Chapter 33
thirty-three
After a morning of being tangled together, Vade pried himself off her long enough to ready himself for the day’s journey.
Orelia followed his lead and changed into one of the tunics and pants he’d bought her in Ricaboro before gathering the rest of her belongings. When Vade came out of the washroom, he was back in his formidable garb and utterly gorgeous.
She jumped into his arms and their kisses turned needy.
“We have to go,” Vade said, though his hands were full of her ass.
“I don’t want to,” she whined.
He kissed her on the forehead. “I don’t want to leave this cabin either, but we need to get the spell reversed. I’m even more terrified for you now. I don’t want anything happening to you because of me, so the sooner we get to Gretern’s Keep, the better.”
He put out the fire in the hearth with his darkness and Orelia picked up the plumrose he’d left on her pillow the night before. She inhaled the rose’s delicious scent and set it on the bedside table. Maybe it would bring the next occupants luck in love, too.
“Will we make it to the Keep today?” she asked.
Vade slung his pack over his shoulders, then handed Orelia hers. “It’s only a few marks away, if we can actually manage to make it out of here.”
She threaded her arms through the straps. “I guess I’ll stop throwing myself at you then.”
He ushered her out the front door, then slung an arm over her shoulder and kissed her temple. “Please don’t ever stop doing that.”
They left the noise of Ravere behind, letting the chirping birds and the late morning sun guide them into the forest. In a few hours their lives would no longer be tied together, though Orelia knew her heart was forever attached to his.
Vade was insatiable.
Once they’d made it into the forest away from civilization, he pounced. They couldn’t make it five minutes before he was pinning her to a tree again, running his lips along her neck, hands roaming every part of her.
Orelia wasn’t much more controlled. She couldn’t get enough of him.
They slowly made their way east with multiple stops in between to let the birds listen to their moans.
Vade laid her in a clearing and formed a quick ward before stripping her bare.
Orelia hurriedly pulled his tunic over his head and tossed it aside.
The cool grass felt wonderful on her back, and the dappled sunlight flitted over them in pieces.
As much as she wanted him inside her again, Orelia stopped him from entering her.
“There’s something I want to do that I’ve never done,” she said, smiling up at him.
He quirked a brow. “Which is?”
She rolled them over so Vade was on his back. Orelia slid down his body, kissing his tawny skin that had deepened in the sun.
She gripped his hard cock, not knowing how she was going to fit all of him in her mouth, but she wanted to try. Orelia licked a line up the side of him and Vade moaned up at the sky, fingers digging into the grass.
“Fucking hells, that feels phenomenal,” he said. Orelia watched him react to her. He squirmed like she had when he’d been between her thighs. The view of his ridged stomach and sculpted chest made her slick between her legs.
She took as much of him as she could in her mouth, her underwear damp from the sounds he made. Orelia slowly bobbed her head, working her way further down his cock with each movement.
“Gods-damn, Orelia . . .”
He loosely gripped the back of her head and she bobbed faster. Orelia loved the control Vade had as he held her, though she was the one with all the power.
He made low grunts of pleasure as she worked him in her mouth, but she wanted to try everything and was too impatient to finish him like this.
“Stand up,” she ordered.
He looked at her curiously, doing as she said.
She rose with him, licking her lips as she pushed him against a tree.
Vade looked like he wanted to devour her.
She dropped to her knees, gripped the base of his glistening cock, and took him in her mouth again, looking up at him through her lashes as she slid as much as she could of him in and out.
“Oh, fuck . . .” Vade muttered.
She focused on pleasing him and listened to the sounds of his breathing intensify. His fingers found her hair as Orelia worked the length of him. When his breaths shortened and his cock managed to harden even more, she braced.
Vade grunted with her name on his lips as his pleasure slid down her throat. Orelia drank him dry, relishing in the way he twitched and moaned.
“Gods-dammit woman, you’re going to kill me with how fucking amazing that was.” Vade pulled her off the ground, gripped the back of her thighs and turned around, pressing her back to the tree.
She didn’t know how he was still hard, but he eased himself into her and fucked her against the pine. The rough bark at her back stirred a primal need inside her as she wrapped her legs and arms around him, letting him take her.
His shadows slithered over her clitoris while he thrust into her with deep strokes. It wasn’t long before Orelia orgasmed and screamed up at the sky, though no one would hear her pleasure through the ward.
When she was finished, they laid together on a blanket Vade pulled from his pack, naked and hands never straying far from one another.
He laid on his back with Orelia draped over him.
They didn’t speak for a while, enjoying the sun and the breeze, but a gnawing feeling worked its way up to her chest.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Orelia looked up at him. “What do you mean?”
He paused the fingers that had been running through her hair. “I can feel you tensing up.”
Dread threatened to silence her words, but she needed to speak them.
“What is it?” he asked, concern drawing his brows together.
