Chapter 59 #3
I lean in to brush the ghost of a kiss over his lips, already feeling those insecurities left behind. Draven always makes me feel as though I am the center of his universe, beautiful and unbreakable. “I still suggest you get that in writing, though.”
He hums. “You really should have been a merchant, you know.”
My laugh deepens. His grin grows both wider and more crooked.
In the following silence that passes between us, so, too, does the acknowledgement of the remaining things we have yet to fully discuss.
My eyes. My scars. The mark on my thumb from my deal with Casimir—which somehow still remains.
It’s mostly out of vanity on my part, but I just haven’t wanted to talk about those things yet.
Eventually, I will discuss them in depth with him—perhaps we’ll even work together to find answers to the peculiarities surrounding why both our eyes are now dual-colored and how my wielder’s mark seemed to prevent the right side of my body from being littered in scars—but for now?
For now, I want to enjoy this blissful night like nothing else exists.
Draven watches me a beat longer before bringing his lips to mine once more, kissing me with the full, dizzying weight of passion and desire.
He tells me the story of an entire future in the way his mouth holds mine.
Offers me an unbreakable promise which fills my chest with a swell so forceful, I’m convinced my ribs will crack beneath the pressure of it.
I love you, I think as he kisses me. I knew it before, and I know it now. I love you. I love you. I love you.
Yet I don’t find the courage to say it, instead allowing my lips to remain occupied, using their busyness as an excuse to not voice the words in my head.
Draven pulls back, the heat returning to his eyes. He threads his fingers through my hair, twirling the strands over his knuckles. “Allow me to admire you as all great art should be.”
I smirk at him. “Only if you remove an article of clothing.”
His lips tilt, and he tugs at the beautifully sewn Anatolian shirt he’d been wearing for the festival, tossing it to the side.
My eyes drink in the sight of his beautifully honed body, warm like the muted gold of a rudbeckia flower.
“Look at that,” I tease. “Turns out you’re art, too. A living sculpture, in fact.”
Draven chuckles. “Lay down.”
“Is that an order, Captain Dalmar?”
He lowers his hands to my thighs, slowly guiding them apart.
“It is. And it is also an order when I tell you not to withhold a single sound from me when I worship you. To dig your nails into my skin and drag them down my back while you moan my name.” He slowly tugs at my billowing pants, guiding them down my legs and removing them from my ankles, tossing them to the floor.
He grips the back of my thighs and tugs me forward so I’m at the edge of the bed.
Draven lowers himself to one knee, and then the next, positioning himself directly between my thighs and pressing a kiss to the inside skin of my left leg, then my right.
He kisses the most sensitive part of me through the remaining fabric covering me, his pressure firming in a cruel tease of what’s to come.
I tip my head back, a moan already escaping me, and I thread my fingers through his hair, my hips moving with their own mind.
When Draven still doesn’t remove the final scrap of fabric between us, instead toying with me using his mouth and idle touches alike, I tighten my hold on his hair, tugging forcefully at the strands. “Don’t tease me, Draven. I’ve waited too long for this.”
“Which is why I have no intentions of rushing tonight.” Another firm kiss between my thighs.
“Still” —a teasing stroke with his finger— “your wish is my command.” He slides my undergarment from my hips, exposing me entirely to him.
He places a few more featherlight kisses around the area where I throb and pulse for him, ready to explode from the anticipation.
Then he brings his lips to the center of me and allows his tongue free range of my body.
My eyes flutter as a rush of pleasure sweeps over me, a choked gasping noise spilling from my lips.
Draven hums his satisfaction, pulling back to slip two fingers inside me.
“This is what fills my dreams when you’re not near.
What I laid awake at night and fantasized about while you were away, after I learned you were unharmed.
I always imagined I found you, and then I laid you bare before me and showed you how desperately I had ached to feel you. ”
All I can offer him is my heavy breaths and moans of pleasure. Sheer, utter pleasure.
He brings his mouth back to me, his fingers still stroking in and out. Draven sucks my clit between his lips, dragging his teeth tauntingly over the sensitive nerves.
A heady rush tilts the world around me, and I am a mess of propulsive, humming energy as a heat, consuming and fiery as any other, bubbles in my stomach. My fingers tug at the strands of his silken hair again while my other hand clutches at the blanket beneath me. “Gods, Draven. Fuck.”
