Chapter 16 Kess
Kess
The heat hits while I'm in the bath.
I've been soaking for nearly an hour, letting the volcanic hot springs work the ache from muscles I pushed too hard in training.
Steam rises around me in lazy curls, fogging the narrow windows, turning the bathing chamber into a warm cocoon of stone and water.
My eyes are closed, my body loose and floating, my mind drifting somewhere between sleep and waking.
Then fire floods my veins.
It comes without warning—no slow build, no restless days of anticipation. One breath I'm relaxed, boneless, half-asleep in the hot water. The next I'm gasping, gripping the edges of the stone tub, my whole body clenching around a need so sudden and violent it steals the air from my lungs.
Heat.
Three weeks. It's only been three weeks since the last one.
I try to stand and my legs won't hold me.
Slick is already flooding between my thighs, mixing with the bathwater, that telltale sweetness cutting through the mineral smell of the springs.
My nipples have gone hard and aching, every brush of water against them sending sparks down my spine.
The pressure in my belly is a fist clenching tighter and tighter, demanding something I can't give myself.
Flash heat. Again.
I manage to haul myself out of the tub on trembling arms, water sluicing off my body, dripping onto warm stone.
The air feels cold against my overheated skin even though the chamber is thick with steam.
I need to get to my room. Need to lock myself in before anyone sees me like this—naked and dripping and desperate, barely able to stand.
The bond pulses in my chest.
It feels different. Fainter than it should be, like something's muffling the connection, like hearing music through a wall.
I've noticed it growing quieter over the past weeks, the thread between us thinning somehow.
Probably the transformation affecting it—my body changing so fast that even the bond can't keep up.
But even muffled, I can feel him. Feel his awareness of me spike as my heat floods through whatever remains of our connection. Feel his rut stir in answer, that dark hunger rising to meet mine.
He'll come. I know he will.
I grab a robe from the hook by the door—don't bother tying it, just clutch it closed with one shaking hand—and stagger into the corridor.
The stone is cool under my bare wet feet.
A servant rounds the corner ahead of me, takes one look at my face, and flattens herself against the wall with her eyes averted.
Smart girl.
My chambers aren't far. Twenty steps, maybe thirty. I count them in my head, using the numbers to keep myself grounded, to keep from dropping to my knees in the hallway and presenting for anyone who walks by.
Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty.
I shove through my door and slam it behind me, leaning against the oak, breathing hard.
Water drips from my hair onto my shoulders, runs down my spine, pools at my feet.
The robe hangs open, forgotten. I'm shaking so hard my teeth are chattering, but not from cold—from the heat burning me alive from the inside out.
I reach for the lock.
Turn it open, not closed.
Then I wait.
He arrives faster than I expected—minutes, not the hour it took him last time. I hear his footsteps first, heavy and uneven, a man running. Then his breathing through the oak, ragged and harsh.
"Kess." My name scraped raw. "I felt it. The heat. I can leave—lock myself away until it passes. You don't have to—"
"Come in."
Silence.
I open the door.
He's standing in the corridor, frozen mid-motion. Eyes solid black, no gold remaining. Shirt askew like he dressed in a hurry, or maybe undressed—I can see the planes of his chest through the gap. Claws out, gleaming in the torchlight.
"Come in," I say again. "Stay with me."
"If I come in there, I won't be able to stop." His voice breaks on the words. "The rut is already—"
"I know what happens when you come inside." I step back, making space. "I'm asking anyway."
Something shifts in his expression. That careful control he's been maintaining for weeks—through dinners and conversations and one almost-kiss that still burns on my lips—cracking apart.
Then he's through the door.
It slams behind him. His hands find my waist, my hips, sliding over bare skin with a reverence that makes my breath catch. I'm already naked, already dripping, and his fingers find the slick between my thighs and he makes a sound like I've wounded him.
"Kess—"
I grab his shirt and haul him down to me.
The kiss is nothing like before.
Not the violent claiming on the altar, teeth and blood and fury. Not the desperate collision in the armory, more battle than embrace. Not even the ghost of a kiss in my chambers, that brush of lips before he pulled away.
This is soft.
His mouth moves against mine slowly, learning the shape of me, the taste. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb stroking my cheekbone like I'm something precious. Something worth being careful with.
