40. Chapter Thirty-Eight #3
My nightgown shifted as his hand smoothed over my hip, fingers grazing the thin barrier. He drew back just enough to look at me, thumb stroking idly.
He let out a low groan. “And nothing beneath this? You make it far too easy to tempt.”
His kisses left fire down my throat. His hand teased, circling, never giving what I craved. My breath broke into shallow gasps until frustration cracked me open. My voice shook.
“Please, Tairngire.” I muttered, not quite knowing what I was asking for but needing more.
He stilled, smile curving against my skin. “Never thought I’d hear that from your mouth.” His eyes burned, no longer veiled, but…hungry. “You. Begging me.”
Shame and heat tangled, but I couldn’t stop. “I—I want your touch.”
He traced slow circles along the inside of my thigh, holding me hostage in the waiting. His expression softened as he took in my face.
“Where, Aurenya?” He said my name like both prayer and curse. “Tell me where.”
The words ripped free in a desperate plea. “Where it aches.”
For a heartbeat, he stilled. I opened my eyes to find him staring at my face. His eyes burned molten, possessive. An arrogant god stripped bare of his smugness.
Every nerve I had in my body screamed, but still…he didn’t give. My hips shifted helplessly, and he stilled me with a growl. He clucked his tongue, lips brushing my neck. “Stay still. You’ll burn brighter if you suffer for it first.”
“Don’t—” I couldn’t finish the thought. My voice cracked, raw with both frustration at his teasing and a need I didn’t understand.
His teeth grazed my collarbone only to ease the sting with his tongue.
It was a maddening combination. “You’ve read of this in your sacred books.
Pages that tried to tame it.” His fingers slid up my side in a barely-there touch.
“But words don’t show you how it feels.” His thumb pressed against my hip bone, applying the right pressure to make my eyes roll back.
My breath hitched, body arching. He pulled back instantly, denying, taunting.
An exasperated noise escaped me. “Fuck. You.”
He stiffened, his lips against my throat. “Careful with that dirty mouth of yours. I could stop, leave you aching, let you writhe with only your imagination to finish what I started.”
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
His dark chuckle reverberated off the stone walls. “Then I would advise you to mind your tongue.”
His hand hovered just above where I needed it most. His thumb brushed fabric in torturous strokes. Every time I arched into his touch, he only held me down harder, denying me.
“I suggest you apologize for your horrendous manners,” he murmured against my mouth.
My nails bit into his skin, a growl in my throat. It pained me to appease him, but I was just so…what had he called me? Needy. I would say anything to see where this was headed.
“Sorry.” I muttered hesitantly, barely a whisper.
He hummed against my lips. “For what?”
I grit my teeth. I hated him. Truly, I did. When I didn’t answer in a timely manner, he pinched one of my nipples through the thin cloth of my nightgown and gently twisted.
I let out a yelp and forced the words out on a gasp. “For my horrendous manners.”
His eyes blazed, a smug smile forming on his lips. “Good girl.”
Gooseflesh formed across my arms, hearing his condescending praise. Gods, who was I?
Finally, his hand slid where I wanted as he caught my bottom lip with his teeth, a single finger swiping against my slit in a long, slow drag.
“So fucking wet for me,” he groaned.
I stiffened, humiliation and frustration bloomed in my chest in equal measure at his use of the word he’d just chastised me for saying.
What a hypocrite.
I couldn’t linger in my frustration long, however, because his thumb circled a particularly sensitive area, jumbling my thoughts. He teased until a sound tore out of me, it was positively mortifying. I whimpered anyway, chasing the friction.
He tsk’d. “Patience, you remember. Your pleasure is mine to take right now.”
“You can’t just—” The words broke into a cry as he pressed harder, sparks scattering through me.
“Oh, but I can. See, Aurenya…I’ve been patient, waiting to touch you like this,” he murmured between maddening strokes of his finger up and down my most sensitive flesh. “Now it’s your turn to wait while I memorize every inch of you.”
His thumb still circled the bundle of nerves that was on fire with a featherlight touch, then he finally slid a finger inside me and let out a guttural groan, pressing against a place I didn’t know existed. My breaths went shallow, frantic. Heat coiled. My thighs trembled, pressure built tighter.
He breathed into my skin, somehow knowing exactly what I needed.
His mouth brushed my jaw, my throat, then back to my lips.
His kisses were relentless, like he was starved for my skin, stroking his tongue against mine like he wanted to taste my moans.
He dragged his finger in and out of me with agonizing slowness, all while his thumb kept circling that aching spot.
The sensation was too much to bear. I had never felt anything so good in my life.
“Gods,” I let out a ragged gasp.
His teeth grazed my ear, pine invading all my senses. I nearly cried when his fingers stopped moving. “No. Just one,” he growled. “You’ll learn better than to use plurals when I’m between your thighs.”
