28
For the next two days, we hid in that same aisle and kissed far more than we read.
This morning, Celestine returned to the prayer hall. She ate in silence before heading back to her room to await lunch, when she told me she’d had a meeting with the high priestess.
“She sympathizes,” she murmured. “But said it was time to do my part in this war by returning to routine.”
I frowned. “It’s only been three days since it happened.”
“It feels like it happened three minutes ago.” Celestine stabbed a piece of fish in her soup. “Nellassa says the goddess does not look favorably upon those who choose to sever bonds. Unless a better-fitting path than what Avyshla has selected can be proven, they’ll live to regret their choice.”
That pleased me. “Well, the odds of finding another mate after severing a bond are so slim, he’ll certainly live to regret it.”
“It’s indeed rare,” she said. “I think the high priestess told me to comfort me, but now all I can think about is Darcen defeating the odds by finding a better fit in his own kingdom.” Stabbing another hunk of fish, she quietly seethed, “A perfect match for Coraldeen’s precious prince.”
I ripped a piece of bread. As I chewed, I glared at the table where Meront and Darcen sat.
Celestine knocked my arm. “You know what would really make him regret his choice?” Her smile was sly, tossed briefly over her shoulder. “If I fucked the enemy prince.”
The bread got stuck in my throat.
“I’d wager he’s rough,” she whispered. “That he doesn’t talk at all. Just grunts and growls and feeds on you while ramming into you.”
I coughed.
“Of course, it wouldn’t just make Darcen hate me. Everyone would.” Prying the fish from her fork with her teeth, Celestine bobbed her head, as if truly considering it. “Still, it might be worth it.”
Coughing again, the bread came back up.
Celestine finally noticed my struggle, but mistook it for embarrassment. “Really, Ayla. You must get rid of your innocence.” Laughing, she shook her head. “Maybe then you’ll cease blushing at the mere mention of sex.”
“Maybe,” I muttered, and reached for my water.
That afternoon, I couldn’t stop ruminating over what Celestine had said about using Voran for revenge.
Sitting beside him at the end of our favorite aisle only made it worse.
Not because I feared he would humor my friend, but because of why she’d said it. Celestine wanted to hurt Darcen by doing the worst thing she could imagine. To her, and to everyone here, that meant having sex with the Valadorn prince.
He read quietly from a book I’d selected before he’d arrived. Another collection of fables. This time, in the form of short poems. Some were trickier than others, causing him to blow frustrated breaths or grumble low in his throat.
When he did the latter again, he didn’t read on after I corrected him. He said, “The priestesses retire earlier.”
I smiled at my folded hands. “You’ve been spying on them.”
“Listening,” Voran said. “They do not wish to watch over you like infants.”
“Us, you mean.”
“By tomorrow evening, they’ll have surrendered entirely.”
My heart jumped. “You want to return to doing our lessons in your room.”
“It would certainly make touching your cunt much easier.” His crass response forced my eyes to his and a laugh from me as he said, “Or I can come to your room. That way, if we’re caught, you can say that the evil wolf has developed a dark fascination with you.”
I glared, but my wriggling lips ruined it.
“You can tell them that he watches you.” Lashes dipping to my mouth, he murmured, “That he wants nothing more than to devour you until you moan louder than that irksome fucking bell.”
Heat spread through me, vicious and coiling low in my body. But his mention of moaning reminded me of Darcen and Meront and Alixa. Which then brought what Celestine had said back, as well as the heavy weight of shame.
I looked back down at my hands.
Voran’s exhale and words were rough. “Something plagues you.”
“Does it now?” I teased.
“Do not play.”
I leaned my head against the stone at our backs and turned it to his. “Then tell me why you think that.”
For swelling moments, Voran just stared at me. As he did, his jaw unclenched.
“Fine.” The book was slammed closed. He set it atop others on the shelf beside him, then pushed up his tunic sleeves.
Tapping his fingers, he said, “You will not chirp unless I make you. You’ve yet to taunt me into kissing you, and we have been reading…
” His eyes widened as he came close to snarling, “For over thirty fucking minutes.”
I couldn’t help it—and laughed.
Then squeaked when I was lifted and put on the floor before the prince. His legs rose on either side of me, caging me. His arms too, which settled around my squirming body like muscular walls. At my ear, he whispered, “Be still, or I’ll bite.”