He reaches for the hand I have clutched into the blankets, his tongue still working me into a frenzy. He pries my fingers free of the fabric and instead places them on his shoulder. “What did I tell you? If you clutch onto anything, it will only be me.”
Fuck.
I dig my nails into his shoulder, squeezing my eyes as my pleasure crescendoes, threatening to erupt in warm waves of pleasure. I sit up, pushing him back, not yet ready to find my finish.
Draven looks at me, a smirk tipping his lips. “Yes?” he croons mockingly.
“Switch positions with me.”
“Is that an order?”
“It is.”
Draven’s smirk widens into something devastatingly beautiful. “You know, I’m not used to being the one taking orders.”
“Maybe this will do you some good then.”
We shift our positions on the bed, Draven’s eyes not breaking from mine for so much as a heartbeat. “Oh, I have a feeling it will do wonders for me.”
I undo his pants, taking my time while holding his eyes with mischief in my own. I tug them down his legs and strip them from his ankles, taking care to leave his undergarments in place. Then I begin stroking him over the fabric, just as he did me.
“Oh,” he growls, propping himself up with his elbows braced behind him to watch me. “Cruel, cruel woman.”
Without breaking our heated eye contact, I lower myself to my knees and kiss the bulge pushing through the fabric, placing a taunting pressure on the hardened shaft I can feel through his undergarment. “You have no idea.”
His eyes shudder. “Now who’s teasing who?”
“You started this,” I point out. My fingers curl around his outline, squeezing him with just enough pressure to send his eyes fluttering. “Want me to keep going?”
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Yes.”
“Beg me.”
The corner of his mouth lifts with a sharp curve. “I need you, Lyra. I want you more viscerally than anything I have ever wanted in my entire life. You are my fantasy turned reality, so please, be good for me and keep going.”
Intensely satisfied, I look down to indulge his request, but he leans forward and lifts my chin with the crook of his finger.
“Don’t look away from me. I want to see your eyes as you take me with your mouth.”
With a challenging smirk now pressed into my lips, I do as he asks and hold eye contact while I finish stripping him bare.
I hold his eyes even as my fingers curl around the hard length of him, marveling at every glorious inch, sculpted in a way which has me biting my lip and a flood of heat pooling between my legs.
I don’t break away from his heated gaze even as I spit on the length of him and my palm before stroking him.
Even when a feral, guttural sound rips free of his lips.
Gods, hearing him moan for me is as intoxicating as having his mouth pressed against me.
I bring my lips to his hardened length, first planting gentle kisses along his soft skin, until I finish with a precise flick of my tongue at the tip. Then I swallow him, taking him into my throat and stroking him with my tongue.
Draven reaches out and grabs a fistful of my hair, his head tipping back as he groans, sounding as if he has lost all control of himself.
It is fuel to the growing pleasure fanning the flames coating my skin.
I pump my mouth against him harder, until he eventually sits up and stops me, panting with a wild need in his eyes. Without warning, he lifts me up and turns our positions on the bed, his mouth slamming into mine the moment my back hits the sheets.
By the Mother, there is such savage need behind the kiss. Such insatiable desire. Draven bites my lower lip before bringing his lips down my neck, lowering further to suck on my breast while his hand cups my other. Satisfaction rolls through me, and I dig my nails into his back.
He pulls back and smirks at me. “That’s my girl.”
Draven centers his body with mine, one hand reaching down to steady his shaft while he positions his other beside my head to hold himself up.
He gazes down at me, and his expression shifts.
Softens into something less desperate and wild, instead becoming tender.
“Just you and me, Lyra.” He presses a gentle kiss to my lips.
“For this first time, no magic. No gimmicks. Let it just be a man bearing his heart to the woman who owns it.”
I reach up and glide the backs of my fingers over his stubble, words evading me. I nod right before reaching up to kiss him, a delicate press of my lips, to show him how much those words mean to me.
Draven holds my eyes a heartbeat longer before entering inside me.
The motion is an exchange of energy unlike anything I have ever felt.
There is pleasure and need merging with desire, but there is also a tender undercurrent of passion and love.
I feel it in every stroke he makes against me.
Feel it in the way his fingers caress my skin.