Together
“Iknow you’re awake.” Dommik was curled behind me. His hand caressed my navel, softly patrolling the skin between my breasts to below my belly button. I hadn’t been sure I’d fallen asleep. It had been so long since I’d slept soundly.
“Only because you woke me,” I groaned, capturing his wandering hand and stilling the motion. The scrape of a teasing fang grazed my bare shoulder before he planted a long, firm kiss on my neck.
“You’ve been sleeping forever…” he whined into my hair and I snickered as he nipped at my ear.
“What did you expect when you kept me up so late?” I turned over to find him propped up on his elbow, head cradled in his hand. Today was the day I learned that Dommik Thorne had bed head. And it was adorable.
My innocent thoughts were smothered by a swift, sinful action.
“Hello, lovely.” His fingers pressed against my center before descending further to my slick entrance. The pressure from his thick fingers stretched me and I released a breathy exhale at the delicious soreness. “I think that’s my new favorite sound.”
He pulled out slowly and I arched at the sensation.
“Make it again,” he whispered the command before plunging back inside me. My mouth dropped open from the pleasure but I held back the sound. The sensation receded and I gave him a sly, teasing smile.
“No, no, no. I want to hear you.” He pulled me closer, repeating the motion but amplifying his effort by pressing the heel of his palm into my sensitive bundle of nerves.
Again, no sound.
“Lovely…you better give me the sound I want…” he grunted with a playful frustration. I silently bit my lip while he rolled on top of me, nestling himself between my legs.
He pressed his hardness toward me, but I squeezed his hips between my thighs, holding him at bay. A deep chuckle rumbled through him, accepting my challenge.
Of course he could overpower me. Easily. But that would be no fun. No, he wanted permission. And I would give it to him. But not before I teased him a bit.
He lowered his nose to mine. “Reyva.”
I loved hearing him say my name. I hated ‘lady’. I only tolerated ‘lovely’ because it was mine. But I loved when he said Reyva.
“Hmm?” My hands stroked his muscled shoulders up to the back of his neck.
“Let me in. And give me that sound.” The storm raged in his beautiful eyes and pointed fangs glinted in the dim candlelight. He pressed his hips towards me again. I let him gain the smallest bit of ground before I squeezed, refusing his advances.
“I thought you liked getting permission first.” I ran my nails across his muscled shoulders, knowing any mark I left would be healed before he left this room.
A growl crept up his throat before his mouth crashed into mine. I returned the press of his kiss but withheld his access.
“Please.” His plea crawled across my parted lips. “Let. Me. In.”
I pulled his head to mine, meeting his mouth in molten passion. My legs relaxed and he drove himself fully inside me.
I broke from his kiss to let out a moan.
The stretch, a copious mixture of pleasure and pain, reminded me of my first time with Beau years and years ago.
But this wasn’t Beau. Dommik wasn’t a clumsy first-timer or a timid lover who thought he might break me.
This was better. This was a transcendent connection.
He held himself there, deep inside me, savoring the feeling.
“There it is,” he whispered onto my lips. “Again.”
Dommik thrusted and I obliged.
“Louder.”
“Dommik—” My words lost structure and crumbled into a whimper as he plunged with increasing force.
“Yes, lovely. Body and wretched soul, I’m yours.” He withdrew, then filled me again. “Say my name just like that…” he pressed again “…for the rest of our lives.”
I was going to tell him that we should be careful who hears us. That there might be guards listening. I was going to tell him I should get back to my room before Alba noticed I hadn’t been there all day.
But instead I moaned his name—again and again—as we fell into a rhythm together. I lifted my hips, allowing him extra depth.
The wood of the headboard groaned under his grip and I thought I might shatter with it.
Tension coiled as the hard length of him curved perfectly inside of me.
“Oh, fuck.” He grunted as I gripped his ass, encouraging him deeper, harder.
Rivers of muscle flexed above me. My gaze followed their shadowy paths down, down, until I could see Dommik’s cock moving in and out of me.
Oh, fuck.
The sight awoke something feral. I lifted and rolled my hips up to meet his, determined to be his undoing. “Right there, yes.”
“Reyva,” Dommik panted, his own mounting pleasure scrunching his handsome features. I couldn’t stop myself. I met him stroke for stroke until the wood cracked beneath Dommik’s grip as he slammed his final thrust into me. My heart pounded beneath him as my orgasm echoed through my limbs.
The satiated commander released the headboard and picked a splinter from his hand. He chuckled softly as he looked down at me, admiring my bare breasts before using his hands to trace my curves.
“You’re right,” he purred.
I arched a brow, still using all my energy just to catch my breath rather than form words.
“We are doomed.” The weight of his satisfied body melted into mine and each heavy breath carried us further away from the ecstasy we’d achieved.
Snuggled together, I mindlessly caressed the back of his neck and thought about what he’d said, the rest of our lives.
And for both of us, ‘life’ had different definitions in completely opposite directions.
Dommik could live dozens of human lives.
As for me, I could cross the wrong citizen of the Hive tomorrow and be bled dry in a matter of minutes.
My tongue was thick as I swallowed, trying to hydrate my desiccated throat. I’ve spent so much time thinking about and readying myself for a death that never seemed to come.
“That feels nice,” Dommik murmured into the pillows.
I gently kissed his shoulders, not wanting to expedite the inevitable, but a question bubbled inside of me.
“Dommik. What happens now?”
He squeezed me tighter in a silent response, transforming his body from a blanket over mine to a cocoon of muscles.
I couldn’t count the number of times Dommik told me about the traces a vampire’s touch leaves on human skin.
