Chapter 31 #2
He gazed at me with a tenderness I could scarcely stand to look at.
He bent forward and cradled my face in his hands.
They trembled lightly. “I cannot imagine there will ever come a time I will not need you, Ana.” His quick, shallow breaths caught like a breeze in my hair.
“The spirits may swoon over you, but they mock the king who danced with the wild queen beneath the moon. They say that he held his breath all the while. That he went a little mad. That—while he danced with her—he thought of a riverbank and a wildflower meadow and he wished nothing more than to know if she thought of it too.”
I tilted my face, lips brushing against his ear. “She did.”
We met somewhere in the middle, groaning with relief as our lips collided.
His were like ice against mine. Perhaps he had lost too much blood.
Perhaps the cold of the forest lingered.
I dug my fingers into the nape of his neck and I urged him close, breathing warmth back into him.
If I had ached before, it was nothing to this; to the flaming tightness low in my stomach, robbing me of all sense.
He nipped with a growl at my lower lip, setting skin and blood ablaze.
I burned for him, utterly.
He burned for me too.
I felt it in the heat of his touch, heard it in the low, sinful moans echoing mine. His fingers traced the length of my spine and came to rest at its base, sending another shiver of need through me. He pulled me fiercely into his lap, lips never ceasing their starved exploration of mine.
“Your wound,” I gasped when he drew me against his chest.
He took my hand in reply and laid it to his flaming skin. “It will heal within the hour," he murmured against my jaw. With lips and teeth he trailed wild kisses down the side of my neck. “I am half of a faerie, remember?”
I moaned as he brushed my blouse aside and sucked gently on my collarbone.
“Right,” I breathed. “A wicked, evil faerie set on tormenting me.”
“Oh yes,” he whispered with a low chuckle. “I will see to it that you must suffer as ardently as I do.”
I hummed, unable to speak as pleasure bloomed wherever his lips lay claim to me, wherever his hands delved—from my curls to the top of my thighs and along the hem of my blouse. His fingers slid beneath the linen, drawing me closer. His mouth travelled to the hollow beneath my throat.
“I am feeling rather wicked tonight,” he murmured into my skin.
I hissed in protest as he broke away to stare at me with kiss-red lips and a dark hunger that made my heart stumble.
“All that talk,” I said teasingly, grazing my nails along the edge of his jaw until he shuddered, “and not a single wicked deed to back it up. Come, Adrik. You need not be afraid to break me. Come, and show me your wicked ways.”
His gaze lingered another breath on mine, soft with the same curious longing that swelled achingly in my chest, sharp with the same desire that struck me again and again like lightning.
He made a tender sound, half-laugh and half-groan.
At last, he tangled a hand in my hair and he kissed me with such fury I knew he’d done away with patience and with restraint.
Desire bled into wild, reckless despair.
I sank nails and teeth into him as if he might turn into a dream and slip away if I did not hold tight.
“Ana.”
He must have said it once for every star in the skies—in a whisper, in a groan, in a breathless chuckle, in a plea.
And like the stars, I burned for him, endlessly and fervently.
Fabric ripped as he parted my blouse. I writhed beneath his finger, tracing with aching leisure the outline of my breast beneath a strip of lace.
His name came from my lips like a curse.
“Please,” I rasped, mindless. “Please, Adrik.”
Had he possessed a sliver of compassion, he’d have slid his fingers between my trembling legs and soothed my ache. But he was wicked and so he brushed only the lace aside and dipped his head to trace kisses along the side of my neck, down the vale between my breasts.
“I think,” he whispered with shaking breaths, “that I would do it all over again just for this. Just for you.”
A different ache eclipsed for a breath the one he had stirred with lips and fingers. I felt the weight and the truth of his words as if carved into my bones since the beginning of time. All that sorrow, all that loneliness, all that loss—and still.
And still.
“I think,” I whispered, “that I would too.”
Whatever else I wanted to say slipped from my mind when he flicked his tongue over me; slowly, lazily, as if we had all the time in the world.
I was not so patient. My fingers wove frantically into his hair to pull him closer, and when that did not soothe the knot of anguish, I rolled my hips against his.
His low moan made me burn so exquisitely that I did it again, and another time.
“Ana,” he breathed, a little amused and very pained. "Have you no mercy for me at all?”
“I might have some to spare,” I said, panting, “were you not so pretty to look at when you suffer.”
He laughed roughly. “You find me pretty?”
“I find you as pretty as you are vain, and you are the vainest person I know.”
His quiet chuckle, lips sealed to the pulse at my throat, sent shivers through me.
Lips and limbs entangled like vines, he carried me to the bed and laid me down upon cool silk.
He stood to the side and watched with dark eyes—one finger pressed to his half-parted lips as if to contemplate how next to torment me—as I lay draped over his sheets, ripped blouse revealing lace and bare skin, breasts cool from his lingering kiss.
