47. Archer
Archer
“What was that about?” Saige asks me, locking the shop door, waving to Yevna and the others through the window as they start down the high street.
“Nothing.”
Saige raises a skeptical brow. “Is that why you look as though you’ve seen a ghost?”
Battling within myself, I stare at the flowers she got for me, black calla lilies and crimson roses.
The colors are me in botanical form. If only she knew how much it means.
Is Yevna right? Am I in love with her? It’s been so long since I felt anything that I don’t trust myself to know.
I don’t trust myself with her. I want to tell her that I’m tired of fighting the feelings I have for her, feelings that are deepening with every moment we’re side by side.
Her lingering looks, her soft touches, the way her voice is like silk when she says my name.
For two hundred years I didn’t break once on Malevron’s tables, but here with her?
The want is a force of its own, and my resolve is already shattering.
“Well.” Saige dusts off her hands and reaches for her leather apron. “I should get back to the Confluence. There’s still more I need to assess—”
“I wish I had met you before.” I don’t know why the words are suddenly tumbling out of me, there are so many more important things than how I feel, and yet… I can’t stop myself. Not anymore.
“Before what?” Saige prompts.
“Before Malevron made me this monster, before he broke me apart and left only the bad parts behind.”
“You’re so caught up in who you were that you’re forgetting the most important thing.”
I tilt my head as I study her, one brow raised. “Which is?”
“I like who you are. The man you are today, in this moment. The man who helps Yevna, who sneaks Grim treats even though he insists he doesn’t like him. Who helps men fix broken carts, who shares fried fish with me and eats with his fingers.”
“That side of me is fleeting, Grayson.”
“Archer,” she says gently. “Look at me.”
Gripping the counter, I feel the timber splinter beneath my strength, and yet I can’t turn to her, and I can’t let go. “I… I can’t…”
Saige’s voice softens even more. “Why not? You’ve looked at me plenty of times before.”
Yevna’s parting words echo in my mind, but I freeze, which is what I tend to do in life’s most important moments. Instead of telling Saige the truth, some garbled incomplete nonsense spills from my lips. “When I look at you, I feel…”
Suddenly, she’s gripping my shirt, her eyes bright with challenge as she forces my gaze to meet hers. “What? What do you feel?”
“Everything.” The word escapes me in a whisper. Once I start, I can’t stop. “And I don’t know how to feel it. I’ve been numb for so long, I’ve built a fortified wall around myself to keep it out, because feeling everything… It’s too much for one person. It hurts. It’s all-consuming.”
Her breasts brush against my chest as she inhales sharply and searches my face for something more. “Tell me there’s a ‘but’, Archer…”
I close my eyes, bracing myself for the inevitable pain that comes with admitting you love someone.
Because I do. I’m in love with her. I’m in love with Saige Grayson and no man, no war, or trio of gods could stop it.
I wish I’d known her before, when my fire raged red-hot, when I was whole.
She doesn’t need the love of a broken man, she deserves better, she deserves more.
But because I can’t say nothing, I tell her the truest thing I can verbalize here and now, the desire that is as much a part of me as my flesh and bone. “Grayson,” I murmur, my voice rumbling between us. “I want you.”
I hear the air catch in her throat, I see the flush of color on the apples of her cheeks, and her tongue darting out to wet her lips.
“Is that so, General?” she says huskily. “That’s the truth?”
I hold myself still, straining against the desperate urge to press my mouth to hers, to haul her body to mine. “That’s all I can give you.”
“Should we take this upstairs then?” Saige murmurs.
I shake my head. “We shouldn’t. We shouldn’t take this any further.”
Her answering laugh is like music. “Are you worried I’ll fall in love with you if we have sex?”
“I was worried about that when we first kissed,” I counter. “I’m a very good kisser.”
“You’re something alright.”
“And you’re trouble,” I manage, fighting and losing the primal urge to tear her clothes off here and now.
How did I ever think I could withstand her?
I have battled my attraction to her since the moment I laid eyes on her, and every interaction since has fractured my resolve piece by piece.
I can’t deny it any longer, my rules be damned, the Confluence be damned.
I want to be selfish, just this once. I’m ready to surrender to her.
Unlike me, Saige doesn’t war with herself a moment longer.
She grabs a fistful of my shirt and guides me towards one of the armchairs until the backs of my knees hit the leather and I’m tipping.
Saige swings her legs over mine, straddling me, her fingers spearing through my hair and tugging.
We collide. Her mouth is on me, her lips moving over mine and I moan as I let her take what she needs, what I need.
Her tongue sweeps in, brushing against mine, urgent and demanding, coaxing another carnal sound from the depths of my soul as she grinds against me.
“What are we going to do?” she pants in between ravenous kisses.
I capture her lower lip between my teeth causing her to hiss. “I thought that much was obvious,” I say before I claim her mouth again.
Her nails rake down my chest, the thin layer of fabric between us only making my skin more sensitive.
“About the Confluence, Archer,” she whispers against my throat. “It’s right there, and I’m so close to finishing the restoration to the best of my abilities with what I have here… .”
I peel her shirt down her shoulders, kissing the soft warm skin there, dragging my teeth and drinking in the taste of her.
This woman is in my blood, fueling the very fire in my veins—it’s a madness that has me intoxicated, words spilling from me with no notion of reason.
“Throw it in the damn well out the back for all I care. Let Malevron and the whole fucking world burn, so long as I can have you.”
Saige breaks from our frenzied kiss. “Is that what you want? To throw it away and hope it never surfaces again?”
