Chapter 41
Forty-One
Once we returned to the council room, I sank into my chair, exhausted.
Demir came up beside me, touching my healing shoulder lightly and easing the tension in my neck.
You are so strong.
I could feel Cain’s eyes boring into me. Meeting his gaze, I stared him down until he looked away. He threw a piece of parchment in front of me.
Do not get distracted.
Demir’s grip tightened as he likely read the note over my shoulder and his thoughts filtered into my mind. Is that what I am?
Ignoring the two men in my life, I turned to Viv, and without missing a beat, she began to break down her strategy now that we were on a sped-up timeline.
Heeding the warning of the first dragon, Cain’s whispers and shadows had confirmed that the Morgadian army was much closer than we had thought.
We now had three days to reach a destination that normally took a week.
Once we more or less agreed on a tentative strategy, and Sienna and Everett confirmed that they were optimistic about sorting out the portals we had dispersed.
We had two hours to sleep and pack before marching with the remainder of our forces.
We would be riding for three days without stopping or sleeping.
Even our most thoroughbred horses would struggle to make it, and I would not be surprised if we lost some on the journey.
Demir shook me awake, but before I could truly register who it was in the dark, my arm shot up and gripped around his throat, choking him to the mattress as I pinned him under me.
Instead of fighting back, a moan escaped his lips as I straddled him, pinning his thighs down.
As I registered it was him and that he enjoyed that little display of dominance, I squeezed harder and pressed myself against his hardening length.
The groan that escaped him lit my body on fire—as did the words he silently pleaded through our bond.
More. Please, give me more.
Obliging him, I dropped my lips to his throat just above where I held it and grazed my teeth over his flesh as his body shuddered beneath me.
I rocked my hips over his hardening length and squeezed his neck harder, sucking his skin into my mouth.
His breath came in short pants as he tried to rock his body against mine, but my grip was unrelenting.
He liked my power; he wasn’t scared of it like the rest. He wanted to submit to me not out of duty, or because of a blood oath, but because it felt good to. His body and mind craved it. Craved me.
Releasing him, I rose from the bed and gently pulled him up by his wrist, enticing him to follow me to the vanity and mirror.
Just as he was about to take the lead and go in for a kiss, I pulled his arm behind his back and slammed the front of his body into the vanity, pulling his hair back, baring his neck and lifting his gaze so that he could watch us in the mirror.
‘Do you like this, little prince? Do you like playing at the edge of my darkness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, what do you want me to do to you?’ I asked.
A darkness that matched my own entered his gaze as it met mine in the mirror. I lightly bit his earlobe, letting out a moan.
‘Break me. If I am about to die, then I want you to break me down until there’s nothing left but you. Then I won’t mind it so much, meeting the end with you by my side. Mark me, own me, destroy me.’
His words snapped something inside me. I didn’t know how much I wanted to do exactly that until he begged for it, but suddenly his fantasy became mine. I felt the flame roar within my blood as though it were singing and being called to the surface by the complete submission of our Zauvek.
Pulling a blade from my vanity, I tucked it under his belt and cut through the leather and fabric of his pants until they fell to the ground. I trailed the blade over his bare thighs, over his arse as goosebumps sprinkled his skin, then I cut his shirt from his body.
Images of the young spy I had mutilated with my blade flashed through our link.
‘Do you want me to brand you, little dove?’ I purred into his ear.
He tried to nod, but I held his hair too tightly for him to move. He went to speak but I slid my fingers into his mouth until they bottomed out.
‘I can’t hear you, little dove,’ I said as I shoved them deeper until he gagged on them.
I’m jealous. Images of my name carved into the spy filtered through his mind again.
I couldn’t suppress the laugh that escaped me.
Oh, Demir was made for me. One minute, he was picking up my broken pieces; the next, he was giving me the total control I craved.
I knew it was my complete acceptance of the bond that gave him the confidence to let go, and I relished the power he gave me.
Drawing my fingers from his mouth, I picked my blade up one more time. As I trailed it down the length of his spine, Demir shuddered for me. I looked at him, giving him one last chance to change his mind, but he was certain.
Claim me.
With that, any self-restraint I had remaining snapped, and the blade sliced through his skin with the first letter of my name. With each shallow cut, he quivered beneath me. Once I was finished, I released his hair and stepped back, admiring my work. Across his shoulder was my mark.
Skylar’s
Demir’s length was straining, dripping down onto my stone floors.
‘Want more?’ I asked as I spun him around and pushed his bleeding back against the vanity.
‘Yes,’ he breathed.
Raising the blade I had used to mark his back, I showed him the blood pooling its edge as I stuck out my tongue dragging it across the steel, swallowing every last drop of him.
Tears slid from his eyes as he marvelled at me like I was a God from another plane, here just for him.
Pressing the blade to his cheek, I scraped a tear up and licked it clean.
‘Why are you crying, little dove?’
‘You’re everything. Everything I was too afraid to want. Even if it’s fleeting, I am happy beyond belief that I get this honour of being consumed by you.’
Pressing my blade into his neck, his eyes darkened as his length weeped for me.
‘Grab it and stroke. Pretend you’re stroking into me and tell me what it is you like so much about me.’
‘Nothing—there’s nothing I like, Princess. I love you.’ Stroke.
‘Your contractionary nature, your resilience and your fractured pieces.’ Stroke.
‘Your selflessness, your deep compassion and how you care.’ Stroke.
‘Your coldness, brutality and mercilessness.’ Stroke.
‘Your mind, your body and your soul.’ Stroke.
Stopping him, I gripped his wrist, pulling him back down onto the bed.
Letting his blood seep into my sheets. I flipped the grip in my blade and handed it to Demir, confusion lighting his features.
Slowly, I peeled my clothes from my body and climbed on top of him.
His eyes widening as I slid down his throbbing length, my heat swallowing him whole.
I raised the blade in his hand to the artery in my throat.
‘What am I to you?’ he asked through a groan as I bottomed out on top of him.
‘Trust,’ I breathed the word as I threw my head back, allowing the truth of it to settle deep inside my soul.
There is not one person in my life—blood or otherwise—that I have ever truly wholly trusted, but Demir, of all people, had inexplicably become the one person I now trusted when I couldn’t even trust myself.
How? I wasn’t even sure. Maybe it was because he was the only person who entered my life without wanting anything.
I couldn’t give him a position, status, or power.
He had all of that already and threw it away to follow me, simply because he wanted me.
Not the person I could be, but the raw version of myself that so many others had tried to change.
Reading my thoughts through the bond, Demir’s hands gripped me tighter me as he rammed into me with such force that I screamed in pleasure.
‘Demir!’ Slamming into me again and again, hitting this one heavenly spot inside me that felt like it was the beginning and the end. Pleasure exploded from my core.
‘Fuck, Skylar! Gods, help me,’ he said as his body tensed, meeting mine ready to climax.
‘I am your God,’ I said as he moaned out his release, filling me.
Our lips met in a crushing kiss that conveyed every unspoken word between us.
‘I love you,’ he whispered into my neck.
‘I trust you. I love you,’ I said, understanding blooming within him, knowing that those words meant more than a simple I love you. I do love him, but it’s true trust that I never thought I would find especially not in him of all people.
Collapsing in a pile of sweaty limbs, we caught our breaths before finally pulling ourselves apart.
Spending the next twenty minutes bathing and putting on our gear, we packed lightly, needing to be fast on our horses.
Aside from the clothes we are wearing to fight in, our weapons, and food, there is no room for anything else.