36. Tharos
THIRTY-SIX
THAROS
Her eyes are fierce. Certain. “I won’t let you become that thing’s puppet. But you’re not going to make me watch from a safe distance while you sacrifice yourself. We face this together or not at all.”
Her determination shouldn’t surprise me.
Should remind me of the rules I’ve been following, the distance I’ve been maintaining.
But I can’t bring myself to care anymore.
Not with her in my arms. Not with the battle raging outside and the King waiting in my mind and everything we’ve built about to be tested.
“You’re stubborn.”
“You’re one to talk.”
I kiss her.
Not gentle. Not questioning. I claim her mouth with all the desperation I’ve been holding back, all the want I’ve been denying since the moment she walked into my forest with death in her eyes and defiance in her spine.
She responds with equal intensity. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, her body arching against mine. The kiss deepens—teeth and tongue and the raw need to feel alive while death waits outside.
I press her back against the wall of the hollow, caging her with my body.
My mouth moves from her lips to her jaw, down the column of her throat.
She tilts her head back, giving me access, and I take it.
Taste the salt of her skin, the copper hint of blood from her temple wound, the sweat she’s earned fighting an army alone.
“Tharos.” My name on her lips is half gasp, half plea.
I bite down on the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough to leave a mark. To claim her in a way that will last beyond this moment.
She moans. Grinds against me, and I feel her heat through the leather between us. Feel how much she wants this—wants me—even with the world burning outside.
My hands find the clasps of her armor. Start working them loose.
“Here?” Her voice is breathless, barely a whisper.
“Here.” I pull her ruined breastplate away, toss it aside. “Now. Before—”
“Before everything falls apart.”
“Yes.”
The leather beneath her armor is slick with blood—some hers, some not. I peel it away carefully, revealing the body she’s hidden beneath steel and violence. Lean muscle. Scarred skin. Breasts that fit perfectly in my palms when I cup them, her nipples hardening against my callused fingers.
She arches into my touch. “More.”
I give her more. Duck my head to take one peaked nipple into my mouth, sucking hard enough to make her cry out.
Her fingers tangle in my hair, holding me against her as I worship first one breast, then the other.
By the time I lift my head, she’s panting, her hips rolling against mine in a rhythm that makes my cock throb painfully against the confines of my leathers.
“Your turn.” She shoves at my armor, and I help her strip it away. Her hands go straight to the bark-scars on my chest, tracing the ridges with her fingertips, then following the same path with her mouth.
The sensation is... I don’t have words. No one has touched these scars since they formed. No one has kissed them, licked along the edges where bark meets flesh, pressed their lips to the places where the forest has claimed me.
“Does it hurt?” She looks up at me, mouth hovering over the longest scar.
“No.” My voice comes out wrecked. “It feels like...”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re the first person in decades who’s touched me and meant it.”
Something shifts in her expression. Something softer than I expected. She rises on her toes, kisses me again—slower this time, deeper. Her hands work at my belt, the laces of my leathers, until she can wrap her fingers around my bare cock.
I groan into her mouth. She strokes me—base to tip, her grip firm, her thumb swiping over the head to spread the moisture already gathering there.
“I want this inside me.” Her voice is raw. “I want to feel you for days after this.”
The words snap something inside me. I spin her, press her front against the root-wall of the hollow.
Her breath catches as I yank down her remaining clothes, baring her from the waist down.
She’s slick when I slide my hand between her thighs—so wet my fingers glide through her folds without resistance.
“Gods, Xela.” I bite her shoulder, slide two fingers inside her. She’s tight, hot, clenching around me in a way that makes me want to bury myself in her immediately. “You’re drenched.”
“Your fault.” She pushes back against my hand, taking my fingers deeper. “Been wanting this since—ah—since you first pinned me to a tree.”
“Should have taken you then.” I curl my fingers, find the spot that makes her whole body shudder. “Should have spread you open against that bark and made you scream my name.”
“Do it now.” She looks over her shoulder, eyes blazing. “Stop teasing and fuck me.”
I withdraw my fingers. Line myself up with her entrance. And push inside in one long, relentless stroke.
She screams. Not pain—pleasure, raw and overwhelming. Her walls grip me so tight I have to pause, jaw clenched, fighting the urge to spill immediately. She’s perfect around me. Hot and wet and gripping me in a way that makes my vision blur.
“Move.” Her nails scrape against the roots in front of her. “Tharos, please—”
I move.
