Chapter 30
By the time I pulled away to breathe, I was dizzy, lost in hours of kissing on his couch, with dinner quietly cooking in the background.
My lips were swollen and my undergarments were drenched. We had done nothing but kissed and stroked each other’s backs, but I had felt him growing hard under me the second our mouths had touched. And oh boy, it felt like he actually did have a rather large book down his pants…
He was breathing hard as well, looking absolutely delicious with his hair all mussed up and his shirt crinkled from my holding on to him.
“We should check on dinner,” he rasped. I was about to get up when he pulled me back down on him.
“I have changed my mind, wordsmith. I can’t let you go.
” A little shriek escaped me when he stood up and with his hands on my ass carried me over to the kitchen.
He sat me down on the kitchen counter and kissed me again, deep and long.
I sighed into his mouth, and he responded with a groan, deepening our kiss even further. “Food. Maelis. We need food,” he chided, and I put my hands up in protest.
“Don’t blame me, it’s all you, my lordship.”
He stepped back from me, watching me as I leaned back on my hands and smiled at him.
“Fuck, you are so beautiful,” he said, and he was just about to come back over when I jumped to the ground and pretended to push him away.
“Nah nah nah, Auretheos. Dinner first.” We took the meat out of the stove and it had actually turned out pretty well. The baked potatoes looked amazing as well and with our homemade sauce and some salad it almost resembled something out of Enbergin’s kitchen.
We started out sitting across from each other, but after a few bites I shifted my chair closer, resting my legs lightly in his lap. His grin widened, mischievous and delighted, and he leaned over to press a gentle kiss to my temple.
“You are the sweetest,” he murmured.
We ate, talked, and laughed, and for a while, it felt as if the world beyond these walls had vanished. Just as I was about to start washing up, Theo wiggled a finger at me.
“No work today, wordsmith.” He said, and with a small flick, the dishes vanished.
I leaned back against him, savoring the simplicity of the moment, how easily we fit together here, in this moment.
He finally got up and held his hand out towards me. I took it and he led me upstairs to the master bedroom. We were kissing again before we even walked through the door and the only reason I didn’t melt into a puddle was that he was holding me effortlessly in his strong arms.
I pushed against his chest and put some distance between us.
“All right, Theo. Here are some rules.”
He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but remained where he was standing next to the bed.
“Before we go any further than this,” I pointed back and forth between our lips, to which he smiled broadly, “I have some questions that I need answering.”
He stepped closer.
“…and…,” I halted him with a raised hand, “I need you to promise me that you will tell me to stop if you feel uncomfortable.”
“Not going to happen, but I agree to the conditions, at least to the second,” he answered.
“Good, because you need to understand that I didn’t come with you today because I was expecting anything to happen.
” I said earnestly, and a sheepish grin spread over his face.
He took three quick steps towards me, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me up so my legs could cradle his hips.
“Liar.” He chuckled against my throat and started kissing me along the side of my neck. I jokingly pushed at his shoulders and tried to wiggle free.
“If you want me to take things slow, Mae, you should stop doing that,” he laughed and looked down at where I straddled his hips.
“Sorry.” I murmured.
He walked us over to a big chair in the corner of the room. He placed me on his lap, my legs straddling him.
“So… what’s your first question?” he said, leaning forward to nibble on my earlobe.
“Last night, when we said goodnight, you said I was wearing your insignia. What did you mean by that?”
He looked up in surprise. “I thought you knew, didn’t you?”
I shook my head and his brows furrowed.
“The earrings you are wearing match my godly seal. It’s a quill and a crescent moon. The quill represents the act of writing and recording knowledge, while the crescent moon symbolizes wisdom, mystery, and the cunning that comes with understanding the hidden aspects of the world.”
He lifted his shirt over his head and seeing his bare skin covered in tattoos was breathtaking. To my disappointment, he wasn’t trying to turn me on—well, not yet anyway—but he showed me a tattoo on his chest.
“If you look closely at the spiral formed by the ink, you can see that it resembles the profile of an owl, but only from a specific angle. A representation of how true wisdom and cunning are often hidden and require insight to uncover.”
