Chapter 28
twenty-eight
EVEREST
It’s two in the morning by the time I make it back to The Foundry. The guard at the entrance gives me a flat look but ultimately ignores me, and I do my best not to stare across the courtyard at the place where Cielo was once staying.
My chest still aches with missing him. With not knowing if he’s going to be okay or not. But I won’t focus on that. Right now, I need to see Rathyn, before the worst happens.
I have no idea what kind of punishment he’s facing. I don’t know if the Vyastil have, like, the death penalty or anything, but considering he was going to tear one of Cielo’s arms off just for touching me, I think it’s a safe guess they do.
Or if not death, dismemberment.
I make it up to the apartment and find the door cracked open. I can feel Rathyn waiting for me just behind it, and I take a moment to center myself before pushing inside.
The moment the door is shut, he’s on me. His claws are out, and they tear at my shirt as he wraps himself around me—arms, legs, tail. He shoves me against the wall, and I turn my face up, offering him my mouth.
His long tongue dives inside, tasting me, wrapping around mine, his sucking kisses overwhelming all my senses. I finally shove him back to catch my breath, and I can see his eyes are wild and frantic.
“I’m here,” I say uselessly.
“Yes.”
He touches me more softly this time, reverent. A starving man staring at a buffet. His fingers are gentle as they pass down my neck and rougher when they get to my piercings. He tugs on my nipples, making me gasp, a reminder that I really do belong to him.
“My Everest,” he murmurs. “I am sor—”
“No.”
He blinks at me, obviously confused.
“Let’s not do that right now, okay? I just…” Despite myself, despite my anger and self-righteousness and frustration, I need this. I need him. “Can you please take me to bed?”
He doesn’t fight it. He lifts me in his arms, kissing me slowly and deeply as he makes his way through the apartment. He kicks open the door to his bedroom, all but throwing me on the bed.
I drop with a single bounce, then scramble against the headboard as he stalks toward me on all fours. He looks like a fucking apex predator, and I realize how scared I would be if I ever encountered something like him in the woods by myself.
His fangs are out, longer than normal, claws are shredding the sheets as he makes his way toward my body. I’m hard as a rock and shuddering when he makes contact with my ankle, and it only takes him a second to hook his fingers into my pants and draw them off my body.
My shirt is next, and then he hovers over my torso, staring down with a feral gleam in his dark, rainbow eyes.
“Do you want me?”
He makes a trilling hum in the back of his throat, then shoves his face into my neck. His fangs graze my artery before his tongue darts out and he licks from under my ear, all the way around to the front of my throat, his tongue piercings dragging over my skin.
He’s scenting me again. He bows his head further, burrowing into me, nosing the crook of my shoulder before his lips part.
“Do it,” I tell him.
His fangs press in harder.
My dick kicks, and I rock my hips up into him. I can feel his slit moving, shifting, parting for me as he rubs it along my length. It’s wholly erotic, sending my head into a spin, and the feeling only gets worse when he bears down and breaks the skin.
I feel dribbles of blood bursting out of the puncture wounds, and his tongue lapping them up. He seals his lips around it like a fucking vampire and sucks.
My toes curl, and my balls start to ache. I want him so bad.
I fucking missed him. Missed this.
“Let me fuck you,” I beg. “Let me fuck your slit. Your cock.”
He lets out a growling purr and pushes words into my head in his language. I don’t understand them, but I understand the meaning.
Yes, he’s saying. Please. Please, my Everest.
My shaking hand dives between us, and I grip my cock at the base, dragging the head over the slit. It parts further, his natural lubricant coating me.
It smells odd—heady and rich with a salt tang—like fresh seaweed washed up on the shore. I arch my hips more, the head slipping into him, dragging along his cock, which pulses against mine.
The feeling is fucking overwhelming. And as I rock into him, and he bears down, his hips stuttering with each thrust, I can feel his cock slithering against mine, the impossible length almost curling around me as if to draw out my orgasm that way alone.
“Shit, shit,” I gasp.
He pulls back and studies my face, then dives in and takes another kiss. He tastes like spit and blood and earth—like Rathyn. My Rathyn.
He growls again as we begin to pick up speed, and it doesn’t take long for me to feel my orgasm cresting.
“Wait,” I gasp.
His body freezes.
“Wait. I…I’m going to cum. Do you want it?”
“Yes,” he says, words thicker than usual.
I start to pull away, but he drops his hips and pins me to the bed by my dick.
“Give me your cum,” he growls. He flexes, and something inside of him squeezes around me as his cock continues to thicken and pulse against me.
“I can’t hold on. Fuck, I can’t hold on,” I gasp.
“Give me your cum,” he repeats.
“I’m trying. Rath, baby—you have to pull off me if you want—”
“Give me,” he hisses and snarls, “your cum.”
It’s only then that I realize what he’s demanding. What he’s begging for. My head drops back, and I begin to jackhammer my dick into his slit. My orgasm hits like a tidal wave, crashing over me, stealing my breath, my hearing, my sight.
I’m nothing more than rolling waves of pleasure as his body drinks what I have to give, and somewhere in the chaos, I feel him let go.
