Chapter 40 #2
I slip a bit lower in his hold as he kisses and fingers me more roughly, our balance shifting in a way that brushes my swollen center against the tip of his stiff cock—a cock that is straining, barely contained by his pants.
An even wilder, more primal need awakens in me.
I untangle my legs from around him and put my feet back on the ground.
His hands grab my hips, keeping me nearly flush against him and his hard length—not that I planned on going anywhere.
I glance up at him from under my lashes. “We’re equals, right?”
His face tilts toward mine, our noses brushing. “Yes.”
“No more secrets between us.”
“None.”
“Then why are you still wearing more clothing than me?”
I feel his lips curving into a smile against mine. “You should remedy that.”
My hands are already on his belt, undoing it, before he’s finished speaking. I kiss him as I strip him, my mouth’s hungry, desperate devouring only grinding to a halt once his cock is freed and I feel the full, distracting size of him in my hands.
He places a finger under my chin, holding my gaze to his as he murmurs, “And now I think you should get on your knees and open your mouth nice and wide for me. For the sake of equality.”
Again, I’m already following the command before it’s finished, my hand taking a firmer grip on him and my lips closing around his tip as I sink to my knees.
He has no railing to grab like I did, so his hands eventually find their way to my hair instead, fingers raking through and gripping with a roughness that drives me even more wild.
I take him deeper and deeper into my throat, reveling in the way it unravels him, until he eventually pushes me away, gasping for breath and control.
With one hand still twisted in my hair, he kneels down along with me and jerks me into a hard kiss. We tangle together, a frantic rush of touching and tasting that ultimately ends with me pinned underneath him.
His eyes darken as he stretches my arms above my head and restrains both my wrists together with one hand.
As he eases himself into me with deliberate slowness, letting me feel every inch of his arousal, sliding in and out with increasing fervor until a soft whimper slips out of me and makes him slow to a stop.
“Am I hurting you?” His gaze settles more fully on mine, and I realize then just how dark it really is. How cold the air around us has become.
But I still shake my head.
It doesn’t hurt. And I don’t want him to stop.
Even as the unnatural cold bites at my sweat-covered skin, and I swear he gets even bigger the next time he fully penetrates me, his cock swelling along with the unpredictable power simmering in his veins, pulsing along with his muscles in a way that feels dangerously close to inhuman.
Temptingly close to inhuman, if I’m honest.
But he’s making a conscious effort to keep control of himself now. I can see it in the way he braces his arms. In the way he’s content to just hold himself inside of me and let me feel him throbbing for the moment. In the way he doesn’t quite dare to look directly into my eyes.
I reach up and stroke his face. I’m trying to be conscious, too. Trying to make this last. To stay in control of myself as much as he is.
But it becomes more and more impossible with every passing second.
Every pulse of his need draws a different, more desperate sound to my lips.
And every noise I make seems to make him swell even tighter inside of me, until I’m certain I’m not imagining the way the base of his cock is shifting into something harder and thicker, something that I couldn’t pull away from even if I wanted to.
Which I don’t.
Before long, he loses the battle to keep still. He thrusts slowly at first before picking up speed, keeping time with my increasingly erratic breaths, staying locked inside of me the entire time.
Our eyes meet, and the intensity in his gaze sends a shock of pleasure rippling through me.
My back arches. I don’t try to quiet the cry that tears from my throat in response, and the rawness of it proves to be his undoing—and mine too.
He slams into me one last time and we both let go upon impact, falling into wave after wave of beautiful, trembling relief.
A groan tears through him as he empties the last drops of himself into me, partially sinking down on top of my body.
But I want his entire, still-trembling weight on top of mine, so I clutch his broad shoulders and pull him into a possessive embrace.
He doesn’t fight it, just relaxes more fully, utterly spent and still buried deeply inside of me.
We stay that way for a long time, both of us occasionally shivering with the aftershocks of what we’ve done.
