21
Celestine was late to dinner, so I sat alone.
Yet I wondered if I was truly alone.
Voran’s gaze was no longer a searing brand at my back, but a warmth I’d grown familiar with. He’d watched me since he arrived, so there was no reason for anyone to question it. Even so, I kept glancing across the prayer hall at the Coraldeen prince.
But not once had Darcen looked my way.
A relief after he’d almost found me in Voran’s room this afternoon. Maybe he’d lingered because he’d contemplated entering the Valadorn prince’s room himself.
Celestine arrived flustered and shoving damp curls from her forehead. “Protection be damned. This place has done nothing but exhaust me and break my stupid heart. I’m ready to tame a fyrefowl and fly home.”
I retrieved the raspberries I’d stolen from the cellars from my robes. Pushing the bundled cloth toward her, I said, “Got your favorite before everyone else took them.”
Her smile eased some of the guilt in my chest.
Voran snarled.
The book groaned between his clenched fingers. “If I say it any fucking slower, I will be saying nothing at all.”
“It’s not how slow you say it, it’s how you’re saying it. I think it could be your accent.” I mouthed the word hearth and turned toward him. “Here, put your tongue lightly between your teeth, then push—”
“I would rather put it lightly between your teeth.”
I laughed.
He didn’t.
Remembering where I was, I covered the sound with my hand. I doubted anyone was in the next room at this time of day. But after yesterday, those mischievous younglings giggling in the hall, I needed to be more mindful.
Before heading to Voran’s room, I’d walked the archives until they’d emptied of younglings and some of the lingering wards had seen me.
Voran snatched my wrist.
I stilled.
But he just took my hand from my mouth. “No one is out there.” He would know. He kept my hand, lowered it to the book in his lap as he turned to me on the bed. His callused thumbs scraped across the sensitive skin at my inner wrist. “Tiny.”
Gooseflesh rose. “I’m actually not tiny at all.”
I was just above the average height for faerie females, but although I was somewhat tall, I wasn’t willowy thin. I certainly wasn’t muscular like many of my kin. I was soft. Squishy at my ass, hips, and chest. This often made the archive-issued tunics and pants uncomfortable.
“Maybe you’re just giant,” I tried to quip, but it became a fractured murmur.
“I am bigger than most,” Voran said absently. “All direwolves are.” His thumbs were indeed quite large. So much so, when side by side, they encompassed the width of my wrist. As they moved toward my palm, the book slipped from his lap into mine.
Forcing my eyes to it, I said, “Let’s do it again.”
“Let’s.” A low hiss.
It delivered my eyes to his and heat into my cheeks. One glimpse of those eyes, their unwavering focus on my mouth, confirmed that he hadn’t been talking about reading.
“Voran,” I chided with a smile. “I cannot…” I amended, as I hadn’t done much of the kissing, “You said we don’t have to kiss anymore, and we should—”
“And you said you couldn’t yesterday.” Taking the book, he tossed it onto the bed and leaned forward. He’d already been sitting too close, so the movement brought his mouth to my temple. “Then we kissed.”
“We did,” I breathed.
Rather, he’d kissed me. Saying so was futile when I’d been a willing and floating and mesmerized participant.
His throaty hum elicited more gooseflesh. His thumb dug into my palm, then trailed to my wrist. He swallowed it in his hand as he put his mouth against my cheek. There, he whispered, “Then you fled like a frightened little bird.”
“I did.”
“I can hear your heart pound.” His eyes caught mine, rimmed in brighter blue. “Yet you’re not frightened now.”
I wasn’t. I was nothing but stalled breath and bubbling anticipation. “Should I be?” I whispered back, knowing what he’d do next.
Knowing didn’t make me move. Didn’t keep my heart from stopping the moment he feathered his lips over mine and murmured, “Maybe.”
My eyes closed. I realized he still had my hand when he slid his fingers down it to thread them through mine. The firm hold, such a contrast to the silken clasp of his lips, caused my heart to restart with a painful thud.
He drank in my sigh with a quiet groan that reverberated against my lips. Then he parted them, took my face in his other hand, and ruined me with that gentle exploration.
How a male known for his brutality could kiss so patiently, almost tenderly, bewildered me. That he did so with me—the daughter of his king’s enemy—eroded something fundamental. Something that crumbled into smaller fragments every time he kissed me.
With a pluck at my upper lip, he murmured, “Never understood why people do this. Why they’d want to put their mouth on someone else’s and taste their breath, share saliva.” He kissed my lower lip. “I understand now.”
