Chapter 42 #2
The tears broke from Koryn’s eyes. They slid beneath her mask and down her cheeks, falling in fast droplets across the swells of her breasts.
Her fingers gripped mine.
“I love you, Garrick. I should have said it sooner. I should have said it when I knew it after the Devotion Gate. I should have said it every single day, even when I was angry with you, because it never stopped being true.”
She took me apart with words. Stripped away every part of me and exposed the parts that I’d kept inside to protect myself. Then she reassembled me into something new. A man who was worthy of her love.
“Witch,” I groaned, closing my eyes against the intensity.
“That is not the response I was expecting.” Koryn’s entire body began to tremble.
I could not have that. Not unless it was from pleasure.
I’d been so hesitant to touch her, but now I could not stop. I slid my fingers into her hair, tangling them in the mass of rich brown waves. With my other hand, I captured her hip and pulled her flush against me.
“Do you need me to tell you again, witch?” I said, tilting her head back so I could press a kiss to her jaw.
“Then I will. Every day? That is not enough. I will show you I love you with every touch. When you shiver in the night, and I curl around you, I am saying I love you. When the composure I fought so hard to build falters, it is because I cannot keep any part of myself from the woman I love. You have every single part of me, Koryn. Without reservation and without restraint. I will love you every moment that remains to me, be my life mortal or immortal, and when we both pass from this world…”
There was nothing left to separate us. I kissed Koryn for all the time we had lost, and all the time that I prayed we would still have together. I made love to her lips the way I wanted to make love to her body—slow, thorough, with the promise of forever.
“… I will still be there, loving you. Forever,” I said, pressing my forehead against hers.
We stayed there for several heartbeats, sharing breath. We both felt the enormity of what was between us. I let Koryn breathe it in, experience it, believe it.
She slid her hand up my chest, her fingers a brand even through the thick wool of my quilted surcoat. My breath stuttered, but I did not try to calm it. How could I? I wanted her to see just how deeply she affected me.
When she rose onto her tiptoes, I was there to meet her, steadying her with a hand on her hip, tilting her head back so that I could angle myself deeper into her mouth.
Koryn moaned against me, the vibration so exquisite I felt it straight down through my chest, into my stomach, and through my cock.
Damn the gown and the talisman and the Winter Tithe. I was going to spend this night with my Lifebind spread across the bed. Then the windowsill. We’d test the durability of the new wingback chair. Maybe even the hearthrug.
Except that the hearthrug was occupied.
This time, I was the one who moaned. It took every bit of control I’d fought to instill in myself over the past thirty years to draw back.
“Your familiar,” I whispered, even though we’d been speaking at a normal volume before and the dragon had not budged. She was very good at ignoring us when it suited her.
In that moment, she was curled in front of the fire, the sharp spikes along her back lifting with every steady inhale.
Koryn glanced over her shoulder. “She is sleeping.” But then she cringed, her entire face scrunching up. “Not anymore.”
Sure enough, the dragon stretched out her neck and shook out her wings the best she could without fully extending them.
I sighed. Nothing more was going to happen here and now.
But Koryn’s face held more than disappointment. Her eyes had that faraway look that told me she was speaking with her familiar. And the way they widened and then contracted until there was a divot between her brows told me they were arguing.
“What is it?”
Koryn made a low sound in the back of her throat akin to her familiar’s growl.
“She wants to come with us,” she said. Koryn held up her hand before I could respond. “She’s not. She will stay here, far away from Maura and the king.”
The not-so-little dragon hissed. She took up the entire hearthrug where she’d been curled up for her nap, and her citrine eyes were now wide open and glaring at the pair of us.
It had not taken me long to figure out that it was best to stay out of Koryn and Isanara’s interactions—and especially their arguments.
Koryn turned out of my arms to return her familiar’s glare. The silhouette of her hands on her wide hips had me pressing my own eyes closed. I had to get control of myself and my cock.
“Dragons know their own minds.” Syleris’ silken voice came from the corner behind the chair. He stepped out of a pocket of shadow, or materialized from it, however his power worked. He was not exactly forthcoming about the details.
My already tortured cock twitched at the sight of him.
Koryn divided her attention between dragon and god. “I know my familiar,” she said, and then to Isanara, “And she will be staying here.”
Syleris dismissed the pair and slid his eyes to me, instead.
He lifted one dark brow, silken hair falling across it at a rakish angle.
“The color suits you, halfling,” he purred.
I was not about to tell him the same, even though it was true.
He wore the same tight black leather trousers and gleaming over-the-knee boots as always.
But instead of the simple black vest buttoned all the way to his throat, he wore one of gold and silver brocade on a field of black.
It certainly was not buttoned up to his throat.
If it had buttons at all, they stopped at his sternum, revealing a triangle of muscular golden chest to our view.
Koryn seemed to finish her argument with Isanara, turning her hands-on-hips attention to Syleris and pinning him with the same glare. He was, as usual, unbothered.
“Are you planning on whispering your commentary into my head all night?” she asked.
“I am planning on joining you.”
Syleris flicked his fingers, and a mask materialized over half of his face.
Koryn and I’s covered just our eyes. But Syleris had chosen a different style for himself.
The mask cut across his face in a diagonal, from his temple down to the opposite edge of his jawline, leaving one mesmerizing blue-black eye and his lascivious mouth fully exposed.
The mask itself bore no ornamentation at all.
It was matte white, the contrast stark and perfectly suited to his elegant features.
“Are you going to try and command me to remain here, as well?” Syleris asked Koryn. His blue-black eyes dared her to try.
Isanara hissed at him. She didn’t want his company, clearly.
I could not compel a god. I was not sure I wanted to. “You are hardly inconspicuous.” Even in the mask.
“I have ways of diverting attention.”
Koryn huffed out a breath. “You are going to spend the whole night amplifying the worst impulses of everyone in attendance.”
Syleris stepped closer, so that he was within an arm’s length of either of us. “Do not worry, dearests. I am a god of many talents. I will still have plenty of attention for the two of you.”
Koryn slid her eyes to me, our conversation from just a few minutes before still fresh in the air. But before I could think of a reason to keep Syleris away, the bells in the spiral towers of Balar Shan began to ring.
There was no time for debate. Telling the Dark God what to do was pointless anyway.
I held out my hand to Koryn. “The Winter Tithe has begun. Let’s go make our offering.”