Chapter 15 Sophia #2
"You made that blade," he says. His mouth is close to my ear. His breath is hot. "In my forge. With your bare hands. Do you know what that looked like?"
I shake my head. My thighs are pressed together so hard they're trembling. His hand on my throat is the only thing keeping me upright.
"It looked like you were born to be in this forge." His thumb circles my nipple. Slower. "Like your hands were made for my metal. Like every blade you've ever made before was practice for this."
The words land somewhere below my ribs. Somewhere that's been empty for twenty-six years. My thighs clamp tighter and the slick runs down between them.
"I watched you work for twenty minutes." His voice drops lower.
His hand tightens on my throat—just enough that I feel my pulse against his palm.
"I watched your hands shape iron the way no human should be able to shape iron.
I watched the fire lean toward you. I watched you make the most lethal thing I've seen in nine hundred years and you didn't even know you were doing it. "
My knees are shaking. My cunt is clenching on nothing. His thumb rolls my nipple and the fire magic sparks through it and my hips jerk forward.
"Good girl," he says. Quiet. Like a fact. Like something that has always been true and he is only now saying it aloud. "My good, deadly girl."
I come.
Standing up. His hand on my throat, his hand on my breast, the fire magic in the brand burning through me from the inside. No cock, no knot, no ridges. Just his voice and the words hitting the place my grandmother's training left bare—the empty space where praise was supposed to go and never did.
I come so hard my knees buckle.
He catches me, one arm around my waist, holding me against his chest. The orgasm shakes through me in long, wrecked waves and I'm making sounds I'll have to live with later.
My face is pressed to his bare skin. I can feel his heartbeat.
I can feel his cock hardening against my stomach through the thin fabric.
"That's one," he says against my hair. "You made me wait twenty minutes. I think you owe me more than one."
I hate him. I hate that he can do this to me with his voice and his hands and the specific, surgical way he praises the one thing about me no one has ever praised. I hate that my body is his instrument and he plays it better than I play iron.
"Again," he says.
I shake my head. My face against his chest. My hands gripping his arms.
"Again."
His hand slides down from my breast, down my stomach, under the hem of his shirt.
His other hand stays on my throat—thumb on the brand, fire magic pulsing through it in a steady rhythm that matches my heartbeat.
His fingers slide between my thighs. I'm soaked.
Swollen. He drags two fingers through my folds—slow, deliberate, parting them, spreading the slick.
The fire magic in his fingertips radiates into the swollen skin and I gasp.
He circles my clit. Slow. The pad of his finger tracing around it, not quite pressing, the fire magic flaring each time he passes over the hood. My hips jerk. He circles again. Tighter. The tip of his finger grazing directly over the nerve and the fire magic sparking through it.
"Do you know what you looked like when you held that blade up?" His mouth against my ear. His fingers dip lower—sliding through my folds, parting me open, two fingers pressing against my pussy. Not entering. Pressing. "You looked like a queen holding her scepter."
His fingers push inside me. Just the tips. The fire magic pulses into my cunt and I clench around him.
"You looked like you were standing in the right room for the first time in your life."
He withdraws and drags his wet fingers back up to my clit. Circles again—faster now, slicker, the fire magic running hotter. My hips grind against his hand. I can't stop them. He dips back down, slides through my folds, pushes inside me to the second knuckle, and curls his fingers.
"You looked like mine."
I come. On his fingers. On his words. His hand tight on my throat, the brand burning under his thumb, my thighs clamping around his wrist. The orgasm tears through me and my cunt clenches on his fingers in hard, rhythmic spasms.
He doesn't stop. His fingers slide out of me and find my clit again. Circling. Pressing. Sliding back down through the slick and dipping inside me again. His mouth stays at my ear.
"One more. Show me how grateful you are."
"I can't—I—"
"You can. You will. Because your body knows who it belongs to even if your mouth won't say it."
His fingers press harder against my clit. The fire magic spikes through them. He slides two fingers back inside my cunt and fucks me with them—short, hard strokes, his palm grinding against my clit on every thrust. My cunt clenches. My back arches against his chest.
I come a third time. Silently. My mouth open, no sound, my body rigid against his, my thighs locked around his wrist, his fingers still buried inside me. He holds me through it—his hand on my throat, his fire magic pouring through the brand into my blood in a hot golden river.
When it's over my legs give out completely. He catches my full weight without effort.
He carries me back to his chambers.
I don't fight him this time. I'm too wrung out. Three orgasms on his fingers and I can barely keep my head up. He carries me through the corridors of his court and the fire-thread blazes gold in our wake and the guards press themselves to the walls.
He lays me on the bed. On my side. Curled up in his shirt that's soaked through with sweat and slick. I should be planning my escape. I should be memorizing the guard rotations. I should be the assassin my grandmother made me.
He lies down behind me.
His body is so much bigger than mine. He dwarfs me—his chest against my back, his arm over my waist, his hips against my arse.
