Chapter 23 #3
She knelt eagerly on her discarded dress, and this time I knelt with her, pushing her forward onto her hands and sliding my cock between her legs. I was painfully hard by that point. I needed to be inside of her. To feel her clenching around me as I filled her.
But I took my time, dragging my throbbing length over her sensitive folds, occasionally sliding my hand between her legs as well.
“How wet can we make you?” I wondered aloud.
She only moaned in response.
I gave her clit a gentle pinch. “Should we find out?”
This time, she reached for my hand in answer, pressing it more firmly against her as she rose up and sank backwards into my lap.
I held her hip to help her balance. My other hand stayed tangled with the one she had between her legs, encouraging her to keep using me, to keep touching herself exactly the way she wanted to. “Go on,” I breathed against her ear. “Get yourself nice and ready for me.”
She didn’t need any more coaxing than that; she took more control, using not only our hands but her hips, grinding against my lap with increasingly desperate movements.
Before long, I felt my own control slipping. I bent her forward onto her hands once more, dragging my fingertips along her spine as I positioned myself behind her, and then I grabbed her thighs and spread them wider.
Her entire body trembled. “Aleks, please—”
I slammed into her before she could finish.
I don’t think I could have waited another second.
Her back arched as I gripped her hips and pushed deeper, words spilling from her mouth that were mostly unintelligible, save for one: Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
I slipped a hand around her throat. A gentle squeeze, and she gasped and arched more fully, pulling me even deeper inside.
I kept one hand bracketed around her throat. The other clutched her shoulder as I leaned back slightly, giving me the leverage I needed to drive harder. Faster.
There was nothing gentle about either of our movements any longer.
She met me thrust for thrust in a way that felt primal.
Animalistic. Like we were meant to collide, to claim one another.
Like we were a force of nature that couldn’t be stopped, regardless of consequence or reason.
Wave after wave rose from this collision, pushing us higher, closer, until finally, we reached the inevitable shattering point.
The cry that escaped her as she came ripped away what little remained of my own restraint.
With one final thrust, I followed her into a place that was familiar by now, yet still impossible to properly put into words—an ecstasy that was somehow both light and dark, both a wild unraveling and a perfect becoming.
As we floated back down from our high, we both ended up lying on her wrinkled dress, bodies curved around one another.
At some point, I reluctantly blinked my eyes open. The relief coursing through my veins congealed into something heavier as I saw the bits of dark magic peeling from her skin.
After that initial display when I’d first kissed her, there had been no other erratic magic between us.
She had been suppressing her shadows up until this point, I realized.
An impressive display of control that had only slipped at that last second, when her emotions crescendoed along with everything else.
Slowly, silently, we pulled apart.
She rose into a sitting position, calling her shadows back with easy, beckoning motions.
My eyes followed her every movement, memorizing the way the darkness settled against her skin.
Watching it disappear. I’d witnessed it a hundred times before; I don’t know why I couldn’t take my eyes off it now.
Or why that dangerous itching was once more starting beneath my skin, claws of my magic trying to pull toward the surface.
Toward her. A very different kind of desire than the one I’d given into earlier.
I pushed this desire down, and I turned away—even though I wanted nothing more than to just sit and stare at her, to study the flush still coloring her skin, the rise and fall of her breathing, the way she ran her fingers through her disheveled hair.
Getting to my feet, I started to dress. I could feel her watching me, the blissful fantasy around us continuing to unravel.
“Are you okay?”
I paused with my shirt in my hand, tilting my head toward her. “Yes. You just have a way of rendering me speechless, that’s all.”
It wasn’t a lie.
We both knew there was more to it than that, but we didn’t say so. Not just then. Instead, I sat back down beside her, and we both stared into the dying fire until we found the motivation to finish dressing, to make our way back to the palace and slip away to a proper bedroom.
I still had my doubts. It still felt like we were dancing on the edge of a precipice, testing our balance every time we got too close to one another. But I didn’t object when she asked me to stay. Couldn’t bring myself to.
“I sleep better when you’re here,” she said, turning down the layers of soft blankets and silk sheets. Her voice was so quiet I barely heard it. Like a confession, almost.
“Then I’ll stay,” I assured her, nodding toward the bed. I followed her into the covers after only a moment of hesitation.
Of course I’ll stay.
But I remained awake long after she’d fallen asleep, watching the clock tick away the hours and wondering how much longer we could keep our balance.