CHAPTER 37 #2
I can’t help but hope that the grace he extends to his younger self is the same he will extend to me once he learns what I am.
Perhaps his king will be lenient, given my honesty and my upbringing, just as Awri was when I first arrived.
A hollowness wells in my stomach when I’m reminded that the female seems to have met her limit in what she is willing to accept about me.
I decidedly give up pondering my future and the general’s past, until I know what path the fates will set my feet upon tomorrow.
There are no promises of what the days might hold after tonight.
It doesn’t matter if these moments are my last with him or just the beginning of many more; they will always be precious.
“What is troubling you?” he asks.
I hadn’t noticed his brow drawing down with concern as he examined my reflection. Shoving everything I feel into a well-guarded corner of my mind, I lock it away. He sighs.
“You are a fortress, mi’ajna.” He brushes a stray curl from my eyes. “I only wish I lived inside your walls.”
How can I tell him that the walls that keep us divided are for his protection and not my own? Maybe one day he will let me explain, but that conversation isn’t for tonight. Tonight is for us, and all that we could have been.
I offer an apologetic smile through the mirror and spin to face him. I trace the hard lines of his face with my fingers. Rising to my toes, I brush his lips with my own. It’s a small gesture, a beckoning, one he answers sweetly.
Cupping my jaw reverently, he leans into a deep kiss.
Ballads are born of such kisses, full and deep with longing.
The passion the male pours into my being has a life of its own and could bear entire worlds if I dared to let it free.
These are moments I will treasure. When I recall them, they will remind me of how, even as the sun sets beyond the farthest horizon, she ignites the darkening skies with colorful wonders before ushering in the blanket of night.
I grip his shirt tightly, pulling his chest firmly against my own, unwilling to let even the air divide us. His hands are in my hair the next moment, fisting my curls, as if he too might capture something that can never be taken from him. Something that, unlike myself, will always be his.
Lifting his tunic overhead, I drop it to the floor. His hands move slowly across the exposed flesh of my neck, down my side, and onto my thighs until in one fluid motion he is hoisting me up, hooking my legs around his waist, and carrying me to the bed.
Light from the fire dances in the deep sea of his eyes when he lays me on the thick duvet.
He takes a step back, taking his time as his eyes wander across the landscape of my body.
The thin gossamer gown is bunched at my thighs, a single strap falling from my shoulder, but Xeyvian looks at me as if I am completely bare before him.
As if he has already memorized every curve and dip of my body and can recall it at will.
I tense when his eyes land on the blooming bruise Toren left upon my leg.
It’s not the eyesore it will be two days from now.
Still, I worry that he will abandon me to find Caden, or worse, in pursuit of the knowledge of who dared leave a mark upon my flesh.
Perhaps it is the heat of his passion, or maybe it is the pleading look in my eyes, but he drags his eyes away from it and meets mine.
He drops to a knee at the end of the bed, his intent written clearly on his face as he hooks my ankle around his neck and nips at the sensitive skin of my calf.
The sharp inhale of air passing through my lips garners his attention and his mouth tugs up at the edges, his fangs glistening in the low light of the room. My breath hitches in my throat as his tongue slides up my inner thigh, my stomach dipping with anticipation.
I should be wary of the male and the precarious position I’m in, but it isn’t his fangs I feel when his mouth lands upon my core. It’s the slow slide of his tongue across my folds as he laps up my passion.
I gasp when he hooks my free leg over his shoulder, just as he positioned the other.
His tongue delves into my depths. Like a predator, he watches me over the rise and fall of my chest as my pulse quickens with every stroke from the male.
I clutch the sheet when he works his way toward that sensitive bundle of nerves, grazing it with a sharp fang, before soothing it with the flat of his tongue, and sucking me between his lips.
I lose sight of him when my head drops against the bed, the weight of it suddenly too heavy to hold.
My back strains as it arches, a pleasurable need coiling within me.