“Let me never forget this,” he whispered softly before he joined me.
Our lips knew each other now. There was no hesitation, no tentative prompting.
We came together like waves surging against each other—inevitably and consuming.
I slid a hand over his thundering heart and I left it there, to ensure he was real, long after he’d slipped from his shirt and freed me of the remnants of my blouse, my leather breeches.
“Allow me a taste of you,” he whispered.
A moan was all I offered in response, and a keen glance at his sinful mouth before he brushed it to my ribs, my hipbone. He placed a lingering kiss to the seam of my laced underpants, gaze twined with mine.
I was trembling with need, gasping from the exquisite ache of almost. It lasted no more than one fluttering heartbeat, and yet the moment stretched like a lifetime before me—
A lifetime of this. I could imagine it, almost. I craved it.
I cried out when his lips brushed against me.
He hooked his thumb into the lace and pulled it aside and he watched with wicked, ardent glee as I writhed.
He traced his tongue over me as if I were a poem he was intent to learn by heart—gently at first, then teasingly, and then, when I began to curse him for his brilliant torment, with urgent demand.
I burst aflame once, twice. He seemed content to linger there, between my legs, with my shaking fingers speared into his hair and my heart loud and furious in the humming air.
His ears were flushed, his cheeks too, and when he gave me a slow, wickedly soft smile, his lips glistened.
He laughed quietly as he placed kisses against my inner thigh.
“Are you suffering quite ardently, Ana?”
“Immensely.”
I bit my lip as I watched him drink me in, such rawness in his eyes. “Queen of the Wild,” he breathed. “How can I bear such wonder, Ana? To pretend I do not burn for you is the greatest burden of all.”
I tightened my fingers in his hair to pull him to me, and I grazed my teeth against his throat as I said, “Then stop pretending.” I nipped at his skin again, coaxing a groan from him. “Show me how you burn, Adrik.”
I moaned when I tasted my own ache, my own need on his lips. Heat seized me as he trapped me beneath his weight, as he curled his fingers around my wrists and held them fast while he contemplated me.
“Please, Adrik,” I breathed. “You can stare at me later, or whisper tender things, and if you wish to spend another hour between my legs, I am glad to oblige—” I laughed breathlessly when he made at once to kiss his way back down my side.
I freed one wrist to capture his jaw between my fingers.
He looked at me, gaze dark with mischief and need.
I continued, “—but now, I crave you and this ache will not go until I feel you whole.”
He groaned, as if unleashed by my words. Before I’d next breathed, we were skin to heated skin, his breath wild in my ear, his heart thundering against mine. I sealed my lips to his throat, leaving bruises. I was a wild thing—
His heat robbed me of all thought. We cursed each other as he sank into me, achingly and slowly.
“Ana,” he breathed, pained. I was twisting frantically against him, desperate to ease that gnawing hunger. “Give me a moment, you wicked wild witch.”
He did not heed his own plea, for he sheathed himself with a half-feral growl. Relief, sweet and aching, stole my vision. When he began to move, I arched with a cry off the sheets. Our breaths and moans became the song to which we moved, roughly and desperately.
Later, we would take our time. In the quiet, dark hours, we’d explore and cherish each other.
Now, two flames joined at last to burn together, we had no mind for reverence or slowness.
Now, we were two starving things hungering only for one another.
I grew my roots into glittering, moss-green soil, and I splintered from the pleasure that swept through me.
He cursed me as he came, shuddering beneath my hands.
“Ana,” he whispered as he settled breathlessly beside me, cradling my trembling body as if it were a precious, breakable thing. “How will I ever leave this bed? How will I ever return to the snow?” He must have seen me darken, for guilt swept into his eyes. “I made you sad.”
“No,” I breathed. “Never, Adrik. I just wish… I just wish to forget. Just for tonight.” I brushed a stray golden curl from his forehead. “I do not want to look back and find this moment tainted.”
A sliver of mischief twinkled in his gaze. “Do you intend to look back often?”
“I am afraid it will happen, whether I intend it or not.”
“Hmm,” he breathed into the space between us, fingers growing restless and urgent against me so soon. “I am afraid,” he said in that low, lilting voice, “that you promised me an hour to have my wicked way with you. I shall whisper tender things while you writhe for me.”
We soon abandoned his plan of slowness. Our ache returned twice as sharp. Now that our bodies remembered each other, there was no keeping us apart.
We went slow the third time. As if we might stretch the night beyond its time, so long as our rapture lasted.
There came a storm outside, and the wind howled with renewed fury, and this town would soon lie in the shade of Mount Briarfell like a skeleton gnawed to the bone.
We did not let it matter, in the hours we spent sharing warmth and breath and pleasure.
It did not exist, in this space filled with breathless reverence.
We were living a lie that night, and we lived it well.