Chapter Twenty-Six
“And here I thought the Sun was intense in Pluto,”
Lunelle said, running her fingers over the lush velvet curtains framing the window—easily twice her height—in the king’s bedroom.
The golden Sun broke through the glass and spilled over the Mercurian palace floor, bouncing sparkling rays across her bare feet. She watched as it crowned the city below—a city she’d hopelessly fallen in love with after only a few hours.
A city bathed in golden warmth, just like Mirquios, speckled with pastels and strange flora and gems in the walls she did not yet know the names of.
A city she wanted desperately to call home, she realized.
“I want to come over there, but I don’t know how to give up this view,”
the king mused, lying across the bed and propping himself up on his elbow. With the morning sunlight pouring in behind her, she looked every bit the goddess she was, her silver hair aflame as she brushed it away from her face.
She held her hands out, wondering if perhaps this was how Astra felt when her fingertips caught fire.
“This view?”
Lunelle asked, her lips curling into a smile as she twisted and turned. She leaned back against the glass, enjoying the warmth of the morning light as she held his gaze.
“Or this one?”
She dragged the soft linen of her shirt upward, letting it slip slowly over her skin before tossing it to the floor. She’d gotten dressed in a hurry before leaving the Lunar Court. She hadn’t had time to consider what might come off at the end of her evening.
If she’d had time to plan, she certainly would have included something prettier than the simple white stays wrapped around her chest. She peeled the frilled edges at the center of her back, untying the laces and letting them fall away.
“That one,”
Mirquios murmured, his mouth unable to fully get around the sounds without swallowing.
His eyes widened as her fingers dragged toward her waistband, peeling the leather of her pants over her thighs. She yanked them off her ankles and basked in the sunlight, warming her body from head to toe.
“Goddess smite me,”
Mirquios whispered. He pushed himself from the bed and rushed to her. She was unashamed of the desperation that buzzed between them as she wrapped herself around him—to confess how starved for him she was.
In her fantasies, he’d been soft and slow, curling around her like a wisp of smoke. There, in her hands, he was nothing like smoke—he was fire, burning against her as she tangled their bodies into one. He wrapped his hands around her back, taking his time as his fingers traced paths along her spine.
His palm slipped along her side and climbed her ribs like a ladder, gently teasing the soft skin of her breasts.
It wasn’t enough.
She made it clear as she arched into him and scraped her teeth against his lower lip. A low, thunderous laugh rippled between them. She loved the notion that he was just as feral for her as she’d been for him since they’d first touched in his room, bleeding into one another as their Souls fused.
“Oh,”
Lunelle yelped as he moved her back against the window, pressing her against the warm glass.
“What if someone sees us?”
Mirquios nipped at her ear.
“You deserve to be seen, Lu. They should be so lucky.”
Her cheeks flushed as she pulled at his shirt. He shoved his pants as low as he could without abandoning her cool skin, and her hand flew to him like a moth to flame.
She wrapped her fingers around him and pushed her mouth back to his, sliding her lips over his jaw and neck as she sank to her knees.
“Oh, gods,”
Mirquios rasped as he gripped the window pane with one hand and her silver braid with another. Her hands were everywhere, squeezing, pulling, stroking, and then her lips closed around him, and he nearly wept as the Tether between them pulled tight. The pressure and strain added a strange pleasure to the moment, instead of the unbearable pain of avoiding one another they’d adjusted to.
“Lu,”
he breathed, his knuckles rosy pink as they curled around the golden pane. The Sun illuminated his dark skin, casting him in a halo she thought made him look much more like a Solar demigod than a Mercurian king.
“Lu,”
he gasped again, his fist pulling gently against her braid.
“Mother above, Princess, if you don’t stop, I’ll—”
He didn’t have to finish his thought, she released him with a radiant smile and rose, wrapping herself around him as he pressed her firmly into the window.
Mirquios held his breath as he ran a fingertip up her side. She followed the gentle tip of his finger, admiring the way he dipped into each curve as the Sun danced across her silver freckles.
He leaned into the motion as she wrapped her legs around his waist, marveling at the sigh of the Tether as their bodies melted together. His mouth crawled her neck, the sweet catch of her breath as he nipped her flushed skin his reward.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?”
he asked as he nestled against her. They might be out of one mess, but they were still ensnared in a dozen others—she knew this was only a temporary reprieve.
