Chapter 43 #3
“I know.” His mouth touched the inside of my thigh.
Then higher. By the time his tongue found me, my knees had weakened enough that I had to brace my good hand against his shoulder.
He held one of my thighs over his arm and took his time in a way that felt almost cruel after the argument.
There was no rush. No teasing either. He knew what made my hips jerk now.
Knew where to put his mouth, when to press harder, when to slide two fingers inside me and curl them until my head dropped back.
I tightened around him. “Kieran.” He did not answer.
His mouth stayed on me. The pleasure built differently than the first time.
Less explosive. Deeper. I could feel every drag of his fingers against my entrance, every pass of his tongue over the place that made my thighs tremble.
My injured hand slipped from his shoulder.
He caught my wrist without stopping and placed my palm against the top of his head where I didn’t have to grip.
That small act nearly undid me more than anything else.
I came with his name in my mouth. He kept me upright through it.
When my legs steadied, I pulled him up by the hair.
His mouth was wet. I kissed him anyway. I pushed him backward until his calves hit the edge of the bed.
“Your turn.” A dark smile touched his mouth. “Take your pants off.” He did. The first time I had seen his cock, I had been too overwhelmed by everything else to let myself study him. Now I did. Hard, thick, already slick at the tip.
Kieran noticed where I was looking. “Do you want to keep staring or—”
I wrapped my hand around him. The sentence left with his soul. His head tipped back as I stroked him once, slowly, learning the weight and shape of him with more attention than I had allowed myself before. His good hand landed on my hip.
“Lyra.”
I moved my thumb over the head of his cock. His fingers tightened. There. That sound. I wanted it again. I sank to my knees.
Kieran caught my shoulder. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Your hand—”
“Isn’t the one I’m using.” I took him into my mouth.
His grip on my shoulder tightened. The restraint in him lasted less than a minute.
He let me set the pace at first, his breathing roughening each time I took him deeper.
Then his fingers slid into my hair and held without forcing.
I liked the weight of his hand there. I liked knowing how much control it cost him not to move.
When I drew back and used my tongue along the underside of his cock, he swore under his breath.
I looked up at him. That nearly ruined him.
“Come here.”
I stood. He caught me around the waist and pulled me onto the bed.
The mattress dipped beneath us. For one absurd second, I thought again about the size of it.
Then Kieran rolled me beneath him and there was no room in my head for anything else.
His body settled between my thighs. I could feel the head of his cock at my entrance.
He stopped. That bastard, I knew exactly what he was doing.
I moved my hips toward him. Then he pushed inside.
Slow. My body was wet enough that he entered easily, but the stretch still made me gasp.
Kieran’s face dropped into the curve of my neck.
His first thrust was shallow. The second deeper.
By the third, the anger between us had found somewhere else to go.
I wrapped my legs around him. He drove into me harder.
The bed struck the wall once. Neither of us cared.
My good hand moved across his back. I felt the old scars beneath my palm, raised lines I understood differently now. Kieran went still.
“Don’t.”
His face lifted. “Don’t what?”
“Leave.”
“I’m not.”
“Then don’t go somewhere else because I touched them.” His throat moved. I traced one scar down toward his ribs. His hips shifted involuntarily. “You survived him too.”
“Lyra.”
“No. You need to hear it.” He stiffened at that, as though the words had reached somewhere my hands couldn’t.
I pulled him closer. “You don’t have to like it.
But you need to hear it.” He kissed me hard enough to end the conversation.
His rhythm changed. Rougher now. Messier.
My breasts moved against his chest with every thrust. He caught one nipple between his fingers, rolling it until pleasure sharpened through me.
I dug my nails into his shoulder. He hissed.
“Too much?”
“Not enough.” I pulled him down again. The room filled with the sounds neither of us could control. Skin against skin. The scrape of sheets. His breathing against my neck. My own voice when he changed the angle and struck deeper. “Kieran.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say that.” His laugh was rough and brief against my shoulder. Then he put his hand between us and found me with his fingers. I tightened around his cock. He cursed.
“Again.”
I didn’t know whether he meant my body or the sound I had made. It didn’t matter. He kept moving until the pressure built so fast it hurt. I came around him hard enough that my thighs locked around his hips. Kieran buried himself inside me and stopped. His whole body tightened.
“Lyra.”
I knew what he was asking. “Stay.” His eyes closed as he came inside me.
The pulse of it made my body clench around him again.
For a while neither of us moved. Then Kieran lowered his weight carefully beside me, keeping himself off my injured hand.
My eyes settled on the stillness of the ceiling.
My heartbeat took a long time to settle.
“This didn’t fix anything.”
Kieran lay on his back beside me. “I didn’t think it would.” I rolled onto my side. His chest was marked where my nails had caught him.
“Did you mean what you said?”
“Which part?”
“That you’d rather I hated you.”
He sobered. “If those were truly the choices.”
“And if I told you I couldn’t stay with someone who kept making those choices for me?” Pain crossed his face before he hid it.
“I would try not to.”
“Then try.”
“I’m not going to promise you something I know I might break.” The honesty hurt, but less than another promise would have. I tucked the sheet over my breasts.
“If this happens again, tell me sooner.”
Kieran rubbed one hand over his face. “I’ll tell you what I can before you have to drag it out of me.”
“That’s not enough.”
“No.” We lay there in the quiet. I thought of the word mine. Of how badly I had wanted to hear it again. “You’re mine too,” I said.
Kieran turned his head. I immediately regretted speaking. Not because it was untrue. Because there were words under it I wasn’t ready to give him. He reached across the space between us and touched two fingers to the bandage around my palm.
“You should sleep.”
I gave him a warning look. His mouth moved faintly. Then he said, “If I respond to that right now, I’m going to say more than I should.”
My chest tightened. “About what?”
He looked at me for so long that the room seemed to narrow around it.
“You.” The word landed softly. Too softly.
I waited. Kieran’s hand moved from my bandage to my wrist. “I have spent months trying to convince myself that if I kept enough distance between what I wanted and what I did, I could control this.”
“This?”
His thumb pressed against my skin. “Us.”
My heart hurt. “What do you want?”
He looked at me. Everything in his face said the answer. His mouth did not.
“Kieran.”
“I can’t.”
Anger tried to return. It ran headlong into the exhaustion already hollowing me out. “You can.”
“No.” His voice turned rough. “Not tonight. If I say it tonight, after what happened, after the way we fought, you’ll think I’m saying it because I’m afraid.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He looked toward the ceiling. “I am terrified.” I had never heard him say that before. Not scared. Not worried. Terrified. The last of the fight went out of me. I moved closer—not in forgiveness or surrender—and rested my head against his chest anyway.
Kieran’s arm came around me.
I must have slept eventually, because when I woke, the space beside me was cold.
Kieran sat near the door, dressed again, a blade across his thigh.
The broken blood-anchor lay wrapped beside him, two new ward lines glimmering around the suite entrance.
He was watching the door. I watched him without speaking.
He didn’t know I was awake. His injured hand flexed once around the hilt, then settled.
Whatever we had done to each other tonight, whatever we had admitted or refused to admit, he had not slept.