12. Twelve
twelve
Erqis' hand kept brushing hers on their way back up. It was intensely distracting – not because hers was sticky with drying blood, and not because she had just witnessed what those hands could do.
No, the distraction came with the little tingles that raced up her arm every time Erqis touched her, like the air just before a storm. It came with the memory of those hands gripping her, touching her freely, as if her body belonged to him.
In his mind, it probably did. Neira wasn't as put off by that idea as she would have thought.
And that, in itself, was the problem.
She didn't want to like him. She had no interest in enjoying his company. This man had murdered her father, just days ago, and his very presence put her life at risk, and had certainly turned it upside down. Tolerance , bitter and reluctant and self-serving, was the only thing she wanted to extend to him.
Neira glanced at the source of her frustration, keeping step beside to her – tall, broad-shouldered, with that easy smile still on his face as if all they had done was take a nice walk and share good conversation, splattered with blood – and still couldn’t understand why she wasn't more bothered by him.
She knew why she had been dragged naked into the throne room. It hadn’t only been to humiliate her. No, she had been an offering, as much as the castle gates thrown open had been an invitation to the invading king and his merciless forces. Renger, Arwess – whoever’s the idea had first been, they had hoped to keep their lives by forfeiting hers.
Instead, Erqis been nothing but decent to her, albeit in his own, indubitably odd way. He’d had some entertainment at her expense, of course, but beyond that… beyond that, he had been kind. She had to admit that.
If her father had been the one to return victorious from the battle, things would have been different. She would not be covered in the blood of those who had betrayed her. No. Her father would have scolded her instead, would have berated her for not heeding the regiars. They would have been rewarded for containing their wilful charge, and if punishment had been meted out it would not have been on her account but rather for letting Ramin slip out from under their noses. Her father would have demanded she tell him where Ramin was, so he could bring his rightful heir back home.
And life would have continued as normal. As unexciting, frustrating, bland as it always had been, every day another shade of weary grey.
But her father hadn't come home, Ramin was still gone, and Neira found herself at a precipice with the urge to jump. Her coiling wrath had curled up inside her like a cat after a meal, sated for now, and she had run on wrath and the need for vindication for so long that she didn't know how to exist without it as a driving force anymore.
She should have been devastated. Sad, at the very least. Yet neither of those emotions reared their heads, and that in itself was concerning.
"You're quiet," Erqis commented, pulling her from her increasingly morose thoughts. "This wasn't too much for you, Princess, surely? It looked like you had a lot of fun."
"I did."
It didn't take much to admit it. Her eyes met his, the gold-green hue bright in the relative dimness of the corridor; they had climbed the stairs into the main level of the palace, and now Neira stood on the second step towards the royal wing. She was taller than him like this, his head coming up to her chin instead of the other way around. Perhaps she preferred the other way around, though – easier to sink her teeth into his bared throat from that angle.
The thought made her smile.
Erqis' gaze slipped to her mouth, sharpening. Then down her throat, following the collar of the shirt he had lent her until the laces blocked his gaze from her skin below her collarbone. Before he reached the swell of her breasts, he looked at her face again, took in every single one of the blood splatters drying dark on her cheeks and nose. When he spoke again, his voice was pitched lower, rougher.
"I'm glad."
Neira wet her lips, caught in that gaze. She grimaced when she tasted blood, the taste strangely sharp and bitter, too metallic.
In one move, Erqis had climbed the two steps she had on him, one arm caging her against the stone banister. The other hand came up to stroke his thumb over her mouth, wiping away the blood, and she let him, staring up at him in silence.
There was no one around, not even the hurried patter of servants. The palace was as quiet as the tomb Erqis kept calling it, so much so that Neira could hear her own heartbeat, picking up with how close this perfect stranger was, how intensely he was looking at her.
Erqis licked the pad of his thumb. Sudden heat darkened those bright eyes, and she didn't think it had anything to do with how foul the blood tasted.
Yes . This was exactly how she would turn this situation around.
Neira let her own eyes drop to his mouth, made a point to swallow visibly. Her hand caught his, brought it back to her face, where it curled around the side of her neck, his thumb against her chin.
"I wanted to see you like this," he murmured, dragging his thumb along her jawline in a caress that tightened her nipples, "the day we met – the only thing that would have made you more beautiful then would have been their blood adorning your skin."
She ran her hand up his bare forearm until her fingers caught in his shoved-up sleeve. His skin was warm, startlingly so, the muscles under it shifting. "There is blood left…" Neira inclined her head back towards the depths they had ascended from.
His grin was quick and sharp, but the way his lips met hers was nothing if not soft. Brushing against hers once, twice, as if asking for permission, and when she breathed a sigh, Erqis' arm banded around her waist, yanked her against his front. She was pinned back into the banister by his hips only a second later, when he licked into her mouth, the stone digging into the small of her back.
Neira reciprocated by sinking her nails into his arm, and Erqis only huffed a laugh. What he did with his tongue made heat pool between her legs, so sudden and urgent that the muscled length of his thigh had no trouble pushing between them. The thin leggings did nothing to keep his heat from her, nor hers from him, and Erqis groaned, his lips skimming over her chin before he laved his tongue up the length of her throat.