And now, here, underneath the frame of the massive vampiric commander, there was no hiding whatever hues his touch would appear as on all areas of my body.
Especially the parts we wouldn’t be able to explain away.
“Dommik?”
He lifted his head and let out an exaggerated exhale. Our duties were waiting for us just beyond his door. Duties and punishment.
He kissed me softly before saying, “I don’t know. But I would like to stay here with you a bit longer before we go off to possibly be executed for treason.”
He rolled to his back and pulled me into him. He was being too casual…too nonchalant about betraying the regent whom he admired and had been loyal to for sixty years.
“What if…” I started, but the sentence got caught in my throat. If I finished my thought, this moment might end. He might never look at me the same. And I needed him to keep looking at me like this.
“Hmm?” he encouraged while gently placing a kiss on my forehead.
“Never mind.”
“No, tell me.” His fingers patrolled my arm in slow strokes.
“It’s not worth mentioning,” I pleaded with him to drop it.
“Try me.”
I let out a reluctant exhale before I shared, “What if we told him it was just a one-time thing?”
His hand stopped moving and I wished I could claw the words back from his mind. “Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know. You told me to share. I said it was a bad idea.” Regret assaulted me like a swarm of angry hornets. I sat up slightly and saw his hardened gaze fixed on the ceiling.
“So, you want to say this…that I was a mistake?” I could see Dommik assembling his mental armor from the way his jaw muscle ticked and he avoided my gaze.
My heart sank that it took so little for his guard to go back up. “Dommik. No. Well, yes. But it wasn’t…you aren’t…” He was out of bed, moving toward his bathing chamber as I struggled to find the right words. “Please come back.”
The sound of running water echoed from the adjacent room as I looked around for anything I could cover up with. Finding nothing but scraps of my torn clothing, I pulled the sheet off of the bed, draping it around myself like I would a towel.
The pads of my feet met the cold floor and I found him hunched over the basin. Seeing him there, entirely naked, cut with muscle, was a new sight. But my gaze was drawn to his white knuckles gripping the sides of the water filled bowl.
I leaned my cheek against the doorframe.
His slighted eyes slid to mine. “I can’t accept that this was just one time, Reyva. I could barely pretend I didn’t have feelings for you before this. He’s sending me away because he knew it. That there was something here. Something more.”
My heart ached for him and all I could do was sigh.
“He fucking knows it, and you do too. Right?” His brows lifted. “This was not just sex. There’s something more here for you?”
He’d told me he loved me. And I sought him out and gave myself to him.
Being unfaithful to Hollis had been easy.
There was no love to be lost when I wrapped my legs around Beau.
But Rhazien, he wasn’t perfect, but he’d been attentive and kind.
And with so much at stake, there was nothing simple about this.
“Yes. But—” His head dropped and I moved to him. I wrapped my hands around his arm closest to me, beckoning him to look at me. To talk this out. “Dommik, please. You have to admit. It’s complicated. And delicate. This is bigger than us.”
I could practically hear him grinding his teeth. “I cannot fathom the idea of you going back to him.” The stone basin beneath his fingers creaked. “Of his hands…and lips on you…”
I ducked beneath his arms, his frozen form caging me between the basin and his rigid body. The sheet fell as I raised my hands to his cheeks.
“Stop.” I pulled him down and he obliged when I brought my lips to meet his. He exhaled and pressed his forehead into mine. I let my lids fall closed as I whispered, “Stop.”
There was no going back to Rhazien for me. Not when I wanted to be here. Beneath, on top of, and next to Dommik.
My shield. My sword. My forest and flame. My absolute ruin.
My Dommik.
“We’ll tell him,” I declared, my thumbs absently stroking his cheeks. “Tonight. Together,” I continued and he placed a kiss on my forehead and stood to his full height.
“Together,” Dommik repeated.
It was one hour to sunset when the last note of the evening bells vibrated throughout the halls.
The Hive would rise soon and I needed to leave Dommik’s room unseen.
He’d gone to find me a suitable outfit. Something that would cover my skin, which would be riddled with traces of his touch.
A garment I would wear as we confessed what we’d done to the regent of the Southern Hive.
I surveyed my skin, but inspecting my bare arms and midsection was useless to my mortal eyes.
Even if I couldn’t see it, knowing was enough to make my stomach twist. My body was a canvas of treachery.
When we did tell Rhazien, it wouldn’t take more than a passing glance to see the evidence of our betrayal.
I was sitting on the bed, my feet bouncing impatiently as I ran through each plausible scenario from least to most likely. My optimism was limited from the start that we would live through our confession, but the more I considered the different outcomes, the more I doubted our plan.
But Dommik was right. This was the honest and moral thing to do. Be upfront, decent, respectful. If that was even possible given all of the ways Dommik had handled me the night before.
For a moment I wondered how difficult it might be to procure more of that trace-eliminating tonic.
But then again, I wanted to be Dommik’s.
Maybe wearing his traces would make me a disgrace—a fallen prospective queen—but I’d lived with slanderous titles in the past. I could manage it, if it meant I would be his.
That is, if we lived beyond this confession…
A gentle knock rapped at the door.
I stood, securing the sheet around myself again. It seemed odd that Dommik would knock but I chalked it up to a courtesy warning that he was about to enter.
When the door didn’t open, I approached it with a smile and a joke on my lips, both of which fell instantly when I saw the tall, lean, loyal vampiric steward on the other side of the door.
Void of all emotion, Gorvin simply said, “Hello, Lady Reyva.”