28. Two missing halves
Two missing halves
F elix wondered if this was all a dream. If it was, it was an exceptionally good one. If he woke up in a rain-soaked bedroll or something equally dismal in the next few minutes, there would be hell to pay.
But he didn’t. Isolde was practically writhing on top of him, and he didn’t wake up.
He slowly, tentatively moved his hands under the hem of her tunic and brushed his fingertips up along the sides of her body, drawing the most beautiful little noises out of her when he stroked the underside of her breasts.
When he attempted to pull on the fabric to take it off, though, she stopped him.
Her eyes were boring into his; her face impish. “Let’s go outside.”
“Outside? What do you want to do outside?”
Isolde’s head tilted, her grin widening even more, and she stood.
“In the rain?”
She shrugged.
“Isa,” he said, trying to keep himself from laughing, “rain is wet, and cold. Come back here.”
She tugged on his arm. “Get up, Felix. ”
Very well, the lady wished to get rained on again after finally getting warm and dry, who was he to say no?
Felix got to his feet with a bemused smile and peeled off his shirt.
Isolde gave him a look, and he winked at her and shrugged.
“What? It just dried.” Then he let her drag him through the main room and out the door.
Outside it was as dark, cold, and wet as expected. Isolde did not seem deterred in the slightest, looking around and turning left to the far end of the courtyard.
She turned to face him, her hair plastered to her face, her eyes shining.
He raised his eyebrows, then dipped into a bow and extended a hand out to her.
She took it and spun, releasing clouds of sparks that surrounded them.
Felix twirled her with one arm before pulling her back into his reach with the other.
She giggled as she leapt away, her foot landing in a puddle and splashing them both.
He whirled her again, faster this time. Soon they were both breathless, slipping on the wet pavement, and the next spin caught them off balance.
Isolde made a wild grab for him and he just managed to steady them both, catching her with one hand on her waist, the other on her back. He smiled and leaned in. Her chin tilted up, meeting him halfway.
The kiss was sweet at first, soft, tasting of rain.
Her fingers twined in his hair, and she parted her lips for him.
He drew her closer, hands roaming down her body, and the sweetness slowly evolved into something more, something hungry and almost frantic.
Her magic flared and pulsed like a living thing, the rain all but forgotten, the cold banished by the fire between them.
She clung to him, and he lifted her up, wrapping her legs around his waist.
They ended up in the far corner of the courtyard where he perched her on a stone ledge, and her hands flew to his trousers.
He smiled against her mouth. “To think I imagined you’d be shy.”
“Be quiet and take these off, Felix,” she replied in a voice so husky, her expression so seductive, it took a significant amount of willpower to not immediately oblige.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait until we’re somewhere more comfortable…?”
“Are you suggesting we might arrive at a nice, cosy inn with soft beds tomorrow?” she interrupted, eyeing him fiercely through rain-soaked lashes.
“I don’t want to wait for anything. I might not even have a tomorrow for much longer.
I don’t care if it’s crazy. I want to live.
I’ve spent enough nights on this journey alone, wishing I were with you. ”
If Felix still had any reservations, they were well and truly gone now.
But rain or not, cold or not… He had never yet been accused of being a selfish lover, and with her, he was certainly not about to start.
So he pushed her hand away and gave her a disarming grin when she looked at him questioningly.
“Lean back.”
He slid his hands under her ass and pulled her leggings off. He winced in sympathy as her bare flesh touched the stone, but she seemed too mesmerised to care.
He sank down to his knees, trailed kisses up her legs, gently nudged them apart and unceremoniously buried his face between her thighs. She arched her back and whimpered, but the uncertain touch of her hand made him look up at her.
“What… what are you doing?” Her pupils were dark with desire, but she was biting her lip uncertainly.
He raised himself up slightly and tilted his head at her. “I take it this is new…?” His lips brushed the inside of her thigh.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Bless that absolute fucking idiot.
He grinned and licked a trail of raindrops off her other leg. She shuddered.
“I’m pretty sure you’ll like it,” he murmured against her skin, “unless you want me to stop?”
“...no.”
He worked his way back with soft kisses, moving so slowly she was writhing by the end.
He experimented, teasing a little, giving a little, coaxing sounds from her he promised himself he would get her to make any chance he got.
By the time he slipped one, then two fingers into her, she was uttering an incoherent stream of curses, yes -es, more curses, and finally his name, over and over again.
She all but strangled him with her thighs when she convulsed around his fingers, and flares of that heady blue glow raced across her skin and his both .
He didn’t want to stop, didn’t want the rush her pleasure was bringing him to end, but she drew him to his feet, her eyes huge, her face flushed, and any rational thought abandoned him as the feral desire to be buried inside her took over.
“That was… that was,” she stammered, before her words dissolved into gasps as he ground his hips against hers.
Felix pulled her against him, one hand behind her neck and the other on her hip. Her hands found their way to the waist of his now painfully tight trousers again, and this time he did not stop her when she tugged them down. She wrapped her legs around him, pushing her heels against his lower back.