As my mind drifts back toward relative clarity, I’m more aware than ever of how he feels inside of me—how, even after releasing so much of himself, it still feels as if we’re knotted together in a way that’s unlike anything I’ve ever encountered before.
I grind against him a bit, partly out of lingering arousal, partly out of curiosity.
He sucks in a breath, his mouth biting lightly into the curve of my shoulder until I stop moving. “Are you really so insatiable?” he mutters.
“I’m curious.”
“About?”
“Some of that felt…and still feels…less than human.”
His teeth graze my shoulder again. “I warned you I had a more beastly side you might unleash, didn’t I?”
My arousal threatens to flare back into something much hotter as he lazily rocks his hips, sending a few final satisfying tingles of pleasure through me—but he pulls out before I lose myself too completely.
“Dangerous or not,” I say, once I’ve caught my breath, “I’m inclined to consider this a perk.”
“You’re incorrigible,” he says, rolling into the cushions beside me, splaying out and closing his eyes like a man surrendering on a battlefield. “And I was mostly in control of myself throughout that, just so you’re aware. I’m still not convinced it’s safe to risk entirely losing myself with you.”
“You wouldn’t hurt me.”
His brow furrows. “Do you remember anything I’ve said to you about this curse? About the violent, unpredictable nature of it? The way some of my ancestors have turned fully into mindless, deadly monsters?”
I remember all of it, of course, but I try to keep my tone light. “I have read that the mating habits of dragons can be violent.”
“Very much so.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re going to turn violent, though.”
“But I might.”
I shrug. “Still not a bad way to go, all things considered.”
He tries to continue his stern lecturing, but fails, a quiet laugh rumbling up from in his chest. “What the hell am I going to do with you?”
“You’re going to kiss me,” I tell him, propping myself up beside him and pressing my lips against his. He smiles before slowly kissing me back. We lose ourselves in each other for a minute, and then he reaches for a nearby blanket and drapes it over us before wrapping me up in his arms.
“Forget everything I said before,” he says, his fingers trailing mesmerizing patterns across my skin. “I’m claiming you right now. You’re mine, Arowyn. Every fucking part of you is mine.”
I burrow closer to his chest, laying my head on his beating heart. “As long as I get to claim you back,” I whisper.
Waking up in Reave’s bed the next morning feels different than it ever has before.
It feels…normal. Despite all the strange, twisting paths that led to this moment, when I open my eyes and realize where I am, a sense of undeniable peace washes over me. One that only increases as I lift my head and find him already awake, just quietly existing in the same space as me.
He’s sitting in the glass-walled alcove, a breakfast tray on the table in front of him. Wearing nothing except the loose pants he fell asleep in, his hair still messy, his glasses clutched in one hand and pressed thoughtfully against his lips.
I get to my feet, wrapping a small blanket around myself before shuffling over to him. I’m reaching for a croissant from the tray—feeling warm and light and happier than I have in as long as I can remember—when I truly catch sight of the expression on his face.
I immediately freeze. “What’s wrong?”
He motions toward the chair across from him.
I sink into it, my knees suddenly weak as I notice he has a letter clenched in his hand. I can’t make out anything written on it, yet the sight of it fills me with dread. “What is that?”
He places his glasses on the table, freeing up his hand to massage the space between his eyes. “Some personal correspondence from the new King of Dralsk.”
I force myself to keep speaking, because the silence that threatens to settle is even more frightening than the look on his face. “At least he’s communicating, right?”
Reave doesn’t reply.
“Maybe there’s a peaceful option we can find,” I say softly. I’m aware of how naive I sound, but I’m so desperate to go back to that feeling of normalcy, of tranquility, that I don’t care. “If we can start a dialogue, maybe there’s a chance of forming an alliance. Or preventing war, at least.”
Still no reply.
“I know the situation is tense, but what if I could help him, if—”
“Help him?” His grip on the letter tightens.
