Chapter Fifteen
Adeline
The door fell open beneath them, and if it weren’t for Kai’s arms around her waist, she might have fallen with it.
She gasped against his mouth as he backed them both into the room, kicking the door shut as he went.
It had taken them far too long, stumbling around the lower floor of the palace, to find somewhere with an honest-to-Goddess door and not just a flimsy curtain.
Perhaps it was a blessing that they hadn’t quite made it to her bedroom.
It was warmly lit in here, the scent of flowers thick in the small space.
A powder room, she thought, when her back hit a wide counter and set off the chiming of a dozen fallen bottles and vases.
She half-turned to right them, but Kai caught at her jaw and held her there with a deep, unyielding kiss, licking into her mouth until she was fevered with the familiar, heady taste of him, the bottles quite forgotten.
“Tell me you wore it for me.”
Kai’s plea was low, hot against her skin, nose nudging beneath her jaw to tilt her head back against the cool surface of the mirror so her stuttering breaths climbed for the ceiling.
He kissed down the length of her throat, tongue tracing her pulse points, her collarbone, her mind scattering with every brush of his lips.
“Tell me,” he said again, each word rough and laboured, “that you wore this dress knowing exactly what it did to me. What it still does.”
Goddess, how had she survived all these weeks without his hands on her body?
Without that possessive, gravelly rasp in her ear?
She’d forgotten what it was like with him, the way she could never quite keep her grasp on the upper hand, the way she never truly wanted to.
The way the dynamic shifted when the air between them heated, and her sweet, mannerly Merrow King let himself be consumed by something feral. The way he consumed her, in turn.
And that was, if she was honest, the entire reason she’d worn the damned dress.
“It’s for you,” she breathed. “I wore it for you.”
He groaned against one half-bared breast, and the low hum of his voice conducted her every nerve; nipples pebbling, core throbbing, back arching against the solid rail of his arm beneath her back.
The fingers of his free hand slid across her ribs, slipping beneath the rigid bodice to pry it up, to create just enough space for his tongue to caress and tease the underside of her breast. And when he made the first slow, wet pass over her nipple, she gasped out as though he’d thrust into her.
“Kai,” she pleaded, but he only hushed her.
A cruelty so soft she could do nothing but melt.
“I know, love,” he murmured. “I know what you need.”
He reached for the hem of her dress and pushed it slowly over her knees, her thighs, her hips, an unwieldy cloud of blue skirts crushed between them.
He didn’t tease, didn’t waste time trailing his hand up her thigh or tracing the outline of her undergarment.
He only pulled the cloth aside, fingers immediately gliding down her slick, swollen centre, proving to himself what he already knew.
“Fuck.” He swallowed thickly, twice, before he could speak again, his touch still circling her as though he couldn’t will himself to stop. “You’re so fucking wet. What are we going to do about this?”
She might’ve had a suggestion, but Kai swirled those slick fingers over the tight ache at her centre, and Adeline was certain she’d never had a coherent thought in her life.
Her moan wrung the breath from them both, and Kai struggled with another harsh swallow that did nothing to ease the guttural edge to his words.
“I have to make you come first. Fast. But then I am going to fuck you so, so slow.”
She nodded fervently; yes to all of it. Yes, she needed to come on his fingers before she broke down crying, and yes, she wanted him to fuck her, fill her, make her ache.
She whined when his hand withdrew, but then he was unlacing her bodice, and she peeled it eagerly away, the two of them rolling the whole exquisite, one-of-a-kind gown off her body and kicking it aside like it was little more than a nuisance.
“Up,” he rasped, and she rose at once, turning at the slightest press of his hand to her bare hips, guiding her to where he wanted her.
She’d go anywhere, contort herself any which way he pleased, all for the promise of his hands on her body.
And yet, when her palms landed on the counter beneath her, and she tilted her head back against Kai’s shoulder, she was still startled to find her own flushed face panting back at her.
She met Kai’s eyes in the mirror and found them twice as dark as when she’d faced him.
“I need you to see it,” he said raggedly, chest stuttering at her back. “I need you to see what I see.”
She knew, from the way his hands hovered, unmoving, at her hips, that he would not touch her until he had his answer.
