22
Finn
I swear I can still taste my witch on my lips when I wake the next morning.
And I can certainly still hear her.
The soft gasps and stifled groans of pleasure, the cry of ecstasy she buried beneath her palm when she came. They all echo in my ears, in my dreams, though waking is even sweeter when I realize.
She’s still here.
Despite the lingering questions from our conversation last night, I’m determined to savor this.
Soleil. Here. With me.
Goddess, she’s magnificent.
Still naked in my arms, I can’t resist letting my hands wander. Over the soft dip of her waist, the curve of her ass, the swell of the sweet, sweet thighs I lost myself between last night.
I want to do it again.
Every day, for the rest of our lives, I want to taste my witch.
I could feast on her and be satiated for eternity.
Soleil stirs, arching into my touch as her lovely green eyes flutter open. She smiles when she sees me, when she realizes where she is, warm and safe in my arms.
“Hi,” she says, and her voice comes out thin and raspy.
No doubt because of the cries of pleasure I drew from her last night.
“Hello.” Hand curled around her jaw, I lean in and kiss her.
“Mmmph.” She makes a little noise of discontent, and I pull back. “Morning breath.”
I chuckle. “It’ll take more than that to deter me, sunshine.”
I kiss her again, and she soon abandons any self-consciousness she may have had as she blooms into life in my arms. Wrapping her own strong arms around me, she pulls herself closer, fitting the soft curves of her body into all the hard angles of mine.
Two puzzle pieces slotting together in the way we were always meant to.
I’d stay here all day with her. Lay her back into the furs and feast on her again. Take my time learning all the ways my witch likes to be kissed and touched. How to make her writhe and make her scream. How to give her so much pleasure she’d never even think of going back to the human realm.
But the sounds of camp waking up outside are a reminder of where we are and where we need to go today.
Back to the court.
Back to reality.
In wordless agreement and mutual consternation, we rise from bed and go about getting ready. Soleil pulls on the clothes she was wearing last night, then helps me into my armor.
I never thought putting clothes on could be so erotic.
But with each piece her clever fingers help fasten, I feel my body heating. My veins simmer with the same magick that grabbed me the first time I saw her, burned within me last night as I tasted her, and it’s all I can do not to let myself be lost in it.
We’d be here all day if I let myself be lost in it.
When we’re as decent as we’re going to be—though still flushed from the teasing dance of dressing and a little rumpled from last night’s activity—we turn to face the day.
As soon as we step out of the tent, a dozen heads swivel in our direction.
Across camp, Vayla stands and starts clapping.
Soleil and I both freeze in our tracks as she’s joined by a guard, and then another, until we have our own chorus of applause.
“Oh, goddess,” Soleil gasps, and turns her face to bury it against the side of my armor. “They all know, don’t they?”
“So it would seem.”
I should be more embarrassed. I should be every bit as abashed as my witch, mortified to know the entire group probably heard what we were getting up to last night.
I’m not.
I want everyone in camp to know.
I want everyone in this realm to know. And her realm, too, for that matter.
“Good morning,” Vayla drawls as she walks toward us. “And congratulations. Truly, after what we heard, I can only imagine—”
“Stop,” Soleil groans, hiding behind her hand.
“I’m happy for you two,” Vayla says. “About time, really, after how you’ve been mooning over each other all week.”
I grunt at that, but truly have no way to deny it. I’m only mildly embarrassed everyone likely knows how besotted and pathetic for this witch I am.
But there’s nothing to be done about that.
“Come on,” Vayla says to Soleil. “I need an extra set of hands to make sure everything’s packed properly for transport.”
“Of course,” Soleil says, and with one quick kiss pressed to my cheek, she turns to go.
It’s not enough.
Not nearly enough.
And though it would seem I can’t have as much of her as I’d like today, there is one thing I need to do.
Tail whipping out and catching her around the waist, I tug her to me. I bury my hand in her hair, tip her head back, and give her a kiss deep and thorough enough to remind her who’ll be waiting for her whenever she’s done with her duties.
To remind the camp, as well, who’s claimed this beautiful, powerful witch as his mate.
Soleil is breathless and flushed when I release her, little fires banked in her emerald eyes and just as much longing and regret at being pulled apart as I feel when she follows Vayla.
Packing up is a swift and efficient affair. The additional guards who helped portal in supplies show up again to portal them out, and between us all we’re ready to go within a couple of hours.
All that’s left is getting ourselves back to court, and a knot of worry seats itself in my stomach as I make my way to Soleil.
“We’ll take it slower than last time,” I assure her, and she nods.
“Whenever you’re ready, then,” she says with a deep breath, offering me her hand.
Instead of taking it, I swing her up into my arms. She gasps and squirms a little as she gets settled, then looks at me with an arched brow.
“I’m not too heavy?”
I scoff. “You wound me, sunshine. You’re light as a feather in my arms.”
