Chapter 26
Fundamental Foolery
Ragnar
Something was burning.
Ragnar took a deep breath and detected herbs and meat, so at least it wasn’t something that shouldn’t have been over a flame, it was just something that had spent too long there.
“Oh, shoot! Dang! Frick!” Brioni’s hissing voice sounded from the other side of the loft along with some minor scrambling and pan scraping.
At Ragnar’s side, Moar cocked his head and lifted an ear, watching the human.
Moonlight beamed in through the windows overhead and his bed was soft against his no longer aching back.
He was home. But more importantly, she was there with him.
Even if she was making a mess.
Ragnar angled his head just enough to see Brioni scurrying from the basin to the fire where she dumped a literal handful of water on the skillet.
Smoke plumed from whatever she’d been cooking—or, attempting to cook—but the jumping flames went out.
She stood there staring at it forlornly, shoulders drooping.
“I take it breakfast’s ready?”
Brioni gasped, and then she pounced. She landed atop him with a squeal and peppered his face with kisses. “You’re awake!” she shouted and then sat up with a start. “Oh, no. Does it still hurt?”
Ragnar dropped hands onto her thighs to keep her in place atop him.
“Not at all.” She was straddling his stomach with her full weight, but even the dive hadn’t garnered any pain.
Balran was probably the best healer in the city, after all, and he’d spent an entire day in the infirmary being mended from that awful draining magic.
Brioni still groaned quietly in the back of her throat like she didn’t believe him, pulling down the linens and running hands over his bare chest. His skin certainly lit up, but not with pain. “They said you need your rest.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Barely a day.”
Ragnar felt his eyes go wide. “Another day?”
“Don’t worry,” she said quickly, giving his nose a poke like she so often did to Moar’s snout.
“I took care of the feeders and the water and got everyone some exercise and made sure there weren’t any overlooked injuries.
Well, I got some demons to help me with the heavy stuff, but I told them all what to do, and I made sure they did it exactly how you would so that everybody downstairs is happy.
And I even made you breakfast!” She winced. “Well, I tried.”
Despite the smoke, the rest of the loft was immaculate.
Some of Ragnar’s things weren’t where he left them, but discovering the secret places she’d tucked them away in the name of tidiness was a small price to pay for her companionship.
He would pay any price to have her there, he knew, to touch her, to listen to her, to smell her.
“I am hungry,” he said, gaze roving down her body and fingers digging into the soft flesh of her thighs.
The green rings in Brioni’s eyes widened, lips falling open in a circle of surprise. “But I burnt the food.”
Ragnar grinned, fangs sliding down over his lips. “Looks like you’ll have to make it up another way, won’t you?”
A ravenous look flashed across her sweet features, but only for a moment. “Ragnar, you were attacked, tied up, and evil-magicked just two days ago. When we were in the infirmary, you said you couldn’t remember anything after going to the Scholar’s Hall. Zelvax even carved a rune into your skin.”
Ragnar tensed his thigh where the rune had been before Balran drew out the magic and healed over the wounds. There was no pain, but knowing even a fraction of what that demon intended made him shudder—the runes were copied down and with the scholars now, but there were whispers of metamorphosis.
Those other two, the demon and the human that no one could identify, had it much worse.
Their runes couldn’t be entirely healed, and they’d had patches of their skin cut away.
It was probably for the best they were still too enchanted to wake.
He swallowed angrily, glad only that his pack of veilhounds had put an end to the demon who orchestrated it all, but doubly frustrated that the red demon, Itcheran, had gone missing.
It was true that Ragnar had felt like shit in the infirmary, and from the human’s perspective, a full day of sleep probably didn’t seem like enough. Maybe it wasn’t for some things, but he wasn’t as weak as she would expect, which would make the next part fun.
Ragnar sat bolt upright, and Brioni flailed, grabbing onto his shoulders as she slid into his lap. “I have to eat,” he said. “And since you ruined breakfast, you’ll have to do instead.”
Brioni squealed as he pushed her onto her back.
Moar bounded off the bed, leaving Ragnar all the room to spread Brioni’s legs and tear at the patch of fabric keeping him from his meal.
She gasped so sweetly as his tongue found its place at the apex of her thighs, burying itself without preamble right where it belonged.
“Ragnar!” she screamed as he shaped his lips around her nub and sucked. “Oh, my gods, what are you doing?”
He didn’t offer her an answer, mouth too busy, but gripped her wrists and pinned them to the bed at her sides. Her hips bucked, back end springing off the bed, but he never lost the connection, laving at her center and drawing out her wetness to coat his tongue.
Ragnar wanted to show her how grateful he was for everything she’d done.
For the rescuing, of course, and for the care while he was ill, but also for drawing him out and back into the world, for showing him Heck through her eyes, for being funny and patient and kind.
And for loving him, a gray demon who had failed at companionship so many times he hadn’t deserved a single one of the chances she’d given him.
But explaining that took words, and his tongue preferred languishing in her taste as her thighs squeezed on either side of his head.
“Oh, fuck me,” she whimpered when he swirled around her bead of pleasure.
