Epilogue
PHIN
Igasped as Tap hung the portrait depicting him and his brothers on the wall over the sofa.
“You’re so talented.” It was very clear who everyone was, though I of course hadn’t met them all yet.
He’d described Orobas and Sitri to me, and they were right there for me to see in delicate strokes of paint.
Ramsey lifted her head from the arm of the sofa.
Well done, Watchman. She was back for a few days, her time spent split between my mother and me when she wasn’t on some other mission.
Hunting down unknown portals had become her new favorite pastime, so she was often gone for weeks before returning to one of us to recharge.
“You flatter me.” He stood back, fingers laced through mine, as he stared at it some more. “But I fear I need to make a new one. One that includes all our new members.” He pulled me close with a hand around my shoulders.
“I’m sure that can be arranged,” I smiled. “I’ll sit for you, if you need a model.”
His eyes flashed red. “You tempt me, Phin.”
I stared back, not blinking. Sooner or later he’d figure out it was a serious offer.
“Come with me?” I asked. “If you’re showing me your art, I want to show you mine.”
“I’d follow you anywhere, Feather.” He smiled, taking my hand as I walked us down the hall to the tattoo room.
While he’d been working on his painting, I’d been plenty busy myself.
Between my new job in Hell and Tap adjusting to not being the only one in charge of watching all the doorways, we’d been rebalancing everything.
That included both of us making adequate use of our leisure time, and while I’d dabbled in reading, needlework and even tried my hand at painting, nothing had stuck quite like drawing.
It was the only thing that still opened up that quiet blank place in my head, where I could just disappear into the strokes of the quill and float back up a while later to find something beautiful.
Except, the desk in the library hadn’t worked.
I’d had to move a smaller one into the tattoo room for the sparks to really turn into flames.
Lucky for me, Tap was more than accommodating, and some of our most memorable nights had been spent on the cushions after I was done pressing ink into parchment while he decorated his skin.
“What have you been working on, Feather?” he asked, closing the door behind us only most of the way out of habit.
I pushed it the rest of the way shut, his eyebrows raising when the latch clicked into place.
“We should let Ramsey rest.”
His tongue swept across his bottom lip. “Am I to assume we will … not be?” I just smiled and went to my desk, unstacking my labors and spreading them out in the order I wanted. “What’s this?”
Tap examined the pages, the borders of which recorded every pattern he’d tattooed himself with, featuring my scroll in the corners.
I’d drawn my favorite moments of our time together, some mundane, some sweet, and some very, very explicit.
Once I’d assembled them, I realized they were an excellent gauge of where I was in my cycle.
By the time he got to the final one, which was my personal favorite and depicted my recollection of how he’d held me by the throat and made me watch us in the bathroom mirror, he was open-mouthed and sweating.
Tap’s control was very close to snapping.
It shouldn’t have pleased me so much, but it sent a spike of heat through my veins.
Tap didn’t lose control. Ever.
“Feather. This is …” He grunted and caged me against the back of the desk, his hips against mine as he examined the sheets.
“Is there something I should know?” He lowered his head and breathed in deeply as he kissed along my neck.
“Have I been missing the signals that badly? I thought we had at least another week.”
“I think it’s just not as aggressive this time, but I didn’t take my tincture yet.” He ground me into the desk, his rigid length pressed up against me as his head fell back and he groaned. “I can … or, we can have a few days to ourselves again. Up to you.”
“That should be up to you, Phin, not me.” His voice had gravel in it, and his eyes had gone solid ruby.
“Maybe I’ll take it tomorrow, then.” I watched as the man I loved, the one I craved more than life crumbled.
He took his spectacles off and flung them somewhere across the room before diving toward me, both hands cradling my face as his split tongue coaxed my lips apart.
He kissed me like he was suffocating and I was air, like salvation itself was found in my lips.
In the end, he got what he needed—I was the one left breathless when he finally pulled away.
His arm swept the pages off the desktop, the whole of them fluttering as they caught the air before slowly falling to the floor.
