5 Plague #3
“Very well.” She rose on her tiptoes to cup his face, loving how he leaned down to make up for the remaining inches. “I’m scared,” she admitted, brushing her mouth over his jaw. “I’ve sorely missed you.”
He cupped the back of her head, his other hand caressing her spine. “And?” he whispered against her lips.
“I’ve turned around at night, hoping you were home and that work hadn’t kept you at the station. I’ve worried about whether you’re sleeping, and how to help, and whether I’m helping.” She took a jagged breath. “It’s been weeks. If only I could hold you for longer than—”
His mouth covered hers with a harsh groan. Caging her against the stables’ doors, he drank from her lips, drawing on the lower one and chasing the curve of her cheeks when she inhaled. Hunger streaked through her. She made a desperate sound that he devoured.
“I know, sweet Sarai,” he murmured. “I’ve been aching too.” For a man whose features rarely wore tenderness, his voice was awash with it. “You shouldn’t bear the weight of the land’s battles. You smile and tell me you’re well, but I wonder when you’ll regret this.”
Her eyes flew up to his. Desire warred with grim acceptance in the black storm of his gaze. “Is that still what you see?” she whispered. “Someone who’ll leave you?”
“You have every right to.”
“And I won’t. You needn’t push yourself to exhaustion in atonement for the Fall. I would live through Sidran Tower a thousand times over just to end up here. I love you.” She smiled tremulously. “Do try not to forget it.”
The words always seemed to cut him at the knees. His arms shuddered around her. Sweeping her up, he rapidly covered the distance to Aoran Tower, pressing stubbled kisses to her neck.
“Wait! Is Cato—”
“Not home.” He kicked open the door to the atrium and bent to her mouth.
She found his first. A soft breath, then her lips clung to his, parting, taking his tongue in and drawing away for air until she only knew the sheer joy of seeing his pupils expand, tasting the column of his corded neck between labored breaths.
Undoing the first few buttons of her tunic with one hand, he carried her into his study, then up the stairs to their chambers. He heaved a satisfied breath upon reaching the bed. She laughed at his haste, and his eyes went liquid.
“I missed you too.” His thumb traced the corner of her mouth then made a slow foray past her lips.
Need bloomed in her core. “Show me.”
His eyes darkened when she stepped back and discarded her tunic. Black and gold pooled by the bed before he blanketed her on it. Then, it was just the press of wet skin against skin. Pulses straining in yearning to draw even closer.
Hers was a feral devotion, all the more ravenous for the wait. She gloried at his harsh breaths when she rolled her hips into his as he disrobed with sleek efficiency. Nothing came close to the way he made her feel. Safe, protected, known. Cherished.
Removing her armilla, she undid the illusion over her skin.
Kadra followed the progress of her reappearing scars with his mouth.
A kiss behind her ear, a taste of her clavicle.
A surge of affection squeezed her heart.
She locked her legs around his waist and rolled them over.
He obliged with a wicked grin, reaching for her when she nuzzled her way down his throat, past his chest. A hiss erupted through his clenched teeth when she licked over the damp head of his cock.
“Weeks without you.” He knotted a hand in her hair. “How badly do you want me?”
She answered by taking the thick length of him deeper, relishing the way he spat her name when she reached his base.
“Fuck.” A harsh sound of pleasure ripped from him when she flattened her tongue, tasting salt and musk and him.
There he is. The undone god beneath the man of ice and seething control.
This was the only time he ever lost control, and gods, she loved seeing him aflame.
He stroked her cheek, giving her a second to breathe before shuttling into her throat.
Lips stretched around his girth, she should have felt achingly vulnerable, but he looked the supplicant, jaw tight, hard grunts punctuating his thrusts, hands tightening on the back of her head.
“Beautiful.” He ground out, caressing her flushed jaw. “Come here.”
She hollowed her cheeks in playful refusal and watched a wild gleam heat his eyes.
The next second, she found herself pulled off her prize and him heavy-lidded and hungry above her.
His breath came fast as he traced his own path down her body, drawing her breasts into his mouth and nuzzling her navel, taking his time despite her impassioned pleas.
Pressing her hips down, he trailed his fingers through her sensitive, slick core.
A needy sound left her when he breached her with two fingers and curled them into her, and it seemed to turn him feral.