Through the haze of lust, a thought wormed into his mind, unbidden and unwanted but persistent, and he froze.
She noticed, of course. “What is it?”
He struggled to form coherent speech. “We can’t… What if you get…”
Her eyes widened when she understood, but it only made her smile and tug at his arms more insistently.
“It’s fine. I thought of that. Don’t worry.” She pressed herself against his chest and grazed his skin with her teeth.
“You… are you sure?” Four words, and they took as much conscious effort as a fucking sonnet.
“Yes, Felix. Yes. Please,” she sighed against him.
Like she had to say please, or ask at all.
As if she wasn’t a goddess at whose altar he should beg to worship.
He fully intended to go slow, to be gentle and considerate, but she hooked her ankles behind his back, angled her hips, made a sound somewhere between a moan and a whine, and that was the end of that.
“Sweet fucking hells, Isa,” he groaned when he thrust into her, his voice strained, his fingers digging into her flesh.
Felix held still for a moment, kissing her jaw, then pulled out almost fully before sinking back in, finding a rhythm as the waves of pleasure washed over them.
She clawed at his shoulders as she met each of his strokes with breathy little moans that would have driven him over the edge from their sound alone.
Soon he was lost to all thought, and nothing existed except the two of them, like two missing halves of one whole, finally reunited here in this most unlikely of places .
When he opened his eyes and drowned in the blue glow of hers, it was as if a part of her – a part of her magic – wrapped itself around his very soul.
Felix would be unusually fond of rain for a long time after that night.
***
They snuck back into the keep soon after, soaking wet and shivering.
Felix insisted on giving Isolde his dry shirt, not least because it meant he got to peel the sodden one she was wearing off of her.
He drew her down onto the bedding, pulling the blankets around them both.
She immediately burrowed into his chest and sighed contentedly.
He twisted so her head rested on his shoulder.
He lay staring at the ceiling as her breathing gradually slowed.
She was falling asleep in his arms, which made him feel a strange kind of soft and vulnerable that was amazing and terrifying in equal measure.
He had feelings for Isolde; he knew he did.
She had awakened something in him he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to examine.
He’d never cared if a woman he slept with lost interest, or decided to fuck someone else.
Some had tried, to see if they could get a rise out of him, and it left him indifferent.
He’d never had a lack of lovers either, once he gained some confidence with women, and outgrew that awkward phase young men went through of being all legs and elbows. Sex was much like fighting – a bit of a challenge, a way to scratch an itch, a release.
But this, with her, was not that.
He’d never wanted a woman to be his. He’d never wanted to be better, to do better, for anyone.
Now he did, for her. He didn’t know what it was about her, not exactly.
He wanted to save her and to be saved by her at the same time.
As if they were both falling, but if they stuck together, they could fly.
** *
When Felix woke up the next day, Isolde had somehow managed to pull all the blankets off him. He cast a wry grin at the way she had bundled herself up, leaving him to freeze.
He was sorely tempted to kiss her awake, but they were not alone, and maybe she would be embarrassed.
Instead, he untangled himself from her as carefully as he could, trying not to wake her.
Leif and Mia were asleep near the fire. Biscuit came bounding up to him, his little tail wagging.
Felix knelt down to rub the dog’s ears and quietly left the keep, walking a wide circle around his sleeping companions. The puppy followed on his heels.
Outside, the rain had finally stopped. The sky was still moody and grey, but patches of blue were visible here and there.
The air smelled of wet earth and sulphur.
Biscuit yipped at him, excitedly running in circles as Felix exited the courtyard to look at the landscape.
It was a strange place, even without rain.
The plants and even the rocks were odd. To the north, he could just make out the vague silhouettes of mountains.
The Veilcrags. He stood for a moment, lost in thought, until Biscuit snapped him out of it with a bark.
“Let’s go get a drink, mongrel.”
Felix wandered over to the well and brought up a bucket. The icy cold water did nothing to dampen his mood. He didn’t think anything could at this point. He poured water for the pup, too, and hummed a bawdy tavern tune as he washed and tied his hair back.
“What in all the… Are you humming?” Luella’s voice sounded from behind him, laced with disbelief. He turned to grin widely at her incredulous face.
“Morning, Lu. Sleep well?”
She glared daggers at him. “Stop this right now.”
“What?”
“You know very well what. This… cheerfulness. It is terrifying.”
“You told me to apologise, if you recall. ”
“That’s what you understood by ‘apologise,’ was it?”
“I think it worked,” he replied, unable to wipe the smirk off his face.
“Ugh. Spare me,” Luella said, wrinkling her nose. Biscuit growled and tried to attack her boots, which she quietly ignored. “Garren is still considering whether he is going to kill you.”
Felix laughed. “He can try.”
“At any rate,” Luella continued, frowning, “I hope this” – she waved her hand vaguely in his direction – “will not distract you. And her. From whatever comes next.”
A tendril of terror caressed the back of his mind. He ignored it.
“It won’t. We’ll just have to face it. Whatever it is.”