I leaned closer to inspect the tattoo and a breath caught in my throat.
“It looks just like the earrings,” I whispered.
He nodded. “The shopkeeper saw you looking at them the first day at the Lodge and sent them over straight away. She said that I would find the right moment to give them to you and that they had always belonged to you.”
Tears filled my eyes.
Theo leaned back on the chair, but never stopped running his fingertips over my bare arms.
“I used to dream of you. Not of you as a person, but of the wordsmith. I could feel your power calling to me, but I could never find you. I always assumed you would be a man, simply because females played no part in my life whatsoever. Sometimes I saw little glimpses of the world around you in my dreams, but never enough to see who you were.”
I nodded and understanding dawned on me.
“That’s why you were so surprised to see me that first day at the temple.”
He grinned and ran his hands through his hair.
“It was bad enough that you were a woman, but you were just so stunning, Mae. It was agony to look at you, feeling this pull towards you and not being able to give in to it.”
I rose from his lap, pulling my shirt over my head.
He groaned as he watched me sit down in front of his chair between his legs.
I sat up straight, but he was so tall that I could not reach his face with my mouth.
So I took his hand in mine and started planting kisses along the palm of his hands.
My tongue darted out and traced little circles on his palm.
He drew in a shaky breath.
“Honestly, I am so sensitive, you could just massage my little toe all day and I’d be the happiest God alive.
” He chuckled, and I smiled into his palm.
I had never thought about it before, but it made sense that he reacted strongly to physical touch, after being denied any kind of physical comfort all his life.
I’d have to be careful and make sure he knew he was in control.
He lifted his hand and cupped my cheek lovingly.
I marveled at the gentleness of his touch.
“Massaging your toe wasn’t quite what I had in mind, but all right,” I teased and pretended to move away but he held me steady with his hand.
I laughed and leaned up again, offering my mouth for a kiss. He leaned forward and the second our lips touched the world was on fire again. I could have stayed like this, but I wanted to touch him, show him what he had been missing out on.
So I gently pushed him back into the chair.
I lifted my hands and let them run over his muscled chest, reveling in the feeling of his unbridled strength.
He groaned at the touch, closing his eyes and lifting his arm up behind his head.
I leaned forward and started kissing his chest, from his pectoral muscles deeper and deeper down to the hem of his trousers.
“Do you want me to stop?”
I breathed, but he opened his eyes and looked straight into my soul.
“No, please don’t stop.”
So. Hot.
My hands slid down his chiseled torso and over the front of his pants, where I could already see his hardness straining against the fabric.
With light touches I let my hand glide up and down a few times, drawing a ragged breath from Theo.
With shaky fingers I unbuttoned his pants and slid down his trousers so he was only wearing his shorts.
I hooked my finger into his breeches and pulled them down a few stretches, just so the tip of his cock was showing. I leaned forward and let my tongue glide over the tip, the taste salty in my mouth.
He rubbed his hand over his face and blew out a breath.
“Maelis, I can already tell you now that this is going to end in embarrassment for me because I am not going to last a minute if you keep doing that.”
I chuckled and got off my knees.
“Let’s go over to the bed and try something else then.”
He opened his eyes and looked at me, his eyes filled with lust and need. He took my offered hand and shook off the trousers around his ankles. We walked over to the bed and he lay down flat on his back.
I sat up next to him and turned my back, giving him a silent signal to undo my bra. He fumbled with the clasp, muttering under his breath.
“I… I’ve never read anything about these before,” he admitted, cheeks flushing slightly as he struggled.
I bit back a laugh, watching him finally manage to free it after a few tense seconds. The bra went flying unceremoniously to the floor. I turned around and laid back, giving him a smug grin.
“Well,” I said, “at least you’re persistent.”
“I can solve complex formulas in my sleep, but this… this defeats me.”
He kissed me deeply, the bra all but forgotten.
“As it’s so dangerous for me to touch you, how about you touch me first?”
I asked and his responding growl let me know that he was all for it.