Chapter 17
THANDRIEL
With an arch of an eyebrow, he rises to his feet.
His cloak is already off. Without me noticing, he had removed his sword belt with all of his pouches and his blades—including mine, which would’ve come in handy if I’d had it earlier—and placed it up against the tree.
Was he leaving it for Binx to grab a pouch and scurry back up to the trees?
I like to think so, but then Thane grabs the hem of his shirt, lifting it up and over his head, and, sorry, Binx, but you can fend for yourself for the moment.
Now, I’ve seen Thane naked before. His comment that we would see more of each other during our journey was pretty damn apt.
There was never anything sexual about it, though that took a lot of effort on my part to resist temptation, but I needed to be clean, and he needed to make sure the kelpies didn’t try to get me again.
There’s a difference between seeing his body as he waded into water and watching his chest heave, his eyes dark with lust, his fingers trembling slightly as he works his leather pants down after he kicks off his boots.
Once his leathers are past his rear, his cock springs into existence. My mouth is suddenly dry. Talk about a handle. There’s enough for me to grab, to take, to stroke and still marvel at its golden length.
Suddenly, I understand his desire to play with my cunt, readying me for him.
There’s a notable difference between a limp cock and one that’s primed to mate, but I’m not worried.
I trust the gods, and I believe that Thane is my one true mate.
Our bodies are made for each other, and even if it doesn’t seem like we’ll fit, we have to.
I’ll make sure of it.
I tilt my chin, digging my shoulder blades into the moss. “I’m ready when you are, bandit.”
“Then hold on tight, demoness,” he quips, grabbing his cock.
He twists his hand, stroking himself, making my mouth water to wonder what it would be like to taste him there, but that can wait.
We either have a night or forever, I know that.
Still, I want to have him claim me first before I explore the rest of him.
Thane is thinking along the same lines as me.
Lowering himself to his knees, his casts his gaze over me, then follows it with a soft caress of his fingertips over the curls of my cunt.
Another swipe of his finger, gathering the moisture there and pronouncing it suitable, he covers my body with mine before lodging the
So warm.
So hot.
When he finally joins us, pushing himself inside of me, there’s a split second that has me gasping, my claws digging into his back as an ache… a sudden pinch… a pressure is all-consuming until it’s gone, and all I know it what it’s like to be impaled on Thane’s other sword.
“Gods, yes,” I moan, even as he goes still on top of me.
I must’ve closed my eyes as he worked himself inside of me. I peek one open, seeing an expression of awe mingled with trepidation as he stares down at me.
“What?”
“Alana,” he grates out. “Are you… were you…” He gulps, his elbows shaking, though he’s strong enough to keep himself braced over me. “Are you alright?”
I laugh, breathless and daring, my hands releasing his back so that I can slip them into his curls. “I’m just dandy. But is that all you have, bandit?”
For a heartbeat, he simply stares at me, and then he laughs—rich and whole and utterly unguarded—and whatever restraint was holding him back just shatters. He gives me more, deeper, fuller, the bond between us flaring bright and fierce as pleasure crests and falls all while pulling us together.
Noctavara narrows to right now. To the way that Thane thrusts and, now that I know I can—and that it feels amazing to do so—I meet each thrust, our groins nearly sparking as we touch.
He’s back to murmuring whispered promises, one hand keeping him steady, the other passing over my belly, my breast, my cheek.
I lose myself in the sensation, wishing it could last forever.
But it doesn’t, despite my pleas to the gods above, and when we finally come apart—my heart stuttering in my chest the moment I start to climax around him until I’m sure it’s stopped beating at all—it’s not really apart, is it?
He stays with me, forehead to mine, hands steady, grounding, as though he intends to anchor me to this moment for all eternity.
As I cry his name into his mouth as my body bucks and pleasure washes over, then when he buries himself deeply inside of him as he finds his own release… he wants to claim me.
And, without either of us meaning to, that’s exactly what he does.
I already told myself that, in his way, Rafe gave me his own version of the mate’s promise. From the moment I recognized him as mine and subconsciously decided I would keep him, in my thoughts, in my actions, I made my mate’s promise back to him.
