Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
TATE
I’m irritated when I return to an empty room, but I conclude that she must have slipped out and is with the others. I love the time I get with her, but it pisses me off that we have to sneak around. Why can’t she just break the betrothal?
In the last few days she’s slept more nights in my bed than in her own, but every time I try to talk to her about it, she either distracts me or changes the topic.
I get dressed, but when I knock on Ara’s door, she isn’t there, and she isn’t down with the others either. Through Daeva, I learned she took Solaris for a flight, and they headed east. What the fuck? If she wanted to visit her family, why didn’t she just tell me?
Relief and irritation war inside my chest when she comes into my room in the late afternoon.
“Where were you?” I snap.
“Were you worried?”
“Of course, I was worried. Don’t evade the question.”
She saunters over to me, straddling me with a seductive smile on her lips, her hand coming up to caress my cheek. “I was perfectly safe, I promise.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Then don’t ask questions.” She leans in, placing kisses along my jaw. “We have two options: we can fight about it or use our time for something much better. I know which option I’ll pick. What do you say?”
Damn that woman and her secrets.
“I will get to the bottom of this,” I say, but my hands run down her sides and I pull her closer.
She hums in approval. “Right choice,” she murmurs before her mouth devours mine. The kiss is hungry, and a husky laugh leaves her lips when I twist so she ends up on the bed underneath me.
“You drive me fucking insane, sunshine,” I growl, and she laughs again.
“Insanity looks good on you, though,” she teases.
I bite her neck just where it smoothes out into her shoulder, frustration and possessive need coursing through me. She consumes me.
“Marking me as yours?” she teases, laughter in her voice.
“I would stamp it across your brow if I could,” I growl, and she laughs again.
“I’ll be yours for as long as you’ll have me,” she whispers, her voice soft now, while she traces my face. And her eyes are full of unspoken words. I just wish she would spit them out.
“Then plan on forever,” I murmur.
Our next kiss is softer, savoring, appreciating.
I want answers, but she’s right. We have so little time alone, wasting it on a fight seems a shame. So I trace her every curve and dip again and again even though I’ve already committed them to memory by now.
I love the way her sighs turn to breathy moans, the soft hums of approval I can draw from her lips, and I drink up her sounds, keeping them.
Our clothes disappear piece by leisurely discarded piece, while I worship every part of her on my way to her pulsing core.
The sounds she makes, the way she responds to my fingers, my lips, my tongue, is addictive, and I watch tension gather in every line of her body, mesmerized, until she shatters with my name on her lips, her body going from taut and writhing in pleasure to languid and boneless.
Motionless apart from her heaving chest.
I kiss my way up her body, and when her eyes flutter open, I push into her. I groan at the sensation, her moan mingling with mine. No matter how often I have her, this first moment of invasion and surrender gets me every time.
“I love the way you fill me,” Ara whispers, as if she read my mind. Her inner muscles squeeze me, and I groan again, her quiet laughter a delicious vibration running through both of us.
“Like this?” I push deeper and savor the way pleasure clouds her eyes.
“Yes,” she moans.
“And this?” I pull out and slam into her, burying myself even deeper than before.
“Gods, yes.”
“The gods have nothing to do with it,” I tease.
“Oh, but they made you just for me.”
“Or you for me.”
“Who cares as long as we end up right here, right now?” she pants, meeting every one of my thrusts.
Our fingers intertwine, skin slickens, and as her body arches off the bed like an offering worthy of a god, my mouth finds her breast. Mine. She is all mine.
Watching her surrender and demand at once, to see her fire and fight tempered by pleasure, is the best kind of reward.
It doesn’t take long until she tightens around me, her muscles quivering.
Ara bites my shoulder to muffle her scream while she ripples, squeezes me, and almost takes me over the edge with her. But I’m not done with her yet.
I pick up her pliant form and carry her over to the desk, settling once more between her legs while she wraps her arms around my shoulders, burying her face in my neck.
“Insatiable,” she mumbles against my skin before kissing my neck.
“You were the one telling me to make good use of the time, and I don’t know how long it’ll be until we have time alone again.”
“True, and that was not a complaint.” She kisses up my neck before she finds my lips, our pace slower, more savoring this time. When she goes over the edge again, pleasure consumes me, and I hold her close while I let go.
We don’t get much sleep that night, but my only regret is having to wake her in the early morning hours when she fell asleep in my arms not long ago. She grumbles at me and pulls the pillow over her head when I pepper her face with kisses.
I chuckle at her adorable attempts, but pry the pillow out of her fingers and away from her face.
“We have to get up, sunshine,” I tell her.
“Just tell them you broke me last night,” she mumbles, and I laugh.
“Are you sure that’s what you want me to tell them?”
“If it means I can spend the day in bed snuggled up to you, yes, then I’m sure.” She sounds more awake now, and I love the picture she paints. One day, we’ll have that.
“Come on, we have to get moving.” I scoop her up in my arms and carry her over into the shower.
Showering together makes us slightly late, and we hurry through breakfast, but neither of us minds.
Jared’s eyes wander from me to Ara and back before he grins.
He leans into Ara and whispers something, and I raise my eyebrow in question when Ara laughs.
“He thanks me for your good mood,” she murmurs, relaying his message. I shake my head and grin. Cheeky bastard.
Someone clears his throat behind me, and when I turn and find a messenger bearing my family’s colors, my stomach drops.
“Your Highness, the queen requests your presence.”