He is a master of this craft, and he works my body to perfection with every sweep across that tender peak of flesh.
He builds the tension like a rising tide drawn by the moon to break upon the shores.
And when I do break, my back hitting the bed as my body tremors out a rasping moan, his hands find my waist and he pulls me against his mouth with a desperation I understand well.
His tongue moves in time with the rhythm of my quaking.
The male between my legs unwilling to allow the heights to which he brought me to diminish in the slightest. He toils between my thighs until I cry out into the night, breaking anew, my whole being eager to meet the demands of his tongue.
Only when my entire body writhes uncontrollably under the intensity of his attention does he withdraw.
He meets my eyes, a fiendish smile on his face as he drops a kiss against my inner thigh, my body shuddering.
Every nerve is on fire, my cheeks flushed with the rushing blood of my pounding heart.
He looks truly pleased with himself when I find that I am unable to summon the strength to move and I wonder if this had always been his plan.
Lifting the fabric of my gown, he drops a gentle kiss on my belly. My nipples are already peaked when he eyes me through the valley of my breasts, relieving me of the thin gossamer sheath and discarding it.
I’ve regained enough of my strength to meet his lips when he brings them to mine, delighting in the taste of my pleasure upon his tongue.
My hands travel along the lines of his back, tracing the muscles below his shoulders, down his sides and onto his firm ass.
The fates certainly took their time when they chiseled his form and tonight, I am determined to memorize the feeling of his body as he presses it against my own.
He slides his thick shaft across the slickness of my core, retreating tauntingly when my hips rise, encouraging him to enter. He smiles against my throat, fangs grazing the surface, and I arch my neck to the side in invitation.
I don’t have to look to know that the smile has fallen from his lips. The tense stillness of his body says everything, a low rumble forming in his chest. He hesitates, the heat of his breath caressing the crook of my neck.
“Don’t make me beg,” I whisper.
The words are meant to tease him, but I find that I might do just that if the male continues this pleasurable torment.
“I will give you everything,” he puffs out against the base of my neck. “But only when you understand what it is you are asking for.”
Before I can comprehend the movement, he snakes his arm under my lower back, grips my hip, and flips me onto my belly.
Pulling me back until I am on my knees, he kneels behind me, my ass cradled in the seat of his lap, his chest pressing down against my back.
His hand slides up my throat until he cups my jaw and turns my head to face him.
“If you understand nothing else, understand this,” he says quietly, my core stretching around his length as he slides into me, filling me from wall to wall, “your pleasure is my pleasure, and you will never have to beg me for that, or anything else.”
He seats himself fully, capturing my moan with his mouth before retreating from my body in a painfully slow slide as I clench around his girth.
Every stroke of his tongue against my own is echoed by the stroke of his shaft, his hips rocking back and forth lazily as if my body was made for his pleasure, just as his was made for mine.
His hand cups my breast, and a vibrating rumble grows in his chest as his fingers round my nipple and it hardens in response to his touch.
He rises onto his knees, his hands gripping my hips as he pulls back, only to plunge himself into me to a depth I’ve never known.
I gasp, and my body explodes in a myriad of tingling sparks.
My mind grows hazy even as the rest of my senses heighten. My knees begin to tremble when he slams into me again, deeper still and more eager than before. His pace quickens with every thrust he drives into my core, pulling my hips until I’m seated firmly in his lap.
I think he might find his release. The thought of the male’s passion spilling into me, enough to strain the tension already coiling in my belly.
He groans when I clench my legs together, my body tightening around him.
The slick of my passion coats his length anew and he swears under his breath as he pulls himself from within me and rolls me onto my side.
There is a desperate look written on his face when he settles his feet on the floor and slides me to the edge of the bed.
