Chapter 31 #2
We were both at each other’s mercy. Both starving for release, both hungry in a messy, heated way that didn’t fit with any proper, royal agenda.
So when I decided I needed him inside of me, I didn’t speak, didn’t need to; I merely rose onto my knees and positioned myself so I was hovering over his lap.
He rose with me, his hands moving under my ass, supporting me as I rocked myself back and forth along his hardened length.
“Keep watching,” he whispered, and I did—and so did he, his eyes heavy with lust as he finally guided himself into me. He took me slowly, gaze burning into the reflection of us in the mirror, savoring every reaction as he pushed inside inch by inch.
He was so controlled. So composed. It was both maddening and unspeakably arousing, how focused he seemed to be on making me feel every sensation to the fullest extent.
Maybe it was the fear, the uncertainty that loomed over every decision we made lately—and that need to keep control so that our magic didn’t spiral into something dangerous.
I’ll keep you safe, he’d promised me.
But after a night spent carefully watching every step, every word, every move that I made as I balanced a new crown on my head, I didn’t care about safe any longer.
I lowered myself more fully onto him, drawing a groan and a curse as he throbbed against the deepest parts of me.
I leaned back, pressing as much of my body to his as possible.
Stretching my arms back as well, I hooked them around his neck, holding on as I worked my hips in an increasingly eager dance.
For a moment, he barely moved. He just let me grind against him, his hands on my hips, helping me balance.
I watched him in the mirror—his head falling back, lips moving with silent curses.
His fingers digging deeper and deeper into my skin.
His composure slipping, bit by bit, until he reached his breaking point.
He abruptly adjusted his position, stretching his legs out to give him better leverage.
Then he grabbed my arms from around his neck and twisted them against my back instead, pushing my breasts out, displaying them front and center in the mirror as he started to thrust, to control the way I rose and fell against him.
He buried his face in the crook of my neck, alternating between soft kisses and devouring ones, and occasionally just letting his lips rest against my skin as he breathed me in.
But he never went long without lifting his eyes and taking in the sight of what he was doing to me.
His gaze was wild with desire whenever it swept over the mirror image of my body—so completely, obviously enraptured by me that it pushed me a little closer to the edge every time I watched him drink me in.
“Now you get to see the beautiful sight I do whenever I’m moving inside of you like this.
Do you see why I’m obsessed with you?” His voice was low, each word sending heat coiling through me, making me clench more tightly around him.
He gave several quick thrusts in response to that tightening, keeping my arms pinned behind my back so my breasts heaved up and down with the force of his pounding.
His gaze followed their movement—and soon mine did, too.
A wicked smile curved his lips. “Does it turn you on, watching them bounce while I fuck you?”
My reply was somewhere between a breathless yes and a whimper.
Because gods, it did. But it was more than a physical desire burning through me.
It was the freedom of it that I craved. The way I felt exposed, yet safe.
There was nothing proper or expected about what we were doing—all thought of royal duties and divine destinies faded whenever we were together like this—yet it felt indescribably, undeniably right.
Even as our magic stirred beneath our skin, and I held my breath and hoped it wouldn’t turn into a more violent storm.
But even if we were consumed by that storm, I don’t think it would have mattered.
I don’t think I would have stopped.
Because there was nothing I wanted more than this.
Nothing more than him.
He didn’t stop as the first swirls of shadow lifted from my skin, but his thrusts did grow gentler, more deliberate.
He guided me into the more intimate position we’d started in, both of us on our knees with him filling me inch by throbbing inch.
I reached back again, this time wrapping my arms around his waist, relaxing against his firm body and leaving myself completely at his mercy.
The slower pace he set made it easier to watch what he was doing. To study the commanding grip he took on my shoulder with one hand, pushing me down to meet each of his thrusts, while his other hand roamed over my front side, teasing every inch he could reach before finally sliding between my legs.
He continued driving into me with slow, deep motions, but his fingers quickly worked up to a rougher, more insistent rhythm. His mouth was equally rough, sucking on my neck until I was squirming, desperate for release.
Every part of my body was aflame by this point. My thighs squeezed tighter together with every building wave of my orgasm, with every balance-rocking clench of my insides.
“Eyes open and face forward,” Aleks rasped, his hand moving from my shoulder to my jaw, lifting my gaze. “So you can see how beautiful you look when I make you come.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them. My awareness was slipping, giving way to hazy bliss. But I did as he said, fixing my eyes on the mirror.
