Chapter Thirty-Nine #3
I swallow as much of him as I can, which isn’t much because he’s far bigger than my mouth can handle, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Fuck yes,” he moans as he puts his hands in my hair, knotting them there, pulling me to him. “Fuck, you’re so good at that.”
I use my mouth and tongue and hands to please him, feeling his desire for it, slipping a hand down to stroke his balls, which makes him shudder and forces him to lean against the wall to stay upright.
It feels so good, both in my own feelings and in his, which are practically vibrating with ecstasy at my touch. It makes me feel powerful, primal, to hear the moans and gasps I pull from his lips through his cock. He’s a God-King, and I’m a goddess on her knees, giving him what he needs.
“That’s good, but that’s not what I need,” he says, pulling me up from him. He tastes himself on my mouth when he kisses me, feels the heat of himself on my lips.
It drives him wild with desire. He shoves my pants the rest of the way down and I step out of them, then he lifts me by the hips and lowers me until he’s against my entrance, pushing me so my back is against the wall.
And then, finally, he slams into me all the way to the hilt.
“Fuck!” I scream, giving him what he wanted, my eyes rolling back as I feel the entire length of him take me. “Yes, Ronan! Fuck me like that. Ruin me.”
He grabs my face and holds it still, looking me in the eye. “I could never ruin you. You are perfect.”
Then he kisses me, claiming my mouth as he thrusts so hard and deep within my body, I think I might die from the pleasure.
I can’t stop my climax from happening again with him slamming into me like that, with his feelings echoing infinitely in my mind. The waves build up within me quickly and then crash over and over, unrelenting.
He catches my head in his hand, holding my body against the wall, his cock still slamming inside me.
He pushes his head to mine, our foreheads touching, the distance between our eyes too close to focus as he rams himself into me, a low groan in his throat.
He watches me come and come for him, over and over without a break, until my vision is blurry and my legs can’t hold themselves against him.
But he isn’t finished yet. When I finally come down in shuddering gasps, he lowers me to the ground and turns me against the wall like I asked for. I press my hands and bare breasts against it as he shoves open my legs. “Is this what you wanted?” he asks.
“Yes,” I breathe. I can barely speak, but I don’t want him to stop. I need him to fill me, need to feel his release in me. He grabs my face and turns it to him, pulling me upright so my back is against his chest, kissing me as he enters me once more.
Gods, it’s good from this angle. He’s hitting a spot right on my inner walls that feels so good, I see stars behind my eyes. He lets out a guttural groan as I back my ass up into him, spreading open for him, inviting him even deeper.
“I want to feel you come again,” he says. “I need it. Come with me.” He squeezes a nipple with one hand as the other works my clit. He kisses my neck, all the while never stopping the relentless rhythm of his thrusting, which is growing more and more erratic the closer he gets.
It’s so many sensations all at once, I can’t handle it. I arch my back against him, tilting my head back to look at him, to kiss his lips, to see the hot, feral look on his face as he can’t take it anymore, as he bucks wildly into me, finding his release.
His shuddering, gasping final thrusts send me over the edge one last time, and I tighten around him in explosive waves, my body so spent with pleasure that I collapse under him before I finish, forcing him to hold me to keep me upright.
He presses himself against me, still inside of me, stroking my neck and my hair, tilting my face to him to kiss gentle kisses on my lips. The power, the passion between us, melts into something softer, deeper. It fills my heart as well as my body.
“I love you,” he says, his voice a caress. He turns me back to him and takes me into his arms, burying his face in my neck, wrapping his arms around me so tight I can barely breathe, his chest heaving from the exertion and the emotion and everything that we are and will be together.
“I love you, Ronan,” I whisper into his shoulder, feeling his hands tighten and relax at my words. “I’m yours.”
“I’m yours,” he says, stroking my face, sending a healing touch through my body that fills me with warmth.
I let him hold me for a long time, until I feel the rhythm of his heart return to normal, until it matches mine, our hearts echoing their beats and their love for each other.
Then, reluctantly, we part, dressing once more and joining the guards where they’re waiting in the hall to escort me to my chambers.
