Chapter 33
AMEIRAH
Despite the handsy touches and filthy words we exchanged on the way to the baths, the moment I submerged my body, I hissed at the vicious sting in my side.
“I’m fine,” I said when Varidian’s eyes darkened, pure wrath overriding his lust.
“I should have been the one to kill my father,” he growled, casting off his dusty leathers and sinking into the huge bath inset in the warm stone floor with me. “I would have made it last far longer than you did.”
I chewed my lip. “About that. It can’t be safe to harbour me in the Red Star. People will come looking for me—”
“Let them.” His warm hands found my hips, pulling me into him. Even though the harpoon injury had healed, he was still smeared with blood and the sight of it made me want to set things on fire.
“Do you even understand that I killed a king? It’s the worst kind of treason. I’ll be executed for it—”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“It’s regicide—”
“I know,” Varidian said with a grin, sweeping closer, the water lapping around us kept warm by magic embedded in the stone. His stare simmered, a huskiness in his voice that made me extra sensitive to the hands on my body. “Aren’t you positively murderous, my beautiful, alluring wife?”
“God save us from your obsession,” I groaned. “Varidian, I need you to have some common sense right now.”
“I have sense,” he murmured, catching my lip in his teeth as he stroked over my hips, mindful of my injury.
His palms moulded to my ass, positioning me until our hips aligned.
He was already hard, and the wet slide of skin made his cock jolt against my hip.
“I have the good sense to give my beloved wife several orgasms to ease the pain of the injury she got defending our kingdom.”
“We need a plan—”
“We have a plan.”
“Would you stop interrupting me?” I grumbled, and watched delight turn his eyes to glittering topaz.
Oh, he was goading me. He wanted me angry and blazing; no doubt my wrath was a turn-on.
I tugged the tie from his hair and wrapped dark strands around my fingers, pulling tight.
He shuddered, his mouth parting. “Tell me the plan.”
“Touch me,” he begged. “Please, Ameirah.”
“Tell me the plan, and I will.”
He groaned, his eyes falling shut, long lashes casting shadows across his cheeks.
“My brother is a secretive bastard, but for months he’s been training his ground legion in wyvern flight and gathering secrets on all the power players in Ithanys—and Kalder.
I have no doubt his plan eventually involved the king’s death, even if we’ve escalated their timeline.
He’s going for the crown. Let him have it. ”
I reached through the warm water and wrapped my hand around his hardness, earning a deep, throaty groan with the long stroke I gave him.
I knew Kamaal had secrets and knew there was no love lost between him and Bakshi, but what Varidian described was a rebellion.
The council would never accept him as king—that room was full of the Zalaam queen’s people.
I opened my mouth to tell Varidian about all I’d seen and learned in Cirestia, but he was panting—trembling—and I decided that dark story could wait.
The moment I kissed him, Varidian lifted me from the water and my back met the cold stone of the wall.
“Your leg. The cut you got defending the Red Star,” he said against my mouth, his hands wandering over my thighs as he kissed me, deep and urgent from the first brush of his lips to mine.
I tightened my grip on his hair, taking control of the kiss when he began to draw away.
I kissed him until my lungs burned, until my head threatened to spin.
“Healed weeks ago,” I panted, meeting his glazed eyes and grinning, twisting my hand as I stroked him again. “I missed seeing you like this.”
“Owned completely by you? Aching for more? On the verge of begging?”
I squeezed him from base to tip and found a spot on his throat to drag my teeth. “We can do better than on the verge, husband.”
His groan filled the entire room, his hands squeezing my ass deep enough to leave impressions. “Please,” he breathed. “Please, Ameirah. I missed you too much to wait this long, you’re killing me.”
I kissed his throat, smiling against his damp skin. When one hand left my backside, my toes curled in anticipation of the first touch, and Varidian didn’t disappoint. My husband never did. I crashed my lips into his as the pads of his fingertips circled, sending sparks through every nerve ending.
My body thrummed with heat and the memory of burning up on the rooftop, my deathfyre destroying the medallion, killing the king, was too close for comfort.
So I kissed Varidian until the taste of him drove out the remembered smoke, touched him until his groans replaced the sound of wyvern roars, and rode his fingers until pleasure overrode fear.
