Chapter 17 #3
When his eyes rise to meet mine again, they’ve changed.
Darkened. Their silver has become that river of steel again, the current of which seems to wrap around me, to cover me from head to toe.
I’m trapped in his eyes. I can hardly breathe.
I don’t want to breathe, because if I do, it might break the spell of this moment, of Daerios and me, too close, far too close—
Just as I think he’s about the close the distance between us, he lets go of my thigh and turns away. I stifle a gasp as air rushes against the place his hand used to be.
Shit. That was way too close.
I glance about the room, frantically searching for a change of subject. My eyes fall on the pink box.
“Donuts!” I exclaim too loudly.
“Yes.” Amusement tugs at the corners of Daerios’s mouth. “That is what those are.”
I flip open the lid and select a vanilla cruller. I lift it to my lips and take a big bite. Then another. I chew exaggeratedly. “Mmm.”
His lips twitch.
I polish off the cruller in two more bites, then lick my fingertips one by one.
I’m about to dive back in for another donut when Daerios reaches out and catches my wrist. He stares at my fingers.
The ones that were just in my mouth. A small dusting of wet powdered sugar still coats my skin.
His eyes move to meet mine, and he draws my hand closer to his face.
Then, without taking his eyes off mine, he opens his mouth and brings my fingers inside.
He closes his thick lips around them, wrapping his tongue around their bottoms to suck the leftover sugar off my skin.
His sculpted cheekbones hollow as he drags my fingers back out of his mouth.
Oh. My. God.
For a breath, neither of us speaks. My stomach is on fire. My whole body is on fire. I feel like I’m either about to melt or explode.
In the end, it can’t be helped. It can’t be stopped. I do the very last thing I should.
I lean forward and kiss him.
Daerios freezes against my lips. For a moment, I think I’ve made a very big mistake. That I pushed this too far. But then his shock passes, and he leans into the kiss with such force, such want, that I have to grab his neck with both hands to stay steady.
One of his arms wraps around my waist, the other hand fisting my curls.
I would expect an elf to be light, delicate in their desire.
Daerios is anything but. His lips search mine, testing, teasing them open with his tongue.
He tastes like powdered sugar, like honey cakes, like everything I have denied myself for so long.
This isn’t my first kiss, but it feels as if it should be.
I pull back. We stare at each other, breath dragging in and out of our lungs.
“Do that again,” he whispers, voice ragged.
That’s all it takes. I climb up the futon, throwing one leg over his lap and straddling him.
I crush my lips to his and snake my fingers through his hair.
I have never kissed like this before. Never with such fire, such need.
Heat flames within me. It builds in my pelvis, swelling to an achy knot I know only he can undo.
I grind hard onto his lap. He gasps, his arousal pressing up against me through his sweatpants.
Fuck, he’s so hard. His hands snake down my body, caressing my backside.
They slip up my loose shorts, long fingers cradling my ass and pulling me closer.
I grind into him over and over. I ride him as if I have no shorts on, as if we’re wearing nothing at all.
I want to be wearing nothing at all. He groans, low and tortured.
It almost makes me angry, how much I want to feel him inside me.
He kisses hungrily down my neck. I tilt my head back, giving him as much skin as I can.
I have no idea what’s happening to me. I’m nineteen, and I’ve never felt anything like this, the gnarls and twists turning my insides to a crooked forest. I didn’t think I was even capable of sexual desire, but this far surpasses that. I’m desperate for him.
Just when I think the heat can build no further, that I cannot press deeper to him, Daerios pulls back. He’s panting. “Quinn—”
“Shut up,” I growl. I nudge aside his chin, wrapping my teeth around the bottom of his earlobe and biting softly, a move that drags an involuntary groan out of him.
“Fucking hell, Quinn.”
“Good boy,” I whisper.
His lips crook up into a smile. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”
“Tell me.”
“Since the first moment I saw you.”
“In Widener?”
He shakes his head. “Before then.”
