Chapter Eighteen
Serin
Hands shook me awake, making me gasp as the nightmare fell away, and I found myself face-to-face with Jet in a room lit only by the glow of a nearly full moon through the windows.
His face was cast in shadows, but those gray eyes of his seemed to glow even in the dark.
“It’s okay. You’re here with me,” he reminded me.
The first night, I’d been too exhausted by the events at the lake and then trying to think of ways to help Jet with his plan to do anything but fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
As it turned out, I was even less worldly than I realized as I sat in Jet’s study and listened to the three of them punt around ideas and plans for hours without seeming to get tired or find themselves as mixed up as I felt.
I sat there cross-legged, gaze sliding between them, feeling an inadequacy I’d never experienced before. I didn’t understand the politics, the players, the backhanded deals and backroom schemes. And I couldn’t even study the notes they were all taking.
I was happy to be included but unsure why Jet even wanted me there.
Maybe all those anxieties were what created the perfect breeding ground for the nightmares.
“You’re safe,” Jet murmured, pulling me until I was resting on his chest, his steady heartbeat under my ear.
I knew, given the situation in the Dark Court, that safety wasn’t exactly something he could promise me. But right in that moment, in his arms, I’d never felt safer.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No,” I said as my hand slid over his chest, down his stomach, feeling the muscles tensing underneath my touch.
Any time he wasn’t plotting with the guards or meeting with allies, he was training. Mostly with Nira, since Vishen’s hands were still healing. I hadn’t realized until I witnessed it that he got all his delicious muscles by wielding a sword or doing hand-to-hand combat.
After she was done practicing with him, Nira—an endless source of energy, it seemed—demanded that I work with her too.
And while she claimed I was getting stronger and faster and honing my instincts, I was painfully aware that it would take me years to get to their level, that no amount of training would allow me to be of any help should their plans fail and an actual uprising break out.
I was, as much as I hated to admit it, more of a liability to their plan than an asset. I hated it. I wanted to find my place, be of some use.
“I can hear your gears turning,” Jet said as his fingers drifted through my hair, making little shivers course through my insides.
“I know,” I said, sighing. “I can’t stop thinking. And all I want to do is stop.”
There was the briefest of pauses, Jet’s body tensing, then relaxing.
“I know of a way to make you stop thinking,” he said as his hand slipped down my back, then slid under his shirt I was wearing, then whispered up my thigh and grazed over my bare backside.
The pool of heat in my core was instantaneous.
Suddenly, he was right. There wasn’t a single thought in my head but more.
“I like your idea,” I said, sliding my leg up over his, then feeling his fingers slip down to tease my cleft.
A rumbling sound moved through Jet at that, and the feel of my desire as his fingers slipped inside me, thrusting lazily, then harder and faster as I started to whimper and writhe.
My own hand slid down, tracing the line of his sleep pants before finding the nerve to slip lower and close my hand around the hard length pressing against the fabric.
His whole body jerked at the sensation, emboldening me to keep exploring the firm shape of him. His breath went quick and shallow as his fingers got more demanding inside me.
It wasn’t long before I was slipping the material of his pants down, exposing him.
A strange, needy little sound I didn’t quite understand escaped me at the sight of him, making my sex clench hard around his fingers.
“Touch me or I’m going to lose my fucking mind.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
I slid my hand around him, marveling at the velvety softness of his skin but the hardness beneath.
“Stroke me,” he demanded, closing his hand over mine, “like this.”
A low groan escaped him as I moved my hand up and down his length, the pressure in my core building.
A third finger slid inside me, the pinch making me jolt. “Just relax,” Jet murmured. “It will feel good.”
Within a breath, he was right—the stretch had eased and a comfortable fullness remained, the sensation driving me closer and closer to those waves of pleasure I knew would come.
But before I could get there, Jet rolled, his body coming half over mine, his hard length pressing against my hip as he fucked me harder with his fingers.
“Do you want me here?” he asked, thrusting harder once, making a surprised moan escape me.
I didn’t even need to debate it.
“Yes.”
“Then you need to be ready for me,” he told me.
“I don’t understand,” I admitted as he leaned down, pressing a kiss to the deep V in the front of the shirt I was wearing.
“The first time or two can hurt if you’re not ready. I’m trying to make you ready.”
“Ready how?” I asked.
His head lifted and I felt a slight pinch again as he spread his fingers inside me.
“Like this,” he explained. Then, “My cock is a lot thicker than my fingers.”
I’d noticed.
And for reasons I didn’t understand, that had my walls clenching again, something that made a small smile tug at Jet’s lips.
“You like the thought of me stretching you, don’t you?” he asked as his fingers explored me with the occasional pressure or pinch that quickly eased. “I like the idea of getting to be the only one to do it,” he admitted as his fingers dove a little deeper. “But I need you to come for me first.”
That wasn’t exactly a problem, even if some part of me was unable to think of anything but how he might feel inside me, moving in me.
“Why?”
“Because you will loosen up just a little more. And then I can fuck you.” There was another little clench, dragging a chuckle out of him. “You like that thought, don’t you? Let’s get you there a little faster.”
His hand pressed in, his heel against my cleft, engaging that sweet spot at the apex, driving me up faster and faster until there was that familiar tightening and release, a strangled moan escaping me.
