39. Chapter 39 #2
We left the library and turned down a quieter corridor, one I scarcely recognized. This one had no tapestries, narrower walls, and the torch sconces were spaced farther apart. This far from the main areas, the vibrant sounds of life in the castle had receded into a distant murmur.
He hadn’t let go of me once. My pulse was no longer calm—it was climbing, fast enough that I was certain he could feel it through my hand on his arm. My body was trying to warn me that something was about to happen.
Without pausing our walk, Owain turned his head and barked, “Dismissed.” The word cracked through the corridor. “Return to the family wing.”
The leading guard nodded, and as one, they turned on their heels, stepping away as a unit.
When Owain turned us toward a narrow door and pushed it open, I realized we were entering the same closet I’d first emerged after braving the underground tunnel. The door shut behind us with the creak of barely used wood.
“Am I a secret again?” I asked, the words tumbling out ungracefully, too raw with the threat of fresh sting to soften. I felt ridiculous before I’d even finished speaking.
Owain went still. His attention pressed in with heavy certainty. “Never like what you mean.”
My eyes traced the lines of his face, a strange ache blooming in my heart. “Then why—”
The question died as he moved, and I understood half a heartbeat before it happened that he wasn’t going to answer me with words.
He closed the distance between us in a single, decisive step. His hand came up to hold the back of my neck at the nape. The next instant my back met the stone wall with a breathless jolt as he pressed in, his body flush against mine.
“Owain—”
The rest of his name dissolved into a soft, startled sound as a rush of dark magic surged through the narrow space.
I heard the dull thud of shadows forming a bar to seal the door.
It was already dark in the room, but now the scant light filtering through the tiny window on the other side was all we could see by.
My pulse raced in my ears.
His other hand braced beside my head, caging me in without quite touching. His forehead hovered just shy of mine, his breath warm against my lips.
“You’ve been looking at me like you intend to undo me—” He stopped to drag in a shaky breath. His voice was ragged in a way I’d never heard before. “—even more than you already have.”
My heart gave a sudden, frantic thump. The stone at my back was cold. But he was on fire. The contrast made my skin prickle with an almost overwhelming awareness.
“I—” I didn’t even know what I meant to say.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. “And holding my hand under the table.”
Heat flooded my face. “That was hardly—”
“Lunette.” My name, spoken like a warning. Like a promise.
Whatever fragile protest I had collapsed because he wasn’t wrong. Every glance. Every small, deliberate brush of contact. Every moment I’d allowed myself to lean just a fraction closer.
I wanted him.
“I couldn’t wait until we made it back to my room.” Owain’s hand gently urged me closer.
With a certainty that stole my breath, that first kiss sealed our fates within that dark closet. It was heat and pressure and the explosion of something held back for far too long, violently released.
A soft, helpless sound escaped me as my fingers fisted in the front of his shirt. I was just as eager.
He answered it instantly, angling his head, deepening the kiss with a ferocity that made my knees dangerously unsteady. For the first time, I leaned into him without holding part of myself back.
He felt it. His control slipped another fraction, and the hand braced on the wall joined the one behind my neck to force me even closer. A shiver of anticipation, laced with hedonistic thrill, ran down my spine at his unexpected roughness.
Didn’t know I liked that.
Each time our hips brushed, I felt the unyielding hardness of him pressing against the leather fastenings of his trousers.
“I need to taste you,” he said, without explanation—as if his very soul depended on it. His blown pupils bored into me with something close to mania rampaging behind them. Even still, I knew, with absolute conviction, that if I said “no,” he’d pull back in an instant.
My gaze flicked to the door and back to his. Safe. I was always safe with Owain.
I wrapped my arms around him and pulled his hips into mine until I could finally feel every inch of him against my belly.
He bit off a snarl to kiss me again.
I moaned, my breath meeting his, as his tongue demanded entry. I opened myself to him, granting permission as tendrils of shadow lifted my skirts.