This time, it’s me who pulls back. “Really?”
“Yes. Freshman Week.”
“Freshman Week? But that’s—”
“Over a year ago? I know.” He leans forward, lips brushing my ear. His voice is liquid honey. “I saw you at First Chance Dance. You were dancing with Cara. I watched you the entire night. Berendir even caught me staring, and trust me when I say I didn’t hear the end of it for weeks.”
I laugh softly.
“You have—” He swallows. “You have tortured me ever since.”
“Well, trust me when I say that wasn’t my intention.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why not?” I pull back, grinning. “We’re friends.”
He growls. “I don’t want to be friends.”
“No?” I lower my voice. “What do you want, Daerios?”
One of his hands, strong and certain, wraps around the back of my neck, pulling me forward until his lips are pressed right to my ear. “I want to be so deep inside you that you can remember no name but mine.”
I gasp. My hands twine into his hair and pull until his eyes are burning straight into mine. My hips start to grind on his, pressing forward and down, over and over, a steady metronome that I know will serve as his perfect torture. “Like this?” I breathe.
“Yes.” His eyes don’t leave mine.
I speed up, pushing even harder into him. “Like this?”
“Yes,” he whispers. And then “Please, Quinn.”
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say you want me.”
Without warning, he swoops an arm beneath me, lifting me as if I was no heavier than a stack of books and transferring me onto my back.
I spread out on the futon, and Daerios crouches over me, his body hovering just above mine.
When he speaks, the air seems to pulse with his words.
“I want you, Quinn Kallister. Never, in all my life, have I wanted something as badly as I want you.”
And the craziest part is that I want him too.
That, after almost seven years of feeling nothing, no desire, no arousal, nothing at all, my entire body buzzes with need for him.
For him. An elf. Someone I should despise.
Someone I have sworn to use. Someone who tortures humans for fun, and looks down his nose at me, and follows me everywhere I go, and told me his life story, and fed me honey cakes, and vaaska, and donuts—
Shit.
“You need to leave,” I say too loudly.
Daerios pulls back, eyebrows knitting in confusion. “What?”
“We—we shouldn’t have done this.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I recognize the truth of them. What am I doing? I’m never attracted to anyone, let alone someone completely off-limits. Why now? Why him? It’s as if some strange, lust-driven part of my brain switched on, sweeping me away in a tide of primal desire.
“We shouldn’t have?” he asks.
“No.” I shimmy out from under him. “We’re friends, remember?”
Daerios doesn’t move. His body hovers over mine, eyes unblinking. Lifting one hand and running it down the side of my face, he whispers, “Is that what you want?”
No.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” He leans backward, settling onto his knees. “Right. Okay. No more of that.”
Please, more of that. “Right.”
“Should we… brainstorm?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I’m tired. I should go to bed.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Alright.”
Daerios stands slowly, as if waiting for me to tell him not to go. I don’t. I stand too, leading him over to the door. After pulling it open, I press my back to its face and wait for Daerios to pass.
I clear my throat. “Well.” I look down at my shoes. “Thanks for the donuts.”
“You’re welcome.” His feet don’t move.
After a long heartbeat, I look up and meet his gaze. His eyes glow so brightly it hurts.
“Well,” I say again.
“Well.” He reaches up and catches a strand of my hair, the way he did in the courtyard. “Goodnight, Quinn.”
“Goodnight.”
He disappears down the staircase. I let the door swing shut.
This is good. It’s better than good, actually.
It’s necessary. What the hell was I thinking, telling myself that I was ready to give up in my search for answers just to know Daerios?
My mission isn’t just some petty revenge scheme that I can throw away.
My brother’s life is at stake here. He might still be alive, and if he is, Daerios is the best source of information I have to figure out where.
I can’t forget that. He’s a source. Someone I’m using. Nothing else.
I spin around, pick up the box of donuts, and throw them into the garbage, hoping the ache I feel for the man who brought them will disappear, too.