Chapter 47
“Now kick your legs,” Roiven says. His hands press gently on the bare skin of my hips as he supports me in the water. The witch stands so close behind me I keep bumping up against him. We’ve both stripped down to our undergarments to swim more easily.
We’re just outside the Tower, not in the gentle cove but in the sea itself on the mountain’s other side. I kick down and out, then draw my legs back in toward my body, then do it again. I stay vertical, but it’s hard to know if that’s all me, or if it’s Roiven’s hands supporting me.
“I think I’ve got it.”
“Good. Then try again,” he says, without stepping back.
My hands make small circles in the water as I try the move again, orienting myself.
I’m still not completely used to my new right arm, but it works well enough.
It’s even got two small compartments on the forearm I can tuck odds and ends into.
And it’s not enchanted to keep me from myself, which is the most important bit.
I opted to stay with metal, with a waterproof lining that allows me to swim so long as I wash afterwards to get the salt off. It’s mostly Torain’s work, but Roiven used his practice as a swordsmith to add decorative scalloping on the shoulder and elbow joints.
When I served the Empire, my armor was decorated with feathered wings. Now, it’s waves, to represent the ocean that they tried to keep me from.
My legs kick. Roiven’s steady hands slowly inch away from my waist, until I’m treading water without his support or a flotation device.
“There!” I yell with a grin. I whirl my hands through the water, slowly turning myself around to face him. Roiven’s dark hair is pulled back low on his neck, and the water’s only up to his broad shoulders, even though it would be above my nose if I touched the bottom. He smiles lopsidedly at me.
Lines of white enchantment scar his shoulders, but the blue-black marks on his face remain.
My fingers itch to take the rest of the enchantment from his skin.
The only thing it may be preventing now is Roiven’s ability to lie, which he says he’s fine without—certainly, he still knows how to speak around the truth if the need takes him—but it’s still draining him.
Only, he won’t let me touch it until we finish freeing all 128 Enchanted we managed to save from the imperial ships.
And that’s going to take a while, even if some of the witches are learning how to do it so they can help.
Not everyone can manage it, but most of them have a better reaction than Nor did.
“Keep going,” Roiven says.
“But I’ve got it.” I scowl, but Roiven just feels amused in return.
“Yes, and the whole point is to keep doing it so you don’t drown.”
“Well, if I already know how…” my legs ache.
Actually, my whole body does. For the past two weeks I feel like I’ve done nothing but pull the crystal marks from the Enchanted’s skin, then rest, then do it again.
When Roiven suggested I need to take a real break this afternoon, I thought he’d mean doing something fun. Not physically grinding me down.
“You need to be able to hold it. It’s no good ‘not drowning’ if you only ‘not drown’ for a few strokes.”
He’s right, you know, Hafgúa says in my head.
“What, is one of you planning to let me drown?” I growl.
“Considering you insist on spending all your free time in the water,” Roiven says sternly.
“The cove’s not dangerous. And I’m with Hafgúa the rest of the time.”
“All water’s dangerous.”
He’s still right, Hafgúa says. You know my thoughts on this. I will not take you back out to the deep waters until you can swim without my help, should something happen.
I keep kicking even though my legs burn.
“Then how long are you going to make me do this for?” I ask Roiven.
“I give suggestions, not commands, your majesty,” Roiven teases.
“I already told you—” I can’t be the ruler of a place I’ve barely come to know, with people whose needs I don’t fully understand and a culture that I still feel like a stranger to.
“Take it up with Hafgúa for choosing you. I didn’t make the rules.”
I huff. My legs slow and I slip down, then grit my teeth and kick back up.
“I’m getting tired,” I snap.
Roiven’s hands reach out and grab my waist. I gratefully stop kicking.
As he pulls me against him I wrap my exhausted legs around his hips, my muscles shivering from exertion.
The tide drags at us, but Roiven’s hands slide around me until I’m held comfortably against him, no longer struggling to stay afloat.
I rest the scarred right side of my head against his collar.
