Chapter 24 #2
His fingers gripped my cheeks, wiping away the tears as they formed and forcing me to face him.
“I need you to hear me, and know this. Your father would have never let you take the throne, no matter what others told you. Even if you had, he would have exterminated you and your brother like he did his other families. Do you have any idea how many times he’s done this?
Raised a family, used them for their magic, and then cleared them and his guard?
You weren’t the first, but by the damned Singers you will be the last.”
He meant to help. I knew that, and yet it still stung like a wasp. The image flashed in my mind again, as fresh as the day it happened. I was staring into Deldren’s lifeless face.
But his fingers dug in until they ached, clawing at my flesh, trying to pull me back to the cottage. But I fell, and couldn’t stop falling.
“Please,” he cried. “How can I wrench you from this? Your cries wound me like a thousand blades. I’ll do anything for you.”
I slammed my lids shut, trying to force the image away, but it was relentless.
“Make it stop. I just need a moment. A second of solace, anything to get this out of my head. I see his eyes, I see his blood,” I screamed until my throat went hoarse.
“Make it stop and replace it with anything else—for god’s sake, shove me into a pot of boiling water! ”
He gulped in a breath and shuddered. “You ask for pain, but I can’t. I won’t give you pain, but I can offer pleasure,” he murmured and pulled me to his chest.
I grasped at him, trying to ground myself in his arms and remind myself I was here. Here. Here.
“I’m going to perform a spell, and it will coat your memories momentarily with a sheet of ice. The ice will melt, but it will give you distance and me a chance to distract you. It will be quick and painless.”
He wasn’t asking, but I nodded through my shaking fits anyway.
His fingers laced through my hair, cupping the back of my skull—and then my mind filled with icy relief.
It crawled across me, like he breathed a peerless mist into me.
I couldn’t touch it, but I felt it, wrapping around the cruel image, and distorting it beyond recognition.
I thought when I gazed up at him, I wouldn’t recognize him, but I did, and whatever he did dismantled the wall between us.
All I saw was his gorgeous eyes, shining with worry, and his tight lips pulled with stress.
Gods, he was handsome, but even with the fog, that image tugged at the corner of my mind, trying to drag me under once more.
“I can’t breathe.”
“How, when you are my air?”
My muscles tried to tighten against the forced relaxation of his spell. “I don’t want to think, I can feel it there, looming just out of focus.”
“Then focus on me,” he said, shoving my hands beneath his jack. “Think of my touch, my pleasure, everything I give you freely, and nothing else. Think of me, and my body, and what it will do to you.” He traced my cheek with his tongue, eliciting sparks and heat that shot straight into my core.
“Keep talking,” I sighed, and trailed my fingers up his chest, enjoying the way his muscles twitched beneath me. The heat that filled me was something new, something exciting. It was something that wasn’t pain.
“Think of me filling you, of you stretching to accommodate me. Think of me completing you in the way only I can.” He wound his fingers through my hair. “In fact, why don’t you just stop thinking, and instead, focus on feeling?”
He crushed against my lips, tasting of wine, despair, and longing. A bitterness I knew all too well, and I tugged him closer. I beckoned him into me and pressed further, melding his tongue with mine. His licks were furious, passionate, and painful. I let him lash and punish me with his.
If I thought our last embrace was passionate, this was explosive. I hooked my legs around his and ground until fire shot across my body, one that might consume me. I wished it would.
Then he pulled away breathlessly. “I am clay in your godsdamn hands. You know what I want you to say, what I've been begging to hear for weeks. Tell me that, and I will do anything—” his fingers gripped my nape, tracing their way down my neckline. “Anything.”
“I don’t want to think about the pain. I don’t want to think about the past. I want it to be nothing, background noise.”
“Say it and I’ll make it disappear. Say it and I will take you to that bedroom, and glide my tongue across your body until you’re a mess of writhing, and won't stop screaming my name.”
I looked up at him with watery vision, and great tears that wouldn’t relent. “I love you.”
His lips crushed mine, and his fingers jerked to unhook the buckles of his leathers.
In half a moment, his tongue was all I felt, and his straps snapped.
