Chapter 38
Cillian
Islept with Ceri in my arms, her warm body tucked into mine, the sweet jasmine scent of her hair filling my nose, the rhythmic beat of her heart calming me.
I didn’t sleep much, so in awe that this was happening, I didn’t want to miss any of it.
I’d be tired tomorrow. Or maybe I wouldn’t.
I was so energized by this woman and her love that I wasn’t sure I even needed sleep anymore.
Ceri, however, slept soundly, no longer needing to be on alert in case her father called for her.
She snored a little, which made me smile because it was something I could tease her about in the morning.
She’d get huffy, cheeks turning pink, eyes blazing.
So much to look forward to with this one. With the one.
Sunlight barely peeked through the curtains in my room, and dread filled me.
We’d find a way to be together. I knew we would, but something whispered in my ear, a voice that said so many things could go wrong.
What if Ceri awoke to her father having a meltdown and she changed her mind about this entire thing?
What if she didn’t win the trials? Worse, what if she disappeared like the other contestants?
I couldn’t lose her, not after we’d just admitted our feelings for each other.
She was mine. Surely Castle knew that. Surely it wouldn’t rip her away from me. But Castle had never seemed to care about my feelings, about what I wanted, and that worried me, as much as I wished it didn’t.
Ceri stirred in my arms, her mess of curls brushing my face as she turned and blinked up at me. “Good morning,” she said, voice still full of sleep.
I’d never heard this voice before, the awake-but-still-sleep voice.
“Why are you smiling like that?” she asked, a little more awake this time.
“I have this checklist, you know, of all the firsts I’ve experienced with you.”
She straightened in my arms at that. “What? A checklist? Where is it?”
I kissed her nose. “In my head.”
“Well, I can guess what you added to it last night,” she said with a little smile that drove me wild.
“Mmm, yes, we added a lot to it last night. But that wasn’t what I was thinking of this morning.”
She shifted in my arms so she could crane her neck to look up at me. “What were you thinking about? That it’s the first time we’ve slept together?”
“We’ve slept together before. I checked that off my list decades ago.”
“We haven’t slept together.”
“Oh yes we have. How many times did we fall asleep together under our favorite tree back when Fairwitch Isle was on that cliffside? Or on your rooftop?”
“Those don’t count. I wasn’t curled up in your arms.”
“Actually, you were a few times. I just woke up before you and shifted our positions so that you wouldn’t wake up and freak out.”
“I wouldn’t have freaked out about that.”
I gave her a look, complete with a raised brow, and she huffed.
“Okay, fine. If I woke up in your arms, I might have spiraled a little about what it meant for our friendship.”
“Exactly.”
“Fine, so that wasn’t what you checked off your list. What was, then?”
“I heard your sleepy voice for the first time. I’ve never heard you so groggy like that. Every time we fell asleep together, I either snuck away before you were awake or you woke up all chipper, which I always said was unnatural.”
Her eyes filled with warmth and tenderness that made my heart swell. “I have a sleepy voice? I suppose maybe I slept so deeply last night that I was groggier than normal this morning.”
“I’m glad you got good sleep.”
“But we do have to face reality today,” Ceri said. “There’s a lot we have to talk about.”
“Not yet,” I said, tipping my head toward the curtains. “Sun’s barely up. Doesn’t count until it’s fully over the horizon.”
She smiled mischievously, fully turning to face me, rubbing herself against my cock, and oh my godwitches. Fuck, that felt good. Every thought fled my mind as my hands automatically went around to her backside so I could grab her ass and put her right where I wanted her.
I flipped her around, and she gasped as I pressed my cock into her, finding her entrance and stretching it open.
“Mmm,” she said as my finger went around to her wet center.
“I’m not done with you yet,” I said. “I have another thing I’m ready to check off my list.”
“Yes,” she breathed as I pushed inside her from behind.
She arched her back, making me hit a spot inside her that had us both panting as we began rocking together.
“Fuck, Ceri,” I said while she writhed against me.
“I think I’m going to have to come up with my own checklist,” she said between my thrusts. “Just to make sure we’re being thorough.”
“Absolutely,” I said, needing to be deeper, needing to feel the way her walls clenched around me when she was about to come.
“Please don’t stop,” she said. “Just don’t stop.”
My fingers circled faster as I increased my pace, my release close. Too fucking close. I didn’t want this to end, but at the same time, godwitches, I needed to come inside her or I would die.
