Chapter fifty-five #2
And then his body pressed into mine, my back flat to the panelled wall.
My hips pushed to find his, to fit into the space I knew they would.
Kaed’s eyes were wild and dark as they devoured the sight of me held by him. “This is where I want you. Always. In my hands.”
I bit my lip, and a moan shuddered from me.
“And that.” He thrust his hips into mine and pushed my captured hands harder into the wall. “I want that sound coming from you every time you’re with me, under me, touching me. I don’t want you to think of anything else but me when you make those noises.”
And unbidden, those noises tumbled from me in rhythm with his movements.
Every.
Hard.
Thrust.
I tried to reach for his lips, but he spun me so fast I didn’t have time to catch my breath.
Kaed had my hands pinned behind my back, his body welded to me, caging me under his might.
My breath rattled as his free hand snaked around the column of my neck. He closed his fingers just enough to make my pulse hammer in me. And then his hand moved down my front, down, down until his fingers reached the spot he wanted.
A gasp tore from my lips, and my head fell back onto his chest as his fingers worked the swollen bud of my arousal.
Pinned behind me, my hands were exactly where I wanted them. He grew beneath my touch, through the thin layer of the sheet that barely held him.
He muffled his own moan by biting down on my neck. His teeth were restrained as he let my body absorb the sounds he couldn’t control.
And I loved it.
“Kaed …” I breathed, and reached for him again, my hips bucking into the touch he so expertly gave.
He brought his lips to my ear. “Going to beg me?”
Bastard. He liked that too much.
I pulled against his grip, testing how tightly he held me.
But I only managed to wriggle in his grasp and he liked that. At least he seemed to like it, if the way he grew more as I struggled to free myself was any indication.
He snarled and spun me again, this time picking me up until his hands held me seated, my legs wrapped around his hips.
“I’m not begging you,” I said, my now free hands fisting in his hair.
His eyes darkened at the challenge, and with fae speed, he had me thrown to the bed, the dark sheets splashing around me. I tried to sit up, but Kaed had caged me under him.
This close to him, this much heat in my core, the wetness between my legs … I knew I would beg him. I knew what it felt like to shatter under his touch. And I would beg in any godstongue he wanted for that feeling again.
Kaed knelt over me, and the sight of him, carved from marble and moonstone, before me commanded me to arch upwards.
“No,” he taunted, his fingers splayed across my stomach until I lay back down as bidden.
Kaed fisted the fabric of the shirt and pushed it into my hands.
Hold it. Do not move.
I could read the instructions. And I obeyed.
Kaed knelt in front of me, bending low.
A ragged breath tore from him as he nuzzled along my entrance and I knew he could smell me. His teeth nipped at the delicate fabric of my undergarments. With his free hands, he hooked the lacey scrap of fabric until it pooled around my ankles.
And then his lips finally touched mine.
His tongue moved over my centre, parting the neat folds and licking everything.
The tight bundle of nerves that came together at the apex of my centre screamed in response to the touch of his tongue.
Or maybe I screamed.
My senses didn’t know how to focus on anything except the way he devoured me.
Kaed flicked his tongue back and forth over the bud of my arousal until I ached to come undone. And then he sucked. Tugging at my restraint. His teeth grazed the edges of the nerves, and I whimpered.
Relentless in his hunger, he licked every bit of me, and then he feasted on the ripple of pleasure that tore through me.
I gripped his hair and held his head exactly where I wanted it. I couldn’t find air. Couldn’t find words. But I knew Kaed was there. And that was all I needed.
I shattered. I burned. And I came undone all over his tongue.
Maybe I didn’t beg. But I cried his name over and over again, as cascades of pleasure rushed over me.
And then I collapsed, boneless and dripping.
Kaed ran a hand between my legs, and it came away wet as he cleaned me up.
“Thank you,” I mumbled as I wrapped the sheets around me, and he crawled back to me.
“I think you’ve got that the wrong way around. I should be thanking you.”
I looked at him, confused. I was the one who had just found my release all over him. Not the other way around. But I suddenly realised I would need that too. Soon. I was hungry for it.
“I’ve been imagining doing that to you for a long time.”
“You have?”
He nodded quietly and traced lazy lines over my skin with his hands. “I wanted to know …” He actually faltered. Fumbled for words. I caught the first glimmer of something like bashfulness in him. But he washed it away and, with menace, said, “If you tasted like peaches too.”
