Chapter 13 Bound by Iron #2
She made a purring sound, her gaze feasting on his shoulders. Some small part of him had been worried she’d be disgusted by this shape. The men she’d grown up with were lean and willowy. Muscles meant work, and work was something commoners did.
When she did not object to his use of the word magic, he said, “A good bout of exercise will expend the extra energy.” A good bout of sex would do the same but with much more satisfaction.
He groaned. Rock hard. “I have to leave, Diana. But come here. Let me give you something.” He still had the rings in his fist.
She grabbed a fairy orb he’d given her and held it close to his face. “Your eyes are… glowing. Perhaps it is magic.”
He shoved aside the prick of irritation. Of course it was magic. Her sort wouldn’t listen to reason, insisted their paltry illusions were the only true source of power. “Think whatever pleases you but give me your hand.”
She did, without a hint of hesitation. Her willing trust like a dagger between the ribs. Had he earned that trust? Likely not.
But still he took her hand, rotated it palm up, then spilled the rings into it.
She pinched them between thumb and forefinger and held them close to the fairy orb. “These are supposed to wait for tomorrow, Temple.”
She’d run from her first scheduled wedding. He couldn’t have her running from this one. “I made them. They’re special. We won’t exchange them tomorrow. Has to be now. Alone.”
“Why?”
“Tradition.”
“Ah. One of those secret alchemist things.”
“Just so. Now. I’ll put one ring on you, and you put the other on me. You have to say something when you do it.”
“What do I say?”
“Whatever comes into your head to say. Everything about binding is particular to the couple being bound.”
“Binding?” The rings fell to floor as her hand recoiled to tremble against the safety of her belly.
He picked them up. “Yes.”
“You said nothing about a… binding. What is it? Besides an old alchemist tradition.”
“But that’s what it is. A silly name for an old thing. Come, little mouse. Give me your hand. The ring won’t hurt you. It’s a bit like the summoning stones. But while the stones can be used by anyone, these two rings are tuned to us, connecting us.”
Slowly, her arm uncurled from her body and slipped into his. “I suppose tomorrow will see me bound well enough. No use refusing this.”
“Precisely.” He took her hand and took a breath. Then he slid the ring on her finger, holding her gaze. “My body is yours. Your protection and your pleasure.”
Her chest rose with a shocked inhalation as the ring hit home and began to glow. He held her hand in both of his, and all the colors of the opal circled them, tethered them, bound them together. She began to speak, but he put his ring in her palm.
No words now but the right ones.
Her turn.
Her throat bobbed with a long swallow, and her hand shook as she picked up the larger ring. His palms were suddenly sweaty, and his heart pounded in his ears. The strands of opal light had receded, but still her ring glowed with a faint pearlescence. As did the inside of his ring.
She held his hand with the lightest touch and inspected the inner circle of light before she set the ring at his finger.
She chewed her bottom lip as she considered.
He wanted to tell her not to think, to let her heart guide her, but this silence could not be punctured until she chose the words to act as needle. No puncture then. But a sewing.
A binding.
Finally, she moved with surety, sliding the ring home and meeting his gaze. “My loyalty is yours, as long as I am living.”
Darker bands of light unfurled like ribbons from his ring. They wrapped them up tight, and he felt it like a velvet chain around his ribs. No leaving this woman now. No letting her leave. She felt it too. She was barely breathing, her lips slightly parted, swollen still from his kisses.
“I need you,” he rasped. He hit his knees before her and clasped her hips. “I need you.”
“Yes.” Her hands tangled in his hair.
The shift she wore to bed was short, falling just past her knees, and it didn’t take much to rake up the rough linen and find the dark triangle of curls at the apex of her legs.
He dragged his thumb across her sex first and slid across the floor knee after knee, pushing her backward, setting kisses beneath her belly button until her thighs hit the narrow bed.
She fell backward onto the mattress with a bounce.
Then he feasted, tasting her. Learning her. Teasing that little bud beneath her curls until she wiggled and moaned, until she grew wet with desire.
For him.
“Stay? Work out the magic with me?”
Magic. Hell. Probably would be magic with her.
He could sense it in the almost visible tension strung between them.
Once at a ball he’d seen instruments glamoured to cast their music into images.
Each note had produced a color and shape that lifted into the air and drifted out over the ballroom.
Those colors and shapes seemed to be growing between them, beautiful things promising more beauty to come.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and tugged her close, resting his forehead against hers. “I want to. But I won’t. I’m going to need to walk all night to rid myself of what it took to make those rings. I need to be exhausted to sleep without thinking of you.”
“Exhaust yourself here.”
“Wicked woman.” Wonderful woman.
She chuckled, and he kissed her once more. “Tomorrow, Diana.” Then he slipped back out into the night, sliding down the bent and twisted shop sign and dropping to his feet.
The walk home was torture, his cock hard and aching. Exercise did no good this time, nor did any attempt to think of something—anything—other than her. His brain possessed no room for any thought but Diana. His future wife. Tomorrow.
Couldn’t come soon enough, though dawn was but a few hours off.
He ground to a stop beneath a glowing fairy lamp, his cock close to coming. Hell’s teeth, it felt as if she had her sweet, hot hand around him, as if she stroked him. He could feel it, could feel the sweat of her palm, the warm slide of her iron and opal ring.
He was going to come in his pants. On the sidewalk.
Gritting his teeth, he thought of Ajax spitting out a half-eaten biscuit, soggy and falling apart and putting it in his hand.
That took the edge off enough to run for it.
Didn’t mean the running didn’t hurt like hell.
By the time he returned to his terrace, he almost couldn’t walk. His jaw ached from clenching it, and his back teeth were likely ground to powder. All he had to do, though, was make it up the stairs, to his chamber, then—
Fuck. Fuck. Now it felt like her sweet little hand was cupping his balls and even sweeter lips… they were closing round his cock.
He froze mid-stride in the middle of the staircase, slammed a palm against the wall and leaned into it as he roughly stuffed his hand into trousers.
He was throbbing, and he stroked himself, imagining it was her.
His ring ran hot lines of pleasure up and down his shaft.
He imagined slipping one, then two fingers into Diana, circling her lovely little clit until—
He shattered like glass blown too thin after too hot a heating. He groaned curses and moaned her name as he came like a green boy. On the fucking staircase.
When his breath settled, he dragged heavy legs to his bedchamber and collapsed atop the mattress.
He’d heard bonding was intense, but his parents, other married alchemists, had only discussed the spiritual connection, the almost preternatural ability to communicate without words. He’d based the summoning stones on the concept.
He’d never imagined something so intimate, something so carnal.
Exhaustion claimed him, but the waves that pulled him under were not clear and sun-streaked as they should have been.
Because with as much as his body felt bound to Diana now, he heard, felt, nothing of her soul.