Chapter 24 #2
All I know is that the sound he makes when his mouth hovers over me, when his chilled breath rushes across my skin and his hand grips my thigh as he buries his face there, is enough to make me shatter before he has even taken his first taste.
My body tightens. I squeeze my eyes shut, gripping his hair in one hand, my nails scraping against the stone with the other as his tongue slides against my heat.
The growl that leaves him makes me shiver.
He licks again and again, long, firm strokes of his tongue, and the way it mirrors the wolf is not lost on me.
“You can cry out now if you wish,” he says, his voice muffled. “No one will hear you up here.”
I bite down on my lip as his masterful tongue slides along me again.
“So now I have permission?” I manage. “What makes you think I even want to cry out?”
Then his tongue presses firmly against my clit, circling it, sucking, and my back arches off the stone as I moan, loud and brazen, into the night.
Soon I am bucking against him, desperate for the contact of his mouth, for his tongue to work harder, deeper, faster.
One of his hands reaches up to cup my breast, squeezing as his tongue works in deep, maddening laps that have my eyes watering, my voice breaking into helpless whimpers.
Then I feel a finger slide inside me. Then another while his tongue licks hard and fast.
Gods, help me. I was right. This male wants to devour me, bones and all, and I don’t care. Just let his tongue keep circling and licking and sucking. Let him push me to the edge, then send me crashing over it.
And he does.
The heat builds. The pressure swells. My back bows again, my fingers twisting tight in his hair as my orgasm shatters through me.
Luceran groans, gasping for breath. I hear him lick his lips, then he presses kisses along the inside of my thighs as he slides back up my body. I am slick with sweat, my chest heaving with breaths I can barely control.
“How did you do that?” I breathe.
“Which part?” he asks as he rolls onto his side, propping himself on one elbow, his finger trailing lazily between my breasts.
“All of it,” I say, my tongue sweeping over my lips. “I’ve never felt… that’s never…”
“Good,” he says quickly, his finger cutting through the sweat as it circles my navel. “Because I never want anyone but me to make you feel this way ever again, Neve.”
I smile through the haze. “Just Neve? Not Neve Devlin?”
He grins, shaking his head as his hand slides back up my body to cup my neck. “Just Neve.”
He pulls me into his arms and holds me close, our naked bodies seamless together, bare and honest in a way we could never be down there. It feels fragile. Temporary. An unwelcome reminder.
“Only a few days now,” I murmur. “Your castle is transformed. I’m sure it will impress Lord Rourke and Lady Marlayna.”
His brow furrows. “What do you care if they are impressed or not?”
“I care because it affects you,” I say. “You said they could take away your lands. Your title.”
He grins. “Ah. You worry I would become some homeless pauper?”
“No.” My voice tightens. “I worry about what would happen to me if you were sent away.”
He stills, then shrugs, a little too coldly for my liking. “Your debt would become the concern of the new lord.”
My teeth grit, my nails digging into his skin hard enough to draw a wince.
“Not the debt,” I say tersely. “Me.” I trail my fingers down his arm until I find his hand and lace my fingers through his. “Us.”
His thumb moves slowly, thoughtfully, tracing circles over my hand while his mouth presses soft kisses along the bridge of my nose, up to my brow.
“If I were sent away,” he says at last, “perhaps you would come with me.”
“Do not say things you do not mean,” I whisper.
“If I were not a lord,” he continues evenly. “If I did not carry the weight of the Aurevault. Of the Elarium. Then I would be a male free to choose.” His gaze holds mine. “Free to choose whom I please.”
I do not believe him.
I cannot believe him.
Nothing in this world is that simple. Not when the Fae rule with such cruelty and indifference. Not when he was one of them long before generations of my family were ever born. A farmer’s daughter does not undo centuries of history between our kinds.
And yet, in the quiet of the moment, beneath moonlight and falling snow, safe in his arms while his lips worship my skin, I speak the words I know will change nothing, and yet mean everything to say aloud.
“I am falling in love with you, Luceran.”
I do not regret it.
Not in the way I thought I might.
If anything, the release feels like exactly what my heart, my soul, needed. To speak it aloud. To give it shape. To tell someone, him, the moon, the quiet world beyond this cave, that what I feel for this Fae has moved far beyond the need for his body or the taste of his mouth.
I don’t flinch or flush with shame when he doesn’t answer at once. That isn’t why I said it. He lifts my chin with the crook of his knuckle, and for a moment I lose myself in the impossible beauty of his eyes, the way they seem to hold entire winters and lost summers within them.
“Then it seems I am at a disadvantage,” he says softly. “Because I fell in love with you long before tonight.”
The smile that breaks across my face feels unstoppable. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, relief and happiness swelling beneath my skin until it is almost too much to contain. He draws my chin closer and presses his lips to mine.
Our fingers untangle as he pulls himself over me, sliding between my legs, dragging my thigh high over his hip.
The weight of him pressing down sends heat coiling low in my belly, the throbbing ache returning as the hard planes of his stomach slide against me.
I feel him grow hard and thick almost instantly as the kiss deepens, turns hungry, his tongue claiming mine while his canines scrape against my bottom lip.
He draws back slightly, just enough to look me in the eye.
“There will be no going back after this,” he warns. “You will be mine.”
