Chapter 17 #4
This didn’t feel like duty…it felt like an amorous caress, all her nerves coming alive in every corner he touched. He drew circles on her clit and she whimpered, closing her eyes, her steady breaths gradually becoming shallow. She bit back a small cry, fighting to keep herself quiet.
He smelled soft, as contradictory as that seemed, like her vanilla soap and chamomile room spray.
At the same time, the heat of his body filled her with a sharp adrenaline, like the rush after a good workout.
It was an addictive, oddly soothing sensation that made her want to lick his skin, bite him just to get closer, make him hers—and the frustration that he held her steady by the neck and she couldn’t turn to do so only increased her want.
…What a bizarre thought.
“Slower,” she gasped, then froze, shocked by her own command. But Argos was excellent at taking direction, and her body melted against his, her shock lost to her senses.
She let out a primal moan, but as soon as she slapped her hand over her mouth, Argos took hold of her wrist and pinned it to the wall before them.
“Argos,” she begged—for what, she couldn’t even remember.
She shifted forward, forgetting about decorum completely to lean her forehead against the wall as her husband’s protective heat pressed in behind her.
“There she is,” he praised in her ear.
And from there, Theora couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried, her cries climbing along with her nerves to the peak.
This wasn’t sex, was it? Not in the word’s common use, anyway.
She shouldn’t have been enjoying it so much.
But his hand felt so good against her. She wanted that hand against her every day.
She wanted to wake up to it, like a ritual.
She wanted it hiding under her skirt at the breakfast table, like a game.
But more than anything, she realized, she wanted it to mean something more than just Honor.
She wanted twenty more minutes of this. An hour.
A lifetime. But all too quickly, a cry tore out of her as she felt the release, a sound she’d never heard from herself before that echoed off the water and stone.
She grabbed hold of Argos as another spasm went through her, her knees threatening to buckle.
He held her steady for a moment. All she could hear was her quick pants, feel his warm breath against the back of her neck.
Kiss me, Argos, she wanted to beg, I don’t want this to end.
Instead, he laid his jacket on the bench before easing her down to sit on it.
She closed her eyes, resting the back of her head against the wall as she struggled to catch her breath, gain composure.
It seemed impossible with her legs still shaking as they were, her undergarments soaked through, her pussy throbbing and pulsing like it had a heartbeat of its own.
Sovereign reigns…She’d never imagined anything like that was even possible. To come so hard that way…She’d clearly never had a real orgasm before, if that was how it was supposed to feel.
When she opened her eyes all she could see was her husband—literally, as he stood close, ready to steady her if need be. All she could see was the bulge pressing against the fabric of his pants.
But she only saw it for a moment before he tilted her chin up to look at him. He gave her their loving salute, lingering on her bottom lip.
Sovereign. He must have wiped them off, but his fingers smelled of her, still.
Like every little intimate fold he’d explored.
It disturbed her as much as excited her.
She had an irrational urge to take his fingers into her mouth.
Her lips parted slightly, dying to ask for it.
She shifted her hips, pressing her thighs together to hold herself back.
At her movement, her husband’s gaze flicked over her.
“You want more?” he asked, a deep, quiet growl that threatened to undo her all over again.
Yes. Her body sighed. Yes, yes, yes…
But this time she wanted to know what it felt like to have him inside her, hard and massive and stretching her to the edge of—
Are you insane?
She shook away the fantasies, turning her face away from his touch, squeezing her legs together to ward off any further activity. “Y-you…you should fix…” She waved at his crotch, vaguely. “That.”
Argos turned away from her quickly, adjusting himself…
giving Theora the time she needed to get herself together.
She desperately needed a change of underwear, but there was nothing to be done about that now.
She didn’t even have any perfume to spray, paranoia convincing her that the entire boat would be able to smell that she had just had sex.
But there wasn’t much to be done about that, either. Nothing but to distract herself.
“How did you learn how to do that?” she asked.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Do what?”
She rolled her eyes and managed to stand, but the cool sensation of the cavern air beneath her skirt just made her aware of just how drenched her panties were. They were barely serving their purpose at this point, but removing them with Argos standing right there was out of the question.
“You know what,” she said, crossing her arms.
Finally he turned to face her, his expression not giving away the answer. But Theora was less concerned with that, and more disappointed that his hard-on was gone. Sovereign, Theora. Stop objectifying your bodyguard.
“Usually,” said Argos, “people get good at things through practice.”
Theora made a sound in her throat she couldn’t quite process. “Gross.”
“What’s gross about it?” His voice was suddenly bitter enough to make Theora cringe at her own reaction. Gross had been a poor word choice. She should’ve been grateful for all that practice, and what it had done for her…Instead, she was jealous of all who’d come before her.
She reached out to offer him their salute, freezing when he lowered his head to look at the ground.
“Argos?” she asked, worried her words had truly hurt him. “Are you okay?”
He stared at his feet for a moment, as if making sense of his emotions. Theora stepped toward him, and he looked up with an expression that halted her. She wanted to kiss that uncertain brow of his. Reassure him. But of what?
So she waited, her breath locked in his silence. After a moment he released it, the look in his eyes making her knees threaten to buckle before he murmured, “You just…taste how I imagined, that’s all.”
Like butterscotch lollipops.
Theora felt her breath tremble at his words. He had…cleaned his fingers with his…fuck. Part of her wished she hadn’t been so overcome in the moment, that she could have watched him do it.
The other part of her, the queenly part, knew that that kind of thinking was far too dangerous.
“I’ve flustered you again,” said Argos, but there was no hint of teasing in his tone. Dread Sovereign, it was worse than that. She pressed on her lower stomach, as if that would stop her panties from getting wet.
“We shouldn’t touch each other anymore,” she murmured, turning away.
Argos took a breath, running his fingers through his hair. “I overdid it. I should’ve never asked that of you.”
“It doesn’t matter how much, how little. The problem is you’re too good at it, and I’m just not…used to that.”
“Be honest with yourself, Theora,” said Argos, his voice as stern as it was sweet. “Are you not used to it? Or do you just not allow yourself to be?”
There was a burning sensation behind her eyes that couldn’t be soothed.
She turned away from him, tilting her head back slightly, in case the tears disobeyed her efforts and threatened the integrity of her eye makeup.
She felt herself trembling as his massive presence approached, wanting his touch and yet unsure if she could ever bear it again.
His hand slipped around her waist, the other across her chest and both shoulders. She didn’t fight the embrace, just to prove she didn’t have to, to prove it didn’t affect her…to prove that this was only cuddling to get them used to each other, and nothing more.
Sovereign. Any excuse except that she wanted it.
There was no way Argos could have learned to do things like that, living in the barracks his whole life. She wasn’t na?ve enough to think no Warrior had ever done so, but it was against his Honor…and the one thing Argos upheld higher than anything was Honor.
Theora held his arm against her chest, suddenly realizing why Boada had chosen him. “This isn’t your first relationship, is it?”
“No,” he murmured to her hair.
No wonder he was so good with his hands, at making her feel safe. And then a pin stabbed through her gut. He would never have had a sexual relationship outside of claiming…and that meant…
“What happened to her?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. Or he did, in the way he quickly moved away, no longer comfortable. “Vespula happened to her,” he finally said, his voice tinged with anger.
Theora’s stomach ached for him, but he didn’t stay to be comforted. He put his useless glasses back on, shouldering his jacket as he opened the door, holding it wide.
“I think we’ve made our point,” he said, his voice now leveled to proper public-displaying stoicism. “Let’s go see how mad we made Venita.”