Renick
Iexhale a frustrated breath, tossing on this too-soft bed.
The mint and sugar are gone, having done nothing to help me sleep. I can’t stop thinking about Sera in the garden. The way the silver moonlight highlighted her beautiful features. The way she looked at me, wicked and daring.
I stare at the ceiling, unable to stop thinking about the sugar melting on her tongue. The way her lips parted for my fingers. How her tongue followed my thumb, lips closing around it. And the taste of her—gods, the brief, brutal moment of tasting her on my thumb.
The fucking warmth where she let her lips close around my finger as if testing me, leaving me in a maddening state I still haven’t recovered from.
Shit.
I drag my hand down my face, my cock hard and aching, begging to be stroked off.
Fuck, sleep is not happening.
I rise from the bed and drag on my black tunic and trousers, then creep into the corridor, the palace breathing around me with the creak of cooling stone. There’s a distant flicker of a torch in its sconce, a guard’s snore from somewhere down the hallway.
I move on muscle memory through the north wing.
With the revolt, many of the guards have been summoned to the borders, and I find the door to the garden with ease.
I tell myself I’m just going for more mint for my tea.
That I’ll walk the grounds for an hour to clear my head and return, try to sleep.
I tell myself a lot of things. All of which are lies.
I’m going in search of her.
The night air is cool when I push through to the garden. The moon hangs low, not quite full. But it’s bright enough to turn the world around me into a charcoal sketch. The small garden is silver and black in the light, the violet petals reminding me of her.
But she’s not here.
I stand at the edge of her row of poisonous plants for a long moment, listening to the soft wind and to my own pulse and to the part of me that whispers terrible, damning things.
The river is just past the eastern wall, through the orchard. I look up at the moon, gauging it.
While she didn’t invite me there directly, she did tell me about it. And I don’t believe Seravyn Morvaine is a woman who shares her secrets lightly.
I walk to the orchard gate and push it open.
The orchard at night is its own enchanted realm.
Apple trees leaning toward each other, their branches knotted overhead.
The path between them is dappled silver where the moon breaks through the leaves.
The smell of fruit and earth and dry grass rises around me with every defiant step.
My boots make little sound over the soft ground.
A habit from years of practice, stealth honed in my bones.
Somewhere a night bird calls as I move past the trees, a man being pulled. There is no part of this where I have any choice. My feet are taking me, and I’m simply following.
At the sound of moving water, I slow my approach, instinct kicking in. Habit from a thief. I move to the edge of the orchard, where the apple trees thin and the reeds begin, stopping in the shadow of a patch of trees.
And my heart vaults at the sight of her.
The river curves through a clearing, running broad and shallow over a bed of pale stones. The rushing water catches the moonlight exactly the way she described it, like poured silver, molten.
And angels above, she’s there in it.
Sera stands waist-deep in the dark river, her back half-turned to me, her hair loose and wet down her slender pale shoulders.
Her white nightdress clings to her body, practically transparent.
The fabric molds to every curve, and the moon is being extremely generous with what it chooses to illuminate.
A pained groan works free from deep in my throat.
I should leave. A decent man would leave. But fuck, the devastating sight of her keeps my feet rooted like the tree I’m leaned against to hold me upright. I have never in my abysmal life made a decision more thoroughly than I make the decision to stay.
My breath has stopped in my chest. My hand finds the trunk of the tree, fingers raking the rough bark, as if needing the sting of pain to sober me.
The reeds are tall here, giving me plenty of shelter.
So I can watch her like a damned heathen as she trails her fingers through the surface of the water.
She tips her head back, letting the moonlight pour across her throat, down the seductive line of her—chin to clavicle to the shadow of her peaked nipples under the wet silk.
I’m already so gods-damn aroused from just the erotic sight of her, bathing her body beneath the moon like a goddess.
Then my heart all but leaps from my chest when her hand starts to drift. Down her throat. Across her collarbone. Down the ruinous slope of her chest, slow and exploratory. Her palm flattens over her breast through the nightdress, and her head tips back farther.
And I watch. Gods help me, I watch as her lips part on a small, soft sound that the river almost swallows.
I hear it just enough to torture me, and I swear I will hear it for the rest of my wretched life.
My body, which has been a battlefield since the moment I saw her in the throne room, surrenders entirely. The blood leaves my brain. My hand goes white where it grips the tree bark. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t tear my gaze away from her.
Sera eases through the water, coming up on the riverbank. Her knees sink into the silt, the river water rising mid-thigh. And bathed by the moonlight, I can see every beautiful, sensual inch of her. The outline of her heavy breasts, her nipples hard against the sheer material.
Daringly, she moves her hand lower, exploring over her belly, pelvis, ratcheting my heart rate the moment her fingertips draw the hem of her nightdress up to rest just below her hips, before her fingers dip beneath it.