She answered in the form of her heels digging deeper into his back. Sighing at the swell of him against her, she closed her eyes, letting the warmth of the Sun caress her bare shoulders as Mirquios slid into her.
Lunelle whimpered at the sensation, unsure how something she’d done so many times could suddenly feel so wildly different. Her body held his—a sacred note at the end of a hymn, praising every goddess she could name as she tightened her grip on his neck. He moved slowly at first, but that quickly gave way to something much more craven as his arms pulled her closer still.
She pressed into the glass at her back, the feeling of him too intense, too close to rupturing. Mirquios closed his fingers around her throat, pulling her back into him so he could whisper his worship into her ear as he felt the goddess within her crash around him.
She wound like a coil—everything within her pulled together, ready to unleash. He leaned further into her, snagging her ear in his teeth again, growling against her, “Tell me what you need.”
Her head fell back, her pulse racing into a rhythm she wasn’t sure was possible. She reached for a hand—any hand, fuck, her own would do if he couldn’t reach—but she snagged his fingers from her hip and pushed them toward her breast, flush with blood and heat and desperation.
She’d been asked what she wanted a million times, but no one ever asked what she’d needed.
And while Lunelle had learned not to need much, she needed him.
He pulled at her lips with his teeth, losing himself in her, squeezing and kneading and biting and taking any piece of her he could access. When she did finally burst, her cheeks flushed a stunning shade of red as she arched her back, her heavy breaths laced with his name, which only pushed him over the edge.
She gasped as he lost control of himself, a melody of low notes from his throat crashing against her shoulder as his teeth cut into her flesh. The sting of the bite compared to the fullness of him inside her eased the tension of the Tether, buzzing with a different sort of energy now.
“Gods above,”
he sighed, claiming every breath she managed to take, his kiss just as maddening as it had been on the Plutonian cliffs, but now he was hers to hold.
Hers to enjoy.
Hers.
Lunelle could hardly think. Not a single thread of words stuck to the walls of her mind as her king brought her to his bed, curling around her in an effort to absorb as much of her as he could in whatever time they’d have together.
When she sought out the prince, it was to distract herself from the complete overwhelm of her world. And it had worked for a mere moment. But the quiet never lasted—the safety from her thoughts was only in the thrill of the risk.
With Mirquios, with the other half of her so close and sharing her breath, her mind was at ease despite the understanding that they had nothing but trouble coming.
But they could face it together.
He tucked his head into her chest as she stroked his hair, a million questions racing across her tongue.
Most of the answers seemed too difficult to find, so she asked the one simmering under her fingertips since she’d arrived back in Lunaria.
“Do you think the commander knows my sister is devastatingly in love with him?”
Mirquios laughed into her skin, the soft reverberation dissolving over her stomach. His bright eyes flashed toward hers, half-closed in her dazed bliss. He sat up, leaning against his headboard, and pulled on her hand, an invitation to climb over his lap as he thought about her question.
Lunelle settled on top of him, her pale skin glowing in the morning sunlight that streamed through the window. Mirquios pressed his lips to her throat, his hands wandering her back. He forced himself to come up for air, though she knew he’d have rather spent every second exploring which spots on her neck made her breath hitch.
“Not to answer your question with a question, but do you think your sister knows the commander is so in love with her he can’t see straight?”
A quiet smile overtook her lips as she leaned forward, the friction distracting both of them.
“What a mess.”
Lunelle rested her hand against his neck, feeling the warmth of his pulse as it quickened beneath the surface.
“Leave it to the Fire Queen to find herself entangled with a Solarian.”
Mirquios leaned into her touch, letting it soothe all of the misery that had built up in his veins like poison for months.
“Leave it to Luxuros to fall for the only woman I’ve ever met who could go toe-to-toe with his strange mind.”
Lunelle sank her hips lower. A stifled groan rose from his throat in return as he leaned forward, pulling her into another intoxicating kiss. How she’d gone so long without the chemistry of this, the depth of sensation between them, she could not fathom.
“Perhaps if we make them wait long enough, they’ll sort themselves out,”
she whispered, hooking an arm around the back of his neck.
“You know,”
he said between sizzling nips against her neck.
“I cannot remember what I worshipped before you.”
As she rolled her hips forward once again, she felt the stirrings of his devotion between them, a welcome offering that she would bless again and again, for however long the gods allowed.