Chapter 13 #2
“I want to see you, and I want to touch you,” he said. His fingertips landed on my waist. “May I?”
I nodded, maybe too enthusiastically.
“You know I like words,” he admonished.
“Yes,” I whispered.
Those fingertips dragged up my sides, to the lacing at my breasts. I stopped breathing.
“And if that word turns to ‘no,’ you will tell me.”
I couldn’t imagine a world in which I would want to.
Especially when the backs of his fingers brushed across the swell of my breasts. They might have trembled beneath him. He gathered the ends of the lacing, which were tied in a bow, and undid the knot with a firm pull.
I thought he might draw it out, turn me into a puddle of need. But his patience seemed to vanish, and he smoothly undid the laces. Lifting my shoulders, he pulled the top over my head, laying me bare before him.
Only then did the vulnerability kick in.
Not because of him, but because I’d never exposed myself to anyone before.
I was so new to this, so terribly unequipped for the territory we were wading into. My arms twitched with the need to cover myself.
“I don’t remember telling you to release your eyes from mine.” The low timbre sent my doubts scattering.
“You called me bossy earlier, but that title belongs to you,” I nervously whispered.
His lips pulled into a cocky smirk. “I’m Princeps, carella.”
I followed his command and looked at him, at the raw blend of heat and reverence with which he studied me. His expression made me feel like…like I was giving him a gift. Like I was something to be cherished.
“I’ve told you that you’re beautiful,” he said with utter sincerity, “but you’re beyond that, Etarla.
I only wish I was as good with words as I am with knives, so I could find the right ones to give you.
” He touched me then, his hands as reverent as his gaze as they glided up my waist. My ribs felt fragile beneath the heated span of his palms. “But since I cannot find those words, I’ll simply have to show you. ”
He leaned down and kissed me, one arm braced on the bed beside my head, the other traveling to my chest to praise my flesh like he’d done once before.
Only this time, he didn’t stop. Not as he kneaded and pinched and drew moans from my mouth, which he swallowed with his own.
Not when I ground my hips into his. I did not know what I sought, only that I needed relief from the tension building between my thighs.
Needed to be closer to his heat, his encompassing strength.
His lips replaced his hand, kissing the curve of my breast on a path to the tight bud at its center, the scrape of his whiskers on my skin divine. My back arched from the bed when he brushed against the eager peak.
A smoky chuckle vibrated across my skin and curled in my belly. “Something you enjoy,” he hummed, dragging his lips across the sensitive bud again.
My back bowed, nerves desperate for more attention, even as embarrassment snaked through the cloud of pleasure. “Too much?”
He answered with a light nip to the side of my breast, eliciting a sharp gasp from my throat. The tiny bite throbbing, I stared at him, wide-eyed.
“Consider that your warning. I have no tolerance for anything that implies you are short of perfect, particularly in my bed.”
I blinked. “This is my bed.”
The grin that dragged his lips up was carnal and wicked. “Everything in this Citadel is mine, carella.” I lost sight of that grin as his lips descended back to my flesh. “Everything.”
I didn’t have the chance to unpack his implication because the wet heat of his mouth was around that sensitive bud, assaulting me with new sensations. I threw my hips against his, tension coiling into something that might explode.
Skies, I needed it to explode.
“I have you,” he murmured against my skin. His hand, now freed, loosened my trousers. Then it slid beneath.
All the way to where I burned.
He paused, lifted his head, and waited.
It was foreign, being touched there. But initial startlement was almost immediately overcome with my body’s need for more.
This was Harthon. He had me. And I trusted him completely.
“Okay,” I breathed.
The most delicious touch, the most perfect pressure, began, as he continued to worship my breasts, each heartbeat more addictive than the last. Time became a blur of pleasure.
Cries escaped my mouth, dancing through the air, and a coil formed where his hand played, getting tighter, and tighter, and tighter—
I shattered with a cry, one I half-stifled in my throat. Harthon stayed with me, easing me down from the breath-stealing high, until I was limp against the bed. His hand slid out from beneath my trousers, and he braced his body above mine.
“Do not swallow your pleasure. Not with me,” he said softly.
Warmth bloomed on my cheeks. I couldn’t believe I’d made those sounds. “It would have been loud.”
“And we are the only two rooms in this hall,” he countered. “I want to hear what I do to you.”
“I think it’s rather obvious what you just did to me.”
His eyes lightened at that, and he swept a lock of hair from my cheek. His body was a blanket above me, swathing me in heat. There was still that length straining through his trousers, resting along my thigh.
“What about your pleasure?”
He’d given to me, but he hadn’t taken for himself. He was clearly still waiting for his own release. And as I sat there in a sated haze, I wanted to know what it was like to give him that, to see this force of a man pleasured.
“There is so much I have already taken from you.” His tone was thick with regret. A knuckle coasted down my cheek. “Tonight was mine to only give.”
He’d literally taken me weeks ago. Stolen me from my home. Forced me into this duty. But it was a misleading simplification.
“I want to give you more,” I told him.
“In time.”
If what I felt on my thigh was any indication, “You seem to need it now.”
He smiled softly, and it was beautiful on him, this man who was always so fierce.
“Rest assured, pleasuring you has brought me great enjoyment, carella. I have everything I need.” He shifted to the side and pulled my back into his front.
“And if you choose to continue arguing, just know that as Princeps of this Territory, I command you to not give me more tonight.”
“And as the magvis, who’s far more powerful than you, I can do what I wish.”
I didn’t mean it, though. He’d made his decision, and now that he was cocooning me in his heat, sleep beckoned. I wondered if he’d still be there when I woke.
Thoughts of the coming hours brought another question to mind. “Are we still leaving the day after tomorrow?”
“The seas are favorable, but they don’t stay that way for long. I can give us four more days here, rather than one.”
Merelda had just gotten here. This expedition might take weeks. The idea of leaving her so soon was painful.
But there was a duty to uphold. Every day we delayed was a day more people suffered and died. We needed those resources.
“I just need the one day,” I decided. Merelda would understand. She would encourage it, really.
Harthon answered by tugging me closer, and I fell into a dreamless sleep.