25. Kieran
Kieran
When I woke again, the room was dark except for the lamp beside the bed.
Astra sat beneath it with her head bowed and one hand wrapped around my wrist. Someone had washed the blood from her face. A faint red stain remained at the cuff of her sleeve, and her hair had dried in tangled strands around her shoulders.
I watched her until the bond stirred.
It was quieter than pain. Quieter than the Pull had ever been. Warmth moved through the completed line, carrying the edge of her exhaustion and the stubborn vigilance that had kept her in that chair long after anyone sensible would have slept.
Her fingers tightened.
“You’re awake.”
“Apparently dying didn’t take.” My voice scraped on the words.
The joke landed badly. I saw it in her face.
“Sorry,” I said. “Too soon.”
“Much too soon.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Most of the day. The healer checked you twice. She says the Mark is holding.”
I flexed my right hand beneath hers. Every finger answered cleanly. No tremor. No numbness spreading from the smallest knuckle inward. I lifted my arm, waiting for the familiar catch in my shoulder, and found only the pull of tired muscle.
Astra followed the movement with her eyes.
“Does it hurt?”
“No.”
I said it again because neither of us trusted the first answer.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
For three years, pain had occupied the joint so completely that its absence felt like a room after someone had taken out all the furniture. I rolled my shoulder carefully. Skin moved over bone. The Mark warmed, whole and quiet beneath it.
Astra’s breath left her.
“Come here,” I said.
She moved from the chair to the edge of the bed. I made room for her, though there was nowhere near enough, and she leaned down until her ear rested over my heart.
I laid my hand against the back of her head.
Once, there had been another rhythm beneath my pulse. A patient ticking that grew louder whenever the fracture advanced. I had heard it in silent rooms, in the pause before sleep, in every embrace I ended before someone could notice how carefully I was breathing.
Now my heart beat alone.
Astra listened for a long time.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she said.
The words warmed the line between us, but grief remained caught beneath them. I felt the room as she remembered it: the cold of my skin, Hale’s hand at my throat, the healer reaching to pull her away.
“You found me.”
“I didn’t know if it would work.” She lifted her head. “I knew the line could carry some of the strain. Everything after that was instinct.”
“You waited for me to choose.”
“I had to.”
“I know.” I touched the completed line at her wrist. “I remember.”
Her fear eased a little, though it did not leave. I could feel how easily it might return, how close she still was to the moment when my presence had begun to disappear beneath her hands.
“Where are Hale and Caspian?” I asked.
“The healer sent them back to their rooms. She told Marrow separating us before she understood the new bond would be foolish. Hale argued until she threatened to have him removed.”
“That sounds like him.”
“Caspian didn’t argue.” She looked down at our hands. “He felt the bond close. He was relieved. And it hurt him.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt him.”
“I know. So does he.”
“He stayed until you woke,” she said. “He needed to see that you knew me.”
“And then he left you here with me.”
“He did.”
“You should talk to him.”
“I will.” Her thumb moved across my knuckles. “But I’m not leaving you alone tonight.”
I had spent years preparing people to leave me. I had made it easy where I could, retreating behind charm whenever concern came too close to the truth. Astra had never been especially interested in what I made easy.
“All right,” I said.
She studied me, waiting for the joke that usually followed surrender. I let the silence stand.
Her palm returned to my chest. She watched it rise with my breathing. When she looked at me again, her gaze dropped to my mouth.
“You nearly died last night,” she said.
“I remember that part too.”
“Kieran.”
“I’m tired. I’m sore. And I want you.” I drew my thumb along her lower lip. “If you want to sit there and listen to my heart all night, I want that too.”
“I want you,” she said.
She leaned down and kissed me.
She kept one hand over my heart, feeling each beat beneath her palm while her mouth opened against mine. I drew her lower lip between my teeth. The small sound she made went through the new line and settled hot beneath my ribs.
She stretched out beside me and gathered the thin linen shirt in both hands. I caught her wrists before she could pull it over my head.
“Shoulder,” I reminded her.
Fear flashed through the line.
“Because it’s stiff,” I said. “That’s all.”
I guided her hands to the ties instead. She opened them one by one and eased the fabric aside. The mended Mark ran green-gold over my shoulder, unbroken beneath her fingertips.
She traced it once.
“Still here,” I said.
“I know.”
She kissed the place where the fracture had been.
I closed my eyes. Her mouth was warm against skin the fracture had emptied of feeling. She followed the green-gold line toward my chest, and the bond carried the relief she could not keep from trembling into each kiss.
“Tell me if anything hurts,” she whispered.
“I will.”
“Honestly.”
“A cruel condition, but yes.”
She gave me a look that belonged to the Astra I knew, impatient and alive, and reached for the fastening at my waist.
Her hand closed around my cock.
I sucked in a breath. She stroked me slowly, watching my face with maddening attention, checking every change in it for pain. There was none. Only the heat of her palm and the clean shock of wanting without a clock starting somewhere beneath it.