I hear Ronan’s words in my mind as I prepare for Adria to join me.
They give me the strength I need to give the performance of my life.
I need her to believe that I’m just as angry as she is.
I’ll no longer be trying to convince her to give up on her plans.
Instead, I need to keep her believing that I support them.
I’m pacing the area in front of the window when the door opens.
“This is fucking ridiculous,” she shouts to poor Stella, who has apparently been tasked with being her escort. “Credible threat. There are credible threats every day! We’ve been persecuted for years. I won’t be made a prisoner.”
“The king assures me it’s only a temporary measure—”
“It better damn well be. Go on then. Guard us. Protect us.” Adria slams the door in Stella’s face.
Then she turns to me. “What did you fucking do?”
“Me? They told me someone sent a letter threatening to kill us. How is that my fault?”
“A fucking letter. There’s no way. You did something. Did you make him angry?” She moves to the end of the bed and gestures forcefully for me to join her. “Did you give him reason to suspect you? Where were you during the feast?”
“We delivered food to those shadow-born that were found with me,” I say. It’s one of those partial truths that fuels my magic, which is important right now. I can feel the impact all my truth-telling has had on it. I’m weaker now than I’ve been since we arrived. “No one saw us.”
“Someone must have seen you.”
“They didn’t.” I sigh. There would be no convincing her, even if I were being fully honest. “Don’t worry. They won’t keep us here for long.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he won’t stay away from me for long.” I let that sink in for her. Let her remember what I’m sacrificing for her plan. What she thinks I’m sacrificing.
“Did you ever find the servants’ passages? There’s a meeting I can’t miss.”
I want to ask her with whom, but I know I can’t without arousing her suspicions. “There isn’t one directly into this room. The nearest is in the hall just outside. You’ll need to get past the guards. I could distract them, or you could take them out, but then they’d know what you were doing.”
“Fuck,” she says, shaking her head.
“What about a note? One of the servants, maybe?” They know to intercept anything she tries to send. It should be safe to let her try.
She rubs her face, thinking. “Maybe. It seems reasonable that we would want to communicate with someone while we’re locked up. We have our code, but if I could find a way to get it to Larus or someone where I wouldn’t need to explain who it’s meant for…”
Felix, maybe, although I didn’t think he’d returned from the Islands yet.
Perhaps there’s someone else she’s working with.
And from the sounds of it, Larus knows. I need to encourage her to write the letter, but I won’t do it immediately.
The plan is to keep us here until they’re able to find Larus and arrange the meeting with Felix, which could take a few days.
So I have a few days trapped in this room with her to convince her. A few days to build up her boredom and paranoia. A few days to let her believe her precious plan might get derailed once more.
And I plan to enjoy them.
The next day, I give a note to the guards to ask Ronan to check on me. Adria believes he’s obsessed with me, so I need him to act the part, or she’ll get suspicious. He arrives shortly after, and I greet him at the door, not inviting him in.
I pretend to pretend to enjoy his company, my lies layers deep, now that I’m lying for Adria’s benefit alone. I let her think that I’m deceiving him, that I’m acting as if I want him, but I’m not.
Sleeping alone last night after the evening we spent together was terrible. I don’t know how I can bear being apart from him for days.
I tell him that. I tell him because Adria thinks it’s me looking for a way out of our confinement. And it is, but not for the reason that she thinks.
I spend the rest of the day thumbing through books he brought me, several more travel guides that we didn’t have time to review the night at the library.
I alternate my reading with poking at Adria, asking her questions about the state of things and how much this impacts them until she finally writes the damn note.
Dear Larus,
I won’t be able to have dinner with you tonight. In case you haven’t heard, I’ve been delayed. Please accept my apologies. I’ll need to reschedule to the end of next week.
Yours,
Lady Adria of House Verran
It’s not her best work.
But perhaps there is something useful in it. The only time she references is the end of next week. That’s earlier than we’d been anticipating for the attack based on what she and Larus told me last.
Of course, she may not be referencing the actual date of the siege. It could truly be a meeting, as she said. But it’s something to go on.