She giggles, and I pull her even closer as I open the first portal.
Soleil does much better with portal travel this time around. We take shorter jumps, stopping off at waypoints across the realm, pausing for a few minutes at each one for her to catch her breath and for me to show her brief glimpses of the demon realm and all it offers.
Wide-open plains that stretch as far as the eye can see. Dense forests filled with conifers that reach toward the bright blue skies above. Rocky foothills as we get closer to the court, sloping up to the mountain where the demon kings have ruled for thousands of years.
Her eyes are wide as she takes it all in, her questions thoughtful and challenging to even my extensive knowledge of the realm. By the time we make it back to court, I wish I would have stretched our journey out even longer, had more time with her, because as soon as we arrive, duty calls again.
“I’ve gotta head down to Vayla’s workshop,” Soleil says as we pass through the court’s gates. “We’re getting the blooms into the next step of processing before they’re brewed into the fevercure.”
I nod, though I’m loath to let her go. “You know where to find me later?”
“The wing of rooms where Seren was staying, right? Where…” She trails off, cheeks heating.
“Where I was blessed by the Goddess to find my mate?” I helpfully supply.
“Where I reacted like an idiot and ran away from you, you mean?”
Tail around her waist, I tug her to me. “You eventually came to your senses.”
Her eyes sparkle as she gives me one last kiss then heads off to help Vayla.
I feel immediately bereft without her.
Nonsensical, given we’ve just been in each other’s orbit for the last week, but as soon as she’s gone, a hollow ache takes up residence in my chest.
More than a bit pathetic, actually, the way I’m tempted to follow her like a foundling, so I make myself stalk off in the other direction.
I’m ready for a proper bath and a fresh set of clothes after a week of roughing it, but I barely make it into the Nighfall suite of rooms before a familiar voice calls out to me from the study.
“Finn, is that you?”
I roll my eyes skyward, but make myself answer. “Yes, father.”
“Come in here.”
He doesn’t even bother to look up as I walk through the door, head still down in whatever important papers he’s dealing with this morning.
“You’ve returned,” he says, not a question. “And you weren’t taken out by your first guard assignment, I see.”
“Not for lack of trying,” I say, with a sardonic lilt to the words and a twinge in my shoulder.
“Is what I’ve heard true?” he asks, finally looking up as his eyes rove over me, calculating and concerned.
Surprising, that he’d care I was injured.
“Yes,” I say a bit sheepishly. “There was a run-in with a drakon. I’m alright though, I—”
“Not that.” He waves a hand. “I’ve heard you have a human witch for a mate.”
Oh.
Not concerned, then.
Just calculating.
My father couldn’t give a single shit about me or my wellbeing, so I’ll be damned if he gets to know a thing about my mate.
“It’s not something I wish to discuss with you.”
He frowns. “I don’t care if you don’t wish to discuss it. This witch of yours, does she have connections with the queen? A relationship we could leverage to—”
“Father,” I say flatly.
How he even had the opportunity to find out, I have no idea.
Soleil and I took our time getting back here, but we didn’t take that long. So either he hunted down someone from the expedition to interrogate them as soon as they returned, or he has someone on the inside feeding him information.
Either option is equally likely, and neither makes me anything other than exhausted.
My father is relentless in his need to know, to control, to always have one up on everyone else.
“My relationship with Soleil is not grist for your political mill.”
He snorts. “Of course it is. You’re a Nightfall. What you do and who you are mated to reflects on us all.”
He stands from his desk and circles around it so he can stand right in front of me, hands resting on my shoulders.
“Have you bonded her?”
I can’t help myself; I laugh. Short and rough and disbelieving.
“We only met a week ago.” I shrug out of his grip and head for the door.
“That’s more than enough time to seal a mate bond. What have you been doing that you haven’t convinced her to—”
“I have been respecting her feelings and her boundaries. A strange concept to you, I’m sure.”
He lets out a huff of annoyance and opens his mouth to say something else, but I’m already moving.
Going where? I don’t know.
But being anywhere else in this damned court must be better than standing here and listening to my father talk about my mate and my relationship with her in such cold, calculating terms.
“Finn,” my father calls after my retreating form, and though I hate myself for it, I pause in his office door.
I don’t turn around, though.
A small act of defiance, pathetic though it may be.
“If you’d like to keep your place here at court, the lifestyle I’ve been funding, I would remind you to remember who you are and what you owe this family. You may think you’re exempt, but you are not, and you’d do well to keep that in mind.”
Ah, it would seem I have indeed found the end of my father’s goodwill.
An opportunity like this—a family tie to a witch who, even if she’s not direct kin to the queen, is at least of her kind—is a boon great enough to threaten his own son with expulsion from the family.
Unsurprising, but always good to be reminded where I stand with him.
I don’t dignify his threat with an answer, don’t wait a single second longer before I stride from the room and leave him to his very important business.