Chapter Thirty-Six Taissa
Chapter Thirty-Six
Taissa
Snuggled against Kion’s chest, Taissa taps his nose, testing to see if he’s awake. He is.
(Or, rather, he is now.)
“Mmmph…” One dark eye cracks open, blinks blearily, then softens when she smiles at him.
“We might die tomorrow,” Taissa says conversationally, and Kion turns, groaning into his pillow.
“Merlin, Cho, is that why you woke me up?” Cranky. He’s so cranky.
It’s adorable.
“You’ve only been asleep for five minutes,” she informs him.
“It’s that goblin rum,” Kion mutters, flopping back onto his back and pulling her closer. “I don’t know what they put in it.”
“As I was saying,” Taissa continues, propping herself up on his chest (and ignoring his disgruntled oomph as her elbow digs into his skin), “we might die tomorrow. So I’d like to live a little now…if you’d like to, too.”
It takes a moment for understanding to flicker across his face, his brows raising and eyes darkening as Taissa rubs her thumb along one of his ridiculously sharp cheekbones and tries to smile suggestively, like they do on the telly. Kion blinks, and then snorts a laugh.
“The fuck was that?”
She’s offended. “A smile. A seductive one.”
“Oh. Of course,” says Kion, smirking.
“Numpty,” Taissa mutters, but then Kion’s brushing a long strand of hair out of her face and gazing up at her with raw hope and fear. She softens. “Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t be sick of you afterward. In fact, you should probably be frightened of the opposite.”
A muscle twitches, right on the corner of his mouth. “Really.”
“I might become obsessed with you,” Taissa confesses. “I might drag you into my bedroom, to have you all to myself.” Fascinating—and bloody empowering—that she can make his breathing hitch like that.
“Oh? And what would you do then?” His voice is almost guttural.
Taissa can’t help but to smile mischievously. “Can I show you?”
The pale moonlight streaming from the bedroom’s window, through the gauzy curtain, illuminates the faint bobbing of Kion’s throat. “Yeah, sweetheart. Yeah. You can show me.”
Sweet, sweet victory.
Heart pattering, Taissa kicks back the quilts of the bed, ignoring Kion’s grunt of surprise as the cold air hits his bare chest. Darting through the window’s stream of pale moonlight, she hurries to her suitcase by the door and yanks out the little black nightdress he purchased for her.
“Close your eyes,” she tells Kion over her shoulder as she begins to strip.
His snort somehow manages to be both sleepy and utterly defiant at once.
“You’ll ruin the surprise,” she warns, and she hears him heave a great sigh. The sheets rustle as he turns back over. Shedding her worn shirt and bottoms, Taissa slips into the clinging silk dress and gives herself a mental pat on the back as she struts back toward the bed.
A moment for the history books, it is.
Taissa Cho’s seduction of Kion Locke. The wee hours of June fifteenth, two thousand and twenty-six.
A national holiday.
“Open your eyes,” she murmurs.
Kion, rolling back over, cracks them open and inhales softly—yet sharply—as she continues her sidling. The silk clings and flows like water against her skin. She tries another coy smile…
And promptly trips over a loose floorboard that she cannot see without her glasses.
With all the grace of a drunken bull, Taissa crashes to the ground, catching herself only barely by her hands.
Her face on fire, she draws herself back up, filled with the inane urge to throttle said loose floorboard for ruining what had been (up until this point) the most glorious moment of her life.
“Bugger,” says Taissa with immense defeat.
But the blur that is Kion is staring at her, staring at her as if mesmerized.
As she draws hesitantly closer, she sees that his pupils are swallowing his irises whole—an eclipse, she thinks, of her very own.
“Hells, sweetheart,” he rasps. “Hells. Look at you.” His chest rises and falls unevenly as she crawls back into the bed.
Where was she? Oh, yes. What she would do to him.
“I would wear this dress,” Taissa murmurs as Kion gazes at her, his breathing harsh. “And I’d kiss you like this.” Her lips meet his as she slides a hand underneath the quilt, and toys with Kion’s waistband.
Heaven, as she slips her hand into his briefs, heaven as she watches his eyelids flutter once, then twice.
She wants to drink in these little sounds he makes (the husky grunts, even the occasional whimper—whimper, she’s making Kion Locke fucking whimper) so she leans over and slants her lips against his.
He devours her hungrily, arching needily under her hand.
His kiss tastes like rum, and his skin is burning hot.
Oh, he’s catching fire beneath her, and she’s fanning the flames until he gasps into her mouth and begs her to stop, to let him, flipping over and pinning her beneath his massive body.
Taissa studies him like he’s a work of art as he gazes down at her, his chest rising and falling so unevenly.
