Chapter 15 #2
“The heart is never first,” she made herself say, renewing her methodical stroking of his cock. “You and I, this is business of the most pleasant type.”
Let their infatuation be like a falling star. Bright and hot. Short. Lasting only long enough for them to form hazy memories that could be recalled with vague fondness. Pleasant, because neither of them would stick around long enough for it to go bad.
“Business,” Lowe echoed back at her.
“That’s right,” Calya said, letting her thumb circle his slickened head.
“Then I think it’s time I set new terms.”
Never first. The heart is never first.
The words jangled in Nocren’s head, Avenor’s and Calya’s both. Thin air currents flowed through the room, the wind omnipresent as ever. Yet it was silent now. He could feel its presence, but it didn’t offer any impressions. No warnings, no encouragement.
Whatever consequences awaited him in the morning, Nocren would incur them all on his own.
Despite Calya’s casual demeanor, something had changed.
Not in her words or her voice, but in her eyes.
The way she looked at him with a hint of wistfulness.
She was quick to hide it away, donning her armor—her act of viewing everything through the dispassionate lens of business.
Trying to distract him with her sly hands and self-assured touch.
Nocren gave in. If the wind could abandon caution, then so could he. He could live as simply as Calya did. He wanted her, and neither the fickle wind nor the gloriously naked minx straddling him gave any indication that he should stop.
But their positions? No, that wouldn’t do. If Calya claimed to want him, Nocren would educate her on what it meant to be his.
Before his murmured words of setting new terms were finished, he spun Calya around in his lap so her back pressed into his chest. His legs wound around hers, holding her open for his hand to trail across her pelvis.
When she tried to struggle, he pulled her arms behind her back, looping his own longer one above her elbows to keep her restrained.
Letting his free hand resume its lazy journey across her mound, Nocren brought his lips to her ear. “My terms, Calya. You come twice for me. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Only then do you get to ride.”
“How gentlemanly of you,” she said, wriggling against his hold.
“You didn’t want a gentleman, remember?” He gave her pussy a light slap, just enough for her to start in surprise, an indignant gasp escaping her lips. He slipped his fingers between her folds, and smirked against her neck to find her already wet with desire. “Take your orgasms and thank me after.”
“Thank you?” she scoffed, struggles renewed as she tried to angle her hips away. “You want my gratitude. My submission.”
“I’ll have it, too.” Nocren’s legs kept her from moving far, not that she was trying to escape. More just being contrary, fighting him because she could. Gods all break before Calya Helm made anything easy.
Gods all break him the day he wanted her to.
“My submission is a gift, and not one freely given,” she said. “You want it, you have to earn it.”
She turned her face away from his lips with a haughty sigh. Nocren took her bared throat as an invitation, latching on, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. Let his tongue feel her pulse, the beat rapid beneath his mouth.
His fingers traced around her entrance. She was slick with her arousal, and he parted her, savoring the tremor that ran through her frame.
“Earn?” He tugged at her ear with his teeth. “Is that the mistake whatever boys you’ve fucked in the past have made?”
“Prove you’re a better lover then, ranger,” Calya said, all breathless impatience as her hips tried to sink down on his teasing fingertips.
“Are you going to ask me nicely?”
Hands scrabbling behind her back, Calya raked her fingernails across his abs. “Never.”
Nocren’s dark chuckle ruffled her hair. “Then you won’t mind if I’m not gentle.”
He put two fingers in her, rumbling with pleasure when her inner walls squeezed tight as if trying to break him.
Her back arched, hips rolling with his rapid thrusting.
Each motion made her tits bounce, nipples forming little points that tempted his mouth.
Her head tipped back, hair brushing against his shoulder, a soft moan buzzing in her throat.
He painted wet kisses down her velvety skin, inhaling her innate musky scent, memorizing it.
Nocren’s thumb swiped over her clit, eliciting another moan.
Another clench. He repeated the motion, sometimes only flicking over the sensitive bundle of nerves, other times making slow, firm circles.
When she whined, he ground the heel of his hand against her, his fingers curling, pressing.
He found the spot that made her hips buck against the cage of his legs and focused on it.
