Chapter 11 #2
My tusks graze her shoulder. She shudders, her whole body tightening against me, her nails digging into my back hard enough to leave crescents in my skin.
I let them drag across her skin, careful not to break the surface, just enough pressure to leave a mark.
Claiming without cutting. Mine, the gesture says. Mine.
The borrowed shift is in my way. I tug at the neckline—fabric tears, easier than I expected—and the garment pools at her waist, baring skin that glows amber in the crystal light.
Small breasts, dusky nipples already peaked and straining.
I duck my head and take one into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the sensitive bud, and she cries out.
Her hips buck against me, seeking friction.
I give it to her, grinding the thick ridge of my cock against her center while I worship her breasts.
Switching between them. Licking, sucking, the occasional scrape of teeth that makes her writhe.
She’s soaking through her undergarments—I can feel it, the wet heat of her seeping through fabric, painting my stomach with evidence of her desire.
“I need—” She can’t finish the sentence. Her hands are everywhere—my shoulders, my back, clawing at my shirt like the fabric has personally offended her.
I pull back long enough to help her, yanking the ruined shirt over my head and tossing it aside.
Her hands immediately find my chest, palms flattening against scarred muscle, fingers tracing the topography of violence written on my skin.
The knife wound from the night my father died.
The burn from a training accident when I was young.
The dozen smaller marks that tell the story of a life spent preparing for war.
She leans forward and presses her lips to the longest scar—a blade mark that runs from my collarbone to the center of my chest. The touch is impossibly gentle. Reverent. Like she’s trying to kiss the pain away.
No one has ever touched me like this. With tenderness instead of fear. With desire instead of obligation.
I carry her to the bed—three steps, maybe four, crossing the small chamber in a heartbeat. The mattress is thin, the frame carved from volcanic rock, but she sinks into it like it’s the softest thing she’s ever touched. I follow her down, caging her beneath me, taking a moment to simply look.
Auburn hair spread across dark stone. Chest rising and falling with rapid breath. Eyes locked on mine, challenging even now, even here.
“You’re wearing too much.” Her hands go to my belt, working the buckle with scholar’s fingers that should be clumsy with lust but somehow aren’t. The leather falls away. She pushes at my pants, and I help her, kicking free of the last barrier between us.
Her eyes drop. Widen.
The look on her face isn’t fear. It’s hunger.
“Still not afraid?” The question comes out rough, half-challenge and half-genuine uncertainty.
“Never.” She reaches for me, wrapping her small hand around the thick shaft. Her fingers don’t meet around me. “Not of you. Never of you.”
The touch nearly undoes me. I grab her wrist, pull her hand away, pin it above her head against the pillow. She arches into the restraint, testing it, finding it firm.
“Not yet.” My voice is gravel, barely controlled. “If you keep touching me like that, this will be over before it starts.”
I peel away the rest of her clothes, baring her completely. She’s beautiful—every inch of her, from the freckles scattered across her collarbones to the auburn curls between her thighs. I spread her legs, settle between them, take a moment to look at the glistening pink flesh that’s waiting for me.
She’s wet. Dripping. Her arousal coats her inner thighs, and the sight of it makes my cock throb painfully.
I lean down and run my tongue through her folds.
The sound she makes isn’t human. Her hips jerk off the bed, her hands flying to my head, fingers tangling in my hair. I pin her hips down with one arm and lick her again—slower this time, savoring. She tastes like heat and salt and something uniquely her, a flavor I want to drown in.
I circle her clit with my tongue, and she whimpers.
I suck the sensitive bud between my lips, and she screams. Her thighs clamp around my head, her body arching off the bed, but I don’t stop.
I fuck her with my tongue, thrust into her entrance, feel her walls flutter and clench around the invasion.
She’s close—I can feel it in the tension of her body, hear it in the desperate sounds spilling from her lips.
I slide two fingers into her, crooking them forward, finding the spot that makes her shatter.
She comes with my name on her lips—not the prince, not the title, just Zorath, raw and broken and beautiful.
Her inner muscles grip my fingers in rhythmic pulses, her whole body shaking with the force of her release.
I work her through it, gentling but not stopping, drawing out every last wave of pleasure until she’s limp and gasping beneath me.
