Chapter 15
KORYN
I should have gotten out of bed when the sun first hit my face. I would have gotten out of bed if I weren’t such a coward. But I didn’t, and the gods punished me for it.
Delectable warmth overtook my body, making it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. Months I’d spent out in the cold, exposed to the elements. I was a frost witch, but I wasn’t immune to discomfort, and now…. gods, the heat was so decadent. And the hand sliding up my stomach? Perfection.
He paused where my abdomen dipped into my belly button, pressing the heel of his palm into the crease. Not enough to cause discomfort, but an acknowledgement of my body and all its curves and crevices. He splayed out his impossibly large hand, his fingertips brushing the undersides of my breasts.
Potent heat spread from every fingertip into my being. The ice inside of me turned liquid, my body languid beneath his questing touch. I arched against him, needy for every tiny point of contact that I could get.
He did not disappoint me. He was incapable of it.
His other hand joined the first so he could cup both of my breasts at once.
Dark God curse me, I’d never been with anyone whose hands were large enough to truly hold my breasts like that.
He flicked his thumbs over the tight buds of my nipples while his smallest finger caressed the sensitive crease beneath my breasts.
I wanted his mouth. Needed it. A pleading whimper slipped from my parted, panting lips.
But instead, his hands left my breasts. One of them tracked lower, back over the curve of my abdomen. Another sound, throatier, needier. I’d wanted his mouth? Wrong. This was what I needed—his fingers a few inches lower, where desire pulsed and throbbed. I was a second from begging.
He slid his fingers into the tangle of curls that guarded my entrance. The fragile control I’d had snapped. My shoulders drew together beneath me as my back bowed, and my hips lifted from the soft bed, reaching for his touch. The blankets were gone entirely.
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. Touch me, I silently begged.
But I wasn’t ready.
He speared two fingers down, pressing one on either side of my clit but not touching it directly. Touching me, yes, but still denying me what I wanted where I truly wanted it. I squirmed, working my hips from side to side to try to get the pressure I needed.
A cool breeze skittered across my bare stomach, summoning goosebumps all over my skin. Garrick must have opened the window.
He squeezed his fingers together, pinching my clit between them.
I lost all ability to think, the dark world behind my closed eyes exploding in bright lights.
The rhythm of his touch changed, suddenly fervent and harsh and intensely erotic.
He pinched my clit again, then swiped the broad pad of his thumb over it, the contrast between sharp pain and soft pressure too pleasurable to explain or comprehend.
All he had to do was slide a finger inside of me and I’d come apart—
He stroked a long finger inside of me in a single fluid motion. He’d read my thoughts or he knew me too well… it did not matter. He curled his fingertip, scraped it over the internal cluster of nerves while his other hand pinched my clit again, and I cascaded into oblivion.
I came hard and fast, the stress of captivity and loneliness edging the sensations into a place of desperation. I needed this release. I’d never be able to think clearly without it. These waves of pleasure rolling through my veins would be enough to sustain me even if I never ate another meal.
My channel clenched around his finger again and again, drawing out every bit of pleasure.
Only when it had ebbed away entirely and my body started to relax, the burning desire pooling into satisfaction low in my stomach, did he withdraw his fingers.
He pinched my clit lightly, one last time, before pulling away entirely.
I was breathing so heavily that I could not even hear him beside me.
My eyes were still closed. I’d cracked them open hours ago, seen that Garrick was still in the room, and then slammed them shut again.
Then I let him pleasure me.
Oh gods—no, fuck the gods—what had I done?
The liquid remnants of my climax crystallized inside of me. My entire body went rigid. White morning light stung my eyes, temporarily blinding me, leaving me thrashing and trying to get away from him, except…
Garrick was nowhere to be seen. Not asleep on the hearthrug or silently changing his clothes.
In the pale hours of dawn, I’d cowered under the coverlet, hiding from him, desperate to avoid another conversation.
But the sun was up fully now, even though it hid behind the clouds, and no number of blankets would hide me from him.
“You look so pretty when you come, sweetling.”
