Chapter 26 #3
“That’s it. I can’t wait to make you come for me.” He pulled his fingers out, and I nearly cried, but then he licked his fingers and hummed as if he was tasting the most delicious dessert he’d ever had in his entire life. “With my tongue.”
Those words…the way he breathed them over my ear, like he was starving for me, and he’d die without my taste…
I lost all sense of control, all sense of dignity.
I should’ve refused. I’d never done this before.
This level of intimacy was beyond anything I was prepared for.
He was betrothed; he was my best friend. This was all so wrong.
Blasted Solstice, but if it was so wrong, then why did it feel so godsdamned right. We’d already gone far past the friendship line at this point—the lines everyone knew had been blurred for years. There was no turning back.
The moment I said yes, Jack moved like a starved leopard released from its cage.
He pushed the furs aside, angling his body between mine, and spread my legs with his palms. The fabric of my nightgown was suddenly too heavy, too long, so I stripped it away and laid back, braced on my elbows, as I watched him devour my nakedness with his eyes.
He kissed his way down my legs, his breath grazing fire across my skin. Then he slipped his arms beneath my thighs and pulled me closer, anchoring me to his mouth. I trembled beneath his gaze, my chest rising in shallow pants as he lowered himself to my sex.
The sight of him there…broad shoulders haloed by the soft blue glow emanating from the frost raking across the pavilion, silver hair mussed, lips swollen from the way he’d kissed my neck, would be seared into memory for the rest of my life.
And gods help me, I wanted to remember this. Every breath. Every heartbeat. Every shiver.
He kissed the inside of my thighs as if he were tracing runes with his mouth, each kiss, each flick of his tongue, a prayer. A spell. Something sacred that bound him to me, and me to him.
When he reached my core, his breath fanned over my most sensitive skin, and my hips bucked. He groaned, like he was the one coming undone.
And then he tasted me.
My head tipped back, a helpless, broken moan spilling from my lips. He licked with the precision of a warrior and the devotion of a lover. Deep strokes. Slow circles. Gentle at first, then hungrier. His hands locked my thighs wide, firm and shaking as my body writhed beneath him.
I forgot the tent. Forgot the guards stationed just outside.
All that existed was Jack—his mouth, his tongue sliding up and down my center, his growls of pleasure as they vibrated against me. I clutched the furs, then his hair, gasping as pleasure built faster than I could brace for.
And as the crescendo neared, something ancient inside me stirred, primordial and wild. Like the moon tugging the tides of the sea. A power not fully mine, yet woven through my soul, surged toward him. “Jack,” I cried, tangling my fingers in his hair. “Oh, gods… Just like that.”
He growled into me again and lapped harder, faster, flicking my clit until I shattered against his mouth.
Light burst behind my eyes. My back arched.
And I came with his name on my lips. It wasn’t just a release; it was rebirth.
Like something long asleep inside me had finally opened its eyes.
He kissed his way back up my body, his skin flushed with heat, his lips slick with me.
“Heavens,” I breathed, still panting. “That tongue…”
But he didn’t speak. He hovered above me, bracing himself on trembling arms, and the look in his eyes wasn’t only lust; it was hunger. It was love. It was something older than both.
I reached for him, curling my fingers around the edge of his waistband. “I need you, Jack. I need to feel all of you. Inside me.”
His breath hitched and his hips rocked into my hand.
“I don’t care about the tonics,” I whispered. “Not with you.”
A curse rumbled from deep in his chest. He lowered his forehead to mine, his entire body trembling. “Sylvi…I’m already on the verge of losing all self-control. Your words will damn me.”
“Please. I want this. I want you. I don’t care about what comes after. Just let me have this.”
Wrapping a possessive hand around my neck, he kissed me, starved and bruising. “You want me to claim you, elskan? You want my cock inside you?”
“Yes,” I hissed.
His trousers still clung to his hips, but I worked them down with urgent fingers, exposing the top of his ass.
All around us, hoarfrost climbed the walls of the pavilion, thick and glittering like fractured crystal.
This wasn’t ordinary ice. It was his unseelie magic bleeding into the room, a storm summoned by the bond forged between us.
I should’ve been terrified—one touch from that cursed ice could kill me. But I knew to my bones he would never harm me.
But just as I started to lower his trousers, Jack seized my wrists and pinned them above my head.
His mouth descended on my neck, hungry and wild.
He kissed and nipped and licked, his teeth grazing that place where my pulse thundered, making me crave his bite.
I writhed beneath him, his hard body grinding between my legs.
The only thing separating our bodies from joining was the thin fabric of his trousers, already so dangerously low.
Fuck. If he didn’t slide inside me now, I would certainly die. “Do it, Jack,” I whispered, trembling. “Make me yours. Ruin me for all others.”
The words landed like thunder between us, and he froze.
His mouth stilled and his grip loosened. And when he pulled back, I saw it—the sparks of silver in his eyes drowned by something darker, tormented and violent, churning like an angry, depthless ocean.
And I knew.
It was already too late.
The regret in his gaze tore through me.
“Please. Don’t do this,” I whispered. “Don’t pull away from me. Not now. Not like this.”
“Gods, Sylvi…” he rasped, forehead pressed to mine.
“I want to bury myself so deep inside you, we forget the world. I want to wake with your scent on my skin, with your name on my tongue. There is nothing I want more in this moment than to make you mine in every sense of the word. Not just your body, elskan, but your heart. Your soul.”
His hands trembled where they held me.
“But that’s just it,” he said. “That’s not the world we live in. I don’t want this moment to be the only one we share. I want a life with you. To give you more than my body. I want to give you my loyalty. My blade. To offer you a place beside me on my throne.”
“Jack…” I whimpered. The splintering in my heart was too much to bear.
“I don’t want to stop…”
“Then don’t.”
But his silence said everything.
“I’m so sorry, Syl. I won’t take this from you… I don’t deserve it. It wouldn’t be right.”
And before I could blink, he tore himself from the bed, from me, and stormed out of the tent, shattering the hoarfrost sealing the entrance as he vanished into the cold night like an untamed tempest poised to lay waste to the world.