I've bitten this man. Torn chunks from his throat. Swallowed his blood while he fucked me against stone walls.
But this—this gentle press of lips, this tender exploration—this undoes me in ways violence never could.
I make a sound against his mouth, something embarrassingly close to a whimper, and he swallows it. Deepens the kiss by degrees, tongue sliding against mine, still so careful, still so controlled.
I don't want controlled.
I bite his lower lip—not hard, not to hurt, just enough to feel him shudder. He groans and the careful kiss fractures into something hungrier, his hand fisting in my hair, tilting my head back to take my mouth more thoroughly.
Better.
My hands work at his clothes, shoving the shirt off his shoulders, fumbling with the laces of his trousers. He helps, stripping efficiently, and then he's naked and I let myself look.
Really look, for the first time without heat-madness blurring the edges.
He's built like a weapon. Broad shoulders that block out the lamplight, arms corded with muscle that flexes as he reaches for me, chest wide and sculpted and scattered with dark hair that trails down his stomach in a line I want to follow with my tongue.
His skin is pale gold, marked here and there with old scars—a slash across his ribs, a starburst on his shoulder, the claiming marks I've left on his throat still pink and healing.
His hips are narrow, his thighs thick with power, and between them his cock juts hard and flushed, the head slick and weeping, bigger than I remembered.
He's terrifying. He's beautiful.
He's mine.
Then he's pressing me back toward the bed and the heat roars through me so intensely I nearly black out.
"Wait." He stops, breathing hard, holding himself above me. "Wait. I want to—"
"What?" I'm panting, desperate, every nerve screaming for him to stop talking and start fucking.
"I want to do this right." His thumb traces my lower lip, and even that small touch sends sparks cascading down my spine. "Not just rutting. Not just satisfying the heat. I want to actually—" He stops, swallows. "I want to make love to you."
The words hang between us.
Make love. Like we're something other than a monster and his captive. Like we're two people who chose each other, who want each other, who might be building something worth keeping.
"Then do it," I whisper. "Show me what that feels like."
He kisses me again—soft, then softer, until I'm drowning in the sweetness of it.
His hands explore my body with aching slowness, learning every curve and hollow, every scar and secret place.
When his fingers find the hardened skin on my hips—the contamination spreading, transforming me—he doesn't flinch away.
Just traces the texture with his fingertips like he's memorizing it.
Like he's accepting it.
His mouth follows his hands. Kissing down my throat, my collarbone, the slope of my breast. Taking my nipple between his lips and sucking until I arch off the bed, a moan tearing from my throat, fingers tangling in his hair.
He lavishes attention on one breast, then the other—licking, sucking, grazing his teeth across the sensitive peaks until I'm writhing beneath him, my cunt clenching around nothing, desperate for something to fill it.
"Please—" I don't even know what I'm begging for.
"I've got you." He kisses lower, across my belly, my hip, the crease of my thigh. His breath ghosts over my cunt—swollen and slick, aching for him—and I feel myself clench again, feel more wetness seep out of me.
When his tongue touches me I nearly come apart.
The first lick is slow, deliberate—a long stroke from my entrance to my clit that makes my whole body shudder. He groans against me like I'm the best thing he's ever tasted, and the vibration sends sparks shooting up my spine.
"Fuck, you're sweet." His tongue circles my clit, then dips lower to lap at my entrance. "Could eat this pretty cunt for hours."
He slides two fingers inside me while his mouth works my clit—thick fingers that curve to find that spot, that perfect spot, pressing and stroking while his tongue flicks and circles.
The pleasure builds in waves, each one cresting higher than the last, my thighs trembling on either side of his head.
"Rhystan—" His name comes out broken. "I'm going to—"
"That's it." He pumps his fingers faster, sucks my clit between his lips. "Come on my tongue. Let me taste it."
The orgasm crashes through me, my back bowing off the bed, my cunt clenching around his fingers in rhythmic pulses.
He works me through it, licking and stroking, drawing out the pleasure until I'm shaking and over-sensitive and pushing at his head because it's too much, too good, I can't take any more.
He kisses his way back up my body, his chin slick with me, his eyes dark with want. When he kisses my mouth I taste myself on his lips—salt and musk and something sweeter underneath.