Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
KIERAN
Fuck.
I’d played myself. I had absolutely played myself.
I hadn’t expected Arken’s nipples to pebble over, gently stiffening beneath her shirt—my shirt, actually—the moment I’d said the words good girl.
Source damn me to the fucking void.
Here’s the thing: I knew Arken was submissive in the bedroom.
And Arken knew that I was dominant. We had both toed that line already on multiple occasions, teasing out the truth with subtle—and not-so-subtle—confessions over time.
At this point, having been inside her, there was little else I wanted from this world than an opportunity to delve into that dark dynamic with her, but I wasn’t ready. Not yet.
I needed time. Just a little bit more time to figure my shit out. Because if I went there—if Arken was willing to exchange such intimate power with me, and let her dark side dance with mine?
I was fucking done for.
For me, sexual domination started off as an experiment in my youth.
Toward the tail end of my teenage years, I’d managed to wander into several of Sophrosyne’s secret sex clubs—places you could only find if you had the right connections and knew where to look.
My proximity to the noblesse had done me favors in that regard, and in those darkened, wicked halls I discovered the addictive pursuit of bondage.
Over time, it became a vice more than anything else—a damn good outlet, and essentially the only way I could get my dick hard enough to offer a stranger or two the best night of their lives.
The kind of sex I liked was rough—dangerously rough, carnal and animalistic.
I sought partners with the same energy, people who clearly found their catharsis through such vicious release.
And it goes without saying that this brutality was always consensual, always begged for… but always temporary.
I didn’t do relationships, and I rarely did repeats. I could count the number of people I’d fucked more than once on one hand—a number that now included Arken—and that was by design.
It was easy enough to let strangers bear witness to my dark side in short bursts, letting them scratch the surface and get a small taste of the predator that lurked within.
It was enjoyable, actually, to grant myself slivers of that intimacy, to reveal those parts of myself in the dead of night, knowing that come morning I’d be long gone—no chance of anyone looking too close or delving deeper into the depths of what fueled me.
But Arken saw me. She saw far too much, far too clearly—both for her own good, and mine.
Those honey-gold eyes pierced straight through my fucking soul the moment they’d glanced in my direction.
I knew my secrets and walls frustrated her from time to time, but what Arken didn’t realize was that I was pretty sure she knew me better than I knew my godsdamned self.
There would be no holding myself back with her. There would be no restraint, no calculated control, no slivers of truth tucked behind a casually carnal performance.
The day Arken Asher offered me her submission would be the day the trajectory of my life would remain forever altered, because if she let me take her like that…
I would never give her back.
“Train?” Arken laughed, the sparkling sound pulling me back to the present moment. “I’m hardly dressed to train right now, Captain.”
If she thought I didn’t catch the emphasis on the honorific, she was sorely mistaken—even if I kept my expression neutral as my gaze flicked from my barely-covered groin to her torso, in my shirt.
Gods, I like her wearing my clothes.
“I’d say you’re plenty dressed. Come on,” I said, beckoning her forward. “Join me.”
Arken scrunched her nose with distaste. “I’m pretty sure I’ve done enough core work this week to last me a lifetime, Kieran.”
I grinned wolfishly, holding her gaze as I slowly began to unwrap the Irrosi silk bindings from my palms. “Who said we were doing core work?” I purred, tossing the sweaty, arcana-inhibiting fabric toward the corner of the room.
She cocked her head, studying me with intrigue, those plush lips parting as Shadows began to coalesce in my palms. I was dragging the summon out for show, largely for her benefit. Call it foreplay, if you will. Once the daggers were fully formed, I jerked my head back, beckoning her forward again.
“Let me see those aetherblades, pretty girl.”
Arken’s eyes widened, and the ghost of a smile curled up one corner of her mouth, but she hesitated, sucking her lower lip between her teeth.
“Hey,” I said, immediately dispelling the daggers so I could raise my palms to emphasize my point. “Tell me to fuck off if you need to. There’s absolutely no judgment here, no shame if it’s too soon, Little Conduit.”