And that was all it took: one last glimpse of him at my back. Of his fingers falling from my jaw to bracket my throat, all of him clearly just a breath away from coming completely undone…
I shattered.
He quickly followed, holding me against him until he’d given every last drop of himself to me—and then for several minutes after, until my body finally stopped shaking.
He lifted me up, twisting me around so we were facing one another, before dragging me back into his lap. I pulled the blanket up around us. We sat like that for several minutes, tangled up in one another, hearts still pounding as we slowly came down from our high.
With a sigh, I leaned my head against his chest and closed my eyes, the exhausting activities of the day finally catching up to me.
“You should go to sleep.”
“I am sleeping,” I grumbled against him.
His chest shook with a quiet laugh. “In an actual bed, Chaos.”
Still grumbling, I untangled myself from him and let him help me to my feet, and then through the motions of cleaning ourselves up. I dressed for bed, but he pulled on a proper shirt and pants and went to check in with the guards around my room.
He was gone for no less than a half hour. Despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t fall asleep without him in the room, and I was moments away from getting up and going to patrol the halls myself when he finally returned.
I shot upright as he closed the door and locked it behind him. “Anything to report?”
He shook his head. But just as before, he didn’t seem convinced that all was as well as it appeared on the surface.
Did he sense something that my guards couldn’t?
I clutched the sheets to my chest, working the silk anxiously between my fingers, thinking.
“Rest,” Aleks urged.
“…What about you?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Me either,” I yawned.
His lips quirked in a small smile. “Liar.”
I was too tired to argue.
He settled down in the nearby chair—close enough to provide some measure of comfort. I watched him for a minute more before giving in and curling up with my pillow.
I drifted in and out of sleep.
Every time my eyes fluttered open, I saw Aleks still sitting up, wide awake and staring at the door. No matter what I said to him, our conversation always ended the same way: with him reassuring me, over and over, that he was fine, that he wasn’t tired, until I lost the battle to stay awake.
The fourth time I woke, I found him on the other side of the room, pulling on his coat.
“...Aleks?”
He didn’t answer me this time.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, looking toward the window, trying to gauge the hour. It felt like it was still the middle of the night.
“Where are you going?” I asked, sitting up.
He paused only for a moment before continuing to fasten the buttons of his coat, then moving on to his boots, which he pulled on with methodical detachment.
“Look at me, Aleks.” I got out of bed and started toward him, but lost my courage after only a few steps, bracing my hand against the dresser as my balance swayed. “Please?”
Finally, he finished dressing and turned in my direction. It was almost more painful than him keeping his back to me—the way his gaze slid past mine, either unable or unwilling to hold it.
I was barely breathing as he walked over to me. As he took my hand, his thumb stroking my palm for a moment. My lungs felt like they might shrivel up completely when he finally glanced up and met my eyes.
“I would give anything to keep you safe,” he said.
“…I’m safe with you,” I whispered.
“I don’t think so, Nova. Not anymore.”
I started to disagree.
Then, I noticed his wrists. The faint, twilight-hued magic circling them.
He rolled up the sleeves of his coat to reveal veins glowing with the same purplish light, all of it darker than I’d seen it thus far; it was impossible not to think of a void as I stared at it, of a cold nothingness waiting to consume everything.
And the scars on his chest—what I could see peeking through the open collar of his shirt and coat—had darkened as well, like fresh bruises blossoming all across his skin.
He stared at his palm, watching a strand of violet-black magic coil and writhe against it.
Clenching his hand into a fist, he met my eyes again.
“If I’m the reason they’re here, if they’re planning on triggering something dangerous through me, then I think…
I think it’s better if we keep our distance.
At least until I figure out what’s going on.
And if I leave, then perhaps I can lure them away from you. ” His voice was chillingly calm.
I tried to mirror that composure.
But my shadows were rising, unbidden, curling around my arms and legs. Like they sensed a threat. And no matter how I tried to push them down, they wouldn’t settle.
Aleks turned away, making it halfway to the door before I finally found my voice.
“You’ve fought it this long,” I said, taking a step after him. “You’re stronger than whatever they did to you. Stronger than whatever they’re still trying to do to you. I know you are.”
He paused with his hand on the doorknob.
The moment stretched between us like a drawn blade, sharp and poised to cut through my heart.
He looked back at me.
But whatever his reply would have been, I never heard it—because we were interrupted by shouting in the hallway outside, followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the door.