“I’ll fix that later,” he promised, and settled me where he wanted me before dropping to his knees.
I was wearing one of the dresses I’d bought in Revalia, and his hands slid up my legs at the same time they pushed them apart.
He drew my ankles up over his shoulders, forcing me to lean back on my elbows as his mouth danced along my thigh.
My fingers tangled in his hair as heat consumed me, a flush of warmth washing over me from head to toe.
Tap latched on to me and sucked, causing every thought to evaporate.
“I love this dress,” he muttered, alternating teasing my entrance with his tongue and fingers, sucking, and licking until I was a trembling mess.
In the end, it was his red eyes looking up at me with such devotion that did me in. I came with a rough shout on his fingers and nearly fell off the desk.
He scooped me up and turned me toward the cushions spread out all over the floor. “We’re just getting started, beloved.”
“Wait,” I said on a gasp. “Look at the back.”
After setting me down, he stripped off his own clothing a piece at a time while reaching for one of the discarded pieces of parchment. He flipped one over, finding the new symbol I’d created for us.
He reverently traced along the lines. “This is my sigil. But it’s not. Not exactly.”
“No, it’s … ours,” I said, suddenly embarrassed and worried he’d think I defaced his sigil.
“Ours.” His smile was slow. “Yes. This is you, here, and this is me … but they’re wrapped together. I can’t tell where one stops and the other starts. It’s perfect.”
Relief washed over me, and then confusion as instead of returning to my side, he went to the cabinet and collected a pot of ink and his enchanted quill.
“What are you doing?”
“Did you think I would see that and not want it on my flesh immediately?” He kissed me hard, then dipped the needle and turned the quill over his heart.
“Wait! There? Are you sure?”
He rumbled a low laugh, the sound making my skin tingle. “I’ve never been more certain about a tattoo in my life.”
He started to draw, and I took the opportunity to return the pleasure he’d given me while his hands were occupied.
“Phin, you …” He inhaled through his teeth, the quill held safely away from his chest as I licked up his rigid length and then took all of him into my mouth.
“Fates. I can’t … concentrate,” he groaned as I added my hands and tongue, sliding up and down, finding a rhythm I liked.
“You’ll kill me,” he swore, but gritted his jaw and continued to work the ink into his skin.
Every time I glanced up, he was fighting to stay focused, and that only made me increase my efforts.
I felt him twitch, and all at once, his hands were pulling me away.
“You’re dangerous, Little Feather.” He was panting, but the symbol was complete, right there over his heart in black ink.
“Me next,” I said.
“Where?” he asked.
“You choose.”
His head dropped, and he dragged in a rough breath. He shifted us so that I was on my knees, my front against the cushions, with him behind me. “You should probably find something to hold on to, Feather.”
“Why—”
I moaned as he pushed into me from behind, hands braced on the floor under the cushion. It probably wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind, but it was the best I could do given the circumstances.
He lowered the quill to my skin right near where my scar was. He would draw a bit, then pause, and check on me in that low voice I couldn’t help but melt under.
“You’re doing so well for me, Feather,” he said, thrusting in and out a few times. Every nerve in my body was buzzing, thoughts unable to form. I realized that at least in part, he was keeping me from feeling any pain from the quill.
After one particularly long pause where he drew in and out of me at an excruciatingly slow pace, he swore.
“I can’t …” I felt him throb inside me and his pace increased to the point we were both gasping.
Everything went fuzzy as my release washed over me, Tap only a moment behind.
He wrapped himself over my back, and we just breathed together as my heartbeat slowed to a more normal pace.
I thought he was rolling away, but instead he reached for the quill again.
“Just a bit more, beloved,” he said, and I lay still as he finished placing the pattern on my skin, his body still joined with mine.
Those memories embedded themselves as surely as the ink, a smile locked on my face through the rest of the tattoo, the bath after, and even as we cuddled together on our bed in what had once just been his room for a good night’s sleep.
I couldn’t wait to draw it.