“Still honest?” she asked.
“Pain is no longer the problem.”
Her mouth curved. She bent and kissed me while her hand moved again, firmer this time. My hips lifted before I could stop them.
I put my hand at her waist and turned us onto our sides.
The mended shoulder met the mattress beneath me.
Astra went rigid. “What are you doing?”
“Lying down.”
“On that side.”
I shifted my weight against it. The joint held without a spark of pain. Through the bond, she felt the truth of it before I spoke.
“It works,” I said.
She touched my shoulder, then ran her palm down my arm, checking the whole length of it.
I caught her hand and kissed the center of it. “Turn around.”
She did, slowly, settling with her back against my chest. I loosened the ties at her dress and drew the fabric from her shoulders. The shift followed, pushed down beneath her breasts and over the curve of her stomach.
I kissed the nape of her neck. Her head tipped aside, giving me more room, and I followed the line of her shoulder while my hand closed around one breast.
Her nipple tightened beneath my palm. I rolled it between my fingers, feeling the answering heat pass through the bond.
“Kieran.”
I loved my name in her mouth when she was trying not to make noise.
My hand traveled lower. She opened her thighs before I reached them.
She was already wet. I slid my fingers through her slowly, coating them before I circled her clit. Her hips pressed back against mine, trapping my cock between us.
“There,” she breathed.
I kept the pressure steady. With my mouth at her throat and her body fitted along mine, I felt every change in her breathing. The bond gave me the rest: the rising heat, the pleasure tightening low inside her, the exact moment she needed more.
I slipped one finger into her, then a second. She reached behind us and caught my hip, pulling me closer as she moved against my hand.
“Like that,” she said.
I curled my fingers and worked her clit with my thumb. Her legs opened farther beneath the tangled dress. Each stroke made her body tighten around my fingers, and each answering pulse came back through the green-gold line.
Her hand found mine between her thighs. She did not stop me. She pressed my fingers harder against her and held them there.
“Don’t slow down.”
I didn’t.
She came against my hand with her teeth set in her lower lip, her body bowing back into mine. The bond carried the pleasure through both of us, sharp enough that my cock jerked against her hip.
I kept my fingers inside her until the last contraction eased.
Astra turned her face toward mine. I kissed her, tasting the breath she had bitten back.
“Still want me?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her hand reached between us and wrapped around my cock. “Now.”
She lifted her upper leg and guided me to her. I held her hip steady as the head of my cock pressed into her opening.
“Slowly,” I said.
“For your shoulder?”
“For me.”
Astra pushed back.
I entered her an inch at a time, stopping whenever the sensation threatened to pull all control from me. She was hot and slick around me, her back tight against my chest, her hand still holding me where our bodies joined.
When I was fully inside her, neither of us moved.
The completed bond opened between us. I felt the lingering terror of the morning and her guilt for Caspian, but beneath both ran the need that had brought her into this bed: to feel me alive around her, wanting her, with no part of me already leaving.
She felt my answer before I put it into words.
“I’m here.”
Her fingers tightened around mine.
I drew back and pushed into her again.
The position kept us close. My chest moved against her back with every breath. My mouth found the place below her ear while my hips settled into a slow, deep rhythm.
Astra reached behind to grip my thigh. “Harder.”
I gave her what she asked for.
The bed shifted softly beneath us as I drove into her. The mended shoulder bore my weight. My arm stayed locked around her waist, holding her against every stroke, and still there was no pain.
I slid my hand between her thighs again.
Her breath broke. “Yes.”
I circled her clit in time with my hips. Pleasure moved through the bond in both directions, her body telling me what she needed before she could say it, mine answering until the distinction between giving and taking began to blur.
Astra’s hand closed around my wrist. The green-gold lines aligned there, hers over mine, and light spilled across our joined skin.
“Kieran, I’m—”
Her words dissolved into a low cry as she came around me. Her body clenched hard, drawing me deeper, and the sensation carried through the bond with enough force to break what remained of my control.
I buried my face against her shoulder and came inside her.
For a while we stayed joined, her body softening by degrees within the circle of my arms. My pulse beat against her back. Hers answered beneath my palm.
I flexed the arm beneath her.
It held.
When she eased away, she reached for the folded cloth beside the water bowl. I caught it first.
“You should be resting,” she said.
“So should you.”
I wet the cloth and cleaned her slowly. She watched me through half-closed eyes, one hand resting on my thigh, and let me care for her without argument.
Afterward, she lay along my side with her hand spread over my heart. The room smelled of lamp oil, cold stone, and the faint clean sweetness of her skin. Beyond the secured door, a steward’s footsteps passed and faded.
“They’re going to come for us tomorrow,” she said.
“I know.”
“You sound very calm about that.”
“I’m not calm.” I drew the blanket higher around her. “I just don’t want to give them tonight too.”
I settled her more carefully against me.
Astra’s breath warmed my throat. Her hand rose and fell over my heart, and no ticking answered beneath it. I listened until sleep took the sound from me.