Chapter 30 #3
‘Don’t.’ It came out breathless, abrupt. ‘Don’t. And I know you won’t accept any arguments based on your wellbeing, so I’m not even going to mention that I’ll fail you and hurt you and cause you to regret every moment of this—’
‘You’d better not.’ My blood was hot beneath my skin.
‘—but I am permitted to care about my own comfort.’ His low voice sounded like the scrape of nails over bare skin. Like the rasp of breath against lips. ‘So let’s say it’s a terrible idea because I’m going to hurt you and then you’ll come for my head. Won’t you?’
That was cheating.
‘I don’t think you’d mind,’ I managed.
‘If you killed me?’
‘No.’ I’d all but forgotten about the bloody door.
There was just him and his stupidly pretty mouth, the wide-blown black of his pupil, the faint twitches of his hands by his sides.
‘If I fought you. If you allowed yourself to put up a decent fight in return. If I tried to hold a knife against your throat for the third time – I think you’d enjoy yourself much more than you’d like to admit. ’
His face was expressionless.
But his throat bobbed, diamond scar glittering with the motion – a slow, hard swallow.
He had to see my eyes darting down. Had to know that I’d seen that he’d seen. The silence hung between us like an empty, outstretched hand for a count – and then another mirthless smile quirked his lips.
It felt serendipitous, that smile. An unlikely stroke of luck – like a blade catching a ray of light at just the right angle.
‘And you called me rational,’ he said slowly.
‘Then prove me wrong.’ Recklessness had never felt so much like power. ‘Then be irrational.’
For one frozen moment, I thought I’d pushed too far.
Then he moved.
Even now, he carried himself with that quiet, calculated grace, the precision of a blade being unsheathed – every motion edged with deliberate intent as he shed his blanket, shifted to his knees, and leaned over to lay a hand on my waist. There was no urgency in his lean arms as he pulled me up and towards him.
No hurry in his fingers as they settled on my hip, brushed a stray curl off my cheek.
Poised predator’s confidence; he knew he didn’t need to rush.
His breath was hot on my cheeks. His eye searched my face – asking questions, making sure.
I angled my mouth towards him.
‘Truly a thorn in my side,’ he murmured, and kissed me.
Kissed me.
With those vicious, pretty lips. With the brutal, single-minded focus of a strategist at war – his mouth moulding to mine with breathless precision, his fingers curling in my hair to tilt my head just so.
His hand tightened on my waist, dragging me closer.
His slim body pressed hard against mine, tense and scalding hot …
And just like that, I was no longer thinking.
Just like that, I was no longer scared.
My hands reached around his head, found his nape, his hair.
Silk locks between my fingers, a ribbed edge of horn …
I clawed down and felt rather than heard his snarl against my mouth.
His revenge was a graze of teeth on my bottom lips, swift and sharp enough to make me gasp – the only invitation he needed to deepen the kiss with a hot sweep of his tongue.
Not a kiss. A fucking battlefield.
Runewitch versus fireborn prince, and merciful hell below, it felt good.
Perhaps I was pushing him down. Perhaps he was pulling me with him.
We crashed into his blankets together, lips never parting, breath and limbs tangling as we nipped and grasped and tore at each other with hungry, greedy hands – no more sense in me, just sensation.
The heat of his skin. The cold of his scars.
The coiled hardness of his body, and fuck, that was hardness, the bulging weight pressing into my lower stomach …
I arched into him, a desperate plea for friction, for more.
His fingers dug into my hips in response, rolled me over in the coarse blankets, captured me beneath his weight.
Knee between my thighs. Hips against my hips.
I tried to slide a hand down his body, and didn’t get past his chest; his fingers locked around my wrist with baffling strength, pinning it against the rough wood beside my head.
I pulled away from our kiss and gasped, ‘Bastard.’
And then all of a sudden we were no longer kissing – all of a sudden we’d returned to the realms of sanity, him on top of me, my arm in his iron grasp, his cock pressing into my abdomen like a rod of steel.
His face was a picture of sinful devastation.
Cheeks flushed, hair ruffled. Mouth wet and swollen.
His eye, most of all, which was wild enough for two, the pupil blown wide and brimming with a feral hunger I’d never seen before.
He looked like a man ruined.
The sight was almost better than the kiss itself.
‘What did you call me?’ he muttered, voice as quiet as the crackling of the fire behind me. His lips barely moved. His thumb drew slow circles on the back of my wrist as he held me – jarring, tantalising intimacy.
