Chapter 50
It took ages for Audra’s body to finally succumb to slumber. And when she awoke, the room was still cloaked in shadows, not yet dawn; her face was wet with tears—though she’d had no dreams that she could remember.
Yet, when she looked around … she realized …
She must be dreaming, because she was back in that temple, only she was lying on a slab of stone—a table of some kind that hadn’t been here the last time she’d visited this place in her sleep.
And there was no host of shimmering ghosts, no kneeling demons, she was alone … save him.
Zhaire stood above her; his face, which kept flickering between his two forms, was unreadable. One moment, he was honed from the night skies, his skin littered with constellations, and the next, he was smooth mahogany skin and dark, unfathomable eyes.
“Why are you lying on the altar, Audra? You are not a sacrifice.”
Audra sat up, hopping off the stone and taking another look at it.
She frowned. It did appear to be a site that ancient humans might have used for sacrificing animals or people to their gods, back when they were still trying to call them back, to be remembered by them.
How many had been needlessly killed before the priests realized they weren’t ever coming back?
“I drank the tonic … I’m not supposed to be here.”
Zhaire stepped up behind her. She could feel a fierce heat emanating from him, as though he were a furnace.
“And yet, here you are,” he murmured. “I thought you didn’t want to see me again … and yet, you called me here.” The rumble of his voice, it felt like a caress.
Audra shivered.
“Are you cold?” He was so close, she could feel the stirrings of his breath in her hair. Smell his spiced pear and whiskey scent.
She folded her arms, trying to hide the goose bumps that erupted across her forearms. “It’s cold here.” The goose bumps were not from the cold.
“Only in this odd liminal space. I promise, it’s not cold everywhere here—in the winter, it’s actually quite warm some days.”
“Do you think my mind is making it appear cold? Like my idea of what the Veiled Realm is … is making itself apparent within the dream?”
“If you are the one responsible for this dream … I wonder … Could you make anything happen here?”
She huffed a sad laugh. “Not even in my dreams can I control anything adeptly.”
“Look at me.”
She hesitated.
“Audra. Look at me.” A command.
She couldn’t say why she heeded him, why she consented, but she found herself turning.
He was so close, she stared into his chest. He’d been sleeping for real this time.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt—only low-slung linen pants that tied at the waist with a ribbon.
She forced herself not to notice his well-defined pectoral muscles, the dips and valleys of his abdominal muscles, or that thin trail of hair leading down …
She cleared her throat. “You finally chose a form.”
“It’s hard to control myself here—it takes a while for me to settle. Look at me.”
Forgotten gods, she was trying not to.
He crooked a finger, placing it beneath her chin. “Look at me, Audra,” he pressed.
She had no choice but to allow him to tilt her head up. His eyes roamed over her face, drinking her in, as though he hadn’t seen her in ages.
He’d just seen her a few hours before at the tavern.
“What do you want?” she breathed. “Why am I here?”
“You called me here, Audra. This is your dream. What is it that you want?”
“I want …” Her words faltered in her throat.
What did she want? Forgotten gods, she didn’t think anyone had ever asked her that. Not once in her whole life. Her parents—they were the ones who wanted so much from her, Emyre needed so much from her, even Fiera had just known—had never had to ask.
And thus …
She didn’t possess an answer for him.
So, she blurted the first thing to pop into her mind. “I want to be free.”
He nodded, like her desire made all the sense in the world.
His gaze tripped down to her lips, lingering, before lifting back to meet her gaze. “I can’t give that to you, but I can make you feel free, if even for a moment.”
“How?” She sounded breathless.
“I can make you forget all your responsibilities, every thought pressing down on you, every suffocating worry.”
“To feel free … I wouldn’t even know how to …”
A delicious smirk played on his lips. “You won’t have to think, you only have to feel.”
A night of reprieve … a night to be free. This was what demons always promised, wasn’t it? And yet, they came with expectations, with undercurrents of their own desires.
But what did she care? This was a dream. Her dream.
“What happens here doesn’t matter, right? It isn’t real?”
“It’s only as real as you make it.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but she found she was having trouble forming sentences, what with his hand lingering beneath her chin, but now he’d shifted his grip, loosening it, and he rubbed softly beneath her jaw.
Goose bumps erupted again at just this simple touch.
When was the last time she’d been touched this way by a man?
Never.
Her first time being intimate had been with a patron of the inn—the son of a merchant.
He’d been kind, and she liked the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, so she invited him to the barn.
She’d been so scared of being caught that the entire romp had lasted less than fifteen minutes.
There were a few others after that … young men and women to whom she took a liking …
She didn’t know them, and she never saw them again … They were a fleeting distraction.
And then there was Shea, after Fiera was gone—both grieving their friend in their own ways.
Their couplings had been fumbling, hectic things, neither possessing enough time nor even the desire to truly explore each other, to cherish the stolen moments from their pressing responsibilities; each time had almost felt impersonal, transactional.
But Zhaire’s touch was something … different entirely, the way the pad of this thumb, calloused from hard work, so at odds with the well-dressed princely persona he wore when they met in the daytime, rubbed softly up and down her jaw, his fingers caressing her throat, brushing her collarbone, which was exposed in the low-cut shift she wore.
He cupped the back of her head then, his fingers slipping gently between her braids, and brought his other hand up to mirror that one. He pressed gently, so she tilted even further back, her mouth falling open.
They stood like that for a moment or an eternity, their breaths mingling in the frigid temple, yet heat flushed between them.
“I could give you one perfect night, Audra. Would you let me?”
