Again
Islid my hand up the front of my nightgown, fingers brushing the inside of my thigh, but Colsar didn’t give me the chance to go any further. He gripped the fabric at my collar and ripped it straight down the center, the sound sharp in the quiet chamber.
“A full reenactment,” he growled.
I licked two fingers slowly, then brought them to my nipples, wetting them until they tightened into hard, glistening peaks.
I pinched and rolled them, watching him watch me, then let my hand drift lower.
My fingers slipped in between my legs and began to circle in slow strokes.
I pressed two fingers inside myself, thrusting deep, my hips rocking up to meet my hand.
“I need to know that you want me, Colsar,” I said, breathless.
“Look at me,” he said gruffly. “Do not stop. Not even for a second.”
His voice dropped lower, rough with something dark and possessive. “You want me to show you how I truly feel? Fine. I don’t want you looking at a candle or the ceiling or a rug or any fucking thing in this room but me. I am—fucking… consumed by you.”
“You just spent three days with Eravic—”
“Doing what was necessary to leave here and protect my family,” I breathed, fingers moving faster. “My family is you, Cols—”
The climax crashed over me before I could finish, sudden and overwhelming. My body locked tight, wetness rushing out around my fingers as I cried out, thighs shaking.
His hands gripped my chin firmly, forcing my gaze up. “Look at me and only me.”
I did. The intensity of it undid me completely.
“Colsar,” I gasped, tears slipping down my cheeks. “I love you. Tell me you are my husband. That you will never do that—”
He lifted me onto his lap in one smooth motion. “You chose me. Now you are stuck with me.”
“There is nowhere else I’d rather be stuck,” I murmured, voice still shaky.
He chuckled darkly. “Well, that is probably good, because I have no intention of letting you out of my bed anytime soon.”
He eased himself inside me in one long thrust and I moaned at the stretch, at the way he filled me completely. “I love you,” I said again as he buried his face against my neck.
“Again.”
“I love you, my king.”
“Fuck.” He moaned into my mouth, his thrusts becoming more urgent. “I love you too, Asha Bear.”
The sounds of skin slapping skin began to fill the room.
“What else?” he growled in my ear.
“You are my everything.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
“Again.”
“Forever.”
His voice lowered to a deep, animalistic growl. “Again.”
He drove deeper, harder. Heat spilled between us as we came at the same time, my body pulsing around him while he groaned into my mouth, hips jerking with every movement.
When the last tremors faded, he pressed his forehead to mine, breathing ragged.
“I am glad that we don’t get married every day,” he murmured in my ear. “Because I just lasted all of three minutes.”
I let out a laugh. “It was longer than that, for certain.”
I paused, smiling against his mouth. “Maybe.”
I felt him harden inside me again, his length twitching with fresh interest.
“One word, Colsar?”
“The way you said maybe… it did something to me.”
I laughed out loud, kissing him until the laughter dissolved into new, softer moans.
Afterward we lay in the quiet. His hand was flat on my stomach. My head was against his chest.
He leaned over and kissed down my stomach. Then lower. His mouth trailed down my hip and along my thigh and then stopped at my ankle. He pressed his lips to the mark there the way you pressed your lips to something familiar, then looked up at me.
"Tell me about this."
I looked down at him. "Since I was a child. There was a gathering on a mountain. I do not remember much of it. Only that there was a boy." I paused. "We made promises to each other. I did not think anyone had ever meant a promise before that."
He kissed it again. Then began kissing back up my leg.
"Did he keep it?"
I laughed quietly. "I do not know. I never saw him again." My breath caught as his mouth moved higher. "I am not sure I kept mine either."
He said nothing after that.
After a while he said, "The children have taken a liking to Aviaryn it seems."
"I know."
"Last night I was reading to them and Aviaryn sat down to listen.
" He paused. "I fell asleep. The babies fell asleep.
When I woke up she had taken the book and was reading the rest of it aloud.
" He was quiet. "She was reading it as though she were the adult in the room and all the rest of us were the children. "
I smiled against his chest.
"She finished the whole thing," he said. "Then she set the book down very carefully and looked at Ari and Fiorakis for a long time." A pause. "I pretended to still be asleep."
"Why?"
"Because whatever she was thinking I did not want to interrupt it."
I lay there thinking about that. About Aviaryn sitting in the lamplight finishing reading a children's book to two sleeping babies and one sleeping king who was pretending not to watch.
After a while Colsar said, "I do not want you to go to Alarna."
I did not answer.
"Asharin."
"I know."
"He could drain you completely. Whatever he has decided about you — whatever you think you know about what he wants — the moment that bond activates you are vulnerable in a way I cannot protect you from.
" His voice was low. "I need you at my side.
I have always needed you at my side. We have built something and it is not finished and I need you here to finish it with me. "
I turned and looked at him.
“You need to trust me." I looked at him directly. "We both must do whatever is necessary. That is what we have always done." I paused to kiss his lower jaw. “Are you with me?"
He looked at me for a long time.
"Always," he said. Then he pulled me back against him and held me there and I let him and neither of us said anything else for a while.
Then I got up and dressed. He helped me with the leather laces and when the cloak was around my shoulders he put both hands on my face and looked at me with wet eyes he did not try to hide.
"Come home," he said. Then with a small laugh, “Wherever that is.”
"I will," I said, then wrapped my arms around his neck. “It is wherever you are.” His face turned a light shade of pink and I could not help but give a small laugh. I had never once seen him blush before.
I kissed him once more. Then I went back through the ward and into the tunnel and kept walking and did not look back.