Chapter 25 #3
Her hips bucked, and he pressed her harder to the wall, locking her in place to make sure she couldn’t move.
He paid attention to the cadence of her breath, how it sped in desire instead of fear, how even as they did something they both knew they shouldn’t, she drove him forward with the way her leg tightened on his waist. He watched the passageway in his peripheral, knowing deep down that she was trusting him to protect her.
Trusting him to be her eyes so she could let go.
He pulled his hand from her bodice and tucked it beneath the hem of her dress, two fingers sliding inside her while he continued to use his thumb against her pleasure. She tossed an arm over her mouth and bit down on her own flesh.
“What would they think if they saw you like this, getting exactly what you want?” Reid asked so quietly. “Letting me do this to you.”
She bit down harder, but he heard her muffled cry. She trembled and started to quicken around his fingers. She was rising for him. She had to be just as sunken into this fantasy as he was—the forbidden taste of it all.
She was doing so much pretending. It was a relief to give her something real.
He kept exactly the same pace, pulling in and out of her, teasing her while he did so. Her breath came quicker. Her body went taut. “I told you I was going to make you come in this hallway,” he growled in her ear.
She cried out into her arm, the sound for his ears alone, and tightened around his fingers.
Her knees buckled with her orgasm, but Reid caught her with his own weight.
He plunged in and out of her, desperate to pull as much pleasure from her as he possibly could.
She panted as he finally slid his fingers out.
But then her hands flew to his breeches, and Reid tried to gain common sense, tried to grasp some part of him that knew the right thing to do was to deny them both this stolen moment. They were wasting time. They were—
Her fingers expertly undid the tie at his waist, and she dipped inside. She wrapped her hand around his erection.
All protest was lost.
Reid hiked up her skirts as she pumped him, a rebellious and thrilling smile on her face, eyes glittering behind her mask.
It took him all of three seconds to place his hands at her thighs and haul her up so her legs wrapped around his waist, and then he maneuvered as strategically as he could to pull her panties to the side.
When he felt her slick entrance at the head of his cock, he plunged himself inside her until he was seated to the hilt, mouth pressing over hers to contain her sounds.
He hadn’t had her in all the ways he wanted to.
Their night in Dihrah was just the beginning.
He intended to have so much more. To discover everything about how she liked being taken, to know each word he could whisper in her ear to make her tighten.
But right now wasn’t about discovery; it was about reclaiming. Reminding.
Reid pulled out just enough to threaten a separation, but then he thrust into her again, and she buried her face in his neck with a gasp.
He fucked her against the wall until her teeth sank into the fabric covering his shoulder.
Until small, muffled cries of pleasure vibrated against where she bit him.
With each stroke of his cock inside her, he felt his feet more firmly planted on the ground.
Felt the truth wind between them like an unbreakable chain.
“Mine,” he growled. “You’re fucking mine.”
Vaasa bit harder, and her teeth threatened to mar his shirt. And then he wondered if that was the point.
“If you want to mark me, Wild One, then do it,” he told her.
Reid almost lost himself when she pawed at the black buttons of his shirt, undoing them until she could wrench the fabric from his shoulder.
He couldn’t help himself from picking up speed when she really sank her teeth into his skin, biting him hard, leaving a mark as if she, too, needed to know that in the wake of their distance, there would still be a trace of her upon him.
He had used words and touch to remind her that he’d laid claim, but in the same fashion as he’d always known her, there was an edge of violence in how she expressed herself.
“That’s right,” he growled as he thrust into her again. “I’m still very much yours.”
Vaasa groaned into his skin, and Reid thrust into her hard, pressure building in his cock with each stroke.
He needed her pleasure again. He needed to feel it around something other than his fingers this time.
She must have been thinking the same thing, because her hand snaked down her body and between her legs.
Reid gauged her needs by the response he earned, settling into the speed and pace that caused her back to arch, that brought forth her whispered “Yes, right there, please.”
She shattered around him, muscles clamping, and he didn’t have the self-control this time to pull himself out of her.
He finished with a stifled groan, and it took the very last ounce of his restraint not to let his voice out.
She clung to him, thighs trembling, breath coming in quick spurts. “Vaasa, can you—”
“Get contraception?” she asked, likely realizing exactly what he did; this had been as impulsive as it could get. “Yes.”