I drive into her with all the fury and desperation the battle has stoked in both of us.
Each thrust drives her into the wall, drives the breath from her lungs in sharp cries that echo through the hollow.
She braces herself and pushes back, meeting me stroke for stroke, taking everything I give her and demanding more.
My hand finds her hip, grips hard enough to bruise. The other slides around to find her clit, circling the swollen nub in time with my thrusts. She keens—a high, broken sound—and I feel her starting to tighten around me.
“That’s it.” I growl the words against her ear. “Come on my cock. Let me feel you fall apart.”
She shatters with a scream that I muffle with my hand over her mouth. Her walls clamp down on me, rippling, milking my cock as her whole body convulses. The sensation drags me to the edge—
But I’m not done with her yet.
I pull out. Spin her again. Lift her by the backs of her thighs and drive back inside before she can catch her breath.
Her legs wrap around my waist, ankles locking behind my back. In this position, I’m deeper than before. She’s open and vulnerable, pinned between my body and the wall, and when I start moving again, her eyes roll back.
“Again.” I set a brutal pace, driving up into her with every thrust. “Come for me again.”
“I can’t—”
“You can.” I angle my hips, find the spot inside her that makes her voice break. “You will. I want to feel you shatter around me when I fill you.”
Her nails rake down my back, drawing blood. The pain only sharpens my pleasure, makes my thrusts harder, more urgent. I can feel my own release building at the base of my spine—a pressure that threatens to break me apart.
But I wait. Hold on by sheer will as I drive into her again and again, watching her face, feeling her body tense and tremble beneath my hands.
She comes with my name on her lips. A silent scream, her mouth open, her entire body clenching around me in rhythmic waves. And this time, I let go.
My release tears through me. I bury myself to the hilt and spill inside her, pulse after pulse, her walls milking every drop from me as my vision whites out and my legs nearly buckle.
We stay locked like that, shaking, breathing each other’s air. When I finally lower her to the ground, we both collapse—a tangle of limbs and sweat and satisfaction.
“Well.” Her voice is hoarse, wrecked. “That was...”
“Necessary.”
“I was going to say ‘incredible,’ but sure. Necessary works.”
I laugh. The sound surprises me—rusty and unfamiliar and too loud for our hiding place. She laughs too, and the absurdity of it hits me: two warriors laughing in a hole in the ground while an army burns the forest around them.
I pull her against me, her back to my chest, my arms wrapped around her. She fits perfectly. Like she was made for this space.
“We should move.” I say it even though every part of me wants to stay. “The Engine—”
“I know.” She doesn’t pull away. “Just... give me a minute. Let me pretend the world isn’t ending.”
I hold her. Feel her breath slow. Feel the thunder of her pulse gradually steady. My hand traces idle patterns on her stomach, and she captures it, laces her fingers through mine.
“I need you to understand,” I say into her hair.
“I understand.” She lifts her head, meets my eyes.
“If the King takes you, I’ll kill you myself.
I won’t let you become a puppet. I won’t let you hurt people while wearing your face.
” Her hand finds my cheek. “But that’s not going to happen.
Because you’re going to fight. You’re going to use that thing’s power, and then you’re going to walk out of that grove. That’s the deal.”
“I never agreed to that deal.”
“Too bad. It’s the only one I’m offering.”
I kiss her forehead. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m motivated.”
We dress in silence, helping each other with clasps and buckles, working around injuries that have stiffened while we rested. When we emerge from the hollow, the forest is burning.
The Severance Engine sits a hundred yards from the Heartgrove, its runes blazing with that sickly green light.
Consortium soldiers form a protective wall around it—thirty at least, the survivors of the force that entered Briargrave.
They’ve seen what we can do. They’ve watched their comrades die. And still they advance.
In my mind, the Thorn King stirs.
The moment has come. Are you ready, warden?
I look at Xela. At the woman who fought an army for me. Who gave herself to me in a hole in the ground while the world burned. Who’s standing beside me now with blood on her face and steel in her eyes, ready to face overwhelming numbers because running was never an option.
“Stay behind me,” I tell her.
“Not a chance.”
“This is going to get ugly.”
“Everything’s ugly. I’m used to it.”
I reach for the door in my mind. The barrier between myself and the King. The wall I’ve maintained for decades, the only thing keeping my identity separate from the forest that wants to consume me.
Let me in. Let me help you.
I take a breath.
And I open the door.