Chapter 40 #2
I held her there even as she collapsed against my chest, refusing to let her untangle herself from me, greedy with a need to feel her body on mine.
She sighed as she finally stopped quivering around my cock, the sleepy and satisfied look on her face making my chest swell.
I lightly stroked my fingers over the left side of her chest, my good mood in danger of faltering at the absence of my mark and the memory of how it had felt when they had broken our bond.
I knew how dangerous I looked when she covered my hand with hers and propped herself up to look at me, a softness in her eyes that reached for me, offering comfort.
“I hate that they took it from me and that it’s gone.” She stroked her thumb over my fingers. “But I needed to keep my cover… and I’m… glad they did it. I was so worried about accidentally summoning you.”
She did not sound sure about that word. Glad. It sounded more like a question than a statement. That look in her eyes told me she felt terrible that she felt that way.
“When it happened,” I croaked and then cleared my throat, trying to find the strength I needed to continue without sounding as broken as I had been by what they had done.
“When I felt our bond snapping, I was driven near mad. I had needed to see you, to see you were alive. I had feared it had been you dying, and I went to the Wastes. I… am not proud of what I wanted to do there. I would have gladly destroyed this world, had Oberon not intervened.”
“I’m sorry.” She took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “I never considered how awful it would be for you. I’m so sorry I put you through that.”
“It is done now.” And I hated it.
I hated the absence of my mark on her.
I hated the absence of the connection to her it had given me.
I rolled her onto her side, withdrawing from her, and used magic to clean us both up. I gazed into her soft, contented eyes, silently vowing I would restore our bond one day, when it was safe to do so. I would share that connection with her again.
She sighed, a sated smile curving her lips. “I wish we could stay here forever.”
“We shall have more moments like this. I promise you. This is only the start of things between us…” I brushed her tangled hair from her beautiful face. “The troubled and messy beginning of our love story. All the best ones have them.”
Her smile widened.
And then she wriggled and huffed, her face scrunching up.
“What is wrong?” I looked her over, biting back a groan at the sight of her pert breasts on display, and reached for her corset to pull it up.
“Don’t.” She caught my hand and then loosened her grip on it. “It’s just… the scabs on my wounds are so damned itchy I want to claw my skin off.”
I chuckled but then sobered. “Did I hurt you?”
In the heat of the moment, I had pulled her corset down more than once, so swept up in our passion that I had forgotten about her scars.
“No. They’re just itchy now.”
“Roll onto your front.”
She did not hesitate to obey that command, rolling onto her front and folding her hands over one another to prop her chin up on them.
I knelt beside her, carefully untying her corset to loosen it enough that I could pull it down to reveal the full length of her wounds.
She sighed with the first touch of my fingers against her back, as if my touch was bliss, calming and soothing.
“Keep doing that,” she murmured.
I summoned my magic, all I could use without risking alerting anyone to my presence here in the Summer Court, and followed the line of each scar, healing them as best I could manage and making sure I did not miss one.
“I can’t bring myself to be mad at you,” she mumbled as she rested her head on the back of her hands, her left cheek to me.
“For using magic?” I followed the line of another scar and smiled as she made a noise of agreement in her throat.
I watched her as I healed her, relieving her pain, piecing her back together in a way that soothed me too.
“What have you been up to in your time here? I told you what I have been doing while we have been apart. Tell me what you have been doing.”
I wanted to distract her from the pain and it worked.
She told me of the things she had read in the journals she had found, and how she had come to free Danica, and spoke of Sylvan and what the witch in the fae town had said to her, confirming she was indeed the daughter of Sylas, the fallen Summer King.
I absorbed all the knowledge she offered on our enemy as I worked, moving from the final scar to the first one again, repeating the process so she would keep talking and offering up the secrets of this court.
“Danica mentioned other heirs, and you mentioned them too. Are there more than one?” I feathered my fingers down a particularly brutal slash, holding back my growl as my mood shifted back towards rage and tamping it down.