After Arken’s nightmares last night, I was eager to continue her training. That was something else my brother had taught me, once upon a time: “To conquer what haunts you, you must become stronger than what you fear.”
I wanted to help her get there. I wanted to help reset her subconscious mind with the confidence that she could defend herself. She didn’t need to rely on me, even if I had no intentions of ever leaving her side.
Arken shook her head quickly, as if to dispel her doubts. “No, not at all,” she replied, anxiety replaced by focused determination, a small crease forming between her brows as she eyed the absence of aether in my palms. “I’m ready.”
So eager.
I chuckled under my breath. “Go on, then.”
I’d be lying if I said my dick didn’t twitch when she summoned a twin pair of Light daggers to her palms with ease.
She really, really had no business being this adept in physical arcana without ever having set foot in a formal instructor’s class. I don’t think she realized how insanely advanced she was for her age and education levels—both in control and in raw arcane aptitude.
That said, the ability to summon an aetherblade meant very little if you didn’t know what to do with it.
I braced myself this time, before I said it. “Good girl. Very impressive.” I held back a smirk over the way her body tensed up at my praise. And exactly where it had tensed up.
Good gods, I was going to have fun with that praise kink one of these days.
“Now what?” Arken asked, briefly releasing her blades into the aether so she could tie her hair back.
Good. She was taking this seriously. “Now, I want you to try to stab me,” I said with a grin.
“Excuse me??” she sputtered.
“You heard me.”
“Kieran, I’m not going to do that. I’m not—I’m not going to fucking stab you!”
I snorted. “Well, I know that. You couldn’t land a hit on me if you tried, Asher. But I still want you to try.”
My grin only widened as a wave of petulance passed through her expression, not-so-subtle irritation working her jaw as resolve burrowed its way across her brow.
I tried not to laugh. It was honestly too easy to bait her like this, and I wasn’t sure she’d figured it out yet. The number one way to get a woman like Arken to do something outside of her comfort zone? Tell her she can’t and then sit back and watch her prove me wrong.
Judging by the way her fingers flexed around the grips of her Light blades when they returned to her palms, she was actually quite annoyed. Maybe even a little mad at me for doubting her like that.
Good.
I had ulterior motives in this exercise, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
She didn’t need to know how desperate I was to get to know her dark side, to unearth just how deep that fascination with the Shadows ran.
I knew my girl had teeth, and I wanted to see them come out to play sooner rather than later.
In an explosive motion that would have felt fast to anyone else, Arken launched herself at me with full force, ready to slash at me with her aetherblades to prove a point.
It only took a fraction of focus and energy to dodge her attack.
She huffed with irritation, stumbling a touch when she failed to make impact, and I tapped her leg with my bare foot.
“Stance, Asher.”
“Bite me,” she hissed.
“Later. Adjust your fuckin’ stance.”
The furious glare Arken leveled at me probably could’ve made half my cadre flinch, but I just smiled serenely as she adjusted her positioning as instructed.
“Again.”
This time, instead of dodging when Arken came at me, I simply caught her aetherblade with one of my own, choosing to disregard the strange sensation curling around my core as our arcana clashed.
“Fighting with a blade, even shortswords and daggers like these, is very different from fighting hand-to-hand,” I explained, dispelling my daggers again so I could guide her dominant hand lower, and shift her hips from square-on positioning to something a bit more side-on.
“Here, we prioritize mobility over firm balance. The angle of your body will give you broader reach and make it easier to lunge forward when you want to attack.”
All of Arken’s prior frustrations had dissolved as her academic nature transformed her into an engaged student, listening to my words with rapt attention and nodding along.
She echoed some of my statements beneath her breath the way she often did any time she wanted to commit something to memory.
Something about the repetition, she’d said, helped her grasp a new concept faster during verbal instructions.
“And this,” I chuckled softly as my fingers wove around hers, loosening her reverse grip on the aetherblades. “Is not for beginners.”
I largely fought in reverse, relying on the power I could put behind a downward thrust and my comfort with fighting in close quarters.
Given that I was probably her only example thus far, it made sense that her instinct was to mirror my stance, but she wasn’t quite ready to learn my fighting styles.