Intentionally, I squirmed again.
He nipped my jaw. My shoulders bunched, and I failed to trap another laugh.
His hand covered my mouth. “You laugh like a bird.”
Against his warm skin, I mumbled, “I do not.”
“Like a bird singing in the rain. I like it.” His other hand pressed into my stomach, pushing my back to his chest as he leaned against the stone wall. “Almost as much as I like hearing you struggle to breathe when you come.”
My eyes widened—not merely from his words but from feeling his erection at my lower back. I pulled his hand from my mouth, about to move, although I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
But he said, “I heard what your friend said at lunch.”
I froze.
“As amusing as it was, I have no interest in feeding her hunger for vengeance.”
“I didn’t think you would.” I stared at his hand, so giant between my own that it did make them look tiny.
As if he’d known all along, he hummed. “Then it’s something else she said.
” He shifted my hair aside, and I shivered when his fingers brushed my neck.
“The part about everyone hating her.” His mouth met my pebbling skin.
“Hating you.” His lips slid side to side as he inhaled deeply. “Chirp for me, broshklin.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I will plunge my teeth into your throat and my fingers into your damp cunt right here in this dusty aisle.”
Wanting that, I said nothing. Goaded him with my silence.
But he didn’t move.
His hand stayed between mine, and his mouth and nose at my neck. He really did want me to talk. The warmth that gave me felt strange. Out of place amid the turmoil I’d gotten used to feeling when it came to this prince.
Maybe because it made me believe, just for a moment, that he cared.
That moment was enough to confess, “I cannot lie and say that I do not care if I’m hated. I’ve never been hated before.” My nose scrunched. “Well, not that I know of anyway. I am to be a queen. I need to be respected.” I rolled my lips between my teeth. “I cannot be loathed and ridiculed.”
His question was throaty, almost purred. “No?”
I frowned because, of course, I couldn’t be. “No.”
I thought that might’ve been the end of the topic, and that he would kiss me. Touch me somewhere he shouldn’t.
But he leaned his head against the stone. “Being hated isn’t so bad. People leave you be, and you can do as you wish.” An amused huff. “At least, that has been the case for me here.”
“I don’t think you’re hated,” I whispered, and dragged a finger down the lifeline in his palm. “I think you’re feared.”
“They are often one and the same.”
“Are you hated in Valadorn?”
“By some.”
Tentatively, I pressed, “Some?”
“My uncle and his loyal weasels.”
I tried not to laugh and snorted, which earned my fingers a squeeze from his.
My smile waned as I thought about what he’d just divulged. Watching dust motes twirl before the bookshelves, I found the courage to ask, “Why does King Raxon hate you?”
Our feet nearly reached the shard of light cast over the floor from the last window. My boots looked so small, flat against the stone between Voran’s, and my long legs rather short. As the silence stretched like the afternoon shadows, I expected he wouldn’t answer.
Then, soft yet somewhat stiffly, Voran said, “He is not me.”
“Not a direwolf, you mean.”
Sliding his other hand over my arm, he hummed in confirmation.
“So the gene truly only passes to a firstborn.”
“There would be too many of us otherwise.”
Perhaps King Raxon’s inability to shift into a direwolf had ignited his lust for more. For the Scale Crown. He wanted what he couldn’t have, so he’d take what he could. It was then that I recalled the shipment—that I hadn’t seen any crates from Valadorn.
“There were no goods from your kingdom with the shipment.”
“Raxon is not a generous male.” Before I could choose another question to ask him, he spoke. “So the sharing of that female worked. Your sad friend is now vengeful.”
I suspected he’d brought it up to keep from talking about his uncle, but I didn’t mind. I’d gleaned enough to leave me wondering later.
“It did. I was going to visit you when they…” I halted with a shake of my head. “Well, when it was happening. They left the door open, but I don’t know that it was necessary. Celestine’s room is right next to Alixa’s.”
There was a brief silence before Voran determined, “You both saw it.”
I nodded. “And I couldn’t leave her.”
“Cowardly.” An almost absent murmur as he collected a lingering piece of hair from my cheek. “The fish prince needed to recruit the golden prince to help him fuck the affection-hungry female.”
“I agree.” I circled a callus atop his palm. “Do wolves reject bonds in the same way?”
