Chapter 47 #2
There’s a closed wound over his collarbone where a construct got through.
There’s older scarring too. One line starts at his ribs and wraps around out of sight behind him.
I follow it around his side with my fingers.
He braces over me. I lift up and put my mouth on his collarbone.
Salt, and the last of his own blood, both at once.
My teeth graze him without breaking the skin.
The noise he makes vibrates through my mouth.
His hand comes down over my ribs and my hip.
He opens my pants and puts his hand inside them, over my underwear. Then stops moving.
“God, Nyxiana. You’re so fucking wet.”
I rock into his hand. His fingers press up into me through the cotton.
I whimper. He strips the rest of it off me slowly, his hands dragging down my thighs all the way to my ankles.
By the time I’m naked under him I have both fists in the bedding.
His mouth comes down on my shoulder, then the hollow under my collarbone, then my breast. He stays there until I’m pushing myself up into his mouth. He stays there after that.
I put both hands in his hair and pull. “Valen.” I pull harder. “Lower.”
He chuckles against my breast. It rumbles down through me and lands between my legs. “Greedy girl.”
He works down my stomach. Below my ribs. Past my navel. I chase his mouth with my hips every time it moves. “Valen. Please.”
He looks up at me from between my thighs.
Then his mouth closes over my clit. I cry out.
The room throws it straight back at me. One hand fists in his hair.
Gold sparks up out of my skin everywhere he’s touching me, along my hip, up my side, across my stomach.
He drags his tongue down and back up my seam slowly, all the way.
Then it’s darting inside me, and I push myself up against his mouth.
He pushes two fingers into me, curls them up until he finds the place that makes me buck.
He works me right up to it. Tongue steady on my clit, two fingers stroking that spot inside me, my pussy clenching around them harder every pass.
My thighs start shaking on both sides of his head.
Then he takes his mouth off me. “No, no.” I have his hair in both fists. “Valen, no.”
He waits until it drops back down, starts again. I try to grind up into his mouth. His free arm comes across my hips and pins me down. Tongue on my clit, fingers curling, all the way back up to the edge and slower this time. He takes his mouth off me again.
I sob out loud. “Valen. Please.”
He does it a third time. My heels dig into the bedding. My thighs won’t stop shaking. He brings me up to it. He holds me there. He pulls off, and this time I scream. “Please. Let me...”
He drags his tongue over my clit once, barely touching.
“Vaaalen. Pleaase!”
His fingers curl hard on that spot. His mouth closes over my clit and stays there this time.
I come with his fingers buried in me. Everything pulls tight at once, then releases.
My pussy clenches around them and pulses, dragging at him.
The gold flares up bright enough to catch in his hair and put light across his face.
He works me through it, his mouth staying on me, his fingers still moving and slowing as I come down, until my pussy stops clenching around them.
I’m shaking on the bedding with my knees fallen open on both sides of him.
He kisses my pussy once, softly. Then the inside of my thigh.
He comes up my body slowly, kissing his way up.
My hip. My stomach. Under my breast. My collarbone.
My throat, where he stays a while. Then my mouth, softly. I moan into his mouth.
His cock lies against my pussy, hot, slick with how wet I am. He holds still. I move my hips to try to take him in.
“Nyxiana.” He reaches down and notches himself at my entrance. Then he puts his forehead against mine. Both of us are breathing hard.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do. There’s silver moving in his eyes. It’s been there since he sealed the last column. He holds them steady on mine and lets me have all of it.
“I’ve wanted you since the first time I saw you,” he says.
He has never once handed me a thing about himself. Everything I have of him I took. He gives me that one.
Then he pushes into me.
He holds my eyes while his cock works into me, slowly.
He stretches me open all the way and my pussy clenches around him immediately, pulling him deeper on its own.
Light fractures faintly across my collarbones where his hand is gripping my shoulder.
When he’s all the way in he stops, drops his head down beside mine and holds still.
His arms are shaking on both sides of me.
“Are you okay?”
“More than okay.” I turn my mouth against his ear. “Now move, my love.”
He smiles, kisses me deep and long, then starts to move. Slowly at first, long strokes, all the way out and back. He holds that pace until I take a fistful of his hair. I meet every thrust. My nails go down his back and stay there.
His face is open. It gave me nothing the first night he walked out of the trees at Ash Hollow.
It gave me nothing through four realms, two courts, a fight in my own doorway.
Now I can read all of it. Wanting me is written across every part of that face, the eyes with the silver still running in them, the set of his mouth, his hair hanging over his forehead.
His eyes are on mine and they stay there.
There’s nothing else in this realm he’s looking at.
He drives into me harder. My pussy is tight and slick around his cock.
Every thrust drags a cry out of me. His hand comes off my shoulder and braces beside my head.
His hips speed up. My heels lock at the small of his back.
My pussy starts clenching around him. He feels it happen and drives through it without letting up.
“Valen.”
“I know. I’ve got you.”
He fucks me through it. Deep, hard, the same rhythm all the way. I break open around his cock with my nails buried in his back and his name coming out of me on every stroke. The gold breaks over both of us, pouring out of my skin, across his chest, up into the low light overhead.
He slows to almost nothing and keeps moving in me until I’ve stopped shaking.
Then he wraps an arm around my back and rolls us over without pulling out.
He brings me up on top of him with his cock still inside me.
I brace both hands on his chest and come forward until the angle works.
I make sure of it before I move at all. Then I ride him.
My wings come out. They snap open behind me at full span, pale in the low light, wide enough to touch both walls of this room.
Nobody has ever seen them do that. I leave them out.
Valen watches. Both hands lock onto my hips and stay.
He brings me down harder onto his cock every time.
His eyes go over my face, my throat, my wings, and come back to my face again.
The light off my own skin is bright enough to put color on the walls of this room.
It’s on his chest under my hands, in his hair.
I’m grinding my clit against him at the bottom of every stroke.
My rhythm turns ragged, faster. I’m slamming down on him now and he’s driving up to meet me.
A sound tears up out of me that isn’t a word.
It’s his name breaking in my throat before I get to the end of it. He answers it.
“Ana.”
He’s never called me that before. He says it rough, wrecked, quiet.
I’ve got nothing left after that. His control breaks with mine, hips stuttering under me.
He comes inside me with both hands gripping my hiips hard enough that there’ll be marks there tomorrow.
I’m going to be glad of every one of them.
I collapse onto his chest. He wraps both arms around me before I’ve landed.
Neither of us has anything left. My wings settle loose around both of us, wide, open, resting where they land.
He puts a hand on one of them. Only my parents have ever touched my wings.
He lays his hand along the top edge and leaves it there.
I don’t want him to move it. His other hand moves slowly up my spine, between the wings, all the way and back down.
“I love you, Ana.”
I lift my head off his chest to look at him when I say it back.
“I love you, Valen.”
Then I put my head back down where it was.
“Stay.” I say it into his chest, quietly.
His arm tightens around me.
“I already have.”
Neither of us says anything for a long time.
His heart beats under my ear. The light in here has come down to almost nothing.
Somewhere past these walls there’s a crack in this realm that nobody has closed.
Three realms away there’s a valley full of people who need to hear what we’re bringing home.
And there’s a night on a balcony in Doria that he’s only ever heard about from Faelan. It’s been sitting in me for days.
All of it can wait.