Heat flushed to my cheeks and my core.
“You smell like peaches. And now …” He sucked the fingers he’d run along my centre. And a feral rumble sounded in his chest.
And very suddenly, his pet name for me took on a very different meaning. I retrospectively felt the blushes of every time he’d used that name for me in front of others.
“It’s been torture,” he said.
“Is that all I am? A torture?” I mocked.
He growled and cradled me. “Maybe I like a little torture.”
“Giving or receiving?” What was I doing? I’d become bold—or deranged—by the orgasm that still racked my body.
Kaed searched my eyes for any hint of fear.
He would find none.
“There are so many things I want to do to you, Imogen.” He sighed, and his forehead came to meet mine.
I shuddered under him, and I knew he felt it.
But I wanted more.
My hands reached for the hardness beneath the sheet tied around his hips, but he pulled away out of reach.
“If you tease me, peach, I will repay you in kind. And then some.” He smirked and turned to find a shirt; a shirt I wasn’t wearing.
I felt like I might collapse at the chasm and void he left before me as he got dressed.
My head and heart were swooning from the release, the touch, the burning need that still claimed me.
But then I saw Kaed as he turned from me.
An involuntary gasp escaped me, and my hand flew to cover my mouth when I saw his back.
Kaed turned to me and instantly regathered the shirt he held, as if that could hide what I’d just seen.
“Kaed …” I went to him, but he pushed my searching hand away.
“I didn’t mean for you to see that.” All hints of humour and flirting were dead in his voice. Replaced by something hard and almost cruel.
“I-I don’t mind.” I was still reeling from what I’d seen. “Please …” I breathed, and tried to put my hand on his shoulder to turn him.
And like last night, I saw something in the hard set of his jaw falter.
“It’s not something I want you to see. It’s not a part of me I’m proud of.”
I didn’t say anything, but he allowed my hand to urge him to turn.
“I want to see every part of you.”
And as soon as I’d said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say. But it brought a light back to his eyes, and they twinkled. “Every part?” He grinned like a wolf.
“Let me see …” I ignored the attempt at levity.
With a shuddering inhale, Kaed turned, and I couldn’t stifle the tremor that came to my lips, even seeing it a second time.
His entire back looked like it had been painted with ribbons of shadows and twisted thorns.
Only, they weren’t painted on. They were carved in.
Not tattooed but carved into his skin so deeply that he now had a tapestry of black vein-like scars that stretched across the impressive expanse of his back. It was a charred tree of ash and smoke.
“Did they hurt …?”
I wanted to ask so many other questions. Who did this to him? Why did he endure it? But instead, I cared more about the pain and suffering he’d endured.
“Yes.” He ground out the single word.
I went to raise a hand to one, to trace it with my finger, but I stopped short. He hadn’t shared these with me. He’d left a gate to his past open by accident around me.
“And now?” I pulled my hand back.
He shook his head with slow deliberateness.
“Can I …?” It seemed so personal. So intimate. But this wasn’t about his body. This was about him. He’d sat through whatever form of torture this was. They’d hurt, and he’d suffered it. I knew there was a story behind them, and I was terrified of what it was.
Kaed nodded once.
My fingers shook as they reached for the point of one of the longer tendrils.
It ran from the centre of his spine all the way to his left shoulder blade and had what looked like bleed marks seeping from it.
As though whatever had done this to him had been sentient enough to try to spread once it infected him.
Kaed flinched when my fingers landed on his back. The skin under the inky black scars was cool to the touch.
I wanted to tell him how much I cared about him in that moment. I cared when he was hurting.
He pulled out from under my touch and threw the shirt over his head.
“I’m sorry.” I snatched my hand back from the air where he’d been.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said as he dressed. “My father’s witch was quite the artist.”
My mouth moved uselessly at that.
Audrie had said punishments. But maiming your son. For any reason. I couldn’t fathom a person who would do that to their child. He let the fae witches have me … to do this?
“It’s a long story, peach.” He blew out. “And I don’t think we have time for my sad and unpleasant history.”
I stood dumbfounded and a little numb in his room as he pulled on his boots.
“You might want to get changed.”
“What?” I shook my head, still lost in the agony that that must have been to endure.
I took in the sight of Kaed. He was dressed in leathers. His shoulders were covered with pauldrons, and around his torso was a leather half brace made of belts and buckles.
“Where are we going?”
He strapped the two-handed sword to his back.
“To visit Huxley.”