“I …” Her heart pounded a drumbeat beneath her chest.
He closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled a deep, slow breath. “I can taste your arousal—and it is … divine.”
Audra’s cheeks should warm in a blush—no one had ever said anything like that to her, and yet, all it did was make her core pulse and sing in response, as though it were determined to make itself apparent. Plus, why blush when this was a dream? She’d drunk the elixir, after all …
He groaned and leaned in closer, pressing his face to her throat. “Your scent should be outlawed—it doesn’t even make sense how wonderful your every emotion is … but this particular one … this is what the poets write about.”
Audra’s knees went weak, and his grip tightened, now practically holding her up.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
“If … if this doesn’t truly count … maybe we could pretend, just for tonight—”
That was all he needed. He growled, his hands wrapping beneath her thighs and lifting her so she perched on the stone altar, her thighs spread as if on their own accord, and he invaded the space, pressing himself against her, between her thighs.
His hands were back in her braids, as though drawn by a magnetic force, and he pressed his face to her neck again, inhaling her scent. Her … emotions.
She clamped her legs against his hips, gripping his muscular thighs. His length throbbed beneath his trousers, pressed against her soaking wet core.
“What can you scent? What are my emotions right now?”
His breath tickled her throat, his lips pressed against her skin, and she shivered with pleasure.
“You feel safe here, in my arms, though this confuses you. Your emotions are vacillating between desire and wonder at the feelings I’m eliciting from you, despite not touching you anywhere but your hair—” He gripped her hair in his fist and bundled it behind her head, out of his way; she practically purred at the tension making her scalp tingle, her body ignite.
“And your throat—” He pressed a kiss against her throat, dragged his teeth down the expanse of it, nicking his fangs on her collarbone.
She uttered a moan.
His body jerked at the sound, and he growled in response.
“I will be as a starved man for the rest of my life, now that I’ve tasted the flavor of your desire. All other emotions will choke me, ash upon my tongue.”
She’d never longed for a kiss so much in her life. The spicy, dizzying aroma of his skin, the oils in his hair, the whiskey on his breath; she might cry if she didn’t get a taste of him.
“I can show you how it feels,” he said, low and husky. “If you wish.”
“Yes, please,” her voice was breathy; she hardly recognized it as her own. “Show me.”
She felt a gentle caress on the bond between them—a tug within her chest as though she had strings connecting her to him. She reached out for it with her mind, following the strings until she felt him, accepting his offer.
All at once, she could taste what her emotions felt like—spicy desire mixed with a tang of fear, and yet, the sugary warmth of feeling safe, the bitter longing she carried within her to be cherished by someone, heart and mind and soul.
She gasped, her lips parting, and he leaned in, devouring her lips, her tongue, the air in her lungs.
She keened a moan against his lips and eagerly kissed him back.
They were lost in each other, all clashing lips, and eager tongues, and searching hands; it was as though only she and he existed in all the realms. As she pressed against him, returning the kiss in a maddening fervor, his own walls slipped, and she felt his emotions—as though she were a demon herself: deep, crushing sorrow, a cavern of guilt, riotous desire, eagerness to please—
He released her at once, his emotions vanishing, and she almost protested at the loss of his touch, his feelings, his lips, him—but then he dropped to his knees and gripped her thighs, spreading them wide.
Then he began trailing featherlight kisses up her thighs. She squirmed, but he tightened his grip, holding her still, not permitting her to move a single centimeter as he took his time.
“If I am to worship you on this altar, Heiress, then your underthings must go.”
“I—” And then she drew an incra in the air—her underthings vanished. Oh, this dream magic was nice.
His sharp inhale of breath at the sight of her, spread out before him, was delicious. He took a moment to marvel, gazing upon Audra as though she was something precious, something wonderful to behold.
“My queen,” he breathed before diving in to feast.
She gasped at the feel of his lips on her, his tongue making the broad, assured sweeps of a man well-practiced in the art of pleasure.
She gripped the smooth expanse of his shoulders, her fingernails digging into the pronounced muscles.
She moaned his name, wriggling closer, tightening her thighs against the pointed tips of his ears.
And feast he did. He slurped and licked and pulled her bud between his teeth and then his lips, as she cried out and moaned, her body tensing and tightening in ways it never had before.
And then he lowered his wall for a moment, letting her feel just how much he was enjoying the taste of her—and all at once the world faded around her; she truly was free of every thought, every facet of her being, save this one moment, this one feeling as ecstasy zipped from her core up to her heart and down to her toes as her world exploded into a cascade of stars and blinding lights as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her.
He licked her through the pinnacle, his grip tight on her ass, drinking up her release as though he couldn’t let a single drop of her pleasure go unsavored.
As the little zips of pleasure eased and her body melted, he stood, picking her up and holding her to him, her legs wrapped around his waist. She nuzzled into his throat now, understanding a bit what he was feeling earlier.
After a moment, he sat on the altar as she straddled him. She leaned back to see him, though suddenly, she felt shy. No need for that useless emotion, though, because he was gazing at her with a reverence that defied explanation.
She smiled, wriggling against the hardness pressed into her still-pulsing core.
“Shall we …”
He groaned, pressing his face to her shoulder. “This is your dream, remember. This is all about you.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean—”
Her timepiece chimed, ringing all through the temple as though someone were pulling massive bells in a watchtower.
She groaned as the dream realm began to shimmer. “At least I tasted freedom, if only for a short time.”
He leaned in, planting a kiss on her forehead. “It was I who tasted freedom this night.”