I falter, gripping her hard enough to bruise as the realization washes over me. For the first time in five hundred years, I’ve found it—the line I’d cross. The woman I’d sacrifice anything for. The fate of the realms, the freedom of the Azkari, my very soul.
Saige stares at me with those vibrant silver eyes. “Why are you looking at me like I have some sort of power in this situation? I’m a lowly mortal. You’re an all-powerful Azkari. I can’t touch you, Archer,” she says. “Not in any way that could hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” I tuck a tendril of golden hair behind her ear. “Grayson, you could rip me to fucking pieces. And I’m so far gone for you that I’d get on my knees and thank you for it.”
A wicked smile spreads across her face, and she slides down my body until she’s between my spread legs. “I think it’s my turn to get on my knees.”
A broken moan escapes me at the sight of her peering up at me, her hands moving to the laces of my leathers, my cock straining beneath. “Grayson… we shouldn’t. We said—”
“I don’t give a fuck what we said, Archer. Do you want me? Do you want this?”
“Gods, you know I do. Look at what you’re doing to me.”
She traces the outline of my thick erection with her finger, causing me to buck beneath her touch. “Triad save me,” I mutter, my stomach muscles contracting even at the slightest pressure.
Saige licks her lips. “Let me see you.”
Cursing under my breath, I help her with the laces until the top of my leathers loosen and I lift my hips as she pulls them down over my thighs. My cock springs free, and a soft gasp escapes Saige as she looks upon me for the first time.
“Holy shit,” she murmurs, dragging a fingertip up my thick, hard length, circling the tip where a bead of moisture has gathered.
“Fuck.” I can barely breathe, every nerve in my body suddenly alight as Saige takes my cock in her small hand.
I moan, low and carnal as she takes me at the base and strokes me, up and down, unhurried, as though she has all the time in the world and she wants to memorize the shape and feel of me.
Her eyes are glazed over with lust as her gaze flicks from my shaft back to me, where she takes in my completely unraveled appearance.
She works me torturously, dragging out every stroke, setting off pulses of heat throughout my whole body. My leathers are around my ankles now as she settles herself between my thighs, sizing up my cock as though imagining how it might feel buried inside her. Gods, I can’t—
“I seem to remember you assuring me you’d taste delicious,” she says with a wicked smile.
My breath whistles between my teeth as Saige flattens her tongue and licks me from root to tip. She looks up at me and sucks gently on the crown, before she swallows me down.
“Fuck.” My head tips, hitting the back of the armchair and a low, guttural noise is ripped from my throat. I look back in time to watch her lips stretch around me, and I’m suddenly shaking with the effort to hold back, to keep myself in check. Her mouth is warm, lush and tight around me, and—
Saige moans around my cock as she works up and down, and the sound vibrates through my whole length, tightening in my balls. Fuck, I want to empty myself inside her. The thought of that nearly has me coming then and there.
And just when I think it can’t get any fucking better, she takes my hand and places it on her head, encouraging me to move her the way I want.
She pulls back, just long enough to murmur the words, “Fuck my mouth, Archer. I want to taste you on my tongue.”
A primal growl rumbles through me. “I’m at the end of my tether here, Grayson.”
“So let go.” She hums around me, hollowing her cheeks and sucking me down with more pressure, with more force, challenging me.
I’m so fucking close already, but I allow myself to grip her hair at the roots and thrust into her mouth. I try to go slowly, to take it easy on her, but she’s determined to make me come undone, to unravel me completely.
So I do as she asks—I fuck her mouth. I groan as I pulse my hips, my cock hitting the back of her throat, her eyes streaming as she watches the pleasure take hold of me.
“Fuck, Grayson,” I grind out. “You take me so well. You’re fucking dangerous.
You make me…” but the words are lost as she cups my balls and squeezes them gently.
The need to come is so great I think I might die on the edge of this ecstasy.
With my cock in her mouth, Saige Grayson has all the power in the world, she owns every part of me, and the pleasure is almost un-fucking-bearable.
I’m climbing higher and higher, desire coiling so tight I’m about to snap.
Her tongue hits the underside of my crown at the same time her fingers drift behind my sac, applying pressure to the sensitive skin there—
And then I’m fucking done for. My orgasm rips through me like wildfire, black flames swallowing my vision, leaving me swimming in this beautiful blur of senses and pleasure. I spill my climax into Saige’s mouth, and she takes every damn drop.
“Fuck,” I pant, not sure I’ll ever fully recover. I feel her in every inch of my body, in the depths of my fucking soul.
When I blink her back into focus, she’s licking her lips, as though she’s savoring the taste of me, as though she wants to do it all over again.
“A minute,” I tell her hoarsely. “That’s all I need and—”
Smiling, Saige gets up and maneuvers my leathers back in place before she settles into the armchair with me, curling up at my side, pulling a blanket up around us. “We have time.”
“Do we?” I ask softly.
She nods against my chest. “You said something while I was…”
My stomach bottoms out, wondering what manner of madness spilled from me while I was in the throes of the best orgasm of my damn life. “Did I?”
“Mmmhm,” she replies, as though she’s not sure she truly wants the answer. But curiosity wins out. “You said that I make you want to… and then you didn’t finish what you were saying.”
“Likely because you were busy finishing me, Grayson.”
She delivers a slap to my shoulder. “You’re not going to tell me what you were going to say?”
I press a kiss to her temple, to her cheek and then I capture her mouth with mine. “I was going to say, you make me want to be something more.”
“More than what?”
“More than… this,” I motion to myself.
Saige inhales deeply, before she kisses me, long and slow. “You are more than enough, Archer. I see you.”
I kiss her back, savoring her taste, her touch. “You make me want to be everything to you.”