Chapter Twenty
Dante
This can’t be real. Maybe the last couple of days have been a dream. Maybe I fell asleep in the living room after reading that book I borrowed from Grant, and Ophelia will come back from her girls’ night any minute and shake me awake and send me off to bed—
Lark pushes his trousers down—and I’ve hardly admired, all day, just how tight they are around his arse and thighs—and then steps out of them, apparently not caring at all that they’re on the floor. There’s plenty of dirt down there. I’m not the tidiest gardener.
That thought is fleeting, there and gone, because now I get to look at him, and I realise that I’ve spent all these years not really doing that at all.
Sure, I’ve spoken to him and spent time in the café.
I know what he looks like; I think I could sketch him from memory if I were any good at drawing.
But all those looks have been quick, bashful, not daring to push too far because I never wanted to freak him out or have to humiliatingly let me down gently.
Now I can look. Now he clearly wants me to.
He stands there, tipping his head to one side so his hair falls in a sleek waterfall of dark strands.
It’s already a little messy from where I’ve grabbed at him, but I like that, too.
His face, without the glamour, is sharper, more alien, but I like the jutting line of his cheekbones and his too-sharp teeth.
Slowly, I look lower. My breath comes faster as I trace the surprising width of his shoulders, the pull of pale, shimmering skin over taut muscle. His cock is half-hard, slender and emerging from a base of dark curls. My mouth waters. He wants to ride me? I want to taste him.
Boldness seizes me. “Turn around.”
Lark raises an eyebrow but does as I say. Fuck, he looks good. His arse is round and pert, and I’m going to—
“Fuck. Come here.”
He’s between my thighs from one second to the next, and he kisses me like he’s starving, that edge that has been present all day turning into something heavier, sharper.
I wrap my legs around his hips as best I can to pull him closer.
His skin is warm and smooth under my fingertips.
Does he heal like wolves and vampires do, or will digging my fingers in leave bruises?
I shiver and kiss along one of those sharp cheekbones. I don’t want to. Sure, if we were together, I’d want people to know, but I don’t want to leave a mark on him, don’t want to mar the absolute perfection of him.
“May I…?” Lark’s hands are quick and possessive, fingers curling around my stomach and hips in ways I’ve never experienced from anyone else I’ve slept with. He tugs at the waistband of my trousers, then squeezes the flesh just above there again, like he can’t help himself.
“Yes. Please.”
He unfastens them deftly and helps me lift my hips so he can drag them all the way off. Lark pauses, hands on my thighs, and takes me in far faster than I did him. He’s no less thorough for it. His grip on me tightens and his cock jerks.
“You’re perfect,” he says, and I shake my head.
“You—”
“I cannot lie.” Lark sears me with a look. “You know that.”
I do. I nod frantically, trying to grab at him and pull him closer because I want him to stop looking at me like that, like he sees right through me, and also I never want him to stop, not any of it, not at all.
Lark kisses me again and I slide my hands down his back, letting out a faint gasp when one moves over the curve of his arse.
Lark growls and bites my lower lip. “Lie back on the bench,” he says.
He steps away to move the plant pot I’ve left in the centre of the workbench, and I stretch out across the length of it, glad when it doesn’t wobble or move. It’s sturdy enough for me, but both of us? Moving?
“Is this going to hold?” I ask, and Lark chuckles. He walks back over to me, completely uncaring that he’s naked, and for a moment I can’t breathe.
“I know you have used much of your magic tonight, but just try—” He runs his fingertips over the edge of the bench.
I reach out. The wood isn’t as lively as the trees or plants that surround the castle, but it’s not inert like the wood back home. Not dead.
“How?”
“We ask the trees to change their shape. Help them. This”—he runs his fingers over its edge again—“I made myself. It will not let you fall. I would never let you fall.”
He kisses me again before he climbs onto the table, graceful where no one else would be.
Lark straddles my hips, flashing me a grin full of sharp teeth when he rocks against me.
I groan. I can’t help myself; the blow job should have taken the edge off earlier, but I still feel like I could come at any moment.
“Lark. We need—”
“I have everything we need.” He leans down again, resting on his elbows so he can kiss me slowly, deeply. “Do you trust me with this, despite it all? With you?”
“Y-yes.” I really do. Lark studies my face—unlike him, I can lie—but he seems to read the truth of my words. He kisses my cheek and my jaw. “I don’t want to hurt you either.”