“Sesca and I could aid him in undoing whatever Dralsk has suffered under Meira’s rule. The gods sent divine dragons for guidance, didn’t they? So maybe…”
“He doesn’t want you to guide him, Arowyn.” He gets to his feet so quickly his chair nearly topples over. He catches it at the last second, only to glare at it as though he’s considering picking it up and hurling it into the glass wall.
His calmness ultimately prevails, but there’s still an undercurrent of rage in his voice when he continues.
“He wants to collar you, to claim you, to use you—and it isn’t just you and your dragon he wants.
It’s the control you can exert over other dragons as well.
I’ve told you before: This is how kings and queens have built armies throughout history. ”
“How can you be so sure of his intentions?”
“I had…suspicions. I’ve been sending spies in his direction since the moment we identified him, trying to track him, to pin down his exact plans. And he’s caught on to that surveillance, it seems. Which is what led to this letter.” He clenches the letter in question even tighter in his fist.
The moment stretches like a fraying rope between us while I desperately try to come up with something to say, something that could fix this, or lessen its weight, or at least buy us more time.
Why could we not have more time?
“I need to get dressed,” he says, turning away. “There are already people waiting on me.”
“What if I helped your kingdom instead?” The words rush out of me. “Not his. Yours. Truly, officially helped it, and made the rest of the kingdoms acknowledge Mouren—because how could they not, if a Flamebound decreed it?”
He glances over his shoulder at me for a moment, his expression unreadable, only to walk away without answering.
But I can’t let the idea go, now that I’ve said it out loud. I still don’t care if I sound naive. And I don’t care that what I’m suggesting is so far from my original goals that it’s laughable, or that every plan I had when I first stepped foot into this kingdom is now lying in ruins all around me.
I’ve never been afraid of traversing ruined places, after all.
I can keep going; I only need a glimmer of hope, just a few pieces that I might be able to salvage and mold into something new. That’s all I’ve ever needed to get by.
I follow Reave across the room, stubbornly positioning myself between him and his wardrobe as he tries to open it, forcing him to look at me.
“On the first night I spent in your room, you told me the Flamebound traditionally sealed their service to kings and queens by way of a divine ritual. Something that marked them and officially, magically bonded them to a given kingdom.”
“Yes.” He averts his eyes. “And I’ve told you repeatedly that I didn’t intend to do that to you, because I would never force you into serving me like that.”
“But what if I…chose it? What if you and I actually stood together in this more official way? I could help you fortify this kingdom, and it could become a stable centerpiece in this empire. And maybe there really are other god-sent dragons emerging in other kingdoms, too, and we could unite into something better than before. Maybe this is a new divine age, like some are saying. One meant to be different and greater than any before it.”
He slowly looks back to me.
“What if I chose you? If I did that, would you…” I trail off, confused and unsettled by the new expression spreading across his face. Not concern, or anger, or even the stoic mask he’s usually so good at dropping into place in vulnerable moments like this.
Despair.
It’s a deep, devastating despair that I can’t tear my eyes away from, even when it begins to cause a physical pain in my chest.
“I would have chosen you back,” he replies quietly. “Over and over again, I would have chosen you, if given the chance. I would still choose you, if that’s what you want—gods and dragons and divine laws be damned.”
“Then it’s simple, we just…”
“No. It isn’t simple. Because as far as I know, there is no ritual, divine or otherwise, that can undo a Flamebound mark once it’s been placed.”
“I don’t plan on undoing it. If I did, I wouldn’t—”
“You don’t understand.”
I’m beginning to think I actually do understand, but the explanation forming in my mind is so horrible that I can’t bring myself to say it out loud, and so the silence between us just grows and grows until I can’t take it anymore.
Gripping my wrist, I whisper, “What don’t I understand?”
He hands me the crumpled letter.
I don’t want to take it. But I do. I don’t even read it; my gaze only makes it as far as the broken seal. I recognize it even before I fold it back together, lining up the edges of the wax stamp—a golden circle with six tapered points bursting outward.
I could never forget that symbol.
Because it’s the same one Malachi burned into my skin on the night he proposed.