“You’re doing wonderfully,” he murmurs.
“Don’t tease me.”
“I’m not.”
“My mother would be ashamed I’m this bad at it.”
She would not. But she would make you practice.
“Hafgúa.” I lift my head off Roiven’s shoulder and stare out at the ocean in the direction I can feel my familiar. “We’re having a moment. Do you mind?”
I do not mind. I, too, am having a moment. We are all having a moment.
I snort and bury my face against Roiven again. His skin is warm, warmer than the sun beating on my left shoulder. I can feel a light pulse in his neck from his heartbeat. The witch wraps both arms tight against my back, holding me to him.
His erection prods against me through the fabric of his drawers. I blink, then slowly smile, and tighten my legs around his hips to pull him closer.
“Well, it’s up to you,” I say, rocking my hips to grind myself slowly against him. “I could get out of the water now. But if you think we’d better continue swimming lessons…”
“You’ve made good progress already,” Roiven rasps, one of his hands skimming lower down my back. “Probably best to not overdo it…”
“Now you say that,” I tease, and lift my head.
Roiven’s lips find mine. He tastes like salt, like the sea, and he’s just as demanding. My body floods with the way he wants me, as he cracks open the door between our emotions and lets his lust come tumbling out.
He breaks the kiss, lips still grazing against mine.
“Do you want to, beautiful?” Roiven whispers. Everywhere our bodies touch feels like lightning is crackling along it, hot and energetic. My whole body is awake and wanting.
“Yes. Please. Take me inside.”
The water sheets off us as Roiven walks us toward the rocky shallows. I try to drop to my own feet as we hit the place where the waves crash open, but he holds me tight and strides through it as the water breaks against his legs.
Since my first room burned, I have a new one, and I’m no longer worried about losing control of my power. It doesn’t make sense for me to be high up on the mountain like the witches bonded to dragons are, not when Hafgúa cannot leave the sea.
The cove may have been the end of one staircase, but there were other paths down from the height of the Tower.
One of them leads here, down to this rockier, more unprotected shore—and my new room.
The wooden doors are thrown wide open to face the sea, not hidden from view like the rest of the Tower’s homes.
Roiven walks up the shore, past the tide line and the rise where the sea can reach during its wildest storms, and at last into the sea-facing chamber that I’ve made my home.
The large plush bed is calling to me and my aching body.
But Roiven, responsible as ever, carries me straight to the wall fountain so I can rinse the salt from my metal arm.
With me still in his arms, he presses another kiss to my lips.
Slow at first, then deeper, his tongue pressing into my mouth as I feel the hard length of him jut against me.
I kiss him back, tangling my hands into his hair and making clear he is every bit mine, just as thoroughly as I am his.
When Roiven’s hands loosen on my thighs I let my legs slowly fall down to touch the stone floor, my muscles still aching. The fountain water splatters just next to us. I stretch my right arm out to let the water wash away all the salt and sand-grit.
Roiven finds a bar of soap and unbuttons my brassiere. With my back to him, his hands slowly lather my body. The soap rubs down my spine, and my shoulders, and my neck, as the water courses over my skin.
He presses himself closer to me and reaches around to run the soap over my stomach and my hips.
And finally, slowly, with the water running from the roots of my hair down over me, the witch’s hands find my breasts.
He runs the soap over each in turn, his breath catching as my nipples harden beneath his touch.
And then he sets the soap down and replaces it with his hands, gently kneading.
His mouth presses against my neck in a kiss, and his hands drop lower, scraping over my stomach, my hips, back up to my shoulders…
I find the soap and turn to face him. He catches my mouth with another kiss before I can return the favor, dragging the pale bar over the sharp lines of his abdomen, across every scar I’ve left behind on his skin.
He’s hot to the touch, and hard, and with every moment we drag this out I feel the ache between my legs grow unbearable.
I want him desperately. I drag off his drawers, letting his heavy length swing free, and meet his eyes as I circle his erection with the soap.