I crawl up her body, leaving wet kisses in my wake. When I reach her mouth, I kiss her deep, letting her taste herself on my tongue. Her hands find my shoulders, pulling me down, her legs wrapping around my hips.
“Now.” She rolls her hips against me, and the head of my cock slides through her slick folds. “Please, Zorath, I need you inside me now.”
I notch myself at her entrance. Take a breath. Look into her eyes.
“This might hurt.”
“I don’t care.” Her heels dig into my ass, urging me forward. “I want to feel you for days.”
I push into her.
The sensation overwhelms me—tight, so impossibly tight, her body stretching to accommodate me inch by inch.
She gasps, her nails raking down my back, but she doesn’t tell me to stop.
Doesn’t pull away. Just breathes through the burn while I sink deeper, deeper, until I’m buried to the hilt and we’re both shaking.
I hold myself still. My whole body demanding that I move, thrust, take. But I wait. Give her time to adjust. Press kisses to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
“Move.” Her voice is wrecked, barely recognizable. “Gods, Zorath, move.”
I move.
Slow at first, despite everything screaming at me to take, claim, possess.
Long strokes that drag against her inner walls, that pull sounds from her throat I’ve never heard before.
She’s responsive beyond anything I imagined—every touch, every thrust drawing reactions that drive me higher.
Her hips roll to meet mine, finding rhythm, finding the angle that makes her cry out.
“Harder.” Her nails rake down my back, leaving trails of fire in their wake. “I won’t break.”
I give her harder. Brace one hand against the headboard, use the leverage to drive deeper. The bed protests beneath us—stone creaking, the frame shuddering with each impact. The sound of our bodies meeting fills the chamber, wet and obscene and perfect.
She wraps her legs higher around my waist, changing the angle, and I sink impossibly deeper. Her eyes roll back. Her mouth falls open on a silent scream. I can feel her walls rippling around me, and I know she’s close again.
I reach between us, find her clit, circle it with my thumb while I fuck her with long, brutal strokes. She comes apart beneath me—crying out my name, her whole body arching, inner muscles gripping me in waves that threaten to pull me over the edge with her.
I don’t let myself fall. Not yet. I want more.
I flip us. Put her on top, her thighs straddling my hips, my cock still buried deep inside her. She gasps at the change, hands bracing on my chest, looking down at me with wild eyes.
“Ride me.” The command comes out rough, demanding. “Take what you need.”
She takes.
Her hips roll, finding the rhythm that works for her.
Slow at first, experimental, learning the angle that makes her moan.
Then faster, harder, using my body for her pleasure with an abandon that makes my blood sing.
I grip her hips, helping her move, watching her face as she chases her third release.
She’s beautiful like this. Flushed, sweating, hair wild around her face. Her breasts bounce with each movement, and I can’t resist—I sit up, wrap my arms around her, take a nipple into my mouth while she rides me.
The change in position pushes me even deeper. She cries out, her rhythm faltering, and I take over. Grip her hips. Thrust up into her, hard and fast, using my strength to bounce her on my cock.
“Look at me.” The command escapes before I can stop it. “Fable. Look at me.”
Her eyes find mine. Locked, held, refusing to look away. Recognition sparks between us—beyond the physical, beyond the pleasure building toward crescendo. Understanding. Two people who’ve been alone for too long finally finding a place that fits.
I feel her start to come apart. The way her body tenses around mine, the way her breath catches, the way her eyes go wide and desperate. I drive into her once more, twice, and she shatters—screaming my name, her whole body convulsing, inner muscles gripping me so tight I can’t hold back any longer.
My release rips through me like forge-fire, pleasure so intense it borders on pain. I bury myself to the hilt and let go, spilling into her in hot pulses, her name torn from my throat in a sound that’s half growl and half prayer.
The volcano answers.
A tremor runs through the stone—not dangerous, not the mountain’s anger, but something else.
A pulse that mirrors the one wracking my body, the chamber vibrating in sympathy with whatever primal force we’ve just invoked.
The crystal lights flicker. The lava channel behind the wall glows brighter for a heartbeat, then settles.
