Chapter Fifty-Eight
KAEL
For a moment, I just look at her.
The candlelight turns her into something celestial—all gold skin and trembling breath, her wrists bound in my hand, the new light running beneath her skin like veins of fire.
The world is quiet.
No kingdom, no prophecy, no secrets between us. Just her.
The woman I would raze kingdoms for.
My words hang in the air. Every part of you was always meant for me.
She exhales—a sound that’s half-prayer, half-surrender—and in that instant, I forget every vow I ever made to keep control.
Because love doesn’t want control. Love is wreckage. A sacred burial ground for restraint, control, and peace.
Love is for veneration.
And her thighs are where I worship.
I press my mouth to the pulse at her throat, tasting the heartbeat that answers my own.
Her skin is warm, trembling beneath my tongue.
I trail my lips down her collarbone, over the curve of her breast, and she gasps—soft, desperate. I drink the sound like absolution.
“Kael…” my name breaks from her like it costs her something and the sound makes me weak.
Every muscle in me tightens.
She doesn’t understand—I’m the one being undone.
When I look up, her wrists gripped under my palm above her head, fingers flexing like she’s trying to hold on. Her breasts rising and falling with her breath, hungry for my touch. For my mouth. But her eyes find mine, wide and wanting.
There are a thousand little things about her that undo me more completely than any moan ever could.
The way her bottom lip catches between her teeth when she’s holding back a sound meant only for me.
The way her hips roll instinctively, seeking my hand, my mouth, my fucking soul.
The soft tremor in her legs when my breath ghosts over her skin.
Even the way she swallows—tight, desperate—as if her body is already preparing to take me deep.
I watch every detail like a starving man memorizing a feast, and every small, sacred offering she gives makes me forget that I ever had a life before this moment.
I drag my tongue up the center of her chest until it catches at her throat, until I can feel her pulse against my lips.
Raking my palm down her arm, through the tangle of russet hair, my hand finds her throat.
Her eyes roll back, chin tilting up, craving more from me.
My cock is so fucking hard at the sight of her splayed open beneath me.
Hand gripping her throat. Nipples peaked in arousal. Back arched, aching for me.
A goddess.
“Tell me what you want,” I command, tightening the grip on her throat, watching her submit to me. My queen. My light. Soft and surrendered.
It’s a fucking sight to behold.
Without hesitation, she spreads her legs wider, giving me better access to her pussy. “I want you to fuck me, Kael.”
The way she says it—no restraint, no holding back—has a low, feral growl tearing from my throat.
Because I know I’ve fucked her before. But never like this. Never with nothing between us.
“Fuck,” I grit out, because the woman could lead me anywhere and I’d follow. “Look at you, spread before me like a feast, your pretty cunt dripping for me.”
She whimpers at my words, ravenous and desperate, so I keep going, dragging my hand from her throat and pressing my thumb against her clit. “I’ll fuck you so slowly that you’ll feel every inch of me,” I promise, and her hips grind against my thumb. “The unholy things I’ll do to you, my love.”
The tip of my cock nudges against her, and I feel the way she drips for me, the way her clit is already swollen and aching.
Her moan ripples through the room like an invocation, and a shiver of feral need rakes up my spine.
Her sounds are what unmake me. Soft at first—little breaths she tries and fails to swallow—but then they grow, break, deepen until they vibrate through my fucking bones.
Every whimper is a benediction. Every gasp a confession.
And when she moans—really moans—my vision fragments.
I nearly lose myself every time she gives me that sound, the one pulled from somewhere ancient and holy, as if her body remembers me from lifetimes before.
I’d start wars to keep that sound mine alone.
“Say you want it,” I demand.
She has no idea how devastating she is like this—laid open in trust, breath trembling, eyes blown wide with need.
Not weak. Never weak. But powerful in a way that makes my knees want to hit the floor.
Every part of her is a demand—her hunger, her shaking thighs, the way her chest rises as if she’s drawing me into her lungs.
I swear the Stars themselves dim when she looks at me like that, like I’m the only thing in the world capable of ruining her gently.
Her hands move to her breasts, palming them with pressure, pressing her nipples between her fingertips.
“No, my love,” I cut in. “That’s my job. You’ll lay there and take it, am I understood?”
A frustrated rasp escapes her, so I say it again. “Say you want it.”
Her fingernails dig into my back—hungry and insistent. As if she hasn’t already gotten under my skin and into my fucking veins.
I lift my thumb from her clit, and her fingers wind around my neck and into my hair again. Her gaze burns into mine, unflinching.
“Fuck me now, Kael,” she demands, her words all chaos and conviction.
So, I do.
I push my cock into her pussy, sliding it in slowly so she can adjust to me. So I can feel the way her cunt aches for me, pulses around me.
She arches. Breathes. Grinds. Trembles.
