Chapter 14
T he anger Sin kept caged during the scry bleeds out of him like a pulsing wound now. I hear it in his every footstep back to our chambers, see it in every tic of his clenched jaw. He unlocks our doors with a quick sweep of his hand down the column of locks, and I follow him inside. He heads straight for the decanter on the table and pours two knuckles of the amber liquid into a glass and hands it to me.
I shake my head. “It’s not tender anymore.” Anika healed the injuries as soon as we finished convening with Torin. A rather unpleasant experience that involved her forcing the broken vessels in my face to reabsorb the blood they spilled, and siphoning the trace amounts of iron that lingered on my collar from the soldier’s gauntlets.
“You’re a terrible liar,” he scoffs, then downs the liquor himself.
“So terrible you think Torin didn’t buy our act?” I ask, heading into the adjoining washroom. I slip out of my dress, eager to be rid of all memories of the role I played. Of the role Sin played…
I shrug on the silky jade robe I left on the counter, pour some water from the pitcher into the basin, and dab a clean length of linen into it. I wash my face, listening to Sin shrugging out of his own clothing in the other room.
“He suspects something. Smells a fish. Likely why he wants me to bring you to the waystone.” The growl in his voice tells me exactly how he feels about that last detail.
“What is that? The waystone?”
I toss the rag to the counter and use my hands to splash more water onto my face, rubbing out the remnants of the cosmetics I painted on this morning.
“A waystone,” he begins, appearing in the threshold with one hand raised to grab the doorframe as he leans forward, “is a chasm of sorts. A fissure in the collective.”
“A fissure?” I peer at him through the mirror. He wears only low-slung black pants, the ties there already undone, and the valleys of his V-shaped muscles peeking out from the seam of his trousers.
“Think of them as very charged pockets. Magic works differently in those spaces—more concentrated. Several have been discovered across the continent, and many of the earliest wars were to claim the territories closest to them. Ours is on a tiny isle in the sea—if you can even call it that. Less an isle, more a slab of rock. Useful for communicating messages to soldiers at sea, or even transporting objects. Especially advantageous during times of war.”
“Transport objects?”
“And people,” he says matter-of-factly.
“That’s why he chose there, then. He’ll be able to transport himself to the waystone so we can meet in person, without him having to come near the city.”
Sin nods, his long hair brushing the dark planes of his chest. “It’s not a bad idea, just an unexpected one. Varil was opposed to all magics. Strange that his son has taken to using enchantments at all, let alone to have a personal mage at his call.”
“Why do you think he wants me there?”
Sin is motionless when he responds, though his eyes are calculated, and I suspect he is visualizing every possible outcome of this upcoming meeting. “He doesn’t trust us, which he shouldn’t, and he never will. Not completely.” Sin pauses, cautioning himself on what he wants to say next.
“What are you not saying?”
“He is fascinated by you,” he replies smoothly.
I reach for the comb and work it through my disheveled strands. “I think we have different definitions of ‘ fascinated,’ Your Grace.”
He releases the doorframe and moves behind me, placing his hands on my upper arms and tucking his face into the junction of my shoulder and neck. I relax instantly, his touch a balm to my tightly wound muscles. I hadn’t realized just how much tension I’d been carrying until his hands move to slide across my shoulder blades and down the column of my spine.
“You did well,” he says, voice much softer now. “Are you alright?”
“Yes. I’m fine,” I answer, though I wonder how much of my very real trauma Sin glimpsed through my act earlier.
His hands pause, and his breath warms my neck as he exhales. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I hated it.” His words drip with sincerity, and I know with every fiber in my being that our performance hurt him also.
“No,” I say firmly, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “Don’t say you’re sorry because you have nothing to apologize for. My reactions are my concern, not yours.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I want to recall the words as quickly as I spoke them, but I can’t. They hover between us, thickening the air and charging it with tension. He spins me in his grip so I’m facing him, my lower back pressed against the counter and my chin between his thumb and forefinger. “ You are my concern, Wren. And every piece of you—every fucking piece—deserves to be seen.”
