Chapter 59
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Eurydice
Three days after the funerals, birdcall woke me to a gray dawn.
I woke hungry. Before me, the double doors of Dorian’s balcony sat open and a small yellow bird eyed me from the railing.
In the Dip, we’d considered yellow birds a sign of vitality.
Good luck. Better luck when they studied you with those small black orbs.
Behind me, Dorian’s slow sleep-breathing.
I braced for pain when I turned my head, as I had every morning since the Killing Fields.
None came. I touched my shoulder, my sternum, my ribs, probing for the sharp, breath-stealing pain.
None at all, and for once since that day, I didn’t feel like a wounded animal curling up to protect its soft parts.
The noise of my body had finally quieted, though the scar on my chest was still tender under my fingers. I’d always been quick to heal, but never this quick.
I turned fully toward Dorian. He lay on his back; his breathing had changed, but his eyes hadn’t opened.
He wore darkness under them, twin depressions of fatigue and caretaking.
He’d been relentless since that day on the Killing Fields, caring for me, bringing me what I needed before I’d thought to need it.
This morning, I needed something else. Something more.
I leaned toward his heat, rested my chin on his bare chest. I stroked the stubble on his jawline.
His arms came around me before his eyes opened. He rumbled, pulled me closer until my head was nestled under his. “I’d not expect such gentleness from the queen who broke the courts.”
“No? How about the maiden who shivered in the Eldermaze?”
“Not her, either.” His fingers slid over my scalp. “She would have slept the whole night that way without a word.”
I kissed the spot where his pulse beat in his neck, lingering until he groaned. “I suppose you’re right,” I whispered. “I’m rarely gentle.”
This time I kissed lower, right where his neck met his shoulder, and ended it with a bite. The groan that came was sharper, deeper. I felt him buck in the bed.
Yes, he’d been ready for me before this morning—long before. He’d just been waiting until I felt well enough.
I slid my leg over him and sat up, straddling his chest. His eyes had opened, darker than usual as they stared up at me. Studying my face, my chest, the silk slip I wore, my face again. Here, I felt like a queen—the man below me three times as strong, twice as fast, his gaze reverent.
That familiar reach toward power flowed through me. But also a warmth I’d never felt until I’d known Dorian. Love, real and tangible under my fingers.
Heat slid through me, an ache so sudden I felt hollowed out.
I reached behind me without looking away, laid my fingers gently over his cock and brushed it from base to tip. Already so hard and pulsing. He pulled in a breath when I touched him.
No offers to stop. No worries about hurting me. Not a word except his pupils blowing wide.
“Eury—”
Vaelen’s bleeding sky, the sound of my name on his lips. I ran my hand over his length, squeezing, watching him. He exhaled, his eyes closing—and jerking open again as my hand came up, my thumb swirling over his wet, silken tip.
I needed him. Needed him now.
I raised myself up onto my knees, didn’t even bother shedding my slip.
I brought myself down on his cock until the fat head parted my lips, pressed deep into me.
Pain and pleasure tangled, and I dropped my head back, mouth opening, eyes shutting as he stretched me.
I felt like I would shatter just from his entrance.
His hands went to my hips, gripping tight, and neither of us moved as I adjusted to him. He pulsed inside me to the beat of his heart, and eventually I felt him move under me, shifting us across the sheets until his chest touched mine.
When I lifted my head, opened my eyes, he’d sat up against the head of the bed, his face close to mine. “Don’t be gentle,” I whispered. “I need—”
His lips curled just before he crushed them against mine.
I gasped, then again as he thrust once. One hand wrapped around my body, holding me to him.
The other came up to my slip, yanked the chest of it down until the silk ripped.
He cupped my breast as his tongue swept into my mouth, pressed against my own.
Not the Dorian of before. Not the penned servant of the queen who didn’t want to hurt me.
This one knew I didn’t mind pain. This one knew I enjoyed it more than a little.
He broke our kiss and his mouth dragged down to my chin, his teeth on my jaw, before he was at my chest. When his lips found my nipple and sucked, he thrust into me again.
I cried out with the pleasure of it. Yes, yes, yes.
This was exactly it. Worshipful, relentless, hungry.
I was vaguely aware of my arms around his neck, of the feeling of him all around me, as I broke over him.
