Chapter 25
The evening dragged on without any incident and actually turned out to be quite fun.
It was way after midnight when I said my goodbyes to the group and headed back to my room.
Taking off my heels was a relief and although I loved the dress, I was quite happy to take it off and jump back into my comfortable shorts and shirt for the night.
I decided to do only what was absolutely necessary tonight because I was exhausted. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put my hair up in a bun all in record time. Soon enough I was laying in bed, cuddled up under the softest blanket.
I grabbed my stationary and a quill and started writing a letter to my mother, telling her about everything I had seen on this trip. I was just about to close up the envelope, when a little piece of paper appeared on my lap. I smiled, already knowing who it was from.
“Did you get up into your room safely? Theo”
I scribbled back.
“I almost got lost in this maze,
but I am all safe and tucked up in bed.
And you? Still at the party? M”
It took only a few seconds for an answer to appear
“Yep, but I’d rather go to sleep as well. T”
I sank into the pillows and pictured him among the other gods, probably debating some weighty matters while sneaking mental notes to me. The thought made my chest flutter. Here he was, surrounded by brilliance and beauty and power, and still, he wanted to talk to me.
“Do you want me to run into the hallway
and scream ‘fire, fire!’ or something like that?
Give you a way out?”
It took a little while longer for him to respond.
“Oh Fates, please do. Just barely escaped
the most boring Faerie of this universe.
And that means a lot coming from me,
I have read the chronicles of the Penepolysian wars.
Twice.”
I laughed, remembering all too well that I’d actually dozed off when he mentioned the Chronicle in one of our lessons. I was about to reply when another message appeared from him.
“I wanted to ask you something,
but it’s very personal and you don’t have to respond.”
Intriguing.
“Shoot.”
He didn’t respond instantly. Had he run into an acquaintance again, or was he stalling?
“Tonight, when you met Veridus,
what did you see when you looked at him?”
That was an odd question and not something I would consider personal.
“You’re odd, Theo. But I’ll indulge you.
I simply saw him, I think.
. Grey hair, green eyes with a scar on the left side of his face.
Why do you ask?”
I slid out of bed, getting myself a glass of water as I could feel a headache coming on. When I returned, another note had appeared.
“Veridus is the the God of Stories and Lies. He governs the realm of storytelling,
where every tale, true or false, shapes the world. He is the keeper of forgotten histories
and the spinner of lies that become legends.
His face shifts depending on who’s looking at him,
reflecting their deepest desires or secrets.
But it seems that he wasn’t up to his usual tricks tonight
if you simply saw him in his truest form.”
A knot formed in my stomach, because it was not entirely true that he had seemed like any other God.
The way he stared at his hands and the way he looked at me had felt strange at the time, but now the memory hit hard.
His hands were covered in golden paint like Theo’s, only smeared, as if someone had touched him or he had touched something.
I was debating whether to tell Theo when another note arrived.
“You are not responding.
Either you have gone to sleep or something
else happened with Veridus.”
Damn it, why was he so perceptive? It would have been easy enough to just pretend that I was asleep, but I had read enough romance novels to know that keeping a secret like that never did any good.
“Not sleeping, just debating.
There was actually something odd about the way he looked.”
I messaged back and told him about the smeared golden hands that I had seen and most importantly, Veridus had seen. And from the look in Veridus’ eyes, he had known exactly who these hands belonged to.
Theo did not respond, and I started pacing the room. Had I said too much? Was he just now confronting the God of Lies about our exchange?
To my relief, a note from Theo appeared on my nightstand.
“He won’t be a problem.
He might be a trickster, but he can be trusted to keep his mouth shut.”
That was all he had to say? He must have understood the significance of what I had seen, didn’t he? I knew he was quite literally innocent, but surely he must have realized that Veridus’ hands represented everything I desired? I grabbed my quill once again.
“Is that all that you are going to say about this?”
His response came quickly.
“What else do you want me to say, Maelis?
That my hands would have looked just like that
if you hadn’t stepped out of the veil this morning?
That I wished my paint was smeared all over your body and not just on my hands?
That I paint myself every day to remind myself not
to look at you for too long because I know
I am so dangerously close to risking everything
just to be able to touch you just once?”
My chest felt impossibly tight, and my legs kicked under the duvet as if they had a life of their own.
Every word he sent made me want to laugh, squeal, and melt all at once.
Dangerous territory, I reminded myself, but I couldn’t stop.
I was completely, absurdly, addicted to him, trying and failing to resist at the same time.
“You know that I feel the same way, don’t you?
I ache to touch you, kiss you, be in your arms.”
I sent off the letter, practically holding my breath to see what he’d say in return. I was pacing my room, forgotten was the tiredness I had felt earlier. A letter appeared and seconds later another flooded in.
The first one read:
“You are making it difficult for me
to follow the conversation, wordsmith.”
The second one simply said:
“You should go to sleep.”
But Fates, he had no idea how far I was from sleep, and I’d meant to tell him. Then… I changed my mind.
“You are right, you should go back to your conversation.”
His response came quickly.
“That’s it? You gave up easily.”
He was disappointed. Because he might say that he wanted me to sleep and stop distracting him, but in reality, he didn’t want our conversation to end. The realization made me brave and so I decided to go one step further.
“No, you are right.
You are talking to very important people
down there and I don’t want to be distracting you.”
His response came quickly again.
“Bullshit.”
Fates—damn it. I could hear him say that single word in my head, in that impossibly sexy voice, and I was undone. Heat pooled low in me, and my hand shook as I scribbled down my response:
“Honestly, stop messaging me, I am kinda busy right now.”
