67
How could I let that happen? Dancing so indecently in front of my subjects . . . Letting myself be touched like a human slut in front of my relatives . . . Embarrassing my parents and Araton with my noises of arousal . . .
Disappointing my father in front of the entire court like that.
All for Amlach.
How could I be so selfish? How could I put my obscene desire ahead of my duty to my people?
I was not worthy of being the heir to the throne.
“Nauriel!” Amlach called out to me as I ran across the courtyard in front of the entrance to my wing of the palace.
I ignored him and lifted my skirt to ascend the atrium steps.
I then crossed the empty corridor—most servants not essential to the banquet and the maids had been permitted to go to the gardens and celebrate with the citizens—and hurried into my apartments, slamming the first door behind me, even though I was aware that Amlach was tailing me.
I moved through the rustic sitting room in various shades of blue, lit only by moonlight streaming through the full-wall windows.
When I reached the bedroom door, Amlach suddenly pushed open the sitting room door.
I heard him close it behind him as I marched toward the central window.
I gripped the two knobs and, just before opening the double doors, looked back with anger.
With his resolute gaze locked on mine, Amlach shut the bedroom door behind him and turned the key in the lock.
An adrenaline rush coursed through me as I stepped out onto the terrace, feeling grateful for the cool breeze against my burning face.
The balustrade marked the end of my escape.
I held onto the cymatium and watched breathlessly as my people had fun in the sloping gardens around the mountainside palace, still unaware of what had happened in the reception hall.
Of the scandal I had created.
“Nauriel.”
Amlach’s intimate voice only fueled my anger. I suddenly rounded on him and growled, “Why did you do that?”
He stood on the terrace’s threshold, so still that he looked like a statue. Yet his eyes were blazing. “I’ve done many things since we met,” he remarked sarcastically. “Be more specific.”
“Touching me like that!” I snapped, rubbing my arms. The sensation of his fingers on me was so vivid that my skin tingled with the desire to feel them again.
“As if you were possessing me in front of everyone!” I pressed my palms to my belly, feeling that liquid heat gathering once more between my legs, where I needed him.
“As if you were my . . . my . . .” I couldn’t say it.
His nostrils flared as he drew a long breath, almost as if he were fighting against himself to keep control, and his expression gradually grew menacing.
“ You challenged me,” he said, with a tone filled with treachery, advancing like a predator stalking his victim. “ You let me touch you like that.” He stopped so close to me I could feel the warmth radiating from him. “ You didn’t mind moaning between my hands under your father’s eyes.”
My slap made his head snap abruptly to the side.
His gaze flicked to mine, so sharp it creeped me out.
“You disgust me,” I murmured, my voice cracking with anger and shame.
Amlach wiped the tear that streaked down my cheek with his thumb. “That’s not true.”
I shut my eyes with a grimace. No, that wasn’t true, not a little bit.
“I disgust myself,” I said, turning away from him.
“What have I done?" I looked at the Kingdom of Men beyond the winding line of the Glawar, which shimmered like a river of diamonds in the moonlight. “Oh, Spirits, I’ve ruined everything,” I gasped, placing a hand over my mouth.
I had doomed Amlach’s kingdom.
I had condemned humans to live either among the elves or to depart from the Lands of the East if they wished to survive.
I turned sharply to Amlach, looking everywhere except at his face. “You must . . . you absolutely must return to the party,” I stammered, “and beg for my father’s forgiveness and choose your . . . your bride among my cousins.”
“I can’t,” he replied harshly.
“Why?” I hissed, determined to push him up to the reception hall if I had to.
“Because I feel it, Nauriel,” he answered hotly, magnetizing my gaze to him.
I held my breath. My heart skipped a beat, then started hammering wildly against my ribs. I couldn’t speak, not even think.
All I could do was stare at the half-elf before me with wide eyes.
He exhaled sharply through his nose. “I feel it too,” he admitted.
“I felt it when you pulled me up the tree just before the water hit me.” He brushed my palm, his fingertips climbing up my arm.
“The first time we bathed under the waterfall on our island.” He ran his pads along my prominent collarbone.
“In every moment we spent eating by the fire. And when we were in Rubra, it became so intense I felt like I was going crazy,” he said, irritated, causing me to take a shuddering sigh as he traced the outline of my breasts beneath the dress neckline with the back of his index finger.
