“The love of Terranor,” I said, evoking our god and considering evoking hers too. There weren’t enough Elydorian deities to pray to, the feeling of her full lips around me. When I warned her, sooner than I’d reached a climax in memory, Lyra simply took me in more deeply.
She meant to keep me there.
I had no notion to pull away, releasing every bit into her sweet mouth, the suckling sounds she made, combined with the sight of her at my feet, making every spasm intensify tenfold. If there was something to hold onto, I would have, for fear of toppling over.
“That was…”
No words could do it justice.
As she licked the last drops and pulled away, the look Lyra gave me then couldn’t possibly have been any sexier. Sitting back on her feet, her lips wet, Lyra’s eyes wide with anticipation as if… as if she’d wanted to please me…
“Do you mean to kill me?” I asked, only partly in jest.
She wiped her mouth and stood.
“Why?”
It was a simple enough question but Lyra had no ready answer. What happened between us earlier? We’d been building toward it for some time.
But this, ’twas for my pleasure alone.
She blinked. Lyra didn’t know why she’d done it. She had planned to leave. But instead… My eyes widened.
Of course.
I reached for her. Pulled Lyra into me. Cupping her cheeks between my hands, I summoned my most commanding tone, and I looked down, into her eyes.
“The bedroom will be my domain. In there, you aremine,Lyra. Do you understand?”
She nodded. “Aye.”
“Out of it? ’Tis yet to be seen. But if I ask for you to drop to your knees, you’ll do it.”
Her lips parted. If this aroused her, I would gladly give Lyra what she wanted.
“But know this,” I added, “there will always be pleasure, for us both, in here. Never pain.” And the next part would be important. “Never deceive. If we cannot be honest about what we want, this will not work. Do you understand?”
“I do,” she said.
I released her wrist. It seemed to snap Lyra out of the trance she’d been in since I started my speech.
“I have to speak to Mev before the morrow.”
I was certain she’d done so already, but I offered no argument.
“Until we meet again, then,” I said. “Tomorrow should prove an interesting day.”
“Until then,” she said, fleeing the bedchamber as if she wasn’t certain what had just happened. But I knew.
Whether I liked it or nay, it mattered not.
And I most certainly did not like being bound to a woman who continued to actively deceive me. But we were bound, despite it, in a way that would be difficult to walk away from.
But she was Aetherian.
And war was coming to our clans. The air was too still… The breath before the break. I’d fought battles before, but never one that would carve the fate of realms. If we fell today, Elydor would fracture, and every sacrifice we’d made would turn to ash.
I told myself I was ready. But readiness and peace were not the same thing, and peace had abandoned us long ago.
