Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
ARWEN
Iclose the distance.
The first kiss is soft. Questioning. A brush of my lips against his that asks rather than demands—is this okay, do you want this, are we really doing this. His mouth is warm, slightly chapped, and he holds perfectly still as I explore the shape of him. Letting me lead. Letting me choose.
I pull back just enough to see his face. His expression has shifted—the grief replaced by raw hunger, barely contained. The Bloom pulses visibly beneath his skin, red tendrils flaring with each beat of his heart.
“More?” My voice comes out lower than I intend.
“Whatever you want.” His hands settle on my waist. Gentle. So gentle. Scarred fingers curving against my hips with pressure that asks rather than takes. “Whatever pace.”
I kiss him again. Deeper this time. Let my lips part, let my tongue trace the seam of his mouth until he opens for me. He tastes of the bitter herbs I’ve been using to treat him, and underneath that, a darker flavor. One that makes heat pool low in my belly.
His hands tighten on my waist. Just slightly. Just enough to communicate the restraint coiled in his muscles, the desperation he’s fighting to control. The Bloom wants him to take. To claim. To drown us both in sensation until neither of us can think.
He doesn’t. He holds still while I explore his mouth, while my hands grip his shoulders and dig into the thick slabs of muscle, while I shift closer until my knees bracket his thighs.
When I finally break the kiss, we’re both breathing hard.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur against his jaw.
“The Bloom.” His voice has dropped an octave. Rough gravel that vibrates through his chest into mine. “Makes everything... intense.”
“Is it too much?”
A sound escapes him—half laugh, half groan. “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you in that forest. Covered in blood and running for your life and looking at me like I was either salvation or death.” His breath warms my lips, his face inches from mine. “Too much doesn’t begin to cover it.”
I feel the evidence of that want pressing against my thigh where I straddle his lap. Hard. Insistent. The Bloom magnifies my awareness of it until I can barely focus on anything else.
“Then stop holding back.”
His control snaps.
His mouth crashes into mine with a desperation that steals my breath. One hand slides up my back, fingers splaying across my spine, while the other cups the back of my head, tilting me to the angle he wants. The kiss goes from exploration to claiming in the space of a heartbeat.
I should be afraid. Every instinct the cult programmed into me says I should be afraid of a man this strong, this hungry, this barely contained.
But the fear doesn’t come. Only heat. Only want.
Only the overwhelming need to get closer, to feel more, to burn with him until there’s nothing left but ash.
His mouth moves to my jaw. My neck. Teeth grazing my pulse point, then biting down—not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to make me gasp.
The sound seems to undo him. He growls against my throat, a low vibration that I feel more than hear, and his hips roll upward, grinding against me through the layers of fabric between us.
Pleasure spikes through my core. Sharp. Electric. I rock against him instinctively, chasing the sensation, and his grip on my hip tightens to bruising.
“Arwen—” My name comes out broken. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to be able to—”
“Good.” I fist my hands in his hair and drag his mouth back to mine. “I don’t want you to be able to.”
He groans into the kiss. Both hands slide down to cup my ass, lifting me, repositioning me until I’m pressed flush against the hard length of him. The friction makes my vision blur. The Bloom turns every point of contact into lightning, sensation building faster than I can process.
I reach for the laces of my tunic with trembling fingers.
His hands join mine, working the knots free with surprising dexterity for someone whose hands are shaking as badly as mine.
The fabric parts. Falls open. Cool air hits my bare skin, and then his hands are there, rough palms sliding up my ribs, thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts.
“Tell me to stop.” His voice is wrecked. “Any time. Any moment. Tell me to stop and I will.”
“Don’t stop.” I arch into his touch. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He doesn’t stop.
His hands cup my breasts, calluses rasping against sensitive flesh, and when his thumbs find my nipples, I cry out loud enough that anyone in the corridor might hear.
I don’t care. Can’t care. The Bloom has stripped away everything but sensation, and his hands are everywhere, learning me, memorizing me, finding every place that makes me gasp and shake and beg for more.
His mouth follows his hands. Hot and wet against my collarbone, my sternum, the slope of my breast. When he takes my nipple between his lips, I arch off the cot, fisting my hands in his hair to hold him there.
He sucks. Grazes his teeth across the peaked flesh.
Switches to the other side and repeats the torture until I’m grinding against him with desperate, graceless movements.
“Zrynok—” His name tears from my throat. “I need—”
“I know.” He lifts his head. His lips are swollen, his expression stripped raw, the hunger in his gaze so intense it should frighten me. “I know what you need.”
He flips us. Lays me back on the narrow cot, his broad body covering mine without crushing me. The solid press of him anchors me. Real. His hips slot between my thighs, and even through our remaining clothes, I can feel the thick ridge of him pressing exactly where I need pressure.
His hand slides down my stomach. Finds the waistband of my trousers. Pauses.
“Yes?”
“Yes.” The word comes out as a whimper. “Yes, please, yes—”
He tugs the laces free. Slides his hand beneath the fabric. His fingers discover me wet and aching, and the sound he makes—a growl of pure masculine satisfaction—sends another rush of heat surging through me.
