Chapter Fifty-Nine Stellen
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Stellen
Ijolt upright, disbelieving of the early morning sunlight gleaming through the open door into the main room.
It can’t be morning.
If it’s morning…
I don’t censure my quiet disbelief. “I slept through the night.”
I haven’t done that since before I took the throne.
Thyra’s hand presses to my naked back, her touch soothing, circular rubs, demanding my focus.
She lies beside me on the bed, the blanket loose across her chest. A smile plays at her mouth. “You told me this is what you wanted.”
I told her I wanted to sleep through the night without listening for assassins. I didn’t think it would happen.
As I take in the sheer, fucking beauty of Thyra’s curved lips, unbidden comes a thought I wasn’t expecting.
She is all things to all people.
It was a description of the first female oracle.
Last night… Right now…Thyra is everything I could have dreamed about.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask.
“Long enough to decide that breakfast can wait.”
The blanket falls away from her breasts as she sits up to press kisses to my shoulder, then to the base of my neck.
She maneuvers toward my front, but I’m ahead of her, putting her on her back, my mouth on her breast, my naked body between her legs, and my hand on her clit…
And then my mouth, my tongue stroking through her wetness, working her nub until her moans becomes cries and an orgasm crashes through her body.
Every ragged breath she takes lifts my senses, pulling me high with her as I slide back toward her mouth, kiss her chin, and pull us onto our sides, her upper leg hooked across my waist, her head into the crook of my neck.
Very slowly, her breathing changes and I sense the moment her contentment fades.
“Thyra?”
“I want to hold on to this moment,” she says, pressing closer. “I want to pretend that I shouldn’t have gotten up already. That I shouldn’t be halfway through studying the scrolls by now.”
I rear up over her, pressing her to her back, a command on my lips. “Don’t regret this, Thyra.”
She gives me a small smile, but the burden in her breathing is undeniable.
Willfully, I continue. “If you’re concerned about time, I can bring the scrolls to your bed. You can read them while I…”
I duck my head to her right breast, teasing her nipple, making her gasp.
“Or, I could carry you to the table and lay you back on it. You can read while I fuck—”
She pulls my face to hers, kissing the words from my mouth, her cheeks glowing again, a cascade of laughter bubbling from her lips.
I’ve never heard her laugh.
She could be creating diamonds of pure joy in the air.
Fucking mesmerizing.
“You could.” She bites her lip. “Yes?”
I scoop her up and carry her to the table, laying her down on it. Her messy hair frames her face and she arches her back, adjusting her position, her knees bent but together and her feet at the table’s edge.
Reaching for the satchel where I left it on one of the chairs, I upend it onto the table beside her and snatch up a smaller piece of parchment. “This one.”
Her forehead creases as she scans it. “This is a letter from one of the False Queen’s ladies to—”
Thyra gasps as I part her knees and step between her legs.
“She’s writing to her lover and…hmm…”
I slip my forefinger between her wet folds and she moans at the pressure on her clit, but she seems determined to continue. “A letter to her lover and she’s talking about… Oh…”
Thyra won’t have reached the last part of the letter yet, which is the section that matters. A critical piece of lustful gossip dropped into a paragraph at the end. Possibly one of the most important pieces of information I can give Thyra.
But the start of the letter is all about sex. All the things the lady wants her lover to do to her when he next visits her.
Thyra’s pupils were already dilated, her desire humming with her every breath, but with another gasp, she asks, “Have you read this?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know what’s written here.” She jabs at a part halfway down the first page.
I give her a lazy smile, my finger gliding across her center, making her rock against my hand.
“I do.” My smile grows as Thyra gazes up at me and I ask her, “Would you like that?”
“Yes.”
Sliding my hand away from her core, I lower my head between her legs and drop my lips to the soft skin of her inner thigh, one side, then the next, kissing and stroking, listening to her sighs, her moans as I work my way up to her knee and then to her calves.
Slowly, I draw her legs straight and bring them both up against my chest, her ankles just past my shoulders. Taking a single step closer, I tighten the press of her straightened legs against my chest, drawing a gasp to her lips.
Her core is completely exposed like this. I could drive myself into her as far as I wanted to. “Remember,” I say, not moving, holding back. “We stop if you want to stop.”
She nods. “I remember.”
With a quick hum, I lock my body’s control and position my tip at her core, easing just far enough inside her to hold myself there and free up my hands.
My thumb finds her clit and I stroke until the visible tension in her thigh and stomach muscles eases and the wetness in her core allows me to slide farther inside.
I choose to go only the smallest distance, continuing to stroke her clit until her back arches, her breathing becomes erratic, and she nearly rages at me.
“Fuck me. Please.”
Her body is ready.
I drive myself into her. A single hard thrust.
She cries out and I take a beat, forcing myself to keep my head. To check her breathing, her heart rate, and her tone to be absolutely sure her sobs are pleasure, not pain.
“Again,” she cries, her hands plastered to the table, her fingers clawing the surface, the flush of desire in her eyes threatening to destroy me.
She’s fucking destroying me.
I thrust again and this time, I don’t slow myself down, driving a hard rhythm timed to her needy cries, pulling a command from her every breath, matching myself to her desire until her back arches, her body tightens, and she screams through her orgasm.
Wave after wave, extending and threatening to tear through the lock I placed on my body.
My jaw clenches and my fists curl around the table’s edge on either side of her hips as I rage at myself to hold back.