“There you go,” Jet murmured, stroking me through it, somehow managing to start driving me up even as I came back down. “You tell me when you want me,” he said, his voice rough, the sound scraping over me in a way that brought out goosebumps.
“Now,” I said, reaching for his hips.
Jet sucked in a breath and slid over me, resting between my spread thighs.
But if I expected him to be impatient, I was disappointed as his weight shifted to spread open my shirt. Then I felt him lean down to tease his tongue around my nipple, then suck it into his mouth, making me arch into the sensation as heat and need pooled.
He took his time, moving from one side to the other before kissing up my neck, making little shivers course across my skin.
My breath caught as his face hovered over mine.
Then he lowered, and his lips pressed to mine—slow and sure, drawing me into the new sensation.
I whimpered against his lips as my arms wound around him, pulling his body flush to mine.
His lips slanted again and again, and when my mouth parted on another soft moan, his tongue swept inside, toying with mine until I was writhing against him.
He lifted up as his hips shifted, the length of him pressing against my cleft, making both our breaths catch.
Some part of me tensed, braced for the new sensation, but it didn’t come. He rocked against me, the friction chasing away the traces of uncertainty as the desire rooted and bloomed.
Only when I was arching and rocking with him did he finally shift backward.
I felt the firm press of him at the entrance of me and started to tense.
“Just relax for me,” Jet demanded softly.
Then he pressed in—just a little at first, bringing an unexpected pressure and a burning sensation I didn’t have a name for.
“You’re doing so good,” he said, his voice tight as his breath came in shallow bursts.
He pressed in a little more, both our bodies tensing—his from restraint, mine from the combination of pain and, buried deep beneath it, pleasure.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his forehead pressing to mine. “You’re so tight.”
And he was so big.
“Just hold on for me,” he said, and his lips sealed to mine as he thrust in fully, making me cry out against his lips at the sharp rush of pain. But as soon as it started, it seemed to ease—like my body had surrendered to the sensation, to the fullness of him buried deep inside.
For a long few moments, his body stayed still as his lips explored mine, as the pressure built until I couldn’t take it anymore and my hips started to rock.
His moved with mine, short little pulses of movement until I was moaning against his lips.
Only then did he break the kiss, watching me as he started to thrust. He was slow at first, careful, but as my moans filled the room, as my heels dug into his ass, he gave me a little harder and faster.
The coil curled tighter and tighter inside me as Jet’s groans joined the chorus of my moans.
“That’s it,” he hissed as I arched into him, as my walls tightened. “Come for me.”
Then I did, clutching him to me as my body shivered and pulsed with pleasure over and over.
Jet pressed deep, his body tensing as he groaned, finding his own release at the end of mine.
I held him flush to me afterward, every cell in my body begging him to stay close.
“You’ve gotta let me go sometime,” Jet said, pressing a kiss to one side of my lips, then the other.
“Nope. We can stay like this.”
“Forever?”
“Yep.”
“But then how are you going to eat soup or bread again?”
On a grumble, my arms and legs released him, getting a little chuckle from Jet as he moved to my side instead. But he reached for me, curling me into him.
“You okay?”
I nodded as my fingers traced the familiar contours of his chest. “Yes.”
His hands went to my hair, drifting lazily through the strands. “It won’t hurt every time. Just once or twice.”
“I didn’t mind.”
“Good. Because I’d like to do a lot more of that.”
“Yeah?” I asked, wincing at how hopeful my voice sounded.
“Anytime we’re not strategizing or training, I want to be buried deep inside you.”
My needy body pulsed in pleasure at the idea.
“One day, when all the bad stuff is done, I’d like to do it in the lake.”
A rumble moved through him at that.
“That’s going right to the top of the list.”
“There’s a list?”
“Spent every night in this bed beside you since you came to the castle. Yeah, I’ve been making a mental list.”
“Like where?”
“You, bent over the desk in my study. You riding me on the roof. You going down on me when I finally sit on the throne. There is no shortage of ways I have thought about fucking you.”
“Why me?” I asked.
“Why not you?”
“You said you’ve been with a lot of women. You can have anyone you want. Why me?”
“That’s a good question. And I don’t have an answer. I just know that this is what I want.”
“Only this?”
“Only you, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, Lake Girl, only you. Guess I’m taking those vows a lot more seriously than I’d intended.”
My heart seemed to squeeze in my chest at the idea that he was mine.
All mine. That no one else would ever get to know him this way again.
Even if the rational side of my brain reminded me that this was never a legitimate wedding, that he’d been clear from the beginning that this would all end up with him on his throne and me back in my lake.
But maybe, maybe he’d changed his mind.
I just wasn’t going to be brave enough to ask.
Not yet.
“Sound good to you?” he asked.
“Mmhmm.”
“So maybe you’ll stick around even after the dust settles.”
There it was. That heart squeeze again.
“Two conditions.”
“I’m listening.”
“I get as many trips to my lake as I need to keep it happy and thriving.”
“Obviously. What’s the other?”
“You teach me to read.”
“You want to learn how to read?”
“Yeah.”
“Done. We can start now,” he said, reaching over to the nightstand to grab a pad and pen, then scribbling on it. “Let’s start with letter A.”
I was pretty sure that was the moment I fell for the Dark Prince.
And so our fates were sealed.