“Fuck.” He breathes the word against my throat. “You’re so wet. So ready for me.”
His fingers stroke through my slick folds, learning my shape, finding the places that make me writhe. When he circles my clit with rough callused fingertips, my hips buck off the cot.
“More,” I gasp. “Inside. I need—”
He gives me what I need. One thick finger slides inside me, and the stretch makes my eyes roll back. He’s so much bigger than anything I’ve experienced, his fingers alone wider than most men’s cocks, and when he adds a second finger I have to breathe through the fullness.
“Too much?” Concern cuts through the hunger in his voice.
“No.” I grab his wrist. Hold him in place. “Just—give me a moment.”
He holds still while I adjust. Presses kisses to my forehead, my cheeks, the corner of my mouth. Patient. So patient, even with the Bloom screaming at him to take more, faster, harder.
When I rock my hips experimentally, the stretch transforms into pleasure. Deep and aching and not nearly enough.
“Move.”
He obeys. His fingers pump inside me, curling to find the spot that makes stars burst behind my eyes, his thumb working my clit in tight circles.
The dual stimulation builds faster than I expected—the Bloom magnifying every stroke until I’m shaking, gasping, clinging to his shoulders as the pressure coils tighter and tighter in my core.
“That’s it.” His voice is gravel and sin against my ear. “Let go. Let me feel you come apart.”
I shatter.
The orgasm crashes through me in waves, my inner walls clamping around his fingers as I cry out his name. He works me through it, gentling his strokes as the aftershocks roll through me, pressing kisses to my throat while I remember how to breathe.
Before the trembling fully stops, I’m reaching for his waistband.
“My turn.” I manage to get my shaking fingers around the laces. “I want to feel you. All of you.”
He helps me strip him. Kicks off his trousers while I shove mine down my legs, and then we’re both bare, nothing between us but candlelight and wanting. I look at him—really look—and my breath catches.
He’s massive. Proportional to the rest of him, which means intimidating, thick, flushed dark with need. The head glistens with pre-cum, and when I wrap my hand around his length, he hisses through his teeth.
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” I stroke him slowly. Feel him pulse in my grip. “I want all of it. All of you.”
His head falls back. The tendons in his neck stand out as he fights for control, his hips twitching involuntarily into my touch. I catalog every response. Every noise. Every shudder that runs through his powerful frame when I tighten my grip or twist my wrist a certain way.
This is power. Real power. Not the kind the cult claimed to offer—power through surrender, through letting someone else make the choices. This is the power of giving pleasure. Of making this dangerous man fall apart in my hands.
“Arwen—” His voice breaks. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to—”
“Not yet.” I release him. Push against his chest until he’s flat on his back, and then I’m straddling him again, positioning myself over his straining cock. “I want you inside me when you come.”
His hands grip my hips. Hard enough to leave bruises. “Take what you need. I’m yours.”
The words undo me more than any physical sensation could.
I sink onto him slowly. Inch by inch. The stretch is overwhelming—he’s so thick, filling me so completely that I have to pause halfway down just to breathe. The Bloom screams at me to take more, faster, but I force myself to go slow. To feel every ridge and vein as my body opens for him.
When I’m finally seated fully, his cock buried to the hilt, we both go still.
“Okay?” His voice is strained.
“Perfect.” I rock my hips experimentally. The movement makes both of us groan. “You feel so... full. I’ve never...”
“I know.” His hands flex on my hips. “Take your time. Move when you’re ready.”
I move.
The first thrust is careful. Testing. Finding the angle that makes pleasure spike rather than discomfort. But once I find it—once I discover exactly how to roll my hips to drag him against the spot that made me shatter on his fingers—careful stops mattering.
I ride him with increasing urgency. My hands brace against his chest, nails digging into the flesh around those crawling red tendrils, using the leverage to lift and drop in a rhythm that has us both panting.
His hips surge up to meet me, driving deeper with every stroke, and the sound of flesh meeting flesh fills the small chamber.
“Harder.” The word rips from my throat. “I need—more—”
He sits up without breaking rhythm. Wraps one arm around my waist, the other hand fisting in my hair, and his mouth crashes into mine. The new angle drives him impossibly deeper, and I cry out against his lips.
“Like this?” He punctuates the question with a brutal thrust.
“Yes—fuck—just like that—”
He sets a punishing pace. Holds me in place while he drives into me from below, his cock hitting places inside me I didn’t know existed. The pleasure builds fast and sharp, the Bloom making every stroke feel like lightning, and I’m already trembling on the edge again.
“Touch yourself.” His voice is a growl against my throat. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”
My hand slides between us. Finds my clit slick and swollen. Two strokes is all it takes—his cock filling me, my fingers circling my clit, his teeth sinking into my shoulder—and I’m coming again, harder than before, my whole body convulsing around him.
He follows me over. I feel his cock pulse inside me, feel the hot rush of his release, hear him groan my name like it’s the only word he knows. His arms wrap around me, pulling me flush against his chest, and we ride out the aftershocks in a tangle of sweat-slicked limbs and ragged breathing.