Orelia picked a blade of grass and began fiddling with it. “After we get the spell reversed, where will you go?”
He looked at her with unsurety, and the nerves started creeping in. “Well . . .”
Was he going to leave her? He was still the king’s executioner and had a job to do. Would he ask her to keep traveling with him? She waited on bated breath for his answer.
Vade brushed his knuckles across her cheek. “I meant it when I said I loved you. Seeing as how I’ve never said that to anyone before, I’m hoping the person I said it to would still be interested in staying with me, even after we become untethered.”
Orelia sat up and began dressing, not wanting to have this conversation naked in the middle of the woods. Vade did the same.
Once she was settled and sitting back on the blanket, she spoke. “I don’t want to leave you either, but you’ll be working for the king and traveling all over. I’ll rarely see you.”
Before he could respond, she cut in.
“I have to go back to Minro, Vade. I have to help my friends. No one is at the brothel to help them, and I’ll beg Beron back for my job if I have to. I’ve been gone too long, and who knows what’s happened to them since I left.”
His face pinched. “You want to go home?”
She hated the look of pained abandonment he wore. Quick to not let him think she was anything like his parents, Orelia took his face in her hands.
“I love you, Vade.” Orelia dug deep for her courage and let out the words she hoped wouldn’t make him recoil. “I have to go home, but I want you to come with me. I want us to start a life together.”
She searched his face for a sign he wasn’t about to reject her, wondering if her love was enough to make his nomadic heart settle. Her heart pounded as she waited for his response.
He blinked. “You want me to live with you?”
She couldn’t tell by his tone if he was appalled by the idea or intrigued.
“I know I can’t offer you an exciting life on the road, and I know you have a job to do .
. .” Orelia fumbled over her next words.
“My plain little village can’t compare to the places you’ve been, and I’m sure you’d be bored out of your mind in Minro, but I just thought—”
A ‘Yes!’ flew out of him so fast she thought she may have misheard him.
“Are you sure?” Orelia asked. “I don’t have anything to offer you like this adventurous life you have.”
He squeezed her hand. “Nothing to offer? Orelia, you just offered me the only thing I’ve never had. The one thing no amount of coin can buy. You offered me a loving home.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “You won’t be bored with a simple life?”
Vade wrapped her in his arms. “I have lived a thousand exciting lives, but they’ve been hollow, desperate for the kind of love you have shown me. You are warm, and soft, and kind. Everything I’ve never known and never knew I wanted.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, and Vade brushed it away with his thumb. “A simple, quiet life with you is exactly what I want.”
She went to kiss him, but he moved his head back. Uncertainty flashed in his eyes. “But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified of disappointing you. My past is littered with devilish deeds, and I realize I’m an impossible man to love, so if at any point you want out, I—”
“I don’t want out. I want you with me, always.
” Orelia took his face in her hands. “Come home with me. Start a life with me. Love me. Keep me warm at night and hold me in the morning. In return, I’ll smother you with so much love you won’t even know what to do with yourself.
” She looked deeply into his eyes, showing him the resolute truth of her words. “I’ll never abandon you, Vade.”
A happy tear trailed through the freckle near his left eye she’d first noticed when he’d comforted her in the sky what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“It would be my honor to be yours, Orelia.” He kissed her lips with a featherlight touch. “Forever yours.”
The sky and the earth bore witness to their love once again before the two of them redressed and donned their packs.
“Before we leave Axelton, I’ll need to stop by the bank,” Vade said. “My deal with Aradonis was if I ever wanted out of my job I had to pay him a certain amount. An amount, I’m sure, he never thought I’d acquire.”
“But you have it?”
He nodded. “I keep money in a few banks in different cities, but as luck would have it, I have enough in the one in Axelton to buy my freedom.”
“You’re willing to give up your job completely to live with me?”
Vade slipped his hand in hers. “Nothing would make me happier. My life has been nothing but blood and death. I want it to be something better. You make me want to be better.”
She placed a soft kiss on his lips. “Thank you. But what will you do when you run out?”
He barked a laugh. “I’m dripping in wealth, lamb. I won’t run out.”
“So arrogant.”
“And it will be our money, so spend it however you like.”
Her head jerked back. “I could never take what’s yours. What you earned.”
Vade brushed her hair behind her shoulder. “It’s ours. I want you to spend it on something that makes you happy.”
Her eyes went distant as she pictured what she would do. What did she want to do? “First things first, let’s get this spell reversed. Then we can talk about me draining your purse.”
Vade chuckled. “I like the sound of that. But before we head out, I need to send a letter to Aradonis and let him know I plan to leave. Don’t want to take the King of Nivinia by surprise.”
Vade crafted a message on a small piece of paper, then placed it inside the stone. After the white light disappeared and he made sure the paper was no longer inside, they headed east, fingers intertwined, hearts forever altered.