His cock thrust into me again and again, his tongue relentless on my breast, his arm an iron band around my body, refusing to let me free.
Maybe he was three times as strong, still. Or maybe he’d underestimated himself.
The pleasure went on and on, thick waves of it, until I lay limp in his arms and rested my forehead on his shoulder.
His lips left my nipple with a pop, and I didn’t miss the satisfaction in his eyes even through my haze.
“You…” I could barely speak. “You ripped my slip.”
“Looks better that way.”
A laugh burst out of me. “And you said I wasn’t gentle.”
He thrust once into my sensitive slit, and I sucked in a breath. He somehow felt bigger, harder, or maybe I wanted him so much I’d wrapped myself tighter around him. “I’d say both of us are one part gentle, nine parts too-much-to-handle.”
Completely right. I wanted this, now and every morning, for as far as the horizon stretched. Wildmother, I wanted him again, now.
I shifted my hips atop him. “I think I’ve been far too gentle with you already this morning.”
His eyes glinted. “Do that again, and…”
Just like in the pub in the inner district. Except this time, nothing stood between us except the band of magic that begged for us to be this close.
I moved my hips once, in the other direction.
He growled, lifted me entirely off him. His length slid out of me, and I was briefly empty before he’d turned me, pushed me onto the bed on my belly.
His thighs came around me, caging mine, and he pressed my slip up over my ass. “Gods, changelings really are a different breed.”
I laughed into the sheets—then moaned as he set both hands on my ass, spread my cheeks, and drove into my core. His cock sank right to the hilt on the first thrust, and I grabbed fistfuls of the bedding like they would save me.
They wouldn’t. They didn’t.
He pulled out nearly entirely, then lodged home again. Again, again, faster. One hand bracketed my hip, holding tight. The other slipped down the crack of my ass, and his thumb swirled around the edge of my other hole. I’d never imagined, never thought that would feel so good, until—
His thumb pressed in, and pleasure rose in me, sudden and overwhelming. He slapped my ass, and I lost it entirely. My vision went white.
I cried out, practically a bawl. I was certain every servant in the citadel heard me.
Even through the pleasure, I felt his cock harden. His movements became erratic, and I pushed my ass back into him. I met him thrust for thrust, until he let out the most delicious moan I’d ever heard and came so deep inside me I felt his warmth in my core.
Yes, and yes, and yes. I could have this for an eternity.
He fell over me, still pulsing and twitching inside me, his head on the bed next to mine. He heaved out a breath. “You might want to call up breakfast to my chambers. I don’t think I’ll be moving for the next hour.”
I uncurled my fingers from the bedding and smiled over. “Even at the behest of your queen?”
He ran a hand over my head; our eyes were inches apart. “Only then, and only perhaps.”
I pulled my thumb down his lips. “One thing I probably should have asked before now.”
“Yes?”
“Does making a child work the same for us as it does humans?”
His lips curled under my thumb. “I wouldn’t put you in such a position. It only happens with fae if you will it to.”
“Magic?”
“Magic that would take days and two tomes to explain.”
I chuffed. “Old Jo in the Dip would have shanked someone for that kind of magic.”
“She wished for children?”
“She wished for none.”
He grinned. “Though there is a saying…”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Between Seelie and Unseelie, we forget our oaths in the dark.”
“I guess that explains my parentage.” I paused; my pulse quickened. “Dorian…”
He pressed his lips to mine. Slow, soft. When he pulled back, his eyes were as gentle as I’d ever seen them. “Yes, Eurydice. I would will it to, if you wished.”
If I wished. What heart wouldn’t rise to that kind of proclamation? With Dorian, I would will it. Only with him. And yet…
The wide world closed in. The courts conspired. Queens sat their thrones with their chins on their hands and considered how best to end me.
Children meant vulnerability. They were vulnerable by nature.
“Eury.” Dorian’s nose touched mine. “The future isn’t with us. It isn’t real. Only we are.”
He was right. I had to stay tethered; he kept me here in the present. And the present was an enormous bouquet offered to me.
“Hold me,” I said.
His arm tightened on me. “I am.”
“Every night.”
“And every day, if you like.”
“Do you swear it?”
His brows drew together. He seemed to sense my feeling, and his forehead touched mine. “Always, rabbit. I swear it.”