In the throes, as Thane empties his seed inside of me, I couldn’t guard my essence if I had a sword to my throat, warning me against sharing everything that I’ve ever been and ever will be with this male. I gave it to him freely, never expecting that he’d instinctively return it.
He didn’t just fill me with his cock and his seed. He gave me everything and, in doing so, finalized our mate bond.
Can he tell? Did he feel it? He doesn’t say anything, and I decide that that’s a ‘tomorrow’ conversation.
For now, I feel the loss of his body as he rolls to the side, tugging my naked form on top of him.
He slaps beside him, grabbing for his discarded cloak.
Once he snags it, he spreads it out over my naked rear, covering us both up with it.
Only then does he slip his hands beneath the fabric, wrapping his arms around me, holding me close as though he can’t bare to let me go.
“You have my heart, Alana of Sombra,” he whispers into the night.
I snuggle closer, echoing a line from the mating vow. “You have my everything.”
For as long as I can give it to him, that is.
Thane falls asleep first. Considering he sleeps rarely, constantly on alert for threats, I’m pretty proud of myself. Having me close, making me his… for the first time since we met, he relaxes, snoring long before the endorphins and the sensations wear off for this newly mated to fall asleep.
I don’t mind. I check on Binx with our soulbond, assuring us both I still have one with my ungez, and I was right. He ate enough dried meat to have him dozy, though he promises that he’ll keep one glowing eye open for threats while I curl up with my mate.
My mate…
Eventually, though, the exhilaration that came from bonding to Thane fades, replaced by a fullness somewhere other than my cunt. It’s my brain, and I’m too boneless to understand it at first.
Until, right before I drift off to a well-deserved sleep myself, a vivid memory pops into my head, almost like the visions on the screens in Mom’s home world.
In the afterglow of being mated to Thane, I try to push it out.
I’d heard Mom talk about the essence exchange she had with Dad being like something she called a ‘download’.
Everything that’s Thane is suddenly in my head, but I’m not ready to sift through it yet.
I’ll have a lifetime to learn about him, and even longer to avoid seeing things that I don’t want to—like who taught him how to deflower an unmated female like that—but for now, I’m ready to snuggle up close to him and dream…
But the memory isn’t a dream. It’s real, and the part of me that is Sombran recognizes it as a result of the essence exchange and our new finalized bond.
I gave him everything I am, he gave me his, and with his seed in my cunt, it’s his essence working its way through me now.
And, for a few terrible seconds, my heart seems to stop for a second time—for real as I don’t even breathe—as I realize that what I’m seeing it’sn’t just one of Thane’s memories, but a recent one.
I let it replay, and though my heart starts beating again, it’s shattered into a thousand pieces before the first thump.
In the memory, I’m looking down at the hairless slaver, Finch. The second slaver is dragging the dead one by his poots while Finch looks up at me with fearful eyes.
“You already took the other shadow demon we captured. You could have let us keep the female. The queen would have paid handsomely for her.”
“If you think Celeste will pay when she can just steal the demoness in the prophecy, you are an addled slaver indeed, Finch.”
His face goes tight. “Like how you stole the male? We could’ve fetched a hundred gold coins at the Court.”
“Yes, but if I sent him as a gift to the queen, that’s more gold off my debt. And you let me because you know that I out-rank you. Now flee this woods before I decide to take your head like I took his.”
“Yes, my lie—”
“Aht.”
Finch bows his head in supplication. “Aurex.”
“That’s better,” I hear myself saying in Thane’s voice. “Now be gone. I have a demoness to catch up to.”
A demoness… me.
Because he’s working with the slavers.
Because he’s known exactly what happened to Rafe all along because he found my best friend with the slavers before my arrival—and gave orders to pass him off to the first of the queen’s soldiers they found before he lucked on me in the Shadowed Woods, prepared to give me the same fate if it meant more gold.
Because he’s my bonded mate, but he also owes a debt to his queen.
Godsdamn it, I think, cutting off both of my bonds so that Thane doesn’t know I know… and Binx doesn’t gouge out his eyes with his claws before I decide what to do. Unable to move, I stare up at the stars, and curse silently.
Then I huff out a frustrated breath.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so stubborn about waiting to take his essence and learn all about his motives before I pledged myself to him for eternity.
The sun is high, I’m back in my rumpled dress, and I have my sword at Thane’s throat.