He reclined on the bed beside me, his head propped on one elbow, and his lean body stretched across the length of the bed. His own side was completely undisturbed. He wasn’t beneath the blankets. Neither was I. They were in a tangle around me, and I was painfully, fully, completely naked.
I grabbed the sheets to my chest. This could not be happening. Garrick was not here. Isanara?
I caught a shimmer of lavender near the foot of the bed. Leave me out of this.
I clutched the sheets tighter, but they stuck to my fingers.
A new sort of horrifying realization dawned.
My hands were wet with my own arousal and release.
The man who was to blame lay there, watching me with what appeared to be no more than mild interest, his golden brow smooth, his bow-shaped lips perfectly unquirked.
“You bastard,” I seethed. There had to be something to throw. I wanted my familiar to tear him apart. But from the thump I heard, I suspected she was hiding under the bed.
“Incorrect,” the Dark God said into my mind without moving a single blasted muscle. “Your bastard prince is elsewhere.”
“You… you invaded my mind,” I stammered, now quite believing it even as I connected all the pieces.
My body, still coming down from release, my wet hands, his serene expression.
He’d used his connection to my mind to spur my thoughts, to make me dream Garrick was touching me…
and that he was. That was the change I’d felt.
Not Garrick’s hands, but the Dark God’s.
But not really, because I’d been touching myself.
“You planted those desires, made me touch myself and think of you. Gods… NO!”
“They do call me the Dark God.”
“There are a lot of things I should call you—"
“None of those are very nice.”
“Get out of my head!” I screamed.
Isanara was suddenly at my side, despite her insistence on staying out of… whatever this was. I didn’t even remember getting out of bed, only that I stood naked, clutching a sheet to my front, with my dragon growling at my side.
The only good thing about the whole infuriating, humiliating moment was that the Dark God had to sit up to see me properly.
I enjoyed one second of triumph before he swung his legs around to the side of the bed and gave me his back.
Because, apparently, looking at me was not actually that important.
“And as much as I’d enjoy hearing you put that lovely tongue of yours to use, we don’t have time,” the Dark God said. Aloud, for once. “Your lover won’t leave you alone long, and we have work to do.”
Your bastard prince. Your lover.
“He isn’t mine.”
He walked around the edge of the bed, his movements like the dark, feline creatures I’d seen occasionally in the mountains.
Creations of the witches, long since run amok.
He wore tight, dark trousers and gleaming black leather boots that reached his knees.
The dark fabric of his shirt, buttoned at the wrists and cut close so that it showed off his lean but muscular frame, was made from a fabric that looked to be somewhere between silk and linen.
Slightly shimmery, but I could see the crosshatch of fibers if I looked closely enough.
Which I had no fucking idea why I was.
Self-preservation.
I held the sheet to my chest, even more self-conscious. But he did not look at me. The first sign of interest he showed was for Isanara, whom he regarded with a slight moue of his too-perfect mouth.
I did not like that at all.
“Koryn has always had a special talent for lying to herself,” he said to her.
“You don’t speak to her!”
That got his attention. Not right away. Slowly. He dragged his gaze up to meet mine with infuriating slowness.
I’d thought his eyes were black, like his hair and his clothing and the dark realm over which he presided.
But I’d never seen him in the light of day.
There were veins of blue amid the black, just enough to differentiate the irises from the pupils.
As he looked at me, the striations of color seemed to pulse brighter.
Cold spread through my body. I glanced down at my hands, still clutched around the sheet, expecting to see the whorls of frost that appeared when my power overwhelmed me. But my skin was solid and unmarked.
If this continues much longer, I will have to start gnawing on the fire irons.
I didn’t need to glance down at my familiar to sense her impatience. I did not even know what this was—other than a humiliating, infuriating violation of my privacy and mind. A thought which, even now, the Dark God across from me could probably hear.
Eat whatever you like. Him, if you want, I said to Isanara. I hoped he heard it.
I will eat nothing here, Isanara scowled, spreading her wings wide and ignoring my suggestion. Before I could make another, my familiar was already halfway to the window.
I will bring you back game, she offered.
She lacked fingers to open the windows. I was not going to turn my back on the Dark God. In part, because I did not trust him, and also because my backside was currently and completely bare.