I got comfortable in bed now, dimmed the lights in my room and closed my eyes, waiting for his response.
“I am sure you want me to ask you
what you’re doing that you are so busy, don’t you?”
He was teasing me, and I was fucking loving it.
“You’re the God of Wisdom, pretty sure you can
figure it out without me having to tell you.”
A few seconds passed.
“With the way this conversation is going,
I am pretty sure that I will be ‘busy’ the whole night too.”
Fuck… the thought of him naked in his room, his hands on his cock, thinking about me was almost too much for me. This was actual torture, but the best kind.
“Shocking! And here I thought I was talking to the purest of them all.”
I could almost hear him chuckle at that.
“I am a 500-year-old-virgin, Mae. How do you think I cope?”
This man had me going from being turned on to laughing until I cried and I had never experienced anything like it.
“Would you like me to tell you what I am doing right now?”
No idea where this bravery of mine came from. It probably wasn’t my brain doing the talking right now. His answers consisted of two words.
“No. Yes.”
I smiled and got comfortable in my bed.
“I keep wondering how your hands would feel in mine. That day in your
office when I put my hand on yours, I could feel the strength in it,
the raw power flowing over into my body.
I wonder what it would feel like to have your palms
holding my face, stroking your thumb over my bottom lip…”
I was so damn turned on, but I knew I had to take it slow. Give him time to decide whether he wanted me to continue or if it was too much for him.
“I just spilled my drink because of you.
You are driving me insane, do you know that?”
My smile faltered.
“It’s your choice, Theo.
I would never want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
A new letter dropped in my lap.
“It’s just words, isn’t it? That’s what you said.
It’s just words, it’s not like I am actually standing in front of you,
holding your face between my hands and leaning down
to finally kiss those beautiful lips of yours.
I have been dreaming about those lips since the first time I saw you.”
My breath caught in my throat, his words echoed everything I had imagined.
“Yes, and it’s just words when I tell you
that I would fist my hands in your sexy ass uniform
and pull you closer to me when our tongues touch
and our breaths become quicker.”
I couldn’t stop myself any longer and took off my shirt, exposing my breasts to the cold air.
“You have no idea what you are doing to me.
I just had to excuse myself from a conversation
because I was afraid someone would notice
certain parts of my… basic anatomy.
Thinking of you makes me so hard…”
I laughed again at that, remembering our night at his office when I had gotten a glimpse of his otherworldly upper body. A second note dropped.
“I am heading up to my room now, troublemaker.”
I blew out a breath and let my hand wander over my breasts.
“I wish it was your hand stroking down from my neck over my breasts.
Your warm palms against my nipples, teasing me.”
It took a few minutes for him to respond, but at some point, I heard him coming up the stairs, breathing heavily as if he had been running and his door closing with a thud.
“You are so beautiful. I am pretty sure
I could spend hours just worshiping your perfect tits.”
Fuck.
“I am so wet for you, Theo.
I wish you could just feel for yourself how much you turn me on.”
The notes came back quicker now, he had obviously made it to his bed.
“I get so hard every time I look at you, it’s like a curse. I keep thinking about how I want to run my hands over your stomach, lower and lower until all I can feel is how ready you are for me.”
It was getting harder and harder to draw breath into my lungs.
“Hmmm… what do you do when you think about me?”
I wrote back. I needed to hear him tell me. His response elicited a shiver from me because it painted a picture in my head that almost pushed me over the edge.
“I imagine that my hands are your hands,
stroking up and down on my cock while my hand
is in your hair and my tongue in your mouth.”
Fates damn it, he knew exactly what he was talking about. Another note dropped.
“I imagine rubbing my fingers over your clit, coating my hands with your wetness rather than golden paint. I imagine the way you twitch around my fingers as you cum on my hand. I imagine the way you would stroke yourself in front of me, wetting your hand between your legs to smear your wetness all over my cock…”
This was it. I was going to die from want and what a way to go it would be!
“Fates, Theo. I am so close…”
I heard the rustle of paper.
“Maelis, I want you to cum for me
and I want to hear you all the way from your room.
Can you do that for me?”
Oh my. I knew it wouldn’t take much for me to cum, I was so close already.
“I’d do anything for you.”
And with that, I put my quill down, closed my eyes and let myself get lost in thoughts of Theo, stroking me harder and faster and not putting a damper on my moans.
I came with an intensity that I had not experienced in a long time, my orgasm ripping through me like a tidal wave.
Stars exploded in front of my eyes and it took me a minute or two to catch my breath.
My legs had clamped over my hand, and I was still twitching with little waves of pleasure, like small electric shocks rocked my very core. A note appeared next to my pillow.
“Wow, that was so fucking hot.”
I smiled and searched for my quill, which had gotten lost in the sheets.
“I think you got mixed up at birth. No way you are pure.”
I got up and washed myself. My legs were drenched, and I definitely had to change my undergarments. When I came back, a note was waiting for me.
“I read a lot, you know? Not just history books. But books can only teach me so much. Hearing you… that’s something no book could ever give me.
The way you sound—it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Oh Fates no. I knew I had been loud, and had tried not to stifle my pleasure. But I hadn’t thought about the consequences that someone else might hear me too.
“So, you did enjoy listening to me cum for you?”
I asked cheekily.
“I did, thank you for asking.
So much so that I made a mess all over my stomach
and going to need to take a shower now.”
I cuddled up in my blanket and wrote a last message.
“I wish you were here.”
And his answer twinged my heart.
“Me too, troublemaker.”