There’s still uncertainty in his gaze, and Taissa decides to do the work for him, tugging the dress over her head—
Ach, bloody hells.
It’s gotten stuck over her, right above her nose.
Hidden by the dark, silky fabric, Taissa grimaces as Kion’s amused voice floats toward her. “Feeling stuck, sweetheart?”
“Don’t poke fun, you absolute dobber,” she replies, cursing her thick head of hair and the too-small neckline of the nightdress. She shivers as his thumb, warm and calloused, brushes against the scar on her breastbone, just underneath the new Bonding glyph.
“I’m sorry,” says Kion hoarsely.
“You’re ruining the mood,” says Taissa, glaring at him through the dress. (It’s not very effective. She can’t see a damn thing.) “You can apologize again later—oh!” Teeth scrape against her sensitive skin, and then lips are closing around her, hot tongue laving around her nipple.
The sensation sends a jolt through her, and she arches up, gasping in surprise and pleasure. Kion’s self-satisfied laugh rumbles against her.
“Did you like that, sweetheart?” Kion asks huskily, and Taissa swats at him fondly, only for his fingers to slide down her stomach in a silent request. Taissa nods, and the room’s cool air caresses her legs as Kion pushes back the blankets. Forget the dress. This is really rather exciting.
“Fuck, Taissa,” he says hoarsely, and she can’t see his face, but there’s enough worship in his voice to make her heart race. “You’re just—you’re perfect.”
She blushes fiercely, laughing nervously. “You—” Taissa cuts off abruptly as Kion’s mouth meets her where she’s most sensitive, kissing her intimately, his hands running up her legs to grip her waist.
Taissa bites her lip hard as Kion’s tongue flicks up and down, as she clenches around nothing. “Kion,” she croaks. Swells of pleasure rush through her, like the lapping tide of an ocean, guiding her toward a tidal wave…
“Mm?” he asks, voice muffled and preoccupied, thumbs tracing absent-minded circles on her hips.
Her head falls back, and she knows she must look so silly, with this ridiculous nightdress over her head, but something about not knowing what he’s going to do next…
It’s delightful, really. She can’t help but to smirk as she thinks back to that day in her tiny Banallan kitchen, watching as he reluctantly knelt before her.
It seems he’s become rather fond of kneeling now. And quite good at it.
Her smugness is fleeting.
“Kion,” she rasps again, a few minutes later. Sweat has begun to bead along her hairline; her legs are shaking. Every time her back begins to arch up from the sheets, Kion pulls back, just a little.
“Mmm,” he murmurs, and from his smug tone, Taissa knows exactly what he’s doing.
Scowling at him, she reaches up to tug her dress away (in order to properly glare at him, the cocky bastard really needs some putting in his place), but just then, Kion does something utterly unholy with his tongue and she crashes underneath that tidal wave with an embarrassingly breathy moan of pleasure.
Yet it doesn’t leave her sated, only leaves her wanting more, and it’s then that his hands finally help yank the nightdress off her head.
Taissa’s hair is surely a mess, but Kion’s eyes are so glazed with lust and admiration that she’s not sure he even notices.
“Merlin, sweetheart,” he whispers as she reaches for the band of his briefs, tugging them down insistently to reveal the hard, veined length of him.
She clears her throat, just a bit. She knew it earlier, of course, as she coaxed those sounds of pleasure from him, but Kion Locke didn’t lie.
He most certainly is…very well endowed. (Very well, indeed.)
Kion’s muscular form is dappled in the moonlight, every inch of him as bare and gorgeous as Adonis, every inch of him hers. Taissa blinks a few times, in case this is all a rather pleasant dream.
“Do you have the glyph?” Kion asks huskily, kicking his briefs off the bed, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. Taissa nods, breathless. The Contraception glyph is inked on the small of her back, and she tells him so.
“Good,” he rasps, “me, too,” and then, well, then it’s like she’s died and been carted off to heaven as he, with a gentle movement of his hips, closes the infinitesimal distance lingering between them.
(Dramatic, she knows, but true.)
His body, interlocked with hers, is the most beautiful thing that she has ever seen. He’s beautiful.
She doesn’t realize she’s said it out loud—“you’re beautiful”—until Kion smiles, just a bit, suddenly looking shy. Oh, Taissa’s never seen him like this before, and it makes her heart swell like a balloon.
“You are,” she breathes, reaching up to cup his face before sliding down to stroke his Glamour glyph. “And one day, mo chroí, I hope you won’t feel the need to wear this around me. Every part of you is beautiful.”
“Taissa,” Kion whispers, sounding choked, and then he cuts himself off, planting a kiss to her forehead instead. It means more than words ever could.