He finally pulled back, her juices coating his face and her pretty hole clenching around nothing. “That’s very bad language,” he growled, gaze drifting up over her body as his grip on her wrists tightened. “I’ve never heard you talk like that.”
She lifted her head just over her heaving breasts, face flushed. “Oops.”
“You’re lucky you’ve been such a good girl.” And he dove back between her legs.
Brioni screamed and writhed and even laughed until she went conspicuously silent and still and then broke apart under his tongue. Again, too fast, but she would pay for that later.
She fell into a panting mess on the bed, legs splayed open and shimmering wetness coating her thighs. He would have liked to slide himself into her hot, drenched center and claim her, but his lids went droopy, and there was something even more important he still needed to do with his lips.
“Brioni?” He slid forward, releasing her wrists and resting his chin on her stomach. “Do you still want to stay with me?”
“Huh?” Her head lolled from one side to the other.
He reached up and tangled his claws in her hair to hold her still. “You’ve had more time to think over the last two days, and I’ll understand if you need even more, but do you really want to be my mate?”
“If you keep doing that,” she gasped, “I might never leave this bed.”
He snorted. “I don’t just mean carnally.”
Brioni took a deep breath and licked her lips.
She collected herself there beneath him, her stomach’s slower rise and fall grounding under his head.
“I’m going to keep delivering the mail, and you’re going to keep taking care of the animals,” she said, a gentle smile growing over her pretty face, one he could imagine coming home to every night.
“And twice a week you’re going to take me on a date in Heck, and twice a week I’m going to bring myself here for a date at the barn, and the other three days we’ll take turns surprising each other for lunch and other fun things I can’t exactly think of right now.
You’ll ask me to spend the night, and I will sometimes, and I’ll ask you to spend the night, and you’ll always say no because of Alamar probably, but it’ll be okay because absence makes the heart grow fonder, or so they say, but then one night you’ll ask me to stay, and I will, and I’ll never stop staying.
I’ll still deliver the mail because I actually love delivering the mail, and I’d miss Stephan too much, but this will be my home because you’re my soulbond, Ragnar, and nothing can change that. ”
“You’ve really got it all figured out.”
She shrugged. “It’s your weird demon magic that says so.”
“So…” He rubbed her head and peered deeply into her eyes. “Will you spend the night?”
Brioni scrunched her nose and grinned. “I’ll think about it.”
***
Ragnar woke to an empty bed. Evening was falling, the moon gone behind the trees and the first stars winking to life outside the windows.
He’d had a few meals and a long bath between naps.
Brioni had made appearances, kissing his cheek each time she came and went to care for things down in the barn, but now it was only Moar who slept soundly at the bed’s foot, and the loft was quiet.
He stood and stretched, claws extending as he wrung out the stiffness in his body. He took a deep breath, the lingering scent of Brioni’s release still on his bed linens filling his lungs and waking his bleary mind.
She loved him. She had said it. He had returned it. They were mates.
So where in blazes was she?
Ragnar stalked down the stairs from the loft, instinct prodding at his brain to take each step silently, to move only in the shadows, to seek her out before she knew she was being hunted. Her scent told him she was still there, a human meddling with his things, getting herself into trouble.
She had yet to discover the depth of trouble she could be in.
He heard her, voice a sweet hum by the horse’s stall.
Ragnar lurked just beyond the closest lantern’s glow, admiring how the yellow light spilled over her body as she gently patted the horse’s snout.
“And then he got gobbled up,” she said. “Can you believe it? Not a very good way to go, but he wasn’t a very good demon. ”
Ragnar’s fangs pulsed against his lips, cock already hardening as he watched her sigh, breasts glowing under the lantern light as they rose and fell.
“Poor Ragnar,” she went on, offering the horse a slice of fruit. “He’s sleeping everything off, so that’s why I’m here, but you should consider yourself lucky because that means you get an extra treat.”
“Following my instructions exactly, I see.”
Brioni gasped in her breathy way, eyes rounding and cheeks flushing. Gods, he loved that sound almost as much as he loved that face, elated to see him even if she was surprised by his sudden presence.
“What are you doing out of bed?” She took a step toward him but halted when he eased himself into the light.
Ragnar exhaled, but it rumbled like a growl in his chest. He’d not bothered with a tunic, and a breeze blew through the barn, warm on his skin and carrying her scent on a hot gust. He flexed his claws, muscles tensing and jumping as he practiced patience. “Keeping things tidy too?”
Brioni’s big green eyes darted to his worktable, littered with tools that should have been hanging up and a spilled scoop of goat feed.
“Sure am,” she lied through a toothy grin, clasping her hands behind her back and jutting out her chest because she probably thought that would appease him.
“Don’t you think you should go back upstairs and rest? ”
He tipped his head to the side, stalking closer. “I don’t need rest, Brioni. I need to give you what I promised weeks ago but you keep squirming your way out of.” He lifted a claw and hooked it in the tie of her dress.
“What’s that?” she asked with a wicked sweetness.
“Your punishment.”
Brioni’s eyes went huge and her face went scarlet, but the scent of her arousal betrayed her naughty little performance. “You’ll have to catch me first.”