Pride makes my chest swell. “I have an amazing kissing thing?”
“Yes,” she says, clearly amused.
“I have only had two lessons.” I sound unbearably smug, even to my own ears, but Delphie just laughs and pushes my head down.
Frix, I want to drown in her. I’m definitely going to come in my trousers again, and I don’t care. Her salt on my tongue is the closest I’ll get to the goddess. I lick up the inside of her thigh instead to let my cock cool, retracing the path with a row of little sucking kisses, but it proves just as incendiary when she whimpers and slides one leg out from under the furs. She throws it over my shoulder, hips tilting up toward my face.
This is her asking for what she needs, I realize. So I give what I can—eager, openmouthed affection over every part of her pretty cunt, licking and nibbling and growling my way as I map her complex contours.
What looked like a flower at first glance is actually a labyrinth, but I’m finding my way, testing her responses. I circle her pleasure spot and she curses. My tongue delves into her grasping channel and her back arches. I nip at her plump outer lips, and she pants and pulls me closer. I catalog every reaction as I would an opponent’s weakness and then wait for the right moment to use it against her.
It only takes a few minutes to undo her this way.
“Now, Nik,” she gasps, peeling my hand away from where I’m gripping her thigh and pushing it down meaningfully. “Like before. I need it now.”
I sink two fingers inside her. She’s so wet, they go in like a sharp blade, effortless. She make a low noise of approval, grinding against my hand. Rather than press the heel of my palm against her pleasure spot, I lean in and kiss it softly, slipping my tongue out to tease around it. Soon, she’s rubbing her scent all over my face.
I can’t help it—my cock goes off. Too soon, but I thought it might be sooner, so I don’t mind too much. Hopefully, she is so lost in her pleasure that she won’t notice I’ve lost control of my own again. I growl into her core as I come in searing bursts, andthen do my best to ignore the additional spreading stickiness in my trousers.
Instead, I focus on coaxing more of those noises out of my queen. A firmer tongue, a faster pace with my fingers, and she’s squealing, both arms thrown over her face and a heel digging into my spine, the other kicking so hard, it throws off the furs.
“Fuckme,” she says over and over as she comes, her voice disbelieving and reverent. To my ears it’s a prayer of gratitude, and I offer up my own silent version. Thank Alioth for steering her back to me when I was stupid enough to turn her away. Goddess knows I didn’t deserve another chance to have her.
Her hips rock slower and slower against me. Her legs finally relax, her breath evens and slows. She murmurs something, though I can’t make out what it is. I raise my head to ask, but then a small snore slips out, and that’s when I realize that my queen is asleep, one leg still hooked over my shoulder, one hand limp against the side of my head.
“Delphie,” I whisper, not wanting to wake her if she’s truly asleep. I’m tempted to see if I can kiss one more from her drowsy form, since my cursed cock is hard again and begging for another taste of her sensitive flesh. But she doesn’t even twitch.
Reluctantly, I extricate myself from her limbs and cover her with furs. She sighs and nestles into them, and I can’t help feeling alittlesmug, knowing I’ve sated her so well. Plus, she didn’t see the mess I made of my trousers. I have to do something about that. Alioth save me if I ever make it inside her. I won’t last two thrusts.
I’ve never been jealous of my brother Fen before. I always dismissed his patronage of the pleasure houses as a waste of time. But now I think he was wise to become a warrior in this way before his Alara fell from the sky into his planet’s seas. By all accounts she is well-satisfied, and he’s in the same thrall I am. Maybe I’ll ask his advice for how to have better control.
In the shower, I grimace as I peel the seed-soaked fabric from my skin. I rinse it out under the steaming water before giving myself the same treatment. I let the water pound some of the pigment out of my back and then turn, enjoying the hammer of each drop because the pain is just a shadow of what I feel for Delphie. I think I’ve felt more emotions since I met her than the rest of my life combined.
Not all of them have been good, but all of them have been worth it.
I was a sensitive greenling, more so than my brothers. Though we were close in age, all six of us born within two years, I was the one who watched out for the others, tending their small injuries and soothing their worries. They would be surprised to hear it; we have all been hardened for so long.
My father spotted my soft nature early, though, and he did his best to beat it out of me. It was mostly unsuccessful. He’d catch me helping a trapped bird escape an alcove or consoling another greenling and punish me for it with the flat of his blade.
“Never share your strength,” he’d order between strikes. “A weak thing is a weak thing.”
But the lesson never took. No matter how many times Lyro fell as he toddled after the rest of us, I picked him up and tended his scrapes. Then my father realized that instead of punishing me, he could punish Lyro.
I only had to see the blood striping his tiny back once to know that my father was not to be crossed.
I still wanted to rush in to help. Still felt my brother’s pain as my own. I just didn’t show it. I practiced my camouflage every day, drilling until I became very, very good at keeping my skin in check so it looked like I didn’t care. I practiced until I became the best.
If asked, even those closest to me will tell you I feel nothing. That I lack the normal range of emotions, and that is why theynever appear on my skin. Only the healers who treat me know different. My mask has served me well as a son of Chanísh, even if it is the opposite of who I am at the core. My father didn’t trust the soft, compassionate greenling. He had far more trust in the cold-blooded assassin. He understood cruelty, so he trusted mine.
That has been my mistake in dealing with the Eye, I realize. Zomah can’t trust a king who will sacrifice a piece of his empire to save someone else, because he can’t fathom that level of care. I spoke to him in the language of greed. But he didn’t trust my words because I did not speak it as a native tongue.
If I want Zomah to trust me, he needs to believe my motives. I need a new mask.
Chapter 18
Delphie
Iwake up alone, with no alien king next to me. I can’t help smiling anyway. Nik knocked meoutin round two last night.