Then, they were discarded into a corner of the room.
Beneath was far more muscle than I knew what to do with.
The build of a fighter, borne of many, many years training.
I roved my fingers across his skin, drinking in the softness and warmth.
But when I stole a glance, I thought I might die—people weren’t meant to be this goddamn attractive. Yet here he was, beneath my fingertips. I gripped his ribs and ground against his ever-hardening trousers until I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. Good.
I invited him to explore me with his fingers. They roved beneath my leathers and began undoing every strap that kept us apart. Within a matter of seconds, he had me bare.
His lips were greedier than his fingers, and refused to relent. Further and further I fell. Without a single word, he gathered me up and rose, hurrying us into the bedroom before the cold had a chance to set in. He threw me atop the mattress, but not hard, fumbling to undo his belt.
It came free, and his pants were soon in some nameless corner, forgotten.
I gasped at his form, but he paid me no mind.
He was tall, lithe, lean, but packed with muscle.
Far more than I thought his slim frame could hold.
His skin glowed like pale moonlight, and his eyes shone like stars as he stared down at me, the blue shifting and clouding with arousal.
Just like my empty mind.
And in one fluid movement, he grabbed my ankle and yanked me to the edge of the bed. My breath hitched while my slit throbbed in anticipation. Even my body begged for more.
“I will do anything for you. It will be as if you aren’t a being beyond pleasure. You will never know anything beyond what I make you feel.”
I inhaled sharply when he spread my thighs, and then shuddered an exhale when he put his lips to me. I grabbed fistfuls of sheets, wrapping them around me as he licked me desperately. Lightning shot up my core, swirling with heat.
And once again, there were no thoughts. Only a blank slate as he pressed his pleasure into me.
I moaned, writhed, and bucked, as he inserted his fingers tenderly.
I loved his touch, and I’d dreamed of this a thousand times.
Of how he’d kiss, love, and caress me. But I never thought it would be like this.
He flicked a free hand, and the air around us warmed, now condensed in the small room. It stroked across my skin where he wasn’t, and stole any creeping thoughts.
He pulled away to whisper, “Don’t think. Just feel.”
And I did, as the world began to slip away. The room was darkness and moonlight, but when I fluttered my eyes, it became stars, blinding and blinking. They flared like the sun, increasing as he pushed me closer to the edge. His tongue was relentless, not giving me a single moment of solace.
My limbs numbed and then rapidly warmed as he increased his speed, only to then fall into the cascade of pleasure. It was sudden and rolled across me like a beast, unending and unyielding. I wanted more.
“Don’t stop,” I moaned, gripping the sheets and then moving to his hair. And he sighed into me, but didn’t pull away. Only when I released his locks, and the waves ebbed to the slow lull of my pounding heart, did he rise. But not without one final lick.
Lightning danced across me, as he clambered up me, moving with the precision of a predator and caging me to the bed.
“I could stop, and I should stop… but I don’t want to. I need to make you mine.”
Then his lips crushed mine, his tongue lashing with pain and pleasure. This passion was new. It was fresh, like untouched snow, or the violence of a blizzard. But I fell into it and groaned through his teeth. That’s when he parted from my hungry kiss.
“I’ve spent long centuries thinking about what drives an I’phri to feel this way, a man to desire a woman so intensely he can do nothing but claim her.
I spend the nights thinking of you and the days aching to stroke myself to the very thought of your face, let alone the perfection of your body. ” He ran a finger down my cheek.
“Aelen, I’ve not—”
“I know. I’m going to take you, and I will be gentle, but it will be new. We’ll do it together.”
But with the ferociousness and passion he just showed, I doubted that.
“I don’t think you can be gentle,” I groaned, as he rubbed his member against my slick slit.
He sneered, taken aback. “This will require patience and tenderness. I’d sooner slit my own throat than hurt you.”
That, I believed. So I let him run his lips down my neck. I shuddered as his breath misted against my skin, and as he licked down to my clavicle. No thoughts, no thinking, only pleasure bloomed.
“I’d ask if you’re ready, but your body’s giving that away,” he said and ran a finger down my slit to show me how slick I was. “I can feel you throbbing beneath me. Will you throb and writhe when I fill you? When I thrust until you’re panting and begging for more?”
