35. Jonah
Jonah
The new bond carried Astra back to me before her footsteps reached my door.
Relief moved along the new line, tired and cautious. Whatever Astra had found in Kieran’s room had eased some of her fear. She told me the rest when she entered.
“His pulse is steadier,” she said. “The healer thinks he’ll sleep through most of the night. Caspian is staying with him.”
She closed the door and leaned against it.
The administrator had cleared the corridor, citing Kieran’s need for quiet and my need for treatment. It would hold until the Council answered her orders. No one expected that answer to be kind.
Astra had washed the pencil from Kieran’s shoulder. A gray smear remained along the side of her hand.
“You should be with him,” I said.
“He needs sleep more than he needs me watching him. Caspian stayed.” She looked at the copper light still moving beneath my skin. “I’m where I want to be.”
I had removed my shirt after she left. The fabric had begun to stick to the burns on my forearm, and peeling it away had reopened one of them. Fresh linen covered the worst of the skin. It did nothing to dim the Mark.
Astra crossed the room.
Her gaze moved from the bandage to my face. “Does the bond hurt?”
“No. The arm does.”
Her brows rose at the unprompted admission.
“I’m trying something new.”
Her mouth curved, but weariness kept the expression brief.
I reached for her hand. The moment our palms met, the line warmed. Her relief over Kieran came through more clearly, tangled with anger, exhaustion, and desire she had not attempted to hide.
I hardened against her before I found anything useful to say.
Astra’s gaze dropped between us, then rose to my face.
“Is that the bond?” she asked.
“No.”
This time her smile remained.
I drew her between my knees. She touched the bare skin above the bandage, following the outer curve of the Mark with one finger. Copper light gathered beneath it.
She bent and kissed the place where the Mark disappeared beneath the linen.
The contact went through me with startling force. I caught her hip with my uninjured hand. Her mouth moved higher along my arm, over old scars and newly visible copper, until she reached the inside of my elbow. My breath caught.
She straightened. “Pain?”
“No.”
I put my hand behind her neck and kissed her.
The kiss in this room earlier had torn the last of my suppression open. This one began after the line had closed. I could feel how tired she was in the weight of her body against mine and the slow way her fingers spread across my shoulder. I could also feel how much she wanted me.
I opened the first fastening at her collar.
“Tell me to stop,” I said.
“I won’t.”
“That was not the instruction.”
Astra caught my face between her hands. “I want you, Jonah. I came back because I want to be here. If that changes, I’ll tell you.”
I believed her. My hand stopped shaking against her collar.
I kissed her again and opened the rest of her dress.
We did not hurry. Beyond the door, stewards still occupied the junction, and Marrow was likely composing the report that would condemn all of us by morning. None of that required us to fumble buttons or tear fabric. I drew the dress from her shoulders and let it fall around her feet.
Her shift followed. She lifted her arms, and I pulled the linen over her head with one hand. Her hair caught at the collar and spilled loose when the fabric cleared it.
I had remembered her naked on the salle mats more often than discipline permitted me to admit. But I had never seen her like this, with the completed bond carrying every unguarded part of my response to her and returning hers.
Astra stood between my knees, bare and flushed from my attention. I put both hands at her waist.
Pain pulled through the injured arm. She felt it through the bond and reached for the bandage.
“Don’t,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“I’m not pretending it doesn’t hurt. I’m asking you not to stop touching me because it does.”
She considered that, then rested her palm against my chest.
“You’ll tell me if it gets worse.”
“I will.”
I drew one breast into my mouth.
Her breath left her sharply. My hand spread over the other, thumb passing across the nipple until it tightened. She gripped my shoulder and arched closer, giving me more of her weight.
The bond carried her pleasure as warmth rather than instruction. I did not need it to tell me what she liked. Her body did that plainly: the shift of her hips, her fingers tightening, the small sounds she made when my tongue moved over her again.
I kissed down the center of her stomach.
Astra looked at the floor, then at my arm. “You are not kneeling on stone with that injury.”
I turned us toward the bed before she could continue. She sat at its edge, and I lowered myself onto the folded blanket in front of her.
“Better?”
“Marginally.”
I put my mouth against the inside of her knee.
Her legs opened.
The scent of her reached me when I moved closer. She was already wet, the inner skin of her thighs warm beneath my hands. I kissed one side, then the other, feeling the muscles tighten before my mouth reached where she wanted it.
“Don’t tease me.”
I looked up.
Astra’s hair had fallen over one shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed, and one hand gripped the blanket beside her. She held my gaze as I put my mouth on her.
Her head tipped back.
I drew my tongue slowly through her, tasting her before settling over her clit. The first firm stroke pulled a broken breath from her. I repeated it and felt her thighs tighten around my shoulders.
The bond heated with her. Pleasure moved through it in warm pulses that deepened whenever my tongue found the pressure she wanted.
