Chapter 23 Domineering
TWENTY-THREE
DOMINEERING
“You’ve been staring at the wall since before I woke up .
. .” Avian shifts uneasily on his feet, and Roman takes a long look at me before he slips out the bedroom door after Zilo.
Worry creases his brow, but he and I both know he doesn’t have time to pause and dwell on me any longer than he already has.
Not when there’s a shitshow kingdom—queendom—to attend to.
The door clicks closed so softly that I find myself lingering on the empty sound of it long after the two of them are gone.
Nyra lost her son. Her son and her husband. All because of me. If I was her, I’d kill me. And she’s made an attempt almost every day to speak kindly to me. To show that we’re sisters above anything else.
But no matter how far down you try to push bitterness down, it always simmers back up. This morning was a showing of all those emotions she’s tried to ignore. They came crashing out with year’s worth of choked back tears.
And more secrets than I was ready for.
“Cersia,” Avian whispers.
The bed dips, and then his warm hand is against mine.
“What’s wrong?” When I finally meet his pale gray eyes, he’s searching my face for things he can’t see but most definitely can sense in mysterious ways.
“I—” I don’t know how to put it into words . . .
All the things come shoving through my mind: I ruined my sister’s life. She’s sleeping with the enemy. I’m not who I thought I was. I’m not a shifter. I’m not beautifully blessed . . . I’m . . .
“I’m ordinary,” I whisper with so much sadness weighting my words, I feel them sinking right back down deep into my chest.
I’m not ready to talk about the way Nyra looked at me like she hated me. But the basic parts of me that are lacking, that’s something I can admit to.
“What?”
“I—I—I’m not even beautiful. It was a lie. My mother lied. I’m not—I’m not beautiful,” I shriek the ridiculous thoughts out so fast that I can’t even make sense of them.
And it’s clear when I look at Avian’s uneasy and lost features that he can’t either.
“Cers, you’re . . . of course you’re beautiful.” He pulls me against him and starts stroking my hair the way you would an arrogant, hissing cat. “You know you’re beautiful. What—what the hell are you talking about?”
A pathetic sniffle sneaks out before I can stop it, and in the ugliest pent-up voice I can muster, I say, “But I’m not the most beautiful.
I’m average beautiful. Maybe a bit above average at best, but that’s it.
You know?” I peer up at him with my duck lips quivering from the tears I’m choking back, and he just stares so blankly at me.
A beat passes as he holds me tensely like he’s holding together the last of my wavering brain cells in his very arms.
“Cers, love, I have no idea what you’re saying. Did you hit your head in the middle of the night?”
And then the tears come flooding out. Big walloping fat tears come out in wails of shaking breaths that I can’t control.
“Oh shit,” he whispers more to himself than to me.
“Nyra’s fucking Vanitee and Grandma fucking Seelvie hates me,” I cry with a flailing wave of my hands at my sides.
“Honestly, that’s the first normal thing you’ve said all morning.” He holds my head against his smooth chest, and he just waits. He doesn’t try to sooth the pain he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t press me for more.
He just clings to that patience of his while I fall apart against his strength. And he uses that strength to instill a feeling of safety. A sense that everything will eventually be alright.
And it will be.
I hope.
The tears pass, coming quieter and quieter until they dry up completely, and still, he lets me lie against him. My messy thoughts sort and align one by one, until they seem in order and able to be spoken.
With a slow exhale, I do just that.
“My mother lied to our community. I’m not a shifter. I wasn’t blessed by Goddess Moon.”
I sniffle once more, and he gives me a minute before replying.
“You’re something, though. You’ve felt the beast inside you. And you don’t need the goddess’s blessing. You’re fucking gorgeous. As for the rest, you’re definitely anything but ordinary, Cersia.” The warmth of his calm tone eases the tangle of anxiety within me.
I smile against his damp chest. My fingers trace the soft lines of his abdomen, and I cannot believe how lucky I am to a man like him like him in my life. All three of them really. They’re a pain in the ass, don’t get me wrong. But they’re a pain in my ass in the best possible way.
“We’ll figure out your heritage, Cers,” he says just before pressing a sweet kiss to the top of my head.
My entire heart melts.
It’s a lovey-dovey puddle that I have never felt before in my life.
“Avian?” I say his name like a question, and he answers just the same.
“Yeah?”
My gaze lifts, and he stares deeply into me like he sees every part of me that even I myself cannot begin to see.