“All those nights with your breath on my face . . .” He ran his fingers over my parted lips, and my hot breath brushed against them.
“Having you naked, just a step away from me, in that fucking tub without taking you . . .” He slid his open hand up my throat, pausing for a moment with his thumb on the main artery to feel my heartbeat.
“Seeing your skin open every time you tried to protect me in the arena . . .” His expression turned deadly as he followed the patterns of the scars on my biceps and forearms. “I wanted to scream because I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.
But when we arrived here, I understood.” He put his hand on my heart and looked deep into my eyes.
“It was my soul desperately calling yours.”
I placed my hand over his, tears of happiness rolling down my cheeks. “And mine answered.”
It had resurfaced from the depths of solitude, where it had stayed holed up for millennia, and had started to call out to be found.
By Amlach.
By him alone.
Suddenly, I sensed his fingers arch slightly and press, like the talons of an eagle eager to tear my skin and break bones and sink into flesh to reach my heart.
“I can’t hold back anymore,” he said in a tone filled with sinister desire. “I don’t want to.”
In the next moment, he framed my face in his hands and claimed my mouth.
Our first kiss, finally. And it wasn’t at all how I had imagined it.
It wasn’t a gentle discovery of each other’s tastes, but a voracious plundering. It wasn’t a slow exploration, but a devouring of each other with a ferocity I had never experienced before.
His tongue meeting mine shocked me. His beard scraped my chin and cheeks each time he adjusted my head to deepen the kiss. Our breaths blended with each gasp, brimming with the need for more. My moans prompted him to press his lips harder against mine, bite, and suck them.
Suddenly, he shoved me against the balustrade so forcefully that when the edge dug into my lower back, I gasped in surprise. I broke the kiss, casting an alarmed look at the void beneath me.
He’d almost pushed me off the terrace.
Amlach gave me a wolfish smile, grabbed my face with one hand, and resumed kissing me fiercely. I put my trust in him once more, responding with a passion I never thought I had.
Suddenly, just as Amlach started to gather my skirt around my hips, I realized anyone looking up could see us.
“Amlach, we can’t,” I panted against his lips.
In response, he sat me down on the parapet and positioned himself between my now-exposed legs, his eyes burning with ravenous lust.
I hoped that the elves in the gardens were too absorbed in dancing and the wine’s drunkenness to notice my hair, which, swaying in the breeze, appeared to catch the moon’s rays.
“They’ll come”—I tried to protest again, but Amlach penetrated me with two fingers—“looking for us,” I finished in an ecstatic groan.
He wrapped his other hand around the back of my neck, his mouth parting over mine to swallow every sound I made as he curved his fingers inside me.
“Let them come,” he declared with fury. “Let them see you are mine. And I . . .” His grip on my nape tightened so much that I briefly thought he might break my neck.
“I am yours,” he concluded in a low growl, saturated with resentment.
Then he kissed me again, with such passion that I felt as if I was falling into an abyss of pleasure.
I crossed my ankles behind his back to pull him closer, and after a few seconds, Amlach picked me up and brought me inside.
He set me on the edge of the bed and, before I could react, started tearing my dress off like a bear ripping its prey.
Fueled by his raw strength and the tatters of fabric flying around, I knelt on the mattress and fiddled with his tunic’s belt.
Looking down at me with a smug smile, he let the robe fall off his shoulders.
Meanwhile, I hurriedly unbuttoned his trousers and slid my hand inside.
The moment I touched his cock, feeling the difference between its hardness and the velvety skin with slightly bulging veins, Amlach grabbed my hair and eagerly pressed his lips to mine with a grunt of pleasure.
I moved my fingers downward, brushing against soft hair, and gently squeezed his balls, causing him to pant into my mouth.
I then slid my other hand under his shirt, and he quickly removed it over his head.
Seeing him like this before me, majestic as a dark divinity peering down at me with pride, his erection rising fiercely from the fly, left me in awe.
“Sit down,” he commanded.
I complied, feeling like a puppet controlled by his gaze, blazing with lechery.
“Open up,” he ordered.
I leaned back on the heels of my hands, slightly arching my back, and spread my legs without any shame as my breathing grew increasingly shallow.