I kept my attention on her body rather than the bond: the quickening rise of her stomach, the tremor beginning in her legs, the way her hand left the blanket and entered my hair.
She did not guide me gently.
I held her hips and gave her my mouth without restraint.
Astra’s heel pressed into my back. Her hips lifted from the bed, and my name broke apart in her throat as she came. I kept my tongue against her through each contraction, easing only when her fingers loosened in my hair.
Her breathing filled the room.
I rested my cheek against her thigh and looked up at her.
“Do not look pleased with yourself,” she said.
“Too late.”
She pulled me up by the shoulders and kissed me. Her mouth opened over mine without hesitation, tasting herself there. The force of the kiss brought me between her legs, my knees against the bed frame and her thighs closing around my hips.
Her hand moved down my stomach and opened the fastening at my waist.
My cock was hard enough that the first stroke of her hand bordered on pain.
I caught my breath against her throat.
“Still the arm?” she asked.
“Not the arm.”
She stroked me again, slower, her thumb passing over the head. I pressed my mouth beneath her ear and let myself move into her hand.
For years I had known exactly how much force to permit, how much desire could show in my face, how quickly to master any physical response before another person noticed it.
Astra watched all of it now. The bond left nowhere for the wanting to retreat, and I had expected that exposure to feel dangerous.
Her hand tightened around me. I pushed into her palm.
I pushed her gently back onto the bed.
She moved farther up the mattress and drew me with her. I settled between her thighs, keeping my weight on one knee and my uninjured arm.
“Is this what you want?” I asked.
Astra reached between us and guided the head of my cock through the wetness between her legs.
“Yes.”
I entered her slowly.
Her body opened around me by degrees, hot and slick from my mouth. I watched her face as I pressed deeper, stopping when her breath caught and continuing when her legs tightened around my waist.
I pressed in until our hips met. The line flared.
Astra felt it too. Her eyes opened, and her hand found my wrist against the bed.
The completed bond carried more than pleasure.
I felt the remnant of her fear in Kieran’s cell, the shock of all three lines settling into place, and the exhaustion she had been moving through since the bridge.
She felt the years of suppression still echoing through my body and the disbelief of being inside her with nothing held beyond her reach.
I bent and kissed her.
“Keep looking at me,” she whispered against my mouth.
I drew back and pushed into her again.
Her nails pressed into my shoulder. I kept the first strokes slow, learning the angle that made her thighs open farther and the depth that pulled a low sound from her. When she lifted her hips to meet me, I let the rhythm quicken.
The bed struck softly against the wall.
Astra caught my lower lip between her teeth. “I can take more.”
I gripped her hip and drove deeper.
Her breasts moved against my chest when I bent over her, and her mouth stayed close enough that every broken sound touched my lips. The line burned between our wrists. Her pleasure reached me through it without replacing the pressure gathering in my own body.
I slid my hand beneath her and lifted her hips. The change in angle made her cry out. She covered her mouth, glancing toward the door.
I caught her wrist without pulling. Her gaze moved from the corridor to my face. Then she lowered her hand herself.
I kissed the center of her palm and kept it beneath mine against the bed.
Then I drove into her again.
Astra’s rhythm broke first. Her legs locked around me, and her muscles tightened around my cock in quick, hard pulses. I felt her climax through the bond a breath before it showed in her face, the pleasure striking through both of us while she held me deep inside her.
I kept moving through it, slower now, each contraction pulling at what remained of my restraint.
She opened her eyes.
“Jonah.”
Hearing my name in her voice pulled the last of my control loose.
I buried myself in her and came inside her, my forehead pressed to hers, my hand gripping the curve of her hip. Copper light surged along both our arms and then settled into a low, steady glow.
For a while I remained over her, breathing hard, careful not to let the injured arm collapse.
Astra touched my face. “Come down.”
I eased out of her and lay beside her.
She turned into me at once. I drew the blanket over us and settled her head against my chest. The new bond remained open, quiet now, carrying the soft aftershocks of pleasure and the sleep overtaking both our bodies.
My Mark still showed in full.
Astra traced one copper channel from my wrist toward the bandage. I watched her fingers move over skin I had spent most of my life keeping covered.
“It’s quieter,” I said.
“The bond?”
“My head.”
She lifted her face to look at me.
“I thought letting the Mark surface would make everything louder,” I said. “It was the effort of hiding it that made the noise.”
Astra rested her palm over the completed line.
Beyond the door, the Tower remained awake. Boots crossed the junction. A key entered a lock and withdrew without turning. Somewhere farther down the corridor, the administrator spoke to a steward, her voice low and unyielding.
Morning would bring the Council’s answer. Marrow would bring his evidence. Astra’s third bond would be visible the moment she left this room.
Her breathing slowed against me.
I put my hand over hers where it rested on the Mark.
For tonight, I let the copper light remain.