“You’re incredible.” My eyes are a bit wet all over again for a different reason now. But he doesn’t give me time to wallow in those crazy emotions.
His lips press to mine, and I feel the shy smile of his as he slowly takes me in: a gentle kiss. A tease of his tongue along mine. A deepening, mind-and-body connection of his mouth devouring mine.
“Avian?” I whisper like a question once more.
“Mmm?” He groans that retort along my lips before sliding his tongue along mine so perfectly that I feel it deep within my core.
There’s a hazy moment where I don’t know what I want to say. The emotions are hot and flooding and drifting and slamming all at once.
But then I speak before my mind even processes it all. “I love you.”
That smile pulls at his lips once more as his fingers thread hard through my hair. He kisses me slowly, intimately instead of primitively.
“I love you too,” he says so gently, I feel the warmth of his calming words all through my chest.
It’s the sweetest heartfelt moment.
And then his fingertips dig into my flesh as he grabs my thighs and tosses me back against the mattress. The gasp that escapes my lips is a sound of thrilled surprise.
But he’s always like that.
I never know what this sweet, barbaric man will do from one minute to the next.
The way he shadows over me, gazing down at me like he’s trying to sense my emotions, it just makes me wish like hell he could actually see me.
He never will, but . . .
“That gasp is the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard,” he groans.
My heart hammers harder as he kneels before me, his legs spread wide, accentuating the leanness of his hips, the hardness of his stomach, the broadness of his shoulders.
He’s so damn perfect, it’s hard not to stare.
“You’re quiet . . .” His head tilts, his brow scrunching as he picks apart the meaning in my quietness. “Tell me why.”
My lips part, but it’s harder than I thought it would be to explain reactions and emotions and thoughts all at once to someone who misses the basic cues I never realized I took for granted.
"I—you’re incredibly perfect. Sexy. Visually domineering."
A low chuckle like honey dripping down hot stone shakes out of him. “You think I'm domineering?” His palms lower to either side of his hips, and the way he looks up at me from beneath his heavy brow is a dark look of seduction.
A shiver races along my flesh from where his arms brush against my pants and inner thighs.
“I think you’re as dominant as your situation needs you to be,” I say very carefully and with more thought into the statement than I’d ever realized. “You’re not controlling, but you can take control if need be. You’re not aggressive . . . unless you need to be.”
He crawls closer, hovering his hard body just over mine, skimming skin-to-skin contact with so much minimal touch that it makes me ache for more.
“And how controlling and aggressive do you think I’m about to be, Cersia?” His lips nearly touch mine as he speaks sensually along my lips, giving me his words but taking my breath along with them.
With gentle slowness, his big palm grips my hip, and the moment he settles his weight against me, my pelvis reacts.
My body melds against his, and the hardness between my thighs presses firmer against me the more I grind into him.
He works with me as we ever so slightly push and pull to feel every part of one another in just the right places.
“I think you’re going to be as aggressive as the situation calls for,” I say in as even and steady a tone as I can manage.
One corner of his lips quirks up in a sexy, sinuous smile.
He darts down so fast, I barely process he’s gone until the warmth of his body is ripped away. And then so are my pants.
In one fast move, he’s gripped them and dragged them down my legs in a tangle of fabric neither one of us cares about at all. The feather-light touch of his fingertips against my panties is a bit more delicate.
“Lace,” he whispers in a delicious tone that tingles right through me. Especially when he lowers his head and presses a slow open-mouthed kiss right against the sheer cloth between my thighs.
A breath shakes from my lungs, but he doesn’t pause to appreciate the sound of it the way he did before. Instead, he opens his mouth and drags the heat of his tongue from my opening all the way up to my clit.
And that damn lace is still separating the sweet feel of his mouth fully against me.
“Avian,” I cry, my fingers threading through his soft braid as he does it over and over again until I’m a shifting, trembling mess beneath him.
“What is it?” he rasps before settling that devious tongue along my folds once more.
And once fucking more, I can’t feel it the way I really want to.
“Please,” I ask, beg, plea.
“Please what?” The knowing fucker asks innocently.
My lashes flutter at first, but then, when I look down at him, his body is comfortably lying between my thighs while his long fingers toy lazily with the edge of my panties over my hips. Oh, he loves this. He’s comfortable and happy to just tease me until I’m shaking for the rest of the day.