18. The Settled Magic #2
“Yes, that’s what I want. Keep fucking me like that.” Sigurd buries his face against my neck and lets the careful pace disappear. Water breaks around our bodies as he drives into me with enough force to steal my breath.
The tentacles around me absorb most of the impact, so his strength never grinds me painfully into the wall. I clutch his shoulders and try to meet every thrust, wanting more. “Don’t hold back now, Sigurd!”
Whatever control he had left gives way. The next strokes come rougher and faster, driven by need instead of calculation. He finally moves like the monster he has spent weeks trying to protect me from. My whole body tightens around him in response.
A cool tentacle slips between us and brushes across my clit. The sensation punches a gasp out of me. I clamp around his cock hard enough to break the rhythm of his next thrust. “Do that again, please. Keep doing exactly that.”
He doesn’t make me ask twice. Cool ridges drag over my swollen clit as he keeps fucking me. The contrast is almost obscene. His cock stretches me with every thrust, and the tentacle works my clit in tight, deliberate strokes.
I stop trying to keep quiet. “God, yes. Right there, Sigurd. Don’t fucking stop.” He lifts his head, and his expression nearly sends me over the edge by itself. There is nothing polished or controlled left in him, not anymore.
His mouth finds mine in a rough kiss. The tentacle beneath my thigh lifts me higher and gives him a deeper angle, forcing a gasp from me. I break the kiss long enough to curse his name, and he answers with a growl against my throat.
Pleasure coils tighter with every stroke. My pussy clenches around him, and the tentacle over my clit never lets the tension drop. Then heat blooms through me and cuts straight through the haze.
My body locks instinctively, and Sigurd stops. For one heartbeat, Mt. Qaf comes back through sensation alone. I can remember it all, the pressure in my chest, air refusing to come, and magic turning violent inside me.
But the warmth spreads instead of tightening. The heat sinks deeper into me, sharpening every place Sigurd touches. I draw one breath, then another, and my body relaxes around his cock.
Sigurd remains completely still. His attention is fixed on my face, and I can feel the tension in every part of him. “It feels good,” I tell him, then drag my nails down his shoulders and tighten deliberately around his cock.
Sigurd drives into me again, and every nerve ending in my body pulses with the movement.
The bond stops feeling separate from the sex.
Every thrust sends warmth farther through me, and every stroke of the tentacle over my clit makes the magic answer.
Soon I cannot tell which sensation begins where, and I no longer care.
My legs tighten around his waist. “I need more, Sigurd. Please fuck me harder.” He gives me everything, moving hard enough to make the water surge around us. The tentacle at my clit speeds up, and the one beneath my thigh keeps me open for every deep thrust.
I am so close that each stroke feels almost unbearable. My fingers dig into his shoulders, and my breath catches against his mouth. “I’m going to come. Don’t stop now.”
Sigurd catches my mouth with his and tells me to come for him. He thrusts deep at the same moment the tentacle presses harder over my clit, and everything inside me breaks.
My orgasm tears through me so hard that I lose my breath for a second. My pussy clenches around his cock in hard pulses, and I cry out against his mouth. This time, I do not brace for pain.
The magic surges through me and settles. It feels like Sigurd everywhere at once, threaded through the pleasure already tearing through my body. I lock around him and pull him deeper, and the sound he makes is almost feral.
He says my name against my mouth, and I can feel how close he is. I pull him tighter against me and refuse to let him retreat into control again. “Come inside me, Sigurd. I want to feel you.”
That destroys whatever restraint he has left.
He drives into me one last time and stays buried deep. His cock throbs inside my pussy, and his whole body shudders against mine. The tentacles around me tighten with him, then gradually ease as the tension leaves his body.
I hold him through it, struck by the intimacy of feeling someone so powerful tremble in my arms. Neither of us moves apart once the last shudder passes. Sigurd rests his forehead against mine, and our breathing gradually slows together.
“It’s done,” he pants, his hot breath washing over my chilled skin. “The magic is settled. You’re mine. My mate.”
“Yours, Sigurd. Like you are mine.”
We stay tangled together for another few minutes. One tentacle drifts lazily over my back, gentle enough to make the contrast with what it was doing a few minutes ago almost ridiculous. The thought pulls a laugh from me.
“Cassian is going to be disappointed. He was very clear that intimacy wasn’t necessary for the arrangement.”
“Not necessary, no, but definitely desired,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Tell you what, Valerie. I will have Cassian draft a new contract. A permanent one. Though I believe the ocean’s laws supersede his.”
The contract we signed is officially dead.
The court politics, the jealousy, the lies we told on the surface—none of it matters down here in the cavern.
The surface world is going to feel loud when we eventually go back to pack my things, but right now, the silence of the deep is exactly what I need.
“Take me home, Sigurd,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
He tightens his arms around me, his tentacles wrapping firmly around my waist.
“I already have,” he answers. I lean against his chest and close my eyes, knowing that it’s entirely true.