“I know.” He twists his hand, and his magic flickers around it. When I can focus on his fingers again, they’re slick and he rubs them together to show me.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “You have a spell for that?”
He snorts. “No spells. I am magic. Made of it. So are you.”
“Not like that.”
“Not quite, no. But you have it all the same.”
He lifts up onto his knees and twists around to start opening himself up.
I want to watch him, want to beg him to show me, but I can’t look away from his face either.
Lark plants his other hand in the centre of my chest, twisting his fingers into my chest hair like he did earlier.
Every gentle tug has me breathing faster.
I don’t want pain, not like that, but this is a reminder that he’s here and he’s with me and this is real.
It takes both an age and no time at all for Lark to decide he’s ready, and I gasp in surprise when he reaches down and slicks up my cock. He grins when he does it, eyes half-lidded and sultry. “This is going to feel incredible,” he purrs.
My heart leaps into my throat. Fuck. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve thought about this, fantasised about this.
None of that lives up to the moment Lark lowers his hips and slides down onto my cock.
He’s tight and hot around me, and the grip he has on my chest hair pulls a little tighter when he tips his head back and groans.
“F-fuck,” I moan. I want to push in deeper, but he’s paused, free hand absently stroking his own cock. “Lark, please…”
His eyes cut to me mischievously. “Oh, you want me to take all of you?”
“Lark.”
He leans down until our mouths are only a breath apart. His hair falls around our faces. I reach up and push some of the silky strands aside.
“Make me take it,” he murmurs. “They all think you belong to me. Prove that I belong to you.”
His voice wavers on the last sentence, and the way he’s holding my gaze… It feels less like teasing, defiance, and more like uncertainty.
He wants me to prove it to him.
I shove my hand into his hair and drag him down into a messy kiss.
Lark groans when my tongue pushes into his mouth, and then again when I jerk my hips up, driving my cock deeper into him.
He curls around me, burying his face in my neck as I fuck him, and I grab his hips, planting my feet on the bench for more leverage.
Lark moans and clings to me as I fuck him. Of course I was close before, and each thrust and desperate whine only takes me closer, and while I want to come, I want him to come first.
“Touch yourself,” I gasp out, my breaths ragged. “I want to see you come.”
Lark jerks his head up, staring wide-eyed at my face. Is he surprised by the desire or the fact that I’ve voiced it? Doesn’t matter. He pushes up into a sitting position—I mourn the loss of having him pressed up against me—and wraps his fingers around his cock.
I stare up at him as he starts to move. He rides my cock, hips moving in sync with my own jerky movements, and his entire body moves too, one shimmering wave of soft skin and dark, hungry eyes. I squeeze my own shut and groan.
“I need you to—I want you to—”
“Come, Dante,” Lark says. The words are quiet and firm, and I have no hope of disobeying, no matter how much I want to see Lark come first. I thrust up into him with a ragged groan.
“Lark!”
Lark strokes himself faster. I come hard, driving into him over and over, and he growls and curls over me, staring at my face. I blink up at him blearily. My body thrums with pleasure, exhaustion, and relaxation chasing on its heels, but I know what I want to see before I succumb to any of that.
“Show me,” I beg, and Lark’s moan sounds like it’s dragged out of him.
He tips his head back when he comes, eyes fluttering shut, and I shiver when he comes on my stomach and chest, not caring at all about how messy it is.
How messy we both are; he squeezes around my softening cock and cum dribbles from his hole.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Lark lets out a contented sigh and drapes himself over me. He doesn’t even flinch when his chest presses against mine, though he must be able to feel the wetness on my skin. “I could have never imagined anything better,” he says.
“I never have,” I say, and in the next second, my face floods with heat. “I-I mean…”
Lark chuckles and kisses my cheek. “I thought about you, too,” he says, and the words are not quite bittersweet. “All sorts of ways.”
He lies on top of me for a while, wriggling into a more comfortable position once my cock slips out of him, until his head is resting on my shoulder and one of his hands is still stroking over my chest. He thumbs a nipple and I suck in a breath.
“You should rest,” Lark says, as though he agrees with something I haven’t said. “We need to get you all clear of the castle by daybreak. I do not believe the court will respond well to my soulbond leaving, all things considered.”