I mutter a crass oath, back pressed hard against the tree, as I watch her sensually touch herself between her thighs.
The tilt of her head, the soft rise and fall of her shoulders, the way her free hand goes to her throat and presses gently as if she’s feeling her own pulse race—I take it all in, transfixed.
As her hand moves rhythmically between her spread thighs, her lips part, and a real sound escapes her—low but unmistakable.
Her hips shift forward, chasing the stroke of her fingers.
Her free hand drops to her breast, fingers pinching her peaked nipple, an action to draw another soft sound from her as her hips cant with more demand, more urgency into her hand.
The tantalizing sight of her pleasuring herself on this riverbank hits me like a physical blow. Some guttural sound escapes me, and I clamp my hand over my mouth before it can fully form, my throat working, my body responding without permission.
And then—
Her eyes are searching the line of the reeds, the shadow where I stand concealed. And I know with a certainty that lights my entire body on fire that she’s looking for me. Her gaze never finds me, but I’m still intoxicated by the chance of being caught watching her.
Through the dark, through the thick wall of reeds, my gaze stays locked on her, and I see the faint flicker of a smile at the corner of her mouth—that mouth that I’m dying to taste.
It emboldens me, and I daringly stand taller.
Her lips part on another sound, a small shudder, a hitch in her breath, the tilt of her hips into her own touch—fuck.
Her hips rock against her hand in search of relief, and I’m just as desperate to find it with her while she undoes herself.
I’m dying against this tree, a man-shaped pillar of want, gripping the bark like it’s the only thing keeping me held back. My pulse is roaring. My body is begging. My trousers are agony. I have never in my life been confronted with anything I have desired more than her.
My hand drops of its own volition. I rub over my achingly hard cock straining against my pants. Then I’m pulling the drawstring, setting myself free. Eyes never straying from her, I bring my hand up and lick a path over my palm, wetting it just enough before I grasp the base of my cock.
I bite off a hiss. The relief is so sharp it nearly drops me to my knees.
I press my shoulder blades harder against the tree as I take myself firmer in my hand.
I close my eyes for half a second at the feel of stroking myself and then open them, refusing to miss a single instant, refusing to look away from her even as my own pleasure starts to climb hot and unbearable in my strained muscles.
I want her eyes on me. Right now, as I listen to her breathy moans, as I watch her ride her own fingers. I imagine stalking from the shadows and laying her down in the shallow water, wrapping her inviting thighs around my shoulders and burying my face between them—
“Gods, fuck.” The muttered expletive is stripped from me on a harsh breath.
A shiver grips my bones, and a crackling pressure builds at the base of my spine. I’m thrusting into my hand, chasing my own release with frantic, hard snaps of my hips.
Whatever this unholy communion is between us, I drown in it, the way I’m dying to drown in her.
Her movements quicken. Her chest rises and falls in sharp, shallow rhythms. Her lips part on a sound that is hungry and unrestrained, and it travels right to my groin, undoing me.
My grip tightens around my cock. My breath shatters out of me.
Sera arches her back, knees digging deeper into the muddy bank as her body trembles, and I’m desperate to taste her, bury myself deep inside her, feel her clench hot and tight around me—
Gratification is cut short at her sudden stillness, holding me locked—but then her eyes seal shut, her beautiful features strain in pleasure as a sound breaks out of her that gods-damn ruins me.
And I want it. I want to make it mine.
Head braced against the tree, chin cocked and jaw clenched, I stroke myself in fast, desperate moves as I take in the last of her shuddering pleasure. Then I fall right after her.
I come with a violent groan, biting the inside of my own forearm to stay silent, my hips jerking, the wave of pleasure tearing through me with such force the corners of my vision flickers as I spill hot over the edge of my hand.
The rock of my hips slows, my hand loosens, letting the last of my release quake through my body with the aftershocks. Breath heaving from my chest.
I have never felt more wrecked in my life. Even now, I can’t look away from her.
It’s grown darker over the river, and her features are unreadable, yet somehow I feel she’s as wrecked as I am while I watch her dip beneath the water. She sinks down into the river until only her shoulders and her face are visible.
I remain slumped against the bark, my forearm aching from where my teeth left a print. I’m still watching her, unable to move.
Finally I straighten and tie my trousers, my muscles still taut and shaking.
I have never kissed her, never properly touched her, never even confessed aloud that I want all these things and more—that I’d raze this entire palace to the ground for the right to be the one who touches her.
I wait in the shadows until she’s finished her night swim. Not until she’s cloaked and wandering back through the orchard toward the palace do I dare to move. I follow from a distance, just to make sure she returns safely.
As she slips through the garden door, I bow—alone, in the dark, to a woman who’ll never see just how completely, ruinously, devotedly I am hers.
She’s become the sovereign of every crumbling thing in my life, and I have just been crowned her most willing fool.