His hands moved down my neck, past my shoulders, to cup my breasts. Then his head dipped, and the rough stubble of his beard grazed the sensitive skin of my decolletage as he kissed the peaks of each.
I only had a moment to appreciate the shivers of pleasure it sent through me before I let out a small, surprised squeak. “Oh!”
Higher and higher the dress rose, but I was also being lifted. Except his hands were still lavishing attention on my chest, his lips working their way up my neck.
I looked down. Darkness had gathered beneath me, solid as carved wood.
It settled into the unmistakable shape of a tall, low-backed chair.
Armrests rose under my forearms with the gentle suggestion to stay and get comfortable.
His magic was warm beneath its dark surface, pressing heat into me through the contact.
It felt impossibly like being held. He’d thought of my comfort without being asked.
He’s been doing that, without faltering, since the day you met him, Luna.
It was a moment of wide-eyed realization that, honestly, had taken too long in coming. Owain was thoughtful and so patient with me.
His hands had moved to warm my thighs. Teetering on the edge of no return…
“Tell me you want my lips on you, my fingers inside you,” he whispered, breath warm on the sensitive skin just beneath my ear.
I nodded, wanting to fall off the edge with him. But my silence wasn’t enough.
He kneeled and his rough hands worked up and down the skin of my legs, burning through the contact, tightening slightly as he ordered, “Say it, Lunette.”
Flustered, impatient, wanting, I looked into his dark eyes and said, “Both. At the same time.”
My prince didn’t wait. With a firm grasp, his hands spread my thighs apart with a single thrust. My body was thrumming with the contact, anticipating what was to come.
But then every inch of him, save for the rhythmic expansion and contraction of his chest, went rigid. For half a heartbeat, I worried something was wrong, but he was only staring at my core hungrily, while licking his fingers—getting them ready.
I braced myself for the usual shock of fear at being seen, but I realized I was aching for exactly that. The need to be known by him rose louder than the old instinct to hide.
More than that, the version of me that had flinched and folded felt distant, like a bad habit I hadn’t had time to indulge since coming to the Tir. And Owain’s attention had never felt like judgment. It had always been permission to be exactly who I was.
“You’re perfect,” he said, briefly grasping the hard outline in his trousers. “I just needed to see you, Luna.”
Then he was bent over me, doublet sliding across my bodice, kissing me with an intensity that made me dizzy, while his fingers explored my most sensitive spot.
Wanting more, I pressed my hips into his hand, urging him on. He sank two fingers in. A low moan escaped my lips as he worked me inside and out with a consistent rhythm.
“You wanted both,” he murmured—a tease and a promise.
He moved back, fingers still working my core, and tendrils of shadows peeled away from his hands in swirling, hypnotic patterns, skating along my skin, sending tiny jolts of recognition along the way. His hungry eyes never strayed from me as the tendrils moved to wrap around my thighs.
My heart pounded with exhilaration, my breaths coming in short, rapid bursts as the bindings firmed my hold on the conjured chair. Still, I could move easily. They swayed with my smallest movements.
His voice came out as a hushed rumble as he moved down my body. “They’re for anything you want, moonlight. But I need you to open for me…even as you fall to pieces on my tongue.”
By the cursed gods. I almost reached my pinnacle right then and there.
The chair beneath me shifted, tilting my hips higher as his lips ghosted over my inner thighs. His free hand wrapped around one, and he dragged his teeth along the soft flesh there, inhaling slowly and deeply through his nose as he worked, only to bite down gently at the bend at the hip.
My hips tried to buck at the contact, but his shadows and grasping arm held me in place. I tried to squeeze my legs shut to stem the aching, but the tendrils stopped me too.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, his head still maddeningly nestled between my thighs, yet not quite touching.
“Well, get me faster,” I complained. If I was doing this, I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.
His chuckle was a deep, satisfied sound, laced with a hint of wickedness. ”As you wish, my lady.”
He unhooked his arm from around my thigh and started with one slow, lazy drag of his tongue across my heat as his fingers continued to work my entrance.