The possession in his voice only increased my desire. His fingers moved again with innate precision, leading me higher toward a fall I wasn’t sure I was ready for, until every nerve strained against his hold.
“Tairngire,” my voice cracked, desperate, raw.
“Mmm, that’s much better,” he murmured against my throat, lips brushing my pulse. “Let it take you. This is yours.”
The world blurred as the slick sound of his finger moving inside me burned in my ears until the coil inside me snapped. My back arched. A cry spilled free as heat shattered every thought. I was fire and ruin, burning in his hand.
His gaze snapped up and met mine. He didn’t look away. Glowing emerald eyes devoured every tremor, as though my breaking was something he couldn’t look away from.
My hips jerked. My thighs trembled around his hand.
Waves crashed through me. His lips caught my cry with the lowest groan I’d ever heard, like my need was his.
The ecstasy he drew from me was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
I saw constellations behind my fluttering eyelids, an endless mass of stars shining through infinity.
He pulled back only when the waves began to ebb. That wicked smirk deepened at my ruined state, like unraveling me had been the greatest gift in existence.
“Gods above and below…what was that?” I managed to gasp before I could stop myself.
“That,” he leaned close, I could feel the grin on his lips as they brushed my ear, “was what your books cannot teach.”
Only then did he ease his hand away, slow enough to leave me aching in its absence. My breath hitched when he lifted his fingers and sucked the taste of me off them with a groan, eyes never leaving mine.
“Oh, Little Seer,” he whispered, voice roughened with something close to awe. “You have no idea what you’ve just given me.”
He was positively wicked.
Given him?
I lay there shaking, with my chest rising and falling like I’d just run through every forest in all Seven Realms. The sheets clung damp to my skin. Shame seared hot in my cheeks, crawling down into my bones. I shut my eyes tight. Gods, what had I let him do?
I risked a glance toward him. Immediately regretted it.
He lounged beside me, propped on one elbow, head in his hand, staring down with hooded eyes as if all of that had cost him nothing. His other hand still glowed faintly where it had undone me.
“You’re flushed,” he said lowly, amused. “Wrecked. And still beautiful.”
I turned away, bile and fire twisting in my gut. “You.” My voice cracked. “You weren’t supposed to—”
He laughed, a deep rumble that sank into my bones and made a home there. “No,” he admitted, totally unapologetic. “But I’ve never cared much for rules.” His hand brushed my side, so lightly I could have missed it. “And neither, it seems, do you.”
I wanted to scream, to shove him away, to curse his name until the stones shook.
Instead, I was damp and undone, thighs still trembling, skin prickling with the echo of his touch.
My heart throbbed from the devastating words he spoke before he ruined me.
I turned my face away and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked, catching my jaw with the hand he used to undo me, bringing my eyes back to him.
When I didn’t answer he leaned closer, his breath warm against my lips.
“It means you’ve had a taste of the forbidden.
And now you’ll think of it, again and again.
No book, no temple, no rite will ever satisfy you the way this does. ”
A squeaking noise escaped me before I could stop it. His laugh was cruel, but raw too—something honest tangled in it. He tugged the sheets higher, tucking me in with ease, just like he had last time, as though he hadn’t just helped me break every vow I’d ever been forced to keep.
I was still shaking when he swung lazily off the bed. His back glowed faintly, runes alive beneath his skin, dimming only enough to look mortal again. Mist curled at his shoulders, gathering.
He was leaving?! After doing that to me?
Panic, or something like it, flared sharp in my chest. Before I could swallow it down, my voice broke free. “Where are you going?”
The mist stilled, glittering around him. He turned, slow, savoring it. Lips curving upward. “Ah,” he murmured. “So you do care.”
Heat climbed my neck. I so was not ready to admit that. “That’s not what I—”
He closed the distance he created in two strides, with pine and smoke wrapping around me. His voice dropped to a low coax. “Say it. Tell me to stay.”
My lips parted, but nothing came out. I hated this—how easily he smothered my fire. I wouldn’t, couldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing the kind of effect he was beginning to have on me. The game was getting significantly more dangerous, and I was on the edge of losing.
“You can’t. Can you?” His eyes flashed with amusement. “Because then you’d have to admit you want me here, with you.”
The air burned. My nails dug into the sheets, silence betraying me louder than any words. His smirk curved darker, victorious, smug.
“Don’t worry, Aurenya.” He let out a chuckle, the one that I felt deep in my stomach. “Maybe I will someday. And when I do…” He leaned in, breath ghosting my lips, thumb brushing a strand of damp hair from my cheek. “It will be because you admitted it out loud.”
The mist took him, leaving me with nothing but the echo of his words, the intoxicating scent of pine and leather, and thunder in my chest.
I sank back into the pillows, fists tight, and screamed into one. Gods damn him. He knew. He always knew. And worse—
I had wanted him to stay…
I lost the game after all.