Chapter 48 Evander #2
“Okay,” I tell her. “Settle against me since I can’t put my hands on you. I’m going to need you to help me out of my shirt first, all right? The more skin contact we have, the easier this will go.”
Bryony shifts in my lap, reaching for the fastenings between my wings, making quick work of them. Her hands map the skin she’s uncovering. Tracing over my abs, my pecs, with a deliberate sort of slowness that borders on reverent.
Absolute menace, this girl.
“Enough teasing. Lean against me and let me work.”
She nuzzles her head against my shoulder.
I rest my cheek against her hair and just… breathe. Calm and steady. It’s harder to reach for my power. The shackles have choked it down to guttering embers, but I still feel the spark. It takes more concentration to stoke it higher, hotter, to turn it into something I can use.
Fire sears me with the first surge I push into Bryony. I clench my teeth through the wave and shove the pain down deep. That’s a hurt to deal with when she’s not counting on me.
Because what’s one more lashing for my Chosen?
So I flood every corner of myself with light and heat, with the intent to heal, to soothe, to pleasure—
My girl relaxes as I work, giving herself over to it completely.
Letting me in. Slow and measured, feeding power into her veins.
Her lungs. The secret shadowed places carved out by hurt.
I trail heat and honey-gold light over her hurts in a reverent touch.
Sealing split skin. Soothing the contusions, learning the shape and texture of each as I coax it to fade. Easing the aches.
I drag more power up from that bottomless well inside me and let it sink through layers of dermis and hypodermis, encouraging sluggish blood to reroute. Coaxing splintered bone to fuse, ligaments and cartilage to stitch back together. The internal bleeding takes more concentrated effort.
My magic floods the bond. Stroking, igniting, leaving shuddering ecstasy in its wake. Her breath catches as pleasure winds her up. Each rock and grind of her hips against my cock stoking the fire building low in my gut.
There’s a fierce sort of pride in pushing her to this point. A savage triumph in the knowledge that every shudder and moan is because of me. I did that. I made her feel that.
Bryony throws her head back as she shatters. A choked cry escapes her lips.
“That’s it.” I brush the words against her temple. “Ride it out for me.”
Seeing her lost to bliss, to the wildfire of my magic moving inside her, is nearly enough to undo me. The most exquisite torture.
I could lose myself in this. In watching her and knowing I’m the only one who’s given her this pleasure. I’m the only one who’s seen the expression on Bryony Devaliant’s face when she lets go.
Minutes go by as she shudders through the aftershocks. Her now healed skin sheened in sweat, gilded by the dying firelight.
“I can’t believe you.” Her words slur together. “You were holding out on me.”
I grin. “The offer was always on the table. Not my fault you never took me up on it.”
A soft huff of laughter. “So, how much of your power does Alexios’ leash usually let you access?”
“Usually? About half my full strength. But with these?” The chains clink as I rattle them. “Ten percent, if I’m being generous.”
Her brows shoot up, eyes wide. “Wait. Are you telling me that mind-melting orgasm was you at ten percent?”
“Mmhm. You have no idea the things I’m going to do to you when I have access to all of me.”
Desire floods the bond, hot and hungry. “When these chains come off,” she says, “you won’t leave our bed for a week. I have plans.”
Our bed.
Two words said so simply. As if it’s already an inevitability, the pair of us tangled up in each other long after the dust of this ordeal settles. An unthinking promise of a shared after.
Something squeezes in my chest, too big to be contained even in the body of a god. I need her. I need to be inside her.
“Go.” I jerk my chin toward the bathing chamber. “Get yourself cleaned up. Then you’re going to come back to this bed and let me fuck you until we break it.”
A little shiver goes through her. She slides off my lap and pads into the adjoining room, leaving the door open—because of course she does. My Chosen delights in tormenting me.
She’s barely over the threshold before she’s shucking off her torn clothes.
My breath catches at the sight of her. The elegant taper of her waist, her gorgeous tits, those long legs.
She turns the tap for the tub, and steaming water pours forth, and she gives me a view of that luscious ass, and it’s…
It’s the kind of sight that could bring a god to his knees.
Suddenly, I understand the appeal of worship. The base, primitive urge to prostrate myself at her feet and serve her pleasure until she forgets everything but me. My cock. My touch. My mouth.
The metal edges of the shackles dig into my wrists as I flex my hands, nearly driven out of my mind with the visceral need to feel all that wet, warm skin and lay my claim a thousand different ways.