Roiven’s mouth parts, his jaw slack and his eyes fixed on me but distant with lust.
He pries the soap gently from my fingers and drops it on the floor.
Bracketing my hips with his hands, he sinks down to his knees, hooks his fingers over the hem of my undergarment, and pulls it off of me.
I step out of it quickly so he can toss it to the side.
The water pours over both of us as Roiven bends lower to fit his mouth against me.
Roiven lifts one of my legs up over his shoulder.
I nearly lose balance, swinging my arms back desperately until one connects with the wall.
My metal hand grips the mortar of the stones as my leg tightens against Roiven’s back, and my left hand finds his hair and fists it.
His mouth is demanding, wringing the pleasure from me with little build-up.
I whine and clench, my fingers tightening in his hair, tugging.
His tongue roughens against me and my legs shake.
Another minute and I’m going to fall over.
“Please,” I whisper. It’s all I have to say.
Roiven eases my leg off his shoulder, stands, and drags me back up around his waist. My legs wrap around him as he carries me two feet over, out of the fountain’s flow and against the stone wall.
He presses my back to it and grinds himself against me as his hungry mouth captures mine again.
Reaching between us, I palm his length with my left hand and stroke firmly down and back up.
Through the bond, I can feel every ounce of pleasure coursing through him…
just like he can feel mine. Our lust feeds on each other’s; doubles.
There’s no hiding how badly we want this, and no guessing how the other likes a movement.
When I twist my hand over the head of his shaft I can feel the overwhelming flood of pleasure that courses through Roiven’s mind, as clearly as I feel his breath panting desperately against my cheek.
With one hand still beneath my thigh, holding me up, he slides the other hand between us and buries a finger into my grip.
All I can do is whimper, too far gone for words.
“I need you,” Roiven somehow manages, the words tight and rasped like it was a feat of strength to get them out. I moan in answer, canting my hips toward him. He grips my legs with both hands, inching me higher so he can line himself up with me. I reach down to help guide him.
His length fills me to the hilt. My lips part in a silent moan.
Roiven’s chest presses hard against mine and his fingers dig into the undersides of my thighs.
The initial pleasure sends a shockwave so strong my eyes squeeze shut and I pant around the feeling.
Roiven’s teeth close around the skin of my neck.
He trembles against me, barely restraining himself from how hard he wants me.
Slowly he inches out and rocks back into me. We both breathe out together, a quiet moan or perhaps a prayer, as each of our pleasures mingle and flood through us both. The bond we forged together doubles what either of us would be capable of feeling on our own.
Roiven slides back inside me, and grinds himself deeper, until my body is so full and tight I can’t take any more. My fingers dig hard into his back and a cry escapes my lips.
He thrusts harder. I sob again, wordless with pleasure, my whole body tight and arching and balanced on the edge of shattering.
“Caiteven,” Roiven growls.
He stumbles back from the wall with me clutched around him, and lays me carefully down on the floor with my legs still clasped around his hips.
With the hard floor beneath me, he digs his feet into the stone and drives into me, harder and faster until the pleasure is unbearable, until I break into a thousand shards of light. I see stars. The ocean’s crash is dimmed to nothing more than a distant hum.
Roiven finds his own release, like an earthquake that shatters the world into something new. He collapses on top of me, heavy and warm and breathing hard. I slowly tangle my hands into his hair as we melt together onto the stone floor beneath me.
“Cai.” He whispers my name like it’s a prayer. And then he slowly stands and lifts me up off the floor, and I should stand on my own but I don’t particularly want to. So I let him carry me, like I’m flying, my eyes shut and my head pressed to the heartbeat of his chest.
When he lowers me to the soft bedding of the mattress I nuzzle against him, hardly caring we’re getting the bed wet with our fresh-washed skin.
And Roiven’s mouth finds mine, again, tender and sweet.
I know the Empire is still out there, hiding behind a barrier enchantment we cannot breach, and this ancient war is far from won. But right now we’re home, and safe, and this is all that matters.