She was here. I was healing her. She would be well.
“One is a complete entitled prick and the other is… a tentative ally.” She seemed nervous to admit that.
“Oh, have we been making friends, little wolf?” My tone was teasing, but I smiled when she cracked her eyes open to glare at me. “It is good to have allies.”
“Even when they’re seelie?” She did not look convinced I meant that.
“Even when they are seelie,” I admitted.
“I’m glad to hear that, because Meiryn has been helping me learn ancient fae, and she took care of me and has helped me a lot, and she even stood against Lorien when he—”
She cut herself off.
I grinned wickedly. “Lorien.”
She grimaced at the fact she had just given me his name and rolled away from me, pulling her corset up to cover her breasts. “It’s your stupid magic touch… distracting me and loosening my tongue.”
She poked that tongue out at me.
I went to snatch it and she pulled it back into her mouth before I could catch it.
She scowled at me. “Don’t you dare go after him. You said you wouldn’t.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “And I shall not… right now. But Lorien and I will have a little talk one day about the dangers of touching what is mine.”
“I’m not yours.” She sat up, the mulish twist to her lips not convincing me that she meant those words.
“Oh, you are mine, Saphira. There is no doubt about that.” I moved in a flash, swiftly seizing hold of her, pinning her beneath me.
Her blue eyes held a challenge as I caged her, a dare I wanted to take her up on, but instead of kissing her to prove that she was mine, I leaned on my right elbow and stroked the fingers of my left hand down her soft cheek.
“You are mine, as I am yours. I do not need fate to tell me that. I only need this heart that beats for you.”
“When did you get to be so romantic?” She smiled as she twined her arms around my neck.
I sighed and made a big show of pretending to think about it, and then lowered my gaze to lock with hers again. “I believe it was around the time I first set eyes on you. Your body is quite astounding.”
She playfully shoved at my chest.
“In all seriousness, it was that night, when I saw your defiance, your courage, and your ferocity. I believe I started falling for you then.” I angled my head. “When did you start falling for me? Was it the lake, when you saw my magnificent body?”
Her smile made me ache to kiss her as she skimmed her fingers over my nape, toying with my hair. “I believe it was the lake, when I saw your magnificent… castle.”
She giggled and was gone before I could kiss her as punishment for teasing me so. I sensed her appear behind me and rolled onto my back. She teleported well for someone who was only just learning the trick of it. I rested on my elbows, propping myself up on them.
“In all seriousness,” she echoed as she raked her gaze over me. “I don’t really know. It came on so slowly. I wanted you, was attracted to you, but falling for you? It was so gradual. It’s what makes me think this isn’t fate. This is just love. True love. An unshakable kind of love.”
I hated myself for what I was about to say, and could not keep the growl from my voice as I uttered, “What was it like with the alpha wolf?”
She picked at the embroidery on her corset, her expression darkening, and I despised that she was thinking about that male—her fated one—retreading the paths of her love for him while she was here with me.
I would need to visit Tan’ith when I returned.
Tormenting the prick would make me feel better.
“It was sort of what I expected. I knew we were fated, but I never really saw him. Not until I was old enough to understand what being fated meant.” She kept her gaze downcast as she navigated her feelings, slowly picking them apart just as she picked at a thread on her dress.
“When I met him… it was… instant. Like a light bulb coming on inside me. Like someone flicked a switch. I should have known then that it wasn’t real.
Not really. It was too fast, and looking back…
it was like I had no choice in the matter.
One moment I was not in love, and the next I was.
My wolf instincts pushed me towards him, as if he was inescapable gravity, and I was so swept up in what I had been told about being fated, how much of an honour it was and how a bond should be cherished and nurtured, that I didn’t really stop to think what else a bond might be or what those words might really mean.
Now, it feels more like I was being told to surrender to it, that I should just accept it, and that doesn’t sit right with me anymore. ”