He pushed his tip against me. It was easy, tender, as he pressed deeper. It was large, I wasn’t expecting that, and gasped. But there was no pain, only pleasure, just as he’d promised. His tongue traced against my lower lip, nicking it with his teeth as he filled me with his girth.
I’d never been stretched like this, and it was everything I’d always wanted. Everything I’d dreamed about and more when I rolled around in bed, hot and thinking of him. My pulse drummed in my fingertips as he pulled back and refilled me.
A cry escaped me, and he grinned. But as I groaned, he increased his strokes. First soft, and then passionate. His lips were at my cheek and then my neck, and I languished in his embrace.
“Take me,” I gasped.
“I will claim you,” he growled into my ear. He gritted his teeth and groped my breast. “The world, and the remainder of the I’phri need to know you belong to no other. Do you hear me? You’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I repeated, as pleasure shot up through me and grew at my core. It pulsed, and he throbbed inside me, only increasing my small gasps. And that only encouraged him. He pressed in until the stars returned, swimming around his gorgeous face, and the room disappeared.
I knew nothing but the pleasure, heat, and the fire that raged across me. And then, in the midst of his thrusting, the cascade exploded across me.
I forgot my name, I couldn’t think. I couldn’t scream, beg, cry, or moan. All I could do was ride the wave as it threatened to drown me. Finally, I found my lungs and gasped in air, letting it take me a second time as he continued to thrust.
And then, when we were a hot, huffing tangle of limbs, he finished too with a final thrust, and a powerful emission I felt.
Hot. Heat.
When he met my lips, we were both coated in sweat. He lifted me until I was safely within the crook of his neck. His obsidian hair fell around him like a midnight pool, and he wore what little moonlight trickled in like a pale crown.
I never wanted to marry a noble. Power was the last thing I desired, and I even less wanted to find myself to the right of someone’s seat. But in the wan bedroom, beading with sweat and our slick bodies pressed against each other—he was my king.
His gaze wandered across me, but I couldn’t help but stare at the rhythmic rising and falling.
“Tell me you love me. Say it so I can always remember this,” he murmured.
“I’ve already told you I love you, and yet you’ve yet to utter it a single time.”
He ran a finger down my side, lingering across my ribs. “I’ve told you I love you in a variety of other ways a hundred times already. Why must you make me repeat the obvious?” But his fingers found where the crystal lay between my breasts, and he caressed it, almost sealing it there.
“I wore it for you.”
“No, you wore it for you. But you already knew that, didn’t you?” When I didn’t respond, his grip tightened on the pendant. “You know I love you. Hmm.” The way he hummed across his chest felt so familiar, so tangible. I searched and delved into the recesses of my mind, but couldn’t place it.
And in that, the silence grew. It grew and grew until it swallowed us whole, and all I thought of was the dripping red wine and that crimson flow.
I didn’t notice when I began to tear, but I did when he wiped them. He kissed the back of my hand softly, and only then did he speak.
“What pains you? Is it the same as before?”
I nodded as my throat tightened with tears.
The sob wanted to come, but I swallowed it back down.
“Did you see him? When you attacked the city?” That question hung between us.
I’d never dared to ask, but he was one of the riders, he must have been there for the assault.
He’d mentioned it before, but we’d never talked about it outright. It was time we had that conversation.
“The butchered boy? I did. It was a travesty.” He stared over my shoulder, but was a million miles away.
“Tell me his name, everything about him. People don’t just live on in breathing.
Their stories plaque our hearts, and they can continue on in the tales of others.
Those stories, the people we love, they brand themselves deep into our souls, just as the wounds of their loss.
Tell me everything so that not only one may carry his story, but two. ”
“Deldren,” I said. “His name was Deldren.” And then I told him everything, and when it became too much, he held me while I shook.
He listened as I told him of singing to Deldren when he came up to my knees, telling him the stories of the terrifying Ifrei, and our nights in the Hall of Echoes.
I told him about when they stole him away and when we sent our messages. I told him everything.
And he sat. And he listened.