Chapter Thirty-seven
THEA
T ime slowed, stilled entirely.
Because I fucking love you.
The rough words hung between them, seizing Thea’s heart in an unforgiving fist.
The only truth she needed to hear from him.
‘You… you love me?’ she murmured, her chest caving in.
Wilder gazed down at her, still covered in blood and gore, his silver stare unwavering. ‘You know I do.’ He pressed the flat of his palm to her chest gently. ‘You feel it, here.’
She did.
In her heart, in her bones, she felt it.
And the way he looked at her… Everything he felt shone in his eyes, but there was no expectation, no weight on her with the uttering of those words from his lips.
Only truth. Only love.
Her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Because I love just as I fight. Hard, with everything I have. And I was afraid to lose it all. To lose you.’
‘And now?’
Wilder was still as stone beneath her touch, as though he didn’t believe that she was still standing there, that they were here having this conversation.
‘Now?’ he breathed, wrapping his hand around hers, pressing it to his chest so she could feel his heart hammering beneath. ‘I’m terrified.’
Thea’s voice was raw when she asked: ‘Is that what it means to love me? To be terrified?’
‘I think that is what it means to love at all,’ he said, brushing his lips over hers, the whisper of a kiss. ‘But it’s more than that, Thea. To love you… is to be free.’
He claimed her mouth with his then, his kiss tender and thorough, causing a ripple of longing to move through her. But there was something else, something beyond desire that had settled deep in her chest.
She broke away, swiping at the tears that stung her eyes. ‘I wish we had met when we were younger, so we could have had more time together.’
Wilder smiled as he ran his thumb along the line of her jaw and seemed to stare into her soul.
‘When I was younger I didn’t know what it was to look at a woman and want to fall to my knees,’ he told her.
‘When I was younger I didn’t know a woman could make me feel powerful and powerless in the same breath.
When I was younger, I didn’t know a woman could bring me back from the darkness. ’
Thea exhaled shakily. ‘A woman can do all of that?’
‘Not any woman. There is only one. There has only ever been one.’
And then Wilder kissed her, fiercely this time. His hands slid down her back, cupping her backside as he lifted her to him, her thighs parting around him. Her Warsword carried her to the nearby spring. He didn’t break their kiss, not even as he stepped down into the spring, fully clothed.
Warm water surged around them and still they didn’t break apart.
Thea couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t kiss or breathe him in fast enough. She was torn between wanting to devour him and wanting to savour this beautiful thing between them, her body turning to liquid beneath his touch.
Wilder was so hard against her, the pressure of his erection causing her heart to stutter as he ground against her.
She tangled her fingers in his hair and scraped her nails down the muscles of his tapered back, where beneath his shirt, the ancient language of the Furies spelt in ink: Glory in death, immortality in legend . A vow; a motto to live by.
Thea answered every stroke of his tongue with her own, moaning against his lips.
He lowered them both into the water, finding a ledge somewhere beneath the surface. The heat of the spring swallowed them, their messy clothes billowing around them before Wilder seized the hem of her shirt and peeled it over her head, tossing it onto the rocks beside them. His own followed.
‘We couldn’t have taken these off before getting in?’ she joked.
But Wilder’s eyes darkened at the sight of her hard nipples through the band around her chest. ‘Clothes needed washing anyway,’ he said roughly, and pulled the band down.
Cool air kissed her breasts, teasing her already aching nipples, and Wilder groaned at the sight before lowering his mouth, biting the soft flesh above and then taking one between his teeth.
Thea cried out, grinding her core against his cock through the layers of fabric between them. Wilder rose suddenly from the water, still clutching her to him as he stripped his pants down, holding her as though she weighed nothing.
The granite length of him sprang free.
‘Take off your pants,’ he told her, at last setting her down so they could remove the last of their clothes. He didn’t need to ask her twice, but she didn’t take her eyes off him as she rid herself of those final layers, and he did the same.
When he stood naked before her, the water surging around his thighs, Thea stared at him, her breasts heaving.
He looked like a war god, still smeared with dirt and blood, his wet muscles gleaming as he reached for her again.
Thea bit her lip, watching his cock bob as he moved towards her. She needed to feel it inside her. She needed him. It was impossible not to gravitate towards him, those silver eyes hooded with desire, that sculpted body glistening with water.
She remembered their situation with a start. In the face of everything else, her own needs suddenly seemed so miniscule. ‘What about Tver? What about the —’
‘Fuck everything else. Nothing else exists but us in this moment, Thea,’ he said. ‘And I mean to have you now, here in this spring. For as long as I can.’
His hand wrapped around her waist, following her curves to the small of her back, just as his other hand slipped between her legs, right down her centre.
‘Fuck everything else,’ she heard herself mutter, her voice husky with need.
‘Yes,’ he murmured, his mouth closing over hers as his fingers teased her clit. ‘Spread your legs for me, Thea…’
The words alone sent a thrill right to her core.