Stella, who is back on shift outside our door, agrees to have the note delivered to Larus, once they find him.
Which they haven’t yet. That little piece of news concerns me. He didn’t mention going away when I saw him last, and if he somehow caught wind of us being confined in the palace, it seems like he would come to us to try to secure our safety rather than flee.
Maybe he’s meeting with whoever Adria was planning to meet.
Either way, I’ve done what I can. I spend the rest of the evening thinking about whether there’s anything I can do to change her mind before they throw her in jail for sedition. Anything I could say to her without making her realize where my allegiance now lies.
But there’s nothing. If I want to live, I need to keep my secret.
I wake the next day to movement on my bed.
“Make a sound, and I’ll kill you,” says Adria.
My muscles turn to ice as I realize she’s hovering over me, a flame in her hand. She lowers it to my face until I can feel its heat.
“What are you doing?” I cry out. “What the fuck, Adria?”
“I know you did something. I don’t know what, but I know you did it. You’re going to tell me right now, or I’m burning this bed to the ground with you in it.”
Fuck this. She’s insane. I’m not doing this anymore. I’m getting the fuck out of here before she kills me. She can rot in the dungeons.
I lower the shadows and reach for the ones I can shape to throw her off of me. With my life threatened yet again, they should be easy to find, but I can’t seem to grasp them.
“You’ve still got some fight in you at least,” she says in the darkness. The shadow I drop over us is strong, strengthened by the lies of the last few days. It nearly extinguishes her flame. “Tell me what you did, and I’ll let you live. As long as you didn’t fuck up the plan, I’ll let you live.”
“I didn’t do anything!” I shove her, trying to push her off of me, but she’s stronger than me. She overpowers me, grabbing my wrist cruelly and twisting, hurting me.
“Tell. Me. What. You. Did.” She lowers the flame to my cheek again until I smell the delicate hairs there burning, until I feel the heat licking my flesh.
“Stop! You’re hurting me!”
“You told him something, didn’t you? That’s why we’re in here. You betrayed us. You lied to us. Didn’t you, Sylvie? You think I couldn’t tell?”
“No,” I whimper, lying to her. I can’t fight her without my shadows. I try to force them out again, but they just won’t come. Fuck! “I didn’t. I didn’t.” I screw my face up, pretending to cry.
“Pathetic,” she says. “You’re pathetic. You’re nothing—”
The door bursts open. “Get the fuck away from her,” says Ronan, crossing the room in an instant. He throws Adria off of me as she tries to ignite him, sending a piercing flame into his shoulder.
The guards—five of them, including Taran—sweep in behind him, cornering her.
Ronan takes me from the bed, holding me to him. “Are you alright? I felt your pain.” He touches my cheek, healing the burn there.
“Your shoulder,” I tell him. His robes are smoldering where she pierced him.
He pats out the flame and winces as he heals himself. “That one went deep.”
“But you’re okay?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“I’m okay. I’m here.”
“I knew it,” says Adria, watching us. “You lying whore! I knew it.”
“Sir?” asks Taran. “What should we do with her?”
Ronan sits me down on the ground beside the bed. Then he steps towards Adria, to the corner of the room near the window where the guards have her surrounded.
“I want to kill you for hurting her. For all of the other things you’ve done as well, but for hurting her most of all. I want to watch the light dim from your eyes. I want to hear you take your last gasping breath, knowing I’m the one that killed you.”
“Do it,” says Adria, defiant to the end. “Just fucking do it and stop wasting my time talking about it.”
My heart leaps from across the room. I hate her, I hate everything she’s done, I hate everything she’s made me do, but underneath it all, I love her still.
She’s my family. She’s my blood.
I hate her, but I don’t want her to die. I don’t want him to kill her.
I can’t look.
“But I won’t,” says Ronan, shocking us both. “Because I’m not like you. Because she’s not like you. She’s better than you. She still sees a chance for you, even now.”
Adria laughs bitterly, shaking her head. “Then she’s a fool.”
“Maybe,” says Ronan. “But she’s my fool. And I’m hers.”
He turns to the guards. “Take her to the dungeons.”