She let her head drop back, a wavering moan vibrating against him, and sank her fingers into his brassy curls. Her hips rocked, dragging her aching sex along his thigh.
Erqis chuckled against her skin, each kiss down her neck flavoured with the scrape of his short beard. "And you thought you wouldn't enjoy my tongue…"
"What?" Gods, he made her dizzy. It had been so long – had she ever? Neira had hazy memories of hands on her skin, a mouth on hers, but little beyond that. There was no face, no name. Perhaps it had been an unusually vivid dream.
"Earlier, you said – never mind."
The already wide collar gaped apart to slide down her shoulders on both sides when Erqis tugged the laces free. His touch followed the reveal until he could span her breast with his fingers, a good handful in his large hand. Her nipple was achingly hard even before he bent his head and took it in his mouth. A demanding suck tugged a cord she hadn't known existed, running from her nipple all the way down to her clit. Her sharp gasp made him laugh again, under his breath.
"I've dreamed about these."
Neira hissed when the second nipple was treated to a slow drag of his tongue in contrast, then the stubble of his chin rasping against it. Her fingers tightened in his hair, not enough to pull him away, but enough to make him groan quietly. "An odd dream."
"Is it?" He squeezed her breast when he kissed her again, a quick, deep flick of his tongue along her palate before she could protest. "I'll expand on it after today." His hands began to wander; along her waist, firmer at her hips, before he sank his fingers in against the round of her ass. "And I'll burn all your dresses, so you can't hide all this away."
Her hips and behind were the most generous curves on her body, leading into strong, rounded thighs – not what the heroines were praised for in the love stories Neira had enjoyed reading when she had been younger, but Erqis couldn't seem to keep neither his hands nor his eyes off of them.
"Burn my dresses and I'll find an even more savage fate for you."
Erqis bit her lower lip. "Savage me, Majesty ."
And then he hiked her leg up over his hip and pressed in between her thighs until she could feel his hard length against her cunt. The strokes of his tongue against hers were timed to his hips rocking, and all Neira could do was hold on, dig her nails into his arm and against the back of his neck, and try to keep her composure as her need ratcheted higher with each passing second.
The fabric of her smallclothes was damp at this point, and roughened enough that each slide of friction made her squirm. Erqis' quiet groans were fanning against her lips, her chin, then her neck when he dropped his face into the curve of it to scrape his teeth against her skin. Too gentle, much too gentle; Neira shifted so she could bite his neck, clamping her teeth down until she could taste blood and he gasped and shuddered… and fell still, his panting the only sound between them.
She pushed against him, so close , her peak ebbing away from her with each racing heartbeat, but rocking her own hips into him wasn't as satisfying as the force of his had been. "Erqis…"
He grinned, lazy and languid, and hell if that wasn't the hottest thing she had ever seen – when Erqis took her chin again to kiss her once more.
"I've got you," he murmured, before turning her around so suddenly that all she could do was hold on to the banister so she wouldn't tumble head first right over it. "I've got you, don't worry."
Erqis pressed himself against her ass, still hard, and made quick work of her leggings' laces so he could shove his hand inside. He groaned against her ear when she whimpered, his middle finger parting her slick seam before delving into her grasping core.
"Gods, you're dripping."
Everything was spinning. The openness of the stairwell fell away, the fact that they could be caught any second, the absolute indignity of the mewls and cries this man dragged from her with such ease; all that remained was the way he firmly pulsed his fingers inside her, the pressure of his palm against her clit, the little nibbles and kisses he trailed along the curve of her ear. Neira pressed her thighs closed around his hand, and he groaned as if imagining another part of himself caught just so, and then she fell apart, darkness licking at the edges of her vision.
She came back into her body to the wet, lewd sounds of Erqis licking his fingers clean right by her ear. The shirt by now was caught around her waist and elbows, exposing her breasts to the cool air, her leggings halfway down her hips. His arm was tight around her waist, holding her up and back against him.
"Enjoy yourself, Princess?"
Gods below, that smug tone grated on her, as if he had just won a high-stakes game she hadn't known they were playing. Only she had known. And she had lost.
Scowling, Neira pushed him off, shrugging the shirt up over her shoulders again. What in all the hells had she done? The euphoria of his touch had plummeted into her belly, heavy as a stone. This was… a complication. She had not anticipated the way that her body would ache for more.
She'd be the one left alone and abandoned after this, not him.
"Barely."
"Didn't sound like barely." Erqis was still grinning when he stepped back. "You're delicious, by the way. Any time I can offer you my body, please do make use of it."
" I doubt that will be necessary."
"You'll ask soon enough."
Neira bared her teeth. "You're very full of yourself." She yanked up her leggings and turned to flee up the stairs, to lock herself in her bedroom and sort through these very confusing emotions that were racing through her without some smug man leering.
" You could be full of me instead," he cheerfully called after her. "Any time, Princess. Just let me know!"
Her cheeks were still burning when she reached her bedroom and slammed the door closed, locking it for good measure.