He lets out a sharp cry, his claws digging into my skin as he holds me closer to him.
He shudders around me, pulsing, milking me for every last drop the same way he does with his mouth.
I have just enough sense to look at him one more time before my eyes slam shut, and exhaustion takes me.
He holds me gently, touching the wounds he left on my body. The mark on my neck. The scratches on my skin. The nick on my lip from his fangs.
It will all be healed with the herb, but I’m not ready for those marks to fade, so I don’t take it yet.
“I missed this.”
“I did too…my days and nights have not been pleasurable without you in them.”
I peer up at him lazily, too tired and worn out to fight this anymore. “Same.”
He doesn’t say anything after that. I want him to beg me to come back, but he doesn’t. I lie there, letting myself feel him against me, memorizing each moment so I can replay it in my darkest hours.
I have no idea where this ends, but I really don’t want to find myself broken. I don’t know if my fragile heart can handle it. My finger drags over the metal band encircling his forearm.
“When do you get this off?”
“Tomorrow at the tribunal.”
“What happens at the tribunal?”
“They will decide my punishment.”
I close my eyes against those words. His punishment. “Do you have any idea what that will be?”
“I do not.”
I lean up and stare down at him. “I’m really sorry, Rath. I wish…” I wet my lips, and his eyes soften. “I wish we’d never met sometimes, you know? Everything would be easier for you.”
“Do not speak this.”
“Too late.”
His lips curl up, and his finger brushes against my bottom lip. “I am glad I met you. My life was rigid before, boring. You brought new meaning to my every day. You made me understand what it is to be human. Truly human.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was an insult,” I tease.
He huffs and drags a touch along the shell of my ear, making me shiver. Then he moves his fingers to my jaw, up to circle my eyes, and then over my lips. I realize then he’s touching me in all the places I’m so visibly human.
And he’s not.
“I do not think I understood or appreciated beauty until I met you.”
That feels important. It feels like a lot. Like three words I’ve wanted to say but have been too afraid that he won’t understand the weight and gravity of them.
“Thank you,” he murmurs.
I close my eyes and nestle against him. “I wish we could just stay like this forever.”
“As do I. But that, my Everest, is impossible.”
“It’s been hard without you,” I confess. My defenses are lowered, my heart weak. “I didn’t like being without you. I don’t want to do it again.”
“You are strong, my little human. With me and without.”
The way he says that has me blinking wildly. “Why did that sound like goodbye?”
“I have not said goodbye. There is no need to feel things that have not been spoken.”
I roll my eyes and huff a laugh. “Yeah, okay. Whatever.”
He hums happily beneath me, and I find my eyes closing slightly. “Should I go back to Zane’s?”
“I wish for you to stay,” he says.
Maybe I should ignore him. To punish him just a little longer. Or maybe I want to run because I’m terrified about what will happen tomorrow after he faces the tribunal. I hate that I don’t know what consequences he’s going to face. I hate not knowing what my life might be like after.
I don’t want to lose him.
I can’t lose him.
Despite the panic, it doesn’t take long before I’m dozing under his wandering fingers.
I want to stay awake, to stay with him, to talk until my voice gives out.
But I can’t fight the bone-deep exhaustion taking over me after our frantic reunion.
Every muscle in my body is aching, and I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
I drift to the melodic sound of his purr and the rapid beating of his hearts.
A rustling beneath me has me blinking my eyes open. The sun is peering in behind the blinds, and I realize I slept far longer than I thought.
“Go back to sleep,” Rathyn says softly.
“No. I don’t want to.” When I see him standing up, I crawl toward him. “You’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“How long will it be?”
“I don’t know. But I will return to you the moment I am able.”
I don’t like the sound of that. “Will it be soon?”
He says nothing, just looks at me. He pulls on his robe, but I stop him, grabbing his thighs and holding onto him.
“Not yet. Let me…please,” I rub my face against his groin, and I feel his cockhead push out.
I lap at it, and he gives a low, desperate hum.
“Drink my cum before you go,” I say, peering up at him. His eyes meet mine, and his fingers card through my hair. “Take that piece of me with you.”
“If this is what you wish.”
“Yes, it is.”
I pull back and then sit up, my legs hanging off the bed. My cock is hardening as he lowers himself before me, just like the first time. Only this feels different. Instead of a hello, it feels like a farewell.
His gaze meets mine, and I touch his cheek gently.
“Come back to me,” I whisper, “Promise me.”
He dips his chin in acknowledgement. His head lowers, and I feel his mouth consume me. It’s slow, torturous, like he’s savoring it. And I try to hold out, to hold on. My hands dive into his hair, pulling him onto me over and over, my eyes never leaving his.
But the way he looks on his knees for me, the way his tongue feels wrapped around me, has me coming within minutes.
It’s a rush and then…nothing.
His mouth drags off of me, leaving me cold and bereft.
“Promise,” I say again. “Promise you’ll come back to me.”
He turns, and his eyes meet mine. Sad, aching. “Yes, my Everest. I will come home to you.”
Why does that sound like a lie?