And honestly, he could have asked anything of her in that moment.
He could have asked her to steal the Arabidae and embark on a pirate’s life across the Dhaliaan seas. She would have agreed in a heartbeat.
“Watch,” he said.
So Adeline nodded and watched.
She watched her breasts rise and fall as though she’d just swum the Crossing and back.
She watched her teeth dent her lower lip, as Kai flattened his palm to her hip and teased long, slow strokes over her stomach, the other hand sliding up her ribcage to cup her breast in his broad grasp, fingers spread wide and dimpling her soft skin.
Kai made a low and utterly indecent noise in his throat, as though she were the one touching him.
“Do you see how breathtaking you are? The way your breasts tighten when I touch you? Your exquisite fucking mouth?”
At his words, a breathy, desperate sound was shocked free from her lungs, and he loosed the deepest, most knowing laugh against her shoulder.
“The way you moan for me when I’m anything other than your chivalrous Merrow King.”
Kai’s fingers formed a V around her nipple, squeezing at the same moment that his other hand finally slid down between her thighs.
She gasped as his touch parted her, and he hummed into her shoulder, slowing to savour the glide of his touch through her wetness.
With her undergarment in the way, she couldn’t see his hand, but she watched the mesmerising movement of his forearm; the muscle that shifted and flexed with each wet stroke of his fingers, keeping time with the heat already coiling in the pit of her stomach. Shift, stroke, shift, stroke—
“Watch you, Adeline,” he growled—pleaded—and when her eyes darted to his in their reflection, he promptly slid two fingers inside her.
Adeline cried out, her knees buckling at the intense and abrupt pleasure of Kai, any part of him, finally inside her after so many long weeks.
He groaned again, and she fought to keep her gaze locked on the mirror, watching her own eyes glaze when he pressed a kiss to her throat.
“Kai.”
“Keep watching,” he whispered against her jaw. “I want you to see how beautiful you look, coming apart in my hand.”
Fuck.
He was right, too.
Kai’s touch did wonders for her. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dark and shining, lips plump and parted; but Goddess, his were too.
His breath was hot on her neck as he watched her writhe against his hand, his beautiful arm strained against her stomach while he worked relentlessly between her legs.
He touched her like he’d never stopped. Like he remembered every touch that had come before, had memorised the cadence of every moan he’d ever wrung from her despite the time and strangeness between them.
None of that seemed to matter. He’d promised to give her what she needed—and true to his word, Adeline watched as Kai brought her to a swift and abrupt orgasm, her thighs tight around his wrist and his name rolling endlessly off her tongue.
“That’s it, love, just like that,” came his ragged response.
Adeline’s breath had thinned like she’d climbed a mountain, and it was only as it swept back into her lungs and returned function to her brain that she realised she’d squeezed her eyes shut.
She peeked one open, smiling, expecting to find Kai grinning back at her reflection, but the look on his face seized at her stomach, that loose, warm bliss crushed in one fell swoop.
Kai was far from grinning; his eyes were dark and pained, his brows sloped together.
He looked utterly broken.
She grabbed his arm and gently drew his hand out from between her thighs, heart in her throat.
“What is it? Did I—”
He shook his head, cutting her off at once.
“You’re perfect,” he said hoarsely, but the words were too tight. His head dropped to her shoulder, and his sigh warmed her skin before he said again, “You’re perfect. And I’ve missed you.”
Oh.
Adeline inhaled and watched the shift of her throat in her reflection; she could nearly see her heart sliding down from its hiding place to settle in her ribs once more, back where it belonged.
Just as she was back where she belonged.
Warmth swelled in her chest at the thought, shimmering waves of it rising through her with every beat.
She turned in the circle of his arms and reached up to lay her hand on his face.
Somewhere over the Crossing, his usual scruff had become a beard; it suited him a little too well.
His cheek was pleasantly rough beneath her palm, his skin flushed with the heat that still simmered between them—or perhaps from his own admission.
The difficult truth, and the scrap of pride it had cost him to admit it; he’d missed her.
“I’ve missed you too,” she whispered.
Kai’s pained expression smoothed. He laid his palm over her hand, then curled it around her wrist and squeezed, somehow all the more emphatic in his silence.