Holding her gaze with smoldering eyes, he hoisted her thighs over his shoulders and made a slow, deliberate foray into her with his tongue. Her back arched off the bed when he did it again, tasting her in unhurried strokes. He made love to her core, as relentless in bed as he was in life.
Pleasure blurred her vision and transported them to a fracture in time that was entirely their own.
Her heels dug into his back as darts of lightning coiled through her.
The gods, the Saints, the Wretched, she invoked them all, pleading, gripping the thick silk of his hair when the movements of his tongue sped, angling right where she needed it.
She throbbed to the tune of her pulse and his fingers, and still craved more.
“Kadra, please!”
He licked a stripe up her core before spearing her with his fingers again. Lust painted him with a luminous flush, a rare teasing light in his gaze. “Need me that badly?”
“Badly,” she hoarsely agreed.
Rising up her body, he caught her lower lip between his teeth. “Why’s that, hmm?”
She twined her fingers with his. “Likely because I love you.”
A hoarse breath sawed from him. He rested his forehead against hers. “Say that again.”
“I love you,” she whispered.
The severe planes of his face didn’t alter, but his cavernous eyes glowed. “I’m yours.” A rough mating with her mouth, then a guttural order. “Spread for me. ”
Passion darkened his cheekbones when she did. One hand angled her thighs higher, the other palm-down by her head. She whimpered when the head of his cock slid against her in a long stroke. His resulting smile should have been illegal.
“Take me in.” He reared above her, part desire, part darkness, and all power.
Dazed, she reached between them to press him against her entrance, holding his stormy gaze as he pushed in.
“That’s it, sweet girl. Show me how much you missed me,” he growled, shuddering when he buried himself to the hilt. Cupping her face, he watched her breath hitch at how full she was.
Sweat dripped down his jaw when he pulled out and slowly thrust back in, dipping his head to draw her breasts into his mouth.
There were nights when he tormented her for hours with ruthless patience, seating her on his lap and rocking into her while teasing at where they were joined.
She hooked the thigh he held higher over his hips and tried to curl deeper.
A low laugh rumbled through him, before he slammed back in.
Hard. Her mouth opened on a scream of ecstasy, heat fracturing between the slap of their bodies as though he had summoned lightning.
He drank her cries, curved a hand around her throat and pressed with breathtaking tenderness, tilting her chin down and demanding that she watch him plunge deep.
She couldn’t think; her voice was raw, nerve endings afire.
She tasted his earlobe, mouth, every part of him she could reach, wordless but for his name.
His muscled shoulders bunched, hips hammering into her with agonized need.
Sparks flared at the edge of her vision, magic escaping him as he lost himself.
Her body tightened around his with impending release, and he bit the curve of her neck with a raw moan, hauling her closer to take her more deeply.
A fierce kiss, and his hand on her throat cut off her breath.
She flew over the edge with a scream. Her body twisted, scattered, inundated with fierce wave upon wave of pleasure.
A base, thick sound tore from him as he spasmed, thrusting in deep, desperate strokes as wet heat filled her.
“Fuck, take it all, Sarai.” He rumbled a string of filthy praise, shuddering into her, rubbing his stubbled cheek against her hair. His heartbeat slammed against her skin. Boneless, she breathed to it, protesting when he withdrew to clean her.
A generous lover, he was quiet with his affection and had only said that he loved her once, after the Unraveling. Yet, she felt it in the brush of his lips against her temples and the arms that always banded around her in sleep.
“That,” she pronounced, “was a first. I didn’t think the extremely proper Magus Supreme Kadra ravished women before nightfall.”
He raised an eyebrow drolly, looking more relaxed than he had in months. “I asked you to live with me after knowing you for a day. Propriety isn’t one of my strengths.”
She turned into his neck with a laugh. “Are you certain you aren’t needed to manage the storm?”
“No, this is the last of it. Let’s take a few hours.”
“Do you think the country’ll be standing when we wake?”
“There’s a fair chance.” He cradled her and loosed a gravelly sigh of contentment when she wrapped an arm around his waist.
She allowed the tension and fear of the past few months to slip through her fingers like nightmares. And when sleep found their entwined figures within Aoran Tower, they succumbed peacefully.