I gulp, gripping the hair at the back of his head, kissing his open mouth as he breathes.
“Good,” I whisper. “Then take me, Luceran. Please.”
He growls, lifting my thigh higher on his hip, adjusting himself while his other hand settles low on my stomach.
He spreads my legs so wide that once I might have blushed, but now I am far too desperate to care.
His tip brushes my entrance, rubs against me for torturous seconds, and then my breath hitches as he pushes inside me.
My eyes squeeze shut as the stretch of him sends pleasure rippling through me all over again.
His hand presses lightly to my stomach while the other keeps my leg lifted, angling himself deeper.
My back arches, my fingers claw at the stone, my body trembling as he moves inside me.
Each thrust pulls low sounds from his chest, vibrations that travel straight through me.
He grips my thigh tighter, fingers biting into my flesh as his pale skin slicks with sweat, gleaming like melting ice.
The way he grinds against me as he thrusts, the way he fills me, claims every inch, leaves me barely able to breathe.
My vision blurs as sensation overtakes me.
I reach my release far sooner than I want to.
I want to draw it out. I want it to crest and fall again and again instead of crashing through me all at once. I don’t want to know what it feels like to have him leave me empty. I don’t want him to ever stop.
But he holds himself back.
I see it in the tension of his body, in the tight line of his jaw, in the control etched into every measured movement as he keeps himself balanced there, right on the edge, for what feels like hours.
Until my thighs burn and my limbs grow heavy and weak.
Until I am blissfully aching, gorgeously swollen beneath him.
Only when I beg him to let go does he finally allow himself his release.
He pulls me onto his lap, tangles his hands in the hair at the back of my head, and his eyes never leave mine as he thrusts into me with ruthless intent.
He claims my mouth, my tongue, as he moans.
I tighten around his pulsing shaft, hook my legs around his waist, feel the power of him rippling through me with every gorgeous thrust until at last his jaw clenches, his eyes screw shut, and he erupts inside me.
Luceran holds me close, breathing deep against my skin, our bodies flush together, both slick with sweat. Both filled with warmth.
He doesn’t say anything, but I know he feels it too. The heat in his skin. The red threading through his veins.
That warmth lasts through the night, as we sleep tangled in each other’s arms.
When morning comes, he shifts into the wolf, and I climb onto his back. As he carries me through the waking world, a strange, quiet certainty settles over me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard to make Castle Frostwyn presentable for the Fae of House Taramethos.
Because now I know that even if he lost it all, we might still have each other.
The next few days blur together.
Lady Atilia has additional tables and chairs brought in from her own estate, along with ornate statues meant to impress.
Silverware, dishes, bowls, goblets, everything gleaming and excessive.
She arranges for her own kitchen staff to manage the banquet, while Luceran is expected to provide the labor behind the scenes.
The miners.
Serving. Cleaning. Washing dishes. All the work deemed too lowly even for Fae servants.
All of this is spoken at me, not to me. Lady Atilia can barely bring herself to look in my direction, and I am painfully aware it is because she knows what passes between Luceran and me in the shadows. What she cannot control.
When the work is finally done and it is just the two of us again, a strange normalcy settles in. Almost dull in its routine. And yet deeply comforting.
When I am not handling ledgers, I lose myself in the library.
I read everything I can get my hands on, stacks of books rising around me until I am nearly buried beneath them.
Still, there are more. Thousands more. The sprites are invaluable when it comes to retrieving volumes from the highest shelves.
Luceran has his own responsibilities. The Aurevault. His lands. Settling debts. Sealing bargains.
But when the day finally ends, he finds me in the tower more often than not.
The small hearth glows orange, casting long shadows across the stone walls.
He enters quietly, his presence felt before it is seen.
His hands settle on my shoulders, kneading my skin until the tension melts beneath his thumbs.
They always find every knot.
Then his touch drifts lower, over my chest, his hands closing around my breasts, teasing, pinching my nipples until I am squirming in my chair, knees pressed together in a futile attempt to keep the sensation from overtaking me too quickly.
The ledgers I labored over for hours mean nothing when he sweeps them aside so he can lift me onto the desk instead.
My legs hook over his hips. He touches me, rough and tender all at once, while his mouth claims my neck in heavy, possessive kisses.
By the time he has undone me once, twice, I am desperate enough to fumble with his buckles, the weight of him in my hand almost as satisfying as the way he drives into me again and again.
I struggle to remember a time I was happy before this.
Before Frostwyn. Before him. Before I was indebted to a Fae lord I once wished would die.
Now the thought of such a thing terrifies me, because I know, deep in my bones, that if he were taken from this world, something in me would be destroyed along with him.
As the banquet draws closer, its weight settles over everything. I become acutely aware that what unfolds that night, the judgments passed by creatures who care very little for the cost of their decrees on human lives, will change everything. Forever.
The knowledge follows me into sleep and drags me back out of it again, night after night.
Even when Luceran curls behind me, his body warm, his pale skin gleaming in the moonlight, the runes along his flesh flaring softly with each breath he takes, I lie awake. Listening. Waiting. Dreading the morning I know must come.
And then it does.
I wake with a start, unease clawing at my chest, and reach back without thinking, only to find emptiness.
I turn over, my heart lurching at the absence beside me.
This morning, he is gone.