Chapter 34
Rikard
Hanna panted against his chest, her body warm and loose from the climax they’d shared. His tail was still inside her, and everything about the moment was contentment. The borrowed pleasure still hummed in his veins, an afterglow he never thought he’d experience again.
“Perhaps I should resign my position as Nadir,” he mused.
“Why is that?”
“Because now that I know what we can share, I don’t think I’ll ever leave this room again.”
Her laugh shook her whole body, her body clenching around his tail. A thrill ran between them through the bond, and it made him wish he had time to take her again like that before daysleep.
“A shame it’s so close to dawn,” she murmured, echoing his thoughts.
“That’s no tragedy. My tail will harden when the sun rises,” he teased, still giddy with happiness. “You can play with it all day if you like. I’ll enjoy every minute.”
Her breath caught as though she’d just realized something, but she didn’t speak, only shifting against him. Her fingers idly traced a ridge of scar tissue along his collarbone, her cheeks growing pink. When he probed her thoughts through the bond, she pulled back, shutting him out.
“What is it?” His stomach twisted, waiting for her answer. Had he offended her somehow?
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You blocked your mind from me.”
She propped herself on her elbow. Her hair fell across her cheek, and she pushed it back impatiently. “I was just thinking that your tail isn’t the only thing that will be hard all day.”
He barked a laugh. He’d feared she was hiding some distaste for him, and she was only concealing an off-color joke. “I’ve had the same complaint myself. It’s only hard when I can’t use it.”
“You can’t”—her eyes met his, twinkling with amusement—“but I can.”
“You’re welcome to use me any way you like while frozen,” he said cheerfully. “As you have been.”
“I haven’t!” she yelped.
“You certainly have,” he teased, enjoying her fervent protest. “I have felt your luscious breast press against my open palm, and your backside grind against me while you took your pleasure. And you’ve kissed me more than once when I couldn’t kiss you back.
You’re certainly welcome to climb atop my cock if it pleases you.
It would be the most exquisite torture of my life, but I would endure it gladly every morning. ”
The smile that crossed her face was neither shy nor startled nor embarrassed. It was downright wicked. “Then you might consider removing your breeches before the sun comes up.”
“I’ll make arrangements,” he said, dry humor covering his eagerness.
She kissed his jaw. The bond carried her bright anticipation, and he rushed to beat the heavy tightening in his limbs that foreshadowed daysleep.
His breeches sailed to the floor. He positioned himself on his back, wings spread across the bed, his posture open and body bare, showing all his broken bits.
The deep scars in his hide. The rebuilt legs, cracks visible. The cock that still slept on his thigh.
He grasped the base, coaxing it upright, just as the stone took him. It moved inward from his wingtips and his claws, freezing him joint by joint, locking muscle and tendon and the breath in his lungs. His eyes stayed open. His cock hardened last. It was fully, helplessly, magnificently hard.
She reached for him. Her fingers closed around his, warm and certain, before sliding upward along his shaft. He thought that his unuttered moan might shatter him.
“Good morning, husband,” she murmured.
Hannalinde
He was beautiful in stone.
She’d thought so before, in the Tower, when she’d stolen kisses from his frozen mouth, not realizing he was awake. But she’d never seen him like this: naked, spread out like an offering, the cock that his waking body denied him standing rigid and on display.
The morning light striped his chest in pale bars and caught the ghost of leaves in his healed wing membranes. She kissed him on the mouth. “I’ll be right back, my love.”
She left him briefly to check on Rosalore in the nursery and attempt to ease her aching breasts. She coaxed her sleepy daughter to nurse a little and left her in good hands with the nanny so she could return to Rikard’s stone arms.
There, she sought him through the bond. He was present, faintly. She could just touch his awareness, although it was muted. He was in there, watching her through those fixed-open eyes. Her shift whispered as she pulled it over her head and let the weak sunlight kiss her bare skin.
She’d touched his cock before, when curiosity had driven her to explore the safe, velveted texture. But that had been his waking body, soft and unresponsive. This was different. The stone of daysleep mimicked hard arousal, and the feel of him like this sent an answering spark through her.
She stroked him up and down, slowly, skimming over the slightly rough texture.