I breathed a laugh. ‘Bastard.’
‘Terrible manners.’ His knee pressed down another inch, forcing my thighs farther apart. ‘I’m really not sure what I did to deserve that.’
‘Your face?’ I managed.
His expression didn’t shift. But he rolled his hips against mine, just once – a supple, grinding motion that seemed designed solely to introduce me to the full, staggering length of his cock – and at my gasp, the fiendish gleam in his eye was unmistakable.
‘Begging your pardon?’ he murmured, sweet as poison honey, as I tried to yank my arm free. ‘I didn’t fully catch that, I’m afraid.’
I shouldn’t be enjoying this, damn me. It wasn’t loving. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t caring, the protective embrace of a fairytale prince come to rescue me – but did I need a fairytale prince tonight? I didn’t feel fragile in Durlain’s hold.
Just … fierce.
Fierce, and really fucking horny.
‘I’ll try to put it politely for your tender, sheltered ears.’ My breath was shallow, my voice thick and hoarse. ‘You’re a terrible man but a rather decent kisser—’
‘You’re a pinnacle of courteousness.’ He bent his head, trailing his lips in a taunting line along my jaw. It was barely a touch, and yet I felt it tighten all the way down in my core – felt it curl my toes and fingers. His breath of laughter was a warning. ‘Decent, you said?’
I tried to say something clever. Something accurate. But he nipped at my earlobe, vicious and perfect, and all that burst from my lips was a choked, ‘Fuck.’
‘Polite, indeed,’ he murmured. ‘My sheltered ears are shrivelling to dust.’
‘Serves them right.’ I tried to arch up against him; his lean weight wouldn’t let me. ‘It would be so very helpful if something was just plain ugly about— Oh, hell.’
His teeth had found the side of my neck, nibbling down with torturous slowness.
I tried to take hold of his head with my free hand – anything to get more, more, more of this – and he caught me mid-swing as if he’d anticipated the movement, pinning down my other arm as well.
His knee ground up between my thighs. Reward, punishment, or both – I no longer cared.
I felt only that unbearable friction. Felt my entire body clench around something that was not there.
‘Please,’ I heard myself gasp.
The pressure of his thigh decreased. A moan escaped me despite how hard I tried to keep it down, strangled and desperate.
‘Are you quite alright, Thraga?’ His voice was airily conversational – as if his cock wasn’t pressing into my stomach, hot and hard. As if I wasn’t doing my very best to grind up against his leg. ‘I might have interrupted you – my sincere apologies. What were you about to politely tell me?’
Mists take me.
That this didn’t change anything.
It was what I ought to have said, at least – that I wasn’t about to change my mind about the terms of our bargain.
That I knew who he was. That I didn’t need his heart or his trust or his loyalty, that my wants didn’t come with any feelings attached.
That I was simply a parched patch of earth, a starving animal, so impossibly hungry for anything he might throw my way that I’d happily, blissfully take his cock and forego everything else.
That I needed him inside me so much I could burn.
A simple, swift reassurance with his body hot on top of me … yet somewhere, the words got stuck. Somehow, all that made it past my lips was another hoarse, hollow, ‘Please.’
His eye narrowed. ‘Words, Thraga.’
Shit.
Words.
I knew what I needed to say. It was clear as day in my mind, the things I needed him to know … yet when I opened my mouth, none of it came out. Just the echo of my aimless pleas. That, and a mortifying silence – stretching on and on and on.
‘Ah,’ Durlain said softly.
I swallowed hard. ‘I don’t mean—’
‘No. I know.’ He released my left hand; his fingers on my right wrist loosened. ‘You know what you want, don’t you? Just not why you want it.’
And there it was.
How did he do it, making sense of me?
‘I suppose I’m just rattling the bars,’ I said roughly.
‘You might be,’ he easily agreed, rolling off me and sitting up in a single fluid motion.
His shirt had twisted sideways on his lithe frame; his lips still bore the bruises of my teeth.
But there was no annoyance on his face, no why can’t you just let yourself have fun, witchling?
– as if he’d been interrupted halfway into an unremarkable breakfast rather than this breathtaking almost-fuck.
‘Or you’re trying to numb the fear, or the heartache.
Or you’re making a misguided attempt to get back at Leif from this side of the grave.
And of course, it’s also possible that you just want to get fucked senseless for no other reason than the fun of it? I’m not sure.’
So level-headed. So matter-of-fact.