She did as he asked, the water of the spring rippling around their naked bodies. A soft cry broke from her as he slid a finger inside her. His rigid shaft twitched against her and she wrapped a hand around it, stroking up and down, taking her time.
Wilder groaned into their kiss, the sound sending a vibration shuddering through her, causing more heat to swell between her thighs as he fucked her with his fingers.
It wasn’t enough – it wasn’t nearly enough to express the storm roiling inside her.
Thea released his cock to lead Wilder to a deeper section of the spring, where the water rose to her ribs, and there was a slight ledge for her to perch herself on.
She did exactly that, wrapping her legs around the Warsword and drawing his body to hers.
‘I need you,’ she told him breathlessly.
‘You have me,’ he said, his voice raw. ‘You’ve always had me.’
She reached for him, lining up the crown of his cock to her entrance. ‘You’re mine?’ she asked.
He tensed as she sank down onto him, his eyes glazed not just with desire, but with deep, unending love. ‘Beyond reason.’
‘Then I’m yours.’ She lifted herself, only to sink down on him once more, harder this time, allowing him more of her.
‘I asked for nothing in return.’ He tried and failed to stifle a moan as she moved against him again.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Thea allowed. ‘But you have me all the same…’
His throat bobbed, and he stilled them. ‘What are you saying, Thea?’
Emotion threatened to overwhelm her, to drown out the words she had wanted to say for weeks, the words she had wanted to echo back to him the second he’d said them to her.
‘I’m saying I love you, too,’ she told him, kissing him roughly.
Wilder’s body shuddered around her – and then, he became a man unleashed.
He thrust into her, hard and deep. Thea cried out, heat blooming in her chest, flushing her face, her breasts.
Wilder sank deeper still, making a low, rumbling sound of desire as he did.
Gods, she would never get enough of the sounds he made, or the feel of him inside her.
She was no maiden; she had been with other men before, but it had never been like this.
The force of Wilder was all-consuming, her longing for him so insatiable that the rest of the world and its threats fell away.
Leaving only them.
Each made for the other by the Furies themselves.
Wilder’s fingers closed around the base of her skull, grabbing a fistful of her hair and drawing her close, sharp pinpricks of pain sparking and fading.
He devoured her in every sense of the word, the spring water splashing as he fucked her. She arched into him, desperate for more, relishing how every part of them fitted so perfectly together, how he somehow grounded her amid all the chaos.
‘Touch yourself,’ he demanded, leaning back, his silver eyes darkening with need.
Thea looked down at his sculpted chest, the rippling contours of his abdomen, and the V that pointed like an arrow to where they were joined.
Heart hammering, a thrill racing along her bones, Thea reached between them. Her fingers slid down her centre until she found her clit, circling the sensitive spot. She moaned at the contact, at the bolt of pleasure that shot through her.
‘Furies save me,’ Wilder muttered in a guttural voice, watching. ‘I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight.’
His words emboldened her and Thea allowed her head to tip back as she worked herself, her other hand sliding back up her body to squeeze her breast and roll her nipple between her fingers.
‘Fuck…’ Wilder’s hand left her hip and closed around her other breast, mirroring her actions. ‘I could come undone watching you.’
Pleasure and power entwined, and she could barely handle the pressure building within.
‘So come undone.’
‘Not without you,’ he groaned, replacing her fingers at her clit with his own, as though he couldn’t stand the thought of not touching her himself. ‘Never without you.’
At the first brush of his fingers against her centre, Thea’s vision went white.
And then there was only him, as she climbed that ladder of pleasure, higher and higher. Gods, she wasn’t sure she would survive this, survive him.
Her body begged for release, and her heart yearned to lose herself in him. She didn’t hold back, letting her cries of passion echo through the spring, letting the tears spill and track down her face.
Wilder paused inside her, his expression softening. ‘Are you —’
‘I’m alright,’ she murmured against his lips. ‘More than alright. It’s just…’ She struggled to find the words for the shift that had occurred deep in her chest, so she placed his hand there, so her heart beat beneath his touch.
He met her gaze with understanding. ‘I know.’
Thea gathered herself and kissed him. ‘Don’t stop.’
He claimed her mouth, kissing her back, the dark frenzy they had always shared taking hold once more.
Her Warsword radiated power and strength as he moved inside her, as he strummed her clit, coaxing endless spirals of desire into a shattering climax that had her clawing at him, marking him with her fingernails and crying out in a near-sob.
‘Wilder…’
‘Thea,’ he breathed. Then, he was coming too. He erupted inside her with a loud, carnal moan that sent another shiver of pleasure across her skin. The cadence of his strokes changed, becoming longer and more deliberate, as though he were trying to wring out every last ounce of their releases.
He panted against the crook of her neck, resting his brow there as they both tried to piece themselves back together.
‘I knew you’d be the end of me, Althea Zoltaire,’ he murmured.
‘If this is the end, is it so bad?’ she asked, bringing his mouth to hers in a tender, gentler kiss.
‘No.’ He smiled against her lips. ‘It’s not bad at all.’