I'm small against him. Contained. His body wraps around mine the way his hand wrapped around my throat and the fire magic radiating from his skin presses into me from shoulders to ankles.
His hand slides up under the shirt. Finds my breast. His fingers close around my nipple and pinch. Twist. The fire magic sparks through it and I gasp.
"I wasn't finished with you," he says against the back of my neck.
His cock is hard against my arse. I can feel it through his trousers—thick, hot, the ridges pressing against the thin fabric. He shifts his hips. The head of his cock slides between my thighs from behind. The fire magic radiates through the fabric into the swollen lips of my cunt.
"I can't—not again—"
He pulls the shirt up to my waist. His trousers are gone—I don't know when, I didn't feel him move—and his bare cock is between my thighs, the ridges dragging against my folds, the head pressing against my pussy from behind.
He slams into me.
Hard. Fast. One brutal thrust that fills me to the hilt and drives the air from my lungs. The ridges catch against my inner walls. The fire magic flares. I scream into the pillow.
His hand stays on my breast. His fingers pinch my nipple and twist and pull while his hips snap against my arse. Short, hard thrusts. Fast. Rough. His cock driving into me from behind with a rhythm that has nothing to do with patience and everything to do with claiming.
I'm small against him. His body curls around mine. His chest against my back, his hips slamming into my arse, his cock buried inside me, his hand on my breast, his mouth at the back of my neck. I'm surrounded. Dwarfed. Fucked.
His other hand finds my throat. His fingers close around it. His thumb presses the brand and the fire magic pulses through it and I arch in his grip—my back bowing, my arse pressing against his hips, taking him deeper.
"You think three on my fingers was enough?" His voice is rough. Wrecked. His hips don't slow. "You think I watched you make that blade and all I wanted was to finger you in my forge?"
I can't answer. His cock is hitting deep on every thrust. The ridges drag and catch. The fire magic flares through each one. My cunt is clenching around him in desperate, wrecked spasms.
He tweaks my nipple. Hard. I cry out. He does it again—pulling, twisting, the fire magic sparking through the sensitive peak while his cock pounds into me from behind.
"This is what I wanted." His hand tightens on my throat. "This. You in my bed. My cock inside you. Your cunt squeezing me like you'll die if I stop."
I'm going to come. I can feel it building—the pressure behind my navel, the tightening in my thighs, the way my cunt is gripping him harder on every stroke. The head of his cock is starting to swell. I can feel it thickening with every thrust, the crown expanding, catching deeper on the withdrawal.
"Don't stop—" The words come out before I can swallow them. "Don't—please—"
He doesn't stop. He thrusts harder. Faster. His hand on my breast, his hand on my throat, his cock buried inside me, the swollen head catching deep and dragging and catching again.
I come on his cock. My body locks rigid against his.
My cunt clamps down on the swollen head and the orgasm tears through me in a wave that starts between my hips and reaches my throat.
I scream. His hand is on my throat and I scream against his fingers and my back arches and my thighs clamp shut around his cock.
He doesn't slow down. He thrusts through the orgasm—the swollen head dragging on every withdrawal, fire magic flaring through it, my inner walls gripping and releasing in spasms I can't control.
I'm still coming. I can't stop coming. And then he drives deep.
Fully deep. Bottoms out against the back of me and stops.
The base of his cock swells.
I know what this is. I know and I can't prepare for it anyway—my inner walls stretching around the forming knot, the dense heat of it pressing outward in every direction.
My hands slam flat on the mattress. My cunt locks around it and the orgasm I thought was fading doubles back and breaks over me in a wave that whites out my vision.
Then the head softens.
One moment of relief—the swollen crown releasing from the deepest place inside me, the pressure easing for a single breath. Then his cum floods the space the head left. Golden-hot. Fire magic in every drop, pouring into me in a river of heat that reaches from my hips to my throat.
I lie still.
His cock is inside me—knot sealed at the base, shaft filling me, fire magic pulsing through the ridges in slow waves that match his heartbeat. His body is wrapped around mine. His hand on my throat. His hand on my breast. I can feel his heartbeat through the knot.
I should be planning. I should be thinking about the blade and the Kael-ash fold and the questions I don't have answers to.
I'm thinking about the blade.
I'm thinking about the way the iron sang under my hands. The way the fire in the walls leaned toward me. The way the hum in the metal matched something in my chest—a frequency I've been hearing my whole life without knowing I was hearing it.
I'm thinking about the Kael-ash fold and how my grandmother taught it to me without a name. How she taught me everything without names. How she taught me to make things that hum and sing and kill and she never once told me where the knowledge came from.
The blade on the anvil is still humming. I can hear it from here. Through the stone. Through the mountain.
I shouldn't be able to hear it from here.
His cock is still inside me. His hand is still on my throat. His body is still wrapped around mine, massive and hot, his fire magic still pulsing into me in slow, steady waves.
I close my eyes and listen to the blade singing and I don't pull away.