that should have brought me fear. It should have given me that bitter tinge of distrust, of wondering if I was about to be betrayed, but Caldris could never do such a thing to me. He loved me more than he loved himself, and I felt that love pulse down our nearly complete bond. “Until chaos reigns,” he said, but there was a question in that touch of his knife at the side of my neck.
I didn’t speak as I reached up, covering his left hand with mine. I guided the blade across the side of my neck where it met my shoulder, cutting deep into the flesh there so that my blood flowed in a slow, steady flow and slid down my breast. Taking the knife from his hand, I let the knowledge of the ancients fill me. Aella knew things Estrella did not, and she knew what the next step to this consummation would be. I brought it around the front as Caldris held his right hand out before me. I sliced the blade through his wrist at the exact moment that he entwined the fingers of his left hand with mine, wrenching it behind my back. He pinned my left arm there, his viniculum joining with mine.
Golden light flashed as I tossed the blade to the stone, guiding Caldris’s wrist to my mouth. The taste of his blood coated my tongue, sweet and warm, in spite of the distinct reminder of winter that lingered at the back of my palate. His mouth dropped to my shoulder as he drew my blood into his mouth in the same way, bending his knees and angling his hips. He drove inside me without preamble, connecting us in more than just the physical.
Our viniculum pulsed, the white tendrils filling with the golden light of fate as Caldris’s very being crashed into me. We collided at the center of our bond, our thoughts melding into one. I’d thought I’d known what it would be to be bonded in truth, thought I understood the implication of having another soul exist within the confines of my mind, but I hadn’t had a clue.
Before, Caldris had ended where I began. Our threads had run as if in two segments of a line, meeting in the middle. In this, they intertwined, twisting around one another so fully they formed a knotted mess that would never be able to untangle. I did not know what was him and what was me, only recognizing the smooth glide of him through my flesh.
His pleasure blended with mine, as if we could feel both sides of our pleasure. I felt him draw back and then plunge forward, testing the new feeling of sex as a mated pair, but I also felt his immense completion. I felt what it was to be him, the tight, wet press of me as I parted for him and the vicelike grip of my pussy against his cock. I felt what it was to be both man and woman, and in the intensity of our first moments as a pair, I no longer knew who I was as an individual.
The power of the bond was all-encompassing, our pairing taking all that we were as people and making us somehow more as a collective.
“ Min asteren ,” his voice in my head was the same as if he’d spoken, but I felt it like a whisper against my mind, instead of a whisper against my skin. His mouth still pulled blood from my wound, drawing in deep gulps that only brought us closer.
“ Min oscura ,” I thought back. Whereas before, he may have questioned the choice to use the Old Tongue, he understood in the same way I did now. He understood that the Old Tongue was as much a part of me as the new. “ I see you now, my shadows. ”
“ A shadow cannot exist without his light ,” he thought, unpinning my arm. He kept our hands joined as he pulled his mouth from my neck finally, the wound healing as I released his wrist. With our bond complete, he continued to move inside me as he raised our arms so that I could see the shimmering gold of our viniculum . His lit with mine, a matching gold that glimmered off the surface of the water and illuminated the cave. I took my hand from his, watching and waiting for the moment that the magic faded from his Fae Marks, but it remained even without mine to touch his.
My magic was a part of him now, existing fully within the confines of his body as much as mine. Placing that hand on the stone beside the other, I leaned into it and bent forward, giving Caldris better access to my body as his hands dropped to my hips. He grasped them firmly, his fingertips pressing in to the point of bruising. I reveled in the roughness of it, loved every moment of the lack of control when he snapped his hips back and drove in hard.
Gone was any and all trace of gentleness, his body driving into mine with an uninhibited aggression that he couldn’t have fucked me with before. He struck deep with each thrust, setting a punishing rhythm that he accentuated with a slow roll of his hips when he was fully sheathed inside me. “ Fuck ,” he groaned. “ I wanted to make love to you, not fuck you. ”
I pressed back into him, meeting him thrust for thrust as the water surrounding us splashed against the stone. “ Our love isn’t gentle or kind. It’s rough and all-consuming; it’s a raging inferno that destroys the world in its wake. ” The words felt truer than I dared to admit as I thought them, feeling Caldris shudder behind me as they filled his head. The thread of our bond glowed with golden light, unbreakable with the force of a violent storm.
“ I waited centuries for you. Waited centuries for this, and you still somehow manage to exceed every hope and dream I had. ” The words warmed me from the inside as he dropped a hand to my clit, stroking me as he fucked me. I wouldn’t last long with both our pleasures swirling about as one, with that wicked finger working magic on my body while his cock worked inside.
“ Caldris ,” I thought, tossing my head back to drape against his shoulder. He covered my throat with his left hand, and the searing pain of my viniculum spreading overwhelmed me. It was blinding, all-consuming as I felt Caldris’s rise to match. He groaned through it, his cock twitching inside me as we both shattered over the edge of our orgasms in unison. He filled me, driving deep into me and pausing at the end as the Fae Marks worked over the front of our chests. The tendrils of black and gold combined into a swirling mass, forming an eight-pointed star just above my heart. It glowed with golden light at the center, shadows working through the light so that they formed one being.
My skin felt sensitive in the aftermath of the mark shifting, and Caldris drew me away from the wall to sink into the pool with him. The cool water was soothing against the wound as Caldris turned me to face him, touching his mouth to mine. It was the first kiss we’d shared since completion, the first time we shared breath, and I sank into the comfort of it.
The comfort of him. He shuddered as I ran my fingers over the new star on his chest, finding immense satisfaction in the added mark.
I was his star, and now his flesh was marked with the reminder of my ownership for the rest of his life.
Caldris was mine and mine alone.