He twined my hair around his finger. “Wolves seldom reject bonds unless they are already wed with younglings.” Stroking my hair with his thumb, he said, “But one can usually be severed by simply marking their spouse or another faerie.”
“Like the mark you gave me,” I whispered.
I felt him tense, and he ceased stroking my hair.
I grinned, though he couldn’t see. “Meront said he’s been staying away from me because of my energy, remember?”
“I remember.” Cold words.
They failed to deter me. “So it changed after you fed from me.”
“It’s instinctual,” he said. “Cannot be helped.”
“Oh.” Disappointment tried to bloom. I quickly squashed it.
Voran continued toying with my hair. When he eventually spoke, his accent was thick. “It will fade in the coming weeks.”
Tracing another callus on his palm, I whispered, “Then will you bite me again?”
Tensing once more, he said, “Are you implying that you want me to?”
“Definitely not.”
Amusement drenched his voice. “Now the broshklin decides to provoke me.” At my ear, he warned, “Careful.”
“What if I don’t want to be?”
His swallow was loud. “Then I might ask how uncareful you want to be.”
In answer, I brought his hand to my lower stomach and opened the waistband of my pants.
He didn’t hesitate. He pushed his hand inside and over me.
The contact made me stiffen and gasp noisily.
My mouth was again covered by his other hand. A low groan in my ear preceded muttered words in the ancient language.
With the rough pads of his fingers, he rubbed me so gently that I shivered and clenched and grabbed his arm. My legs opened wider, and more words I couldn’t understand were muttered against my neck.
Then, using only his middle finger, he parted me.
I shook.
His finger stilled near my opening. “I knew you were aroused,” he whispered. “But this makes me want to lick you clean until you come on my tongue.”
Gripping his forearm, I rasped, “Voran.”
“Slide down for me.” When I did, he said, “Stop,” and dunked his fingertip into my opening. A kiss was placed on my neck. “Perfect.” He teased my entrance, then slid his finger up to my clit. “Fucking perfect.”
My breathing turned choppy, at risk of gaining sound, as he circled and circled before moving his finger back down to my opening.
“You feel swollen, Princess.”
He circled my clit again and again, and I realized he was avoiding it—making me wait. My opening was stroked until his finger slipped in.
He groaned softly. “I want to do more than lick you.”
I squirmed, trembling against him.
“I want to stretch this tiny hole with my cock.” Pushing his finger in deeper, he warned, “I will be the one who breaks you, Ayla.”
I moaned.
His hand tightened over my mouth, his whisper rough—ragged. “And when I do, I’m going to take my cock out of this perfect little cunt and watch my seed leak from it, stained with your blood.” He withdrew his finger and went straight to my clit.
Finally, he touched it.
He rubbed it so lightly, I bucked. I needed more. A slightly firmer touch. But he just caressed it.
“All of you.” A growl coated his voice. “All of you is all mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” I croaked.
But we both knew I wasn’t. We both knew that, despite all my treachery, I would never be his, and I would never give him that. We both knew my agreeance was nothing more than a heady lie when we were destined to live on opposing sides of fate.
Voran stroked me harder.
And hearing him murmur in that old language, glimpsing how my hand gripped his ink-covered forearm and his own moved inside my pants…
I unraveled with unexpected violence. My nails dug into his skin. My teeth sank into his finger. As I trembled and groaned and closed my thighs over his hand, he tensed. His curse was hissed.
Slowly, I relaxed against him, tasting blood on my tongue from his finger.
I mumbled into his hand, “You’re bleeding.”
“I will wear your tiny mark with pride.”
I almost laughed, then stilled when he removed his hands from my mouth and pants. Holding the waistband open, he brought his finger to his mouth and sucked. A throaty sound of approval heavied my lashes.
He then returned his hand to my pants. I did laugh then, and squirmed. My thighs clamped his wrist as I rasped, “Sensitive.”
“I can be gentle, remember?” Against my neck, he whispered, “For you.”
Fighting a smile, I settled against him. I let him do as he wished. A mistake. His continued touching soon had me more aroused than before.
I tilted my head to stare up at him. “We should stop now.”
Drowsy eyes searched mine. “Then tell me to stop.”
I couldn’t. Didn’t want to.
He rewarded me with a sinister grin. My heart kicked forcefully. Then he stole my mouth and tortured me until his seed soiled his pants.