Wrapping his hands around my torso, he pushes himself between my legs with a deeply satisfied groan, my knees nearly nestled against my chest. His eyes roam across my flesh, taking in the pinch in my brow and the sway of my breasts as they keep time with every thrust. They wander toward the curve of my backside, his pupils blown wide when they finally travel to where we are joined.
It’s the aching desire on the male’s face that finally pushes my body to crest the wave of my building passion. It’s too much, the intensity of the rise, the swell of my core as he pumps himself inside me.
“Xeyvian,” I plead on a shallow breath and it’s all he needs to lose himself, pouring himself into me.
His body stills, his breathing a mere shudder as his shaft throbs within me.
I’m not sure I can continue but even so, when he parts himself from me, I struggle to bury the loss of our joining.
His breathing is hurried and deep when he collapses onto the bed.
His arms wrapping me up, he pulls me to his chest, laying my ear over the thundering of his heart as he sighs contentedly.
A sweet silence fills the room, and for a while, I’m able to keep my mind from wandering from this moment.
After a time, the rise and fall of his chest becomes more even, and he traces invisible pictures across my back.
These precious seconds I tuck away, unwilling to let the memory fade from my mortal mind.
I breathe in his scent, take note of the way his arms curl perfectly around my form, of how I’ve never felt more at home than I do cradled against his chest. I memorize the sound of his breathing, the woosh of the air as it exits his lungs, and the sound of his heart, beating in time with my own.
But these moments are not made to last and even in the midst of this comfortable perfection I cannot stanch the flow of thoughts threatening to overwhelm me.
I’ve nearly made up my mind to lay in silence until sleep finds me when the question passes my lips. “If there are things you wish to tell me, why make me ask?” I say quietly into the dim night.
He spools a lock of my hair around his finger and looks down at me.
“Because, mi’ajna, I believe you will ask when you are ready, and I trust you to know when that time is right for you.”
None of it matters if the king sends me away or locks me in a cell—or worse. But I smile and say nothing, kissing him sweetly before resting my head on his shoulder and closing my eyes.
It is the one outcome I hadn’t let myself consider, if the king is truly a reaver, he could take my mind from me if he chose to do so. Dark thoughts of a ravaged mind are the last that filter through me when the void comes to take me, regretfully. For tonight is a night I wish to live in forever.
Blood pools by my feet and a shiver snakes up my spine at the rasp of the demon’s blade sliding across the floor. My heart slams against my ribs. Every ragged inhale of smoke swirling in the air burns my lungs. Blood soaks the hair of the still form of the woman reaching for me.
The demon steps toward me. I scream, a dark storm tearing through the fabric of the veil, spearing the demon with a black blade etched in starlight. It gleams, as the demon falls to his knees with a wail, dark blood weeping from its chest to drip upon the floor.
An old woman in tattered rags rises from where the demon falls in a crumpled heap, a black toothed smile adorning her wrinkled features. She is wrapped in rags, a large hood obscuring her face. She reaches a gnarled hand toward me.
“Give up the lie, child.”
In the distance, someone calls to me and the crimson world shudders.
“No,” I beg the crone.
“Shivaria!” A black scaled demon rushes through the door.
Its eyes lock on mine. There’s nowhere to run, every wall of the building around me set ablaze.
I rush the demon with fearful determination.
I will not die, not like this. Slamming my shoulder into its abdomen I send it to the ground with a grunt.
“Shivaria!”
The crimson world fissures. I shake my head, clearing the fog, and bare my teeth as two strange demons flood into the small space.
“Hold her!”
I land a blow on one and it staggers back, the crone cackling behind them. I take the break in their line to rush for the door, halted by an arm, like a steel band hooking my waist, pulling me back into the fray.
“Shivaria, stop!”
I strike at another demon closing in on my right, landing a well-placed kick to the knee of the demon diving at me from my left.
“Enough, Xeyvian. She’s too strong. Do it, now!”
The crimson world breaks around me, consumed by darkness, and the last sound upon my ears is the scream of my own raging fury as the void takes me.