“Dearling,” Varidian groaned, then gasped, “Menace,” when I lightly ran my fingernails over the length of him.
“I want you now.”
“No.” His fingers sped, his body holding mine captive against the wall. “Not until you’re gasping my name.”
“If I gasp it now, will you give me what I want?”
His laugh vibrated over my throat as he kissed me there, then lower, his hot tongue tracing the rise and fall of my collarbones. “No. But I’ll never turn down a pretty gasp from my beautiful wife. Or a plea.”
Everything clenched inside me when his open-mouthed kisses found the juncture of my neck and shoulder, so sensitive as his fingers stroked hot, aching flesh.
“Varidian, please. Please.”
He groaned, teeth scraping down my chest, his head bowed so he could capture my nipple in his mouth. The sensation made me arch off the wall, my body sliding against hot, slick muscle until I could hardly stand it. How quickly I’d lost my control. How quickly he commanded me.
Two fingers glided inside me, slow as he made sure to brush every sensitive spot until my legs trembled. I dug my fingernails into the back of his neck and forgot about every injury we bore.
“Give me my favourite sound,” he said against my breast, his tongue lapping, sending sparks directly to where I clenched around his fingers. “Let me hear the cries of my wife coming for me.”
The words were enough to push me right to the edge, and I panted there, shuddering, so close.
I might have whimpered the words because Varidian sank his teeth into me, sharp canines and all.
And as his thumb swept urgent circles over my clit, my eyes rolled back and pleasure struck, as fierce and all-encompassing as a wildfire.
It burned away the weeks of distance, the fear and panic, the dungeon and Riverren and the rooftop where I killed a king. Nothing existed except this, except pleasure so intense it rewrote history.
“Ameirah,” Varidian grunted, one hand finding the back of my neck as he pressed me flat to the wall, the other trapped between us.
His hands shook, and my toes curled at the stimulation, but I only realised it was involuntary when I sighed and melted against him and his hands kept trembling. “I can feel you. I can feel you.”
I dropped my head onto his shoulder, my breathing slowing. “Well, your fingers are still inside me.”
He shook his head, flicking droplets onto my shoulders. “Ameirah. I can feel you. I felt your release as if it was my pleasure. I can feel you now, sated but with simmering need, as if you want more.”
“You know I do,” I murmured, trying to get my mind to function again. “Are you sure you’re not imagining it?”
“I’m sure,” he said with enough snarl to his words that I believed him, stroking his shoulders with soothing gestures and slowly aware of the sting at my breast. “It’s like my awareness of you with the marriage mark, but so much clearer. Intense.”
He relaxed against me with I ran my fingers through his wet hair, though his breathing remained fast.
“There are old stories, no more than legends now,” I murmured, trying to reach through my chest to feel his emotions.
All I found was my own lazy satisfaction and a bright spark of curiosity.
“Fae who could sense each other, not just their locations, but their feelings, their pain, their needs. Fae who shared bonds that went far deeper than anything we know now. Bondmate warriors who could share power and strength. Soulmates whose love was eternal and unbreakable. Platonic heartmates whose friendship never wavered, who always knew when the other was in trouble.”
“You and your stories,” Varidian said so fondly and with so much love that my chest grew full to bursting. “You think our marriage has grown into one of these legendary bonds?”
I shrugged, splayed my hands over his chest, tracing the ink and scars there but avoiding the new scar. “Dark legends have been reborn. The lightning soul has returned. Why not mates too?”
“I’d say that was wishful thinking if I couldn’t feel your awe, your hope.” He kissed me once, twice, then returned to my mouth for more.
“What do I need right now?” I asked, heat and affection blooming as our gazes locked.
“Are you testing me, dearling?”
“Testing the bond,” I corrected, and felt a giddy rush at the idea of being bonded to Varidian.
Why shouldn’t we have this, when so many myths had come back to life?
Why shouldn’t we have something light and good, when all that had been reborn was darkness and death?
Self-hatred tried to rise, telling me I didn’t deserve this, that I was a killer who deserved only bad things, but I imagined driving a sword through the chest of that voice.