She moves like poetry—like she can breathe her way out of brutality and into beauty.
Like she’s finally realized her loneliness was a graveyard, and trust is the resurrection.
That her isolation was never safety at all—it was self-erasure.
I drive my hips forward, her breath hitching when my cock hits her deep.
Every thrust a promise.
Every kiss a prayer.
Her hips buck wildly with each grind of my cock.
“More,” she pleads, her voice broken and raw.
But I take my time, drawing moans from her throat slowly. “You’ll get what you need, darling,” I promise, and one at a time, I hook her thighs over my shoulder for deeper access.
I press my rough palm into her lower abdomen—the way she broke apart on me last time I did this is etched into my memory. I’ve relived the way her pretty little cunt came on my cock more times than I can count.
Her feet press into my back as she lifts her hips.
“My darling,” I grit out.
Thrust.
“You will never.”
Thrust.
“Be alone.”
Thrust.
“Again.”
Thrust.
Sweat slicks her brow, her eyes glazed and distant, lost to pleasure.
I stop.
“Eyes on me, darling.”
Her eyes snap open, desperate for me to continue.
“It's you and me,” I promise, driving my cock into her. “Tell me you love me and I’ll give you more.”
Her emerald eyes never leave me, and she bites her bottom lip between her teeth, breath ragged and frayed.
Her thighs tremble against my shoulders, and I know her release is close.
I move my palm from her stomach, and add pressure to her clit. “Say it,” I demand.
“I love you,” she breathes, and I drive my cock into her.
“I love you,” she repeats, and I thrust again.
“I love you. I love you. I love you,” she echoes, and I can’t fucking stop.
She owns me. Commands me.
I listen to her words reverberate through the chamber, and I’m lost to it—lost to the oblivion that is Elyssara Dawnmere.
Her moan of ecstasy rips through the room, shattering my final restraint.
Her hips buck wildly, her back bowing off the bed, and her pussy clenches around my cock in pure, unadulterated ecstasy. But her eyes are fixed on mine. Her lips part in euphoria, and I add more pressure to her clit. I want her undone beneath me.
I wring every last shred of pleasure from her body, and her face softens into something stunning—rapture. Bliss.
I follow her into pleasure, coming at the sight of her body writhing against my fingers and cock.
My body shudders and wracks, and a carnal growl rips from my throat.
But I can’t take my eyes off her—devouring, worshipful, as she watches me come.
She’s fucking beautiful. Perfect. My Queen.
When the trembling slows, I don’t move right away.
Her body softens beneath mine, all heat and languor, every line of her gone pliant and golden. I ease down beside her and she folds into me as if she was always meant to fit there—breath for breath, heartbeat for heartbeat.
The room smells of smoke and salt, shrouded in a haze of snuffed out candles.
Her head rests against my chest, tracing idle circles over the fresh ink that maps the night sky across my arms. The constellations inked in onyx glimmer faintly where the candlelight catches them, the same patterns that now live in her skin.
But hers? They’re shimmering gold. Light and shadow, tethered and whole.
Her fingers drift to her upper arm, finding the silver cuff pressing into her skin.
The metal still hums faintly, the pulse of the magic that set her free.
There’s a kind of worship that happens after pleasure—the quiet kind, the reverent kind—where every part of her feels like mine to memorize.
The slope of her shoulder beneath my hand, the warmth of her breath against my ribs, the way her fingers wander over my marks like she’s learning the shape of her name in another language.
This is the part that ruins me most. Not the way she takes me.
Because fuck, she takes me so well. Not the way she comes apart—every part of it something to worship.
But the way she rests against me afterwards as if she trusts the ground itself won’t dare shift beneath us while she sleeps in my arms.
I didn’t know if giving her the cuff now would work. If it would meet the rules the cuff demanded. I hoped the fates, the prophecy, Elyssara would feel the truth: that this is all for her. Freely given, no agendas.
“How did you know?” she asks at last, voice hazy, half-asleep. “How did you find it?”
I smile against her hair, the answer easy. “Gellesk.”
She huffs out a laugh that shakes her shoulders. “Of course. Fuckin’ Gellesk.”
She pauses for a moment. “Where was it?” she asks, body heavy.
“Still in Duskridge Hollow. They thought it was a scrap of tin,” I laugh, not that I didn’t have to cut down at least a dozen men for it.
“Mavyrn took you?” she asks.
“Seren.”
“I always knew she was made for more,” she sighs, completely unsurprised.
I tighten my hold on her, lips brushing her temple. “Sleep, my love. When you wake, we’re going home.” I don’t say the words that hang in the air: for war. We’re going home for war.
Her eyes flutter shut, her body melting against mine. For the first time in forever, it feels like we’re not running or fighting—we’re just escaping into each other.
The tether hums steady and quiet.
And in the hush between heartbeats, I finally let myself believe we’ve survived the dark.