Fucking don’t lose it.
Don’t lose control.
Thyra’s eyes fly open, as if she senses how close I am to coming inside her.
She bends her knees in the cramped space between us, yanking them all the way to her chest so her feet can plant against my shoulders.
With a heave, she shoves me away from her, forcing me out of her body. Forcing me back a step.
I’ve barely regained my balance when she collides with me, launching herself up off the table and knocking me to the floor.
My mind is a mess of surprise and desire, and I don’t fucking care that I’ve landed on my ass. All I can focus on is her.
She drops into a straddling position over me, her knees on either side of my hips as she wraps her hand around my cock and leans forward, her other hand planted beside my head, her nipples brushing my chest, her lips nudging my jaw.
“Let go,” she says.
I hum a note, groaning through the heady rush of sensation.
Her hand pumps my cock. Not softly.
Her lips are parted, her breathing still near moaning. The tremble in her thighs tells me she’s coming through the aftermath, her eyes closing as she presses her pelvis to the base of my cock, her sigh satisfied and then…growing needy.
I buck beneath her, resolutely pressing my hands to the floor because if I lift them for even a second, I’ll grab hold of her hips and move her onto me.
She darts forward, pressing her lips fully to mine, and that’s all it takes for my muscles to tighten. Sensation crashes through me, leaving me groaning on the floor, completely at her mercy.
I don’t fucking care.
Her hand loosens. She arches back, stretching out, beads of sweat on her brow and a satisfied smile growing on her lips.
Dropping onto me, she sprawls across my torso, her chest rising and falling as rapidly as mine is.
We stay like that for a long moment. Until I finally give myself permission to stroke her back, draw the sweaty strands of her hair from her neck while she does the same for me.
I’ve never felt so warm.
Not even before I became heartless.
I don’t question it. I want to stretch out the heat between us and push back against the reality of the day.
She finally lifts her head, but only to whisper a determined, “No.”
I trace the curve of her lips, bemused. “No…what?”
She sinks back to my chest, but her voice becomes softer and I don’t like the hint of despair in it. “I don’t want to think about the world that exists outside this room. I want to hold on to these impossible moments.”
Her hand presses to my heart.
Then she asks a question that breaks me. “How do I feel so safe with you?”
She shouldn’t.
Not really.
She’s safe to share her body with me.
But safe to share her fate?
The perils outside this room are only growing worse.
I warned her I play by my own strategy. That I’m patient, I plan, and I’m not afraid to wait for the perfect strike.
For the last seven days, I’ve bought time. I’ve held back the inevitable, but the pieces are moving and the final strike is coming.
She asked me how she could feel safe with me and I could answer her with manipulative lies. I could tell her she will never feel pain again. She will never have to feel afraid again. Not as long as I’m at her side.
Only one truth is unbreakable. “I will do everything in my power to make the world safe for you, Thyra.”
She lifts her head, shadows forming in her eyes. “I know it.” She edges forward, the shadows fading, pressing the softest kiss to my lips as she repeats, “I know it.”
It takes us long moments to rise and head to our bedrooms to dress.
Before we separate, I say, “If you’re ready before me, you should keep reading that letter.”
A sparkle returns to her eyes. “Are you sure?”
The corner of my mouth twitches upward. Then, more soberly, I say, “Read the end. It will matter to you.”
She nods, responding to my more somber mood. “Okay.”
As she heads to the bathing room attached to her bedroom, I move to my own, grab a cloth, and clean myself up, every swipe reminding me of Thyra’s moans.
Can destruction be a good thing?
Logic tells me no, but my body tells me yes.
When I return to the dining room, fully dressed in a fresh tunic and pants, Thyra’s sitting in one of the chairs, her knees pulled to her chest.
She’s dressed in her training suit, although I sense the hum of Lethian armor concealed beneath it, and her long hair is braided neatly down her left side.
She hasn’t pulled on her fur boots yet, her bare feet brushing the floor, but she doesn’t seem cold.
I guess the nearby heating element is enough for her.
In front of her on the table rests the ornate chest, but it doesn’t look as though she’s opened it, and that’s probably just as well for now.
In her hands is the letter she was reading from before, but she isn’t focused on it, her gaze distant.
The heaviness of her heartbeats tell me her mood has shifted. As I anticipated it would.
“I’ll never break the curse,” she says.
I pull up the second chair, positioning it so I can face her.
Before I can speak, she continues. “Now I understand why, when I told you how the curse could be broken, you didn’t ask me questions about it. You knew, as soon as I spoke of it, that it could never happen.”
I want to tell her that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t try, but optimism isn’t in my nature. I expect sacrifice and anticipate where defeat could occur. That is the only way to win.
She holds up the letter and reads aloud from the postscript at its end.
“‘My love, a final sliver of tasty news for you to devour. The Tol-Dakri have arrived to seal the peace with our Serulian King. Their chief has submitted one of his sons to join the queen’s personal guard, and let me tell you, you would like him.
“‘Unlike his brothers, he works metal and, oh, he is delicious. I personally watched him hammer a medallion for the queen. If I can pry him away from her side, I will make overtures. On your next visit, he could entertain us very nicely. I don’t care if his mother is rumored to be a Blood Fae.’”
Thyra puts down the letter and draws the conclusion I reached years ago. “A Blood Fae forged the Dragonstone Blade.”