I collapse back onto the bed, pulling her down with me, both of us breathing hard in the aftermath. Sweat cools on my skin. Her heart pounds against my ribs. The chamber smells of sex and sulfur and something sweeter beneath—the scent of her, imprinted on my senses in ways I’ll never forget.
We lie there as our breathing slows. Her head on my shoulder, her hand tracing idle patterns on my chest. The tension that’s been coiling inside me for days—weeks—months—finally unspools, replaced by something quieter. Something that feels dangerously like peace.
“The volcano.” Her voice is drowsy, satisfied, curious. “That tremor—”
“The Flamebound bloodline.” I press a kiss to her damp hair. “The mountain responds to us. To strong emotion, usually. Rage. Grief.” A pause. “Apparently other things, too.”
Her laugh is a soft huff against my chest. “I made a volcano react.”
“You made a prince react. The volcano was just following my lead.”
She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me as though I am a question she hasn’t quite answered. Her hair is a disaster—tangled, half-dried, wild from my hands. Her lips are swollen, her throat marked, her body bearing evidence of what we just did. She’s never looked more beautiful.
“Zorath.” Her voice is serious now, the playfulness fading. “What happens after?”
“After dawn?”
“After all of it. The battle, the throne, the Triumvirate. If we survive—when we survive. What happens to us?”
The question hangs in the heated air. I don’t have a clean answer. I’ve spent years planning one thing—and nothing beyond it.
“I don’t know.” Honesty is all I have to offer her. “I’ve spent years planning vengeance. Planning how to take the throne, how to destroy my enemies, how to survive long enough to claim what’s mine. I never planned what comes after. Never let myself think that far ahead.”
“And now?”
“Now I have something worth planning for.” I cup her face in my hands, thumbs tracing her cheekbones.
“You showed me another way, Fable. Truth instead of fear. A kingdom worth ruling instead of just a throne worth claiming. Whatever comes after—I want you there. At my side. Not as an archivist or an advisor or whatever political title would make the nobles comfortable. As my—”
A knock shatters the moment.
Fable jerks away from me, reaching for the discarded shift, her scholar’s instincts overriding post-coital relaxation. I’m on my feet before the second knock lands, reaching for the knife I left on the bench, every muscle suddenly taut with readiness.
“My prince.” Gravik’s voice, muffled through the stone door. “Forgive the interruption.”
“Report.”
A pause—the old guard captain deciding how to phrase whatever’s dragged him from the planning session to interrupt his prince’s private moment.
“They’ve found Regent Kreth. He’s in the upper forges, trying to sabotage the weapon stores.
If he succeeds, we’ll have nothing to fight with when dawn comes. ”
The peace evaporates.
I’m already reaching for my clothes, pulling on leather and armor with the efficiency of long practice. Fable watches from the bed, the shift clutched to her chest, her expression shifting from satisfied to worried to something harder. Resolved.
“How many warriors does he have?”
“A dozen, maybe more. Our scouts couldn’t get close enough for an accurate count.” Another pause. “He’s not trying to escape, my prince. He’s making a stand. Destroying everything he can before we reach him.”
Kreth. The butcher. The man who held my father down while poison did its work. He’s trapped, cornered, desperate—and like any wounded animal, at his most dangerous.
“Assemble a strike team. I want our best fighters, people who know the forge levels. We hit him before he can finish whatever he’s started.”
“Already done. They’re waiting for your command.”
I turn back to Fable. She’s pulled the shift over her head, her hair still wild, her body still bearing my marks. The sight of her lands like a blow—this woman who challenged my methods, who showed me another path, who just gave herself to me without hesitation.
“I have to go.”
“I know.” She rises from the bed, crosses the small space between us. Her hand catches my wrist—not trying to stop me, just anchoring herself. “Come back to me.”
Not a question. Not a plea. A command, delivered with the same certainty she brings to uncovering truth.
I kiss her. Hard, quick, a promise sealed with breath.
“I will.”
Then I’m through the door, striding toward whatever waits in the upper forges, leaving her in a cavern that still smells of sex and smoke. The taste of her lingers on my lips. The memory of her body against mine burns hotter than the volcanic stone beneath my feet.
Kreth is waiting. The man who held my father down while he died and spent three years smiling about it across council tables.
Tonight, one of us dies.
I know which one I’m betting on.