His other hand moves to my back, his fingers tracing a familiar pattern through my robe. A path I know all too well, but one I am surprised he recalls by memory alone. I swallow as Sin glides his fingers from my shoulder blade to the divot in my back. The scar I could have erased with magic but chose to keep, chose to remember . Erasing the scars felt like a disservice to the bruise forever embedded into my heart. A deep purple poison, seeping into every valve and chamber.
“There are so many things I wish I could give to you and cannot, but the one thing I can promise you, is that no one is ever going to hurt you again.”
Both his hands move to cradle my jaw, and we pause here. Inches apart, our breath mingled, and our heartbeats tangled up like vines in a storm. Waiting.
Always waiting.
I will have it no more.
I don’t know who leans forward first, but our mouths connect, the seams of our lips fusing as if they always belonged together. The kiss is gentle. Sin’s lips skim mine, seeking permission, and I open for him. A low groan escapes him as his tongue darts out, exploring my mouth in a kiss that is as slow as it is deep. He tastes of the honeyed mead he downed, and I wrap my arms around his neck as he lifts me by the bottoms of my thighs, my legs wrapping around his waist.
He carries me back into the other room, stumbling as he finds his way to the bed blindly. And then my back is swathed in velvet, Sin’s weight pressing me further into our blankets. His kiss grows hungrier, desperate. I moan as his tongue sweeps across my teeth, his hands finding the panels of my robe and spreading them wide, baring me to him.
The Black Art ravages me with his eyes first, his expression a mix of lust and longing, love and need, and desire churns painfully in my lower belly. He dives then, leaving a scorching trail as he kisses me from my chest to my thighs. I sigh as his tongue flicks my clit, the sound crescendoing into a loud moan as he begins to lick me in slow, purposeful strokes.
The Black Art’s restraint really must be at the end of its leash because he rises a minute later, kicking off his pants as he does. Sin grabs both my legs and pushes them forward, forcing my knees near my ears and lifting my hips for him. And then he’s pumping his cock, notching his bulbous crown at my entrance, and my mouth waters at how his pre-cum drips from his head and onto my aching cunt. And then he pushes into me.
Fuck, if it’s not the most euphoric kind of pain each time the dark mage thrusts into me. I slicken and stretch around him, and he growls from deep in his chest when he meets my resistance, pushing deeper so my flesh opens for him.
His arms drop to support his weight on either side of my head, and I rake my nails down the front of his chest, the sides of his stomach. I grow wetter still as I watch his muscles tighten and flex with each stroke, spearing me with pleasure-pain as my pussy is forced to part for him.
And goddess, do I want to part for him. I hook my legs around his hips, meeting his thrusts in intensity and matching his masculine groans of pleasure with my own rhapsodic cries. The headboard bang, bang, bangs against the wall, and I’m grateful our quarters are in our own wing. Though with how loud we’re being and the preternatural hearing of our guests, I wouldn’t be surprised if any elves lingering nearby hear us.
Sin buries his face in my neck, his breath hot and labored and honey sweet. I turn and capture his mouth with mine, slipping my tongue between his lips as he makes love to me, giving me all of him, all of his devotion.
He breaks our kiss a moment later, forcing me to meet his stare of liquid green fire. “I have always loved you,” he rasps. “Even when I didn’t know how to show that to you. From that very first day”—he groans as he buries himself deep, then pauses, holding us sheathed together—“you bewitched me. And I feared you all the more for it because I knew the gods sent you to be my ruining.”
Sin slides out of me, slowly, agonizingly , just to push into me again, this time forcing me to take him to the hilt.
I come hard.
Cries of rapture fall from my lips as I clench around him, and Sin swallows them whole, desperate to taste my pleasure on his tongue. My head falls back as he finds his own release, his face dropping to the valley between my breasts as he spills inside of me. Seed begins trickling down my thighs immediately as he overfills me, our cream mixing and scenting the air with our passion.
I tangle one hand into the back of his hair, his long strands threading through my fingers. My heart pounds furiously beneath him. So exhausted I’ve become from the twisted games Sin and I play, our fate as black-hearted as the man it compels me to love. The pulse between us a fatal magic, a dark obsession.
“I love you,” I whisper. “Every piece I’ve ruined and the ones I have not.”
I have never been more sure of anything.