“You,” I tried, but he glossed his lips across mine, whisper soft. My eyelids fluttered. As did something within my chest. When he kissed my chin, I managed to ask, “You don’t usually enjoy kissing?”
Against my jaw, he said, “The only female I’ve kissed is you.”
“Males then?”
He huffed. “Just you, Ayla.”
It might have been the first time he’d said my name, and the way his accent wrapped around the letters, wilted them until it sounded like Ay-lah-g, threatened to melt my brain.
“Just me,” I muttered without meaning to.
He hummed in confirmation. Then kissed me once more.
But I couldn’t grasp it. Digest it.
I broke free to blurt out, “Are you the type of male who likes to merely bend a female over?” Given his commanding presence—violently domineering, really—it certainly wouldn’t have surprised me.
“Do you want that?” He kissed my jaw again, then moved his hand to my nape and his mouth lower. “Because I will gladly bend you over when you think you can handle it.”
When.
The promise roughening those rumbly words had me imagining him doing just that, and I didn’t know what shamed me more—that I was imagining it, or that I didn’t loathe the idea. Not even a little bit.
Vicious heat engulfed me. Made worse by the hand at my nape sliding up into my hair.
I squeezed his bicep as the inferno flooded my neck and face. Muttering something in the old language, he kissed both, then crushed my mouth with his. A throaty groan vibrated. Caused my lips to tingle when he relinquished his firm press to adorn them in featherlight sweeps.
His hand left my nape. Retreating, he stroked his thumb across my lower lip until it trembled, then he gently bit it. “Lie down.”
As if under a spell, I did so without thinking. Without asking why.
Only when he loomed above me, his knees between my legs and his hands braced beside my head, did I think at all. “Voran,” I said—tried to.
It was a whispered sigh against his mouth.
“The way you say my name…” He kissed me, another firm press, and said, “I hear it in my fucking sleep.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He eased back just far enough to watch me.
Then he caressed my mouth again and again—lingering the second time—before retreating. My eyes opened to find his long lashes bobbing, those lupine eyes absorbing every feature, and closed as he kissed me once more.
It was dizzying. Distracting. How he made me feel weightless while caged beneath the bulk of him. How he let me hide within tastes of euphoria, only to pull back and force me to feel the gravity of what was happening.
Perhaps that was his intent—to torture me softly until I gave him acceptance. Complete submission.
His focus on my mouth was absolute. That sharp gaze studious.
Then he dropped his lower body.
I gasped.
He pressed against my core through our pants. Unable to help it, to control it, I moved against his erection. Just once.
It stilled Voran.
And sent a wave of pleasure and sickness spiraling through me. I should have been drowning in guilt. Yet the worst of my shame came from not feeling enough of it. From being able to so easily cast my reservations aside as soon as our lips met.
Air hissed between his gnashed teeth. A ragged noise joined its release, and he again pressed into me. Sparks shot from my core to my stomach, hitching my breath. Something dark passed through his gaze before he kissed me.
He pried my lips open and whispered into my mouth, “Make that sound again.”
Rocking against me to encourage it, he licked, then nipped my upper lip until I gave him what he wanted. But this time, I moaned.
He cursed.
A screech came from beyond the window, breaking the spell.
It was broad daylight, and I was lying beneath Voran Valadorn on his bed. Kissing Voran Valadorn on his bed. Wanting so much more from Voran Valadorn on his rotting bed.
“I need to…”
Pushing into me, he asked, “Come?”
My core clenched. Goddess.
“Stop,” I croaked. “We need to stop.”
Though he looked ready to, he didn’t keep me from awkwardly sliding out from beneath him to my unsteady feet.
But he did stop me from leaving his room.
Confused, I glanced at the brass handle I held. Then, making sure I’d unlocked the door, I looked up and found a hand above my head. Large fingers splayed over the wood. His warmth encompassed as he stepped into me.
“Voran.” When he gave no response, I tried to turn.
He crowded me against the door—trapped me as he asked, “Do you want to leave?”
I stared at a knot in the wood, breaths increasing. I heard him inhale deeply. Felt his exhale rustle the hair at the back of my neck. My hand grew clammy on the handle. All I had to do was lie. A simple thing.
Yet I whispered, “No.”
His other hand covered mine on the door handle. Taking my fingers between his, he used them to push the rusted lock back into place.
The quiet catch of metal was akin to a strike of lightning.
“Is it easier to be honest when you’re not looking at me?” Four racing heartbeats, then he ordered, “Say what we both know, little bird.”
“Yes,” I said.