A wave of pleasure started at the base of my spine, shooting up like a geyser as I came hard, my cock pulsing.
“Oh, yes, that right there,” she said, and I continued touching her as the last drops of my orgasm spurted from me. “That spot, Cillian. That. Yes. Yes.”
Her cries got louder as I circled her clit faster until her walls tightened around me and she was yelling my name as she came apart.
* * *
Hours later, the sun shone high in the sky, impossible to ignore through the curtains, a ray of it slicing through my bed. We were both dressed now, Ceri back in that golden gown from the night before and standing by my bedside. I caught her hand and pulled her on top of me.
“Cillian!”
She fell onto me with an oomph, I reached up to cup the back of her neck and guide her lips back to mine.
“I don’t want you to go,” I murmured.
She sighed and rolled next to me, staring at the canopy. “I know, but I have to check on Papa. It’s midmorning by now, and I don’t want him worrying.” She swallowed and looked over at me. “Before I go, can I ask you something?”
“Uh-oh.” She sounded nervous, which made me nervous, another foreign feeling.
She studied my face. “Was it because of me? The heartstopper?”
That took me aback. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been that.
I’d told my mother as much, that it was Ceri and my feelings for her that had led me to want to numb myself to the world.
“No, it wasn’t you. It was how I felt about everything.
” I remembered the day I’d decided to sneak into Nevan’s healer quarters to get some of the tonic.
“What was?” Ceri asked.
“I’d been living in the castle as high prince for two months, and I”—I took a deep breath—“I know this is going to sound far-fetched, but I had this feeling I didn’t belong here, that the crown didn’t belong to me.”
Ceri’s brows furrowed. “I never knew you felt that way.”
“Because I never told anybody.”
“Why?” She sounded sad, and I didn’t want her to think it had anything to do with her.
“Because if I said those words out loud, then they’d become true. Just like my feelings for you. It was easier to push it all away and pretend everything was fine.” I shook my head. “But it wasn’t fine then, just like it isn’t fine now.”
“So what happened that day?”
I swallowed, remembering the screams, the awful sound of stone crunching, the wall that had been left. “The first room disappeared, and I couldn’t handle it. It was the armory. Arguably our most important resource. It was gone. And no one knew why. Except me.”
She raised her brows. “Cillian, you can’t think this is your fault.”
“I think the reason Castle hasn’t given me a queen is because it still hasn’t fully accepted me as high prince.
I can’t explain it any better than that.
And those thoughts on top of my feelings for you were going to completely consume me, so I knew that if I wanted to do my job, I needed to just stop feeling altogether. Then maybe I’d rise to the occasion.”
“Do you still feel that way?” she asked, gaze searching my face. “That Castle doesn’t really want you as its high prince? You know that doesn’t make sense. If it didn’t want you, it would just choose someone else.”
“I know. That’s why I’ve never said anything. Because I can’t understand it myself. It’s just this gut feeling.”
She leaned forward and kissed me. “You do not give yourself enough credit, Cillian Wolfgang. You’ve been an amazing high prince while also managing to be an amazing friend and brother and son. You are everything we’ve needed in Fairwitch Isle, everything I’ve needed.”
“Thank you,” I said, afraid that if I said anymore, I’d start to cry, and that was the last thing I wanted to do after a night and morning filled with explosive sex.
Ceri sat up. “I really do have to go now.” Her face fell. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to make this work. It feels so impossible. We’ve got so many obstacles.”
My heart sank. “Let me walk you back? We can talk more—”
She put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down to kiss me. “That’s okay. I’ll see you tonight, maybe? At my place this time?”
I waggled my eyebrows. “You’re not going to be able to scream my name, you know.”
She gave me a playful shove. “I’m aware, thank you. I don’t need my father thinking I’m being murdered.”
“Oh, I’ll be murdering something,” I said.
She shot me an exasperated look. “I’m regretting this already.”
I tugged her onto my lap as we both laughed. “No you’re not.”
Her gaze softened. “No, I’m not. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still not sure we can make this work, no matter how much we both want it to.”
Before I could argue, the bed started rattling, the floor trembling. The teacups on the table next my windows fell to the floor with a crash. I was familiar enough with the trials by this point to know what was happening.
“Oh, not now,” Ceri said. “I need to see my—”
But she couldn’t even get the words out before she was disappearing from my arms.