It didn’t intimidate her, though. Her bone phallus had much more texture, with its carved ridges and extra nubs for stimulation.
It had been good practice, though, her body learning to accommodate what it had come to fear.
Through the bond, a flare of his pleasure, quiet but unmistakable. He could feel every touch, even if the mental connection wasn’t as blaringly direct as it had been during the night.
She straddled him, feeling scandalous. Her thighs spread wide across his hips, and her knees found purchase in the mattress on either side.
Her hands braced on his chest as she adjusted her position so his cock was lined up with her entrance.
His blank eyes were fixed on the ceiling, but she was in his field of vision, and through the bond, she felt his quiet desire sharpen into hunger.
Encouraged, she sank down on the broad, blunt tip, and panic rose in her throat.
She held herself there, breathing, letting her body adjust to the pressure.
Rikard himself had taught her this: Patience.
Don’t push. Let the yourself open. Her body knew what it wanted, if she gave it time to stop being afraid.
She sank down an inch. The stretch was immediate, a fullness she’d felt with Rikard’s tail but different, because this was unresponsive stone rather than living, pulsing flesh.
Still, it felt good to them both. Every glimpse she got of his emotional state confirmed it.
He was grateful, in awe of her. Proud of how brave she was to try this.
She blinked back emotional tears. Another inch, and the stone cock rubbed up against something sensitive inside her. Her breath caught and she paused, her hands flat on his chest, wishing she could feel his heartbeat beneath the stone.
The bond sparked, and she sank further down on him. The girth split her open, and the stretch was at the edge of pain. But it wasn’t past it. Her total control meant she could take him at her own pace. Her muscles released their grip by degrees and slowly, slowly, her body opened, letting him in.
She rocked, adjusting the angle, and found the depth where it felt right.
She rose and sank, her thighs doing the work.
Silent and staring, Rikard was physically unresponsive, but their mental bond was on fire, spark turning to a flaming furnace, his pleasure and hers mingling until she couldn’t tell whose heat was whose.
He wanted to tell her something. She felt his frustration at being trapped inside stone and unable to speak to her like little lightning bolts. He wanted to ask her something.
So she tried to give him answers, saying everything she was feeling, everything she loved about him.
She praised the way his body fit inside hers as though he had been carved for her, too.
She told him he was beautiful, that she would choose him over a thousand other males, gargoyle or otherwise.
She praised his gentleness and his restraint.
His skillful hands and agile tail, his lips and teeth and tongue.
His pleasure surged, stronger now. She felt it pressing against her consciousness, enormous and patient, dwarfing hers. So she rode him more fervently, grinding her clit against his stone fingers at the base of his cock. She let her eyes fall shut, guiding her movements by what made her feel best.
Her orgasm vined and bloomed, and as the borrowed pleasure flooded him, she could swear she felt his purr.
She rode the aftershocks with her forehead pressed to his chest, breath ragged and thighs trembling. The cock was still hard inside her, would stay hard until the sun set. The sustained fullness in the aftermath was a new sensation, intimate and strange.
She carefully lifted herself off him, and rolled onto her side in the bed, cradled by his open wing. The bond hummed with shared satisfaction, thick and quiet. She lay there breathing, her hand resting on his frozen chest.
Then she noticed the blood.
A smear on his thigh, dark against the gray hide.
She pressed a hand between her thighs and it came away red.
Not much. Only a few drops, nothing alarming.
Months ago, blood between her legs would have sent her spiraling into the dark place where blood meant violence, but this didn’t frighten her at all.
She was giddy with that triumph.
She was glad Rikard’s gaze was fixed on the ceiling, though, so he couldn’t see it. He would be appalled that he’d hurt her, even though she was the one who’d been in control. He’d worry too much, when it had been worth every drop.
She cleaned herself with a cloth from the basin.
She cleaned him too, gently wiping the blood away.
She’d bled. She’d heal. And tomorrow morning, if the baby slept and her body agreed, she would do it again, perhaps with some oil to ease the way this time.
With more patience, too, now that she was certain that a gargoyle cock was not something to survive but something to savor.
She kissed his stone mouth again and again. Through the bond, faint but real, she felt him smile.