Relief flooded him, though a small lashing came from the voice in his mind that hated the times when he wasn’t as responsible as he felt he needed to be. But then her voice floated between them: “When we are free of this place, I am going to lock you in our bedroom.”
Reid grinned despite himself. “Going to break your little rule and let me take you in my bed?”
Vaasa bit her lip, a smile breaking the edges of her mouth. “It was a stupid rule.”
Reid chuckled softly. Vaasa dropped to the floor and tugged her fingers through her hair, adjusting her dress while Reid tried to hide the evidence on himself. He handed her a handkerchief, and she did her best to clean up any remnant.
“Sachia and Koen are waiting,” Reid whispered, though he hated that he had to say it.
A blush crept up Vaasa’s neck, and he stifled his chuckle. Certainly, they would understand. “I’ll go first,” Vaasa whispered.
She darted out of the hallway, but just as quickly as he watched her go, the sound of her footsteps halted.
“Regína,” Vaasa said, a name Reid didn’t recognize.
A feminine voice spoke in Asteryan, sounding deeply apologetic. Vaasa spoke back. From the distance, Reid assumed someone had just come down the hallway he’d first found Vaasa in. But then Vaasa’s tone sped up. Urgency coated her voice. Reid knew his wife’s anger when he heard it.
And then her footsteps turned hasty, and he realized she was sprinting down the stairs.
Reid stepped out of the stairwell, but it was empty.
He followed to the third floor, poking his head around the corner to see Vaasa push a man he didn’t recognize away from her.
He grabbed her wrist, and Reid almost stepped out on instinct, but then Vaasa twisted her arm to break the man’s grasp.
She stormed past him, and like a wounded puppy dog, the man followed her down the stairs.
It was the same man Sachia had pointed out earlier. Medium build, brown hair.
Her lead sentinel.
Reid pressed his back to the wall, fighting the urge to follow them. It took all his strength to keep his feet planted where they were. If he gave himself away, he gave her away, too. He had to trust that she could defend herself.
After waiting a few moments, Reid descended to the second-floor mezzanine, which was flooded with onlookers, each of them peering over the railing to view the commotion below.
The first floor was covered in Asteryan blue jackets.
Sentinels and the city guard. Customers fled the brothel in droves, crowds pushing to get out.
To his left, he spotted Sachia and Koen, the two of them looking like every other spectator in the massive crowd that had assembled.
He raced to them, and their eyes went wide.
Koen breathed in relief. His Icrurian was low and quick.
“The fortress claimed the heiress was abducted; they’ve practically shut down the city. I’d thought they found you.”
Reid glanced down and scanned the crowd. There. Her red dress and mask gave her away, but only to him. Vaasa followed the same man Reid had seen through a set of doors that led to the entranceway, a crowd pushing all around her as if she were any other patron.
“Who is that?” Reid asked. “The man who took her.”
“Roman Katayev, I bet,” Sachia whispered. “Her lead sentinel. He’s only come back to Mekes recently.”
Reid racked his brain. Why did that name sound so familiar? A memory swirled in his mind, vivid and so prominent.
Years ago, there was a man. His name was Roman. I loved him, and Dominik had him killed.
That was what Vaasa had told him the night Dominik came to Mireh. The first night she had ever slept in Reid’s bed. Certainly it wasn’t the same man—that Roman was dead. Yet Koen and Sachia exchanged a glance, and it set Reid on edge. “What?” he demanded. “What don’t I know?”
Sachia shrugged noncommittally. “There are rumors that he and Vaasa are having an affair. But I’m sure that’s all they are. Rumors. The engagement will turn the tides.”
Reid’s mind raced. That had to be one of the hundreds of things Koen and Sachia had overheard in the city about Vaasa.
There was so little else to talk about, and the circumstances of Vaasa’s return would obviously garner gossip.
It had to be untrue. He clung to what he knew of her; fought the voice in his head that told him he wasn’t enough for her. That what he offered her wasn’t enough.
After what they had just done…
“There are more rumors than truths,” Koen assured him. “She is too close to power; people will repeat anything scandalous they hear.”
Reid nodded, trying to absorb those words. Trying to convince himself of their truth.
“We need to get out of here before they start questioning people,” Sachia said, gesturing with her head to the eastern stairs.
As they took the stairs and slipped out of the brothel with the rest of the swarming crowd, Reid glanced around, scanning the swaths of people, looking for one in particular.
But Lord Karev was nowhere to be found.