“So cute of you to try and resist.” He nuzzled at her ear. “My Heartless, such a fighter.”
“You think this is resistance?” Calya panted, face turning toward him, mouth offered up.
“Definitely not a challenge.” Nocren’s lips sealed over hers, tongue licking in to taste her mouth.
Her pussy was tightening around his fingers, her hips no longer straining to take him but rather moving as if of two minds, one still hungry for him and the other growing too sensitive as she neared her peak.
But there was nowhere for her to escape. When she bit at his lower lip, it only sealed her fate.
Nocren deepened the bend of his wrist, rubbing across the sweet spot on her front wall. Kept his fingers buried, his pressure and pace unrelenting even as she began to writhe in his grasp. Her back arched again, her breaths a series of cries as her pussy bore down.
He brushed his lips against her ear. “That’s it. Come for me, sweetheart.”
Calya’s arms twitched, her pelvis stuttering against him as the climax rolled over her.
Soft moans punctuated every grip and release of his fingers, every deliberate stroke he made.
She shivered when his palm caressed her clit, and the possessive beast in his chest clamored for more.
Wanted to feel her perfectly wrecked beneath him.
She who laughed in the face of anything gentle or tender.
That suited him just fine. Ideal, really.
There was no Scarlett Kiss fueling her blood tonight, no liquid magic to soften her up.
She’d take his cock all on her own, like the good girl he knew was in her.
If he had to work for it, well, he’d make it worth both their time.
Nocren released her, and Calya slithered forward until she lay on her side, her body still shivering at odd moments as she came down from her present high. He made a show of examining his fingers and the way her desire clung to his skin. Made sure she watched as he sucked each digit clean.
She propped her chin on her hands. “What do I taste like, ranger?”
“Heartbreak.”
Her nose scrunched up as she laughed. “Maybe don’t give up forestry to become a poet.”
Reaching past her, Nocren opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out the bottle of lubricant he’d procured earlier, just in case. Next to it, he placed a sheath.
“More?” he asked.
Calya flicked the sheath onto the floor. “You’ve only managed one orgasm, Lowe. If you’re going to supplant the boys of my past, you’ll need to do better than that.”
He glanced at the rejected sheath. “There something I should know?”
She pointed at the small bag he’d retrieved from her room.
When he tossed it onto the bed, she pulled out a thin bottle.
It bore the same elegant label of House Oleander as the Scarlett Kiss but was otherwise drab in comparison.
Clear glass, gently molded into the shape of a rose stem, with the opening carved to resemble the bloom.
Pulling the cork out with her teeth and spitting it onto the ground, Calya swallowed the tiny bottle’s contents. She set the glass aside with more care than the cork, pointing her chin at the sheath. “We won’t be needing any of those.”
Not a philter, then, but a regular contraceptive potion.
“Want to feel me that badly, eh?”
A hint of color appeared in her cheeks. “Last time was… With the Kiss, it—it tinted everything. Nicely, of course, but”—she waved a hand to dismiss any concerns before he could give voice to them—“I’d rather nothing in the way. I want you as you are.”
Nocren stared at her, unable to form words. His cock had no such compunction, bobbing in agreement with her.
Calya smirked. “At least this once. Who knows, maybe I’ll prefer a barrier—”
“Not fucking likely.”
Nocren gripped her by the waist, pulling her back until she was bent over the bed, her belly pressed against the mattress. He ignored her squawked protest, grabbing a pillow and tucking it under her with a short, “For your precious ribs.”
A benefit of the cushion was in how it lifted her pert ass up off the bed. Presented her for him. A slice of moonlight came in through the window, so bright after the dark of the storm, slanting perfectly across her backside.
Nocren’s cock throbbed as he palmed her ass. He resisted—barely—the urge to give her soft, fair skin a slap. To see it turn rosy from his hand.
His gaze drifted lower, homed in on the dollop of creamy whiteness gathered at her entrance.
He breathed in hard through his nose, jaw clenching.
It was a struggle to think over the roar of blood pounding in his ears, and what little thinking his brain was doing revolved around making Calya leak with his seed next.
She was being mouthy again, riling him up with sly comments about his manhandling of her, how controlling he was, all while wiggling her gorgeous ass in his face.