I want to map her body. Learn every scar and blemish and perfect imperfection until I can trace them from memory.
In the bath, Bryony tips her head back with a sigh, rubbing soap into a lather on a washcloth and washing herself with economical motions.
Somehow, that makes it worse—the complete lack of artifice, the unselfconscious way she touches herself.
How she erases the remnants of the night’s brutality, like she hadn’t bled out a piece of her soul for me during that test.
It is, bar none, the loveliest sight in both realms.
Bryony’s eyes stay closed as she runs the washcloth lower, dipping between her legs to clean in firm circles. “You watching?”
“I’m appreciating,” I correct.
“Is there a difference?”
“Watching implies a certain distance.” I shift against the headboard, chains clinking. “What I’m feeling for you right now borders on the religious, except less holy.”
Her violet gaze finds mine across the steam-hazed distance. “Less holy. That’s interesting, coming from a god.”
“Even gods can be brought to their knees by the right kind of temptation.”
“Is that so?” She bites her lip. “What does it take to tempt a god?”
You, I want to say. Just you, existing in the same room as me.
But the words that emerge are different, darker: “Right now? The sight of you touching yourself while I can’t.”
A delicate shiver rolls through her, but she just drops the washcloth and starts rubbing her cunt in firmer circles. “I’m enjoying you like this. All chained up and desperate for it. Maybe I won’t let you touch me at all.”
I lean forward, pulling against my chains. “Do it harder. Pinch your nipple with your other hand.”
A shuddering inhale, and then she’s obeying, cupping her breast and rolling her nipple between her fingers.
“Good. Now get those fingers nice and deep in your pussy. Show me how you fuck yourself when I’m not there to do it for you.”
Her eyes stay on mine as she plunges two fingers in, head thrown back as she works herself.
I let out a sigh. “You’re so pretty when you do that.”
It’s the biggest tease, being forced to sit here and watch her take her pleasure while I’m chained up. She rides her hand in a slow, sinuous roll of her hips. I feel the echoes of her building release through the bond, each spark of heat. Feel her climbing higher, chasing relief—
“Come,” I tell her, lacing my voice with the dregs of my power and shoving it at her. “Now.”
“Oh, gods,” she gasps.
I soak in her expression: the half-parted lips, the delicate furrow between her brows as she bucks against her palm. Her lashes flutter shut as she climaxes. A fierce, savage pride detonates in my chest because that’s all for me. She’s all mine.
Her chest heaves as she comes down. Her eyes are soft and hazy when they find mine again.
“Get over here,” I say. “After what Alexios put you through, you deserve to be worshipped properly. Don’t bother drying off.”
Water sluices over her curves as she rises from the bath. She steps out and walks toward me with all that glistening skin on display, pristine and wet and prettily flushed, nearly vibrating with pent-up need.
“Crawl up here and let me taste that pussy,” I murmur.
She braces a hand on the headboard as she climbs up to settle her knees on either side of my face. Close enough for me to feel the heat of her, smell the sweet scent of her arousal.
Bryony jolts with a sharp gasp as I kiss her pussy. The first taste of her bursts across my tongue, sweet and filthy. I’m greedy for her. For every moan and shudder. I flatten my tongue and drag it over her clit in a slow circle, again and again, varying the pressure.
She grinds down. Her fingers twist in my hair, holding me right where she needs me. I commit to memory all the places that make her sigh, that have her squirming, nails sinking into my scalp as she rides my face. And it’s a devastation—a kind of unmaking I’ve never known to be used like this.
This is what worship should be, I think, drunk on the taste of her. Not blood on altars. Not fear and genuflection. This.
By the time she’s shuddering apart on my tongue, I’m so hard I ache with it.
“I need you,” I pant. “If I’m not inside you in the next thirty seconds, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Bryony doesn’t hesitate. Just shimmies down my body until she can get my trousers unbuttoned, shoving them down to free my cock.
I exhale sharply at the first tentative stroke of her hand.
My hips buck into the contact. She lowers herself onto me, both of us groaning at the slick glide.
The weight of her on top of me is hot and perfect, and I can’t do anything but lie there and let her use me.
She sets a slow pace. Hips rising and falling, each downstroke forcing me deeper. I am drunk on it. Drunk on her. Reduced to base instinct, to the animal roar of mine mine mine.