Chapter 15 On Your Knees for Me #3
He moved suddenly, and we began the familiar dance of striking and blocking that got progressively faster and faster as we looked for weaknesses in the other’s guard.
But this sparring session was decidedly different than any other before.
We usually concealed our minds from one another so the sparring was fair, and we could not read one another’s intentions.
The apprehension rising between us was not merely one of aggression and tactile technique but of a more sexual tension.
I breathed in, the taste of his heady exhilaration tingling across my adénes like a drug that I never wanted to quit.
Every time he touched me as we grappled sent a fresh spark of heat through both of us until I almost wanted to let him tackle me.
Perhaps he felt the same way, or maybe Riordan was simply distracted, but he mistook my feint, and I got my hands behind his knees to finally take him to the ground.
His wings vanished seconds before he hit the mat heavily, his breath blasted out of him as I quickly straddled him.
My thighs clamped around his hips, my feet crossed over his shins, and I pinned his wrists to keep him completely immobilized beneath me.
“Turns out you’ll be the one on your back,” I gloated, working to keep my wings from betraying my excitement and flaring over him with my triumph.
You would be just as distracted if you could hear her thoughts now, he insisted, and I froze. I was instantly distracted from the victory of taking his body captive by the thought of how Amira must feel about the display.
Riordan did not leave me wanting and began mentally transcribing a vague outline of her thoughts.
I was unable to hear her directly, not even through my bond to Riordan, but he could give me a translation.
Perhaps it was rather unscrupulous to gain such access to her when we were not yet bonded.
But I could not help savouring knowledge of how her heart was pounding, her skin flushed, her breaths coming in tandem with Riordan.
Nor could I ignore the way her attention was lingering everywhere that my body connected with Riordan to hold him down.
The indecent enjoyment she took in watching us dominate one another was unexpected but a welcome revelation that fuelled my every vulgar fantasy.
It also drew my attention back to the visceral sensation of my skiá conquered beneath me.
Gods! The two of them were going to make me hard in front of Helena and Ares, and I’d never live it down.
Riordan’s eyes flared and heat scorched through them, so I knew he was listening as closely to me as he was to Amira’s mind. I opened my mouth to ask him whether he would ever get on his knees for me, but my king abruptly moved to take advantage of my distraction.
He twisted his wrists out of my hold at the same time and gripped me under my thighs to shift me and break my control over his hips and legs.
With pure brute strength, Riordan lifted me up, our chests and shoulders slamming together as I tried to reassert myself.
But before I could maneuver my legs into a stronger foundation from which to challenge his burst of strength, Riordan had gotten his legs under him again.
We were both on our knees now, facing one another with chests and hips pressed together as we grappled again for control of the match.
Until Riordan leaned close, taking me hostage with nothing more than the soft sensation of his lips and breath on my ear. His groan of sexual frustration had my body trembling with every ounce of the uncompromising need for him that I had suffered through all these long years.
“The things I am going to do to you when you are ready to accept me,” he growled in my ear.
I had to bite back the groan that immediately rose in the back of my throat.
All notions of resistance instantly drained from my body so quickly that I melted into him, and he could feel it.
He could feel how my body betrayed my craving for surrender, so visceral that not even my tainted mind could object to the thought of it.
Just before he made a move for my arms to wrestle me back under his control.
We usually removed unnecessary articles of clothing to prevent injury to our hands, but my forearm guards had always been the exception to the rule.
All my sparring partners had stopped asking about them so long ago that the armour had become almost like an accepted extension of my body.
There was always part of my mind that was conscious of my slave markings, as if they were the real me and the rest of my body was their vessel.
So I was hypervigilant of the arm guards, and in all my time at the war college, they had not been pulled off even once.
But in that moment, wholly consumed by my skiá and the dream of our future together, I had forgotten that I was nothing but a slave.
I forgot my place as a tool for others to satisfy their cruelest depravities.
For a blissful moment, my body had not belonged to that vile woman or any of her greedy clients.
For just a moment, I belonged only to him.
The sensation of air on my horribly scarred skin was so foreign it was like being suddenly naked. I was in too much shock to move as the energy shifted dramatically between us like water had been thrown over my head.
I could see him looking down, I saw the confusion that was spreading across his face as he stared, but it was like my mind had gone numb.
“Orion—” he began as he reached for my arms, and all at once, my senses came screaming back.
“Do not touch them!” I shouted before I could control the reaction and jerked away from him.
It was as if there was a sudden delay between my mind and body that made me clumsy. I tried to rise but fell on my ass like a fledgling attempting to walk. Fear and panic were blaring so loudly I couldn’t even manage to breathe let alone stop the spiral of my thoughts.
And then another body was suddenly right behind me, her scent like a slap that had me falling straight back to earth again. I could feel myself again, I could feel the mat under my palms, the frantic beating of my heart, and the raw pain of my breaths sawing in and out of my lungs.
I saw the horror in Riordan’s eyes and could not bear to face it so I turned into her. Just like the frightened boy in my heart who I’d never been able to outrun.
“It’s alright, I have you,” she whispered to me quickly, her arms loose around me as if she was worried that her touch might make it worse.
She could not have been more wrong.
In the wake of my panicked fit, I was left exhausted, my body heavy and my mind a foggy haze. I leaned into her chest, lulled by her gentle strength and the promise of the safety and tenderness that I’d never been allowed to know but had always craved.
As if she could feel what I needed, Amira wrapped her arms around me tightly enough to make me believe that there was nothing she would not shield me from.
“It will be alright,” she whispered again, this time with her lips against my forehead, and I closed my eyes.
I hoped she was right even though I had learned better than to want things I did not deserve.