While he’d been working on his painting, I’d been plenty busy myself.
Between my new job in Hell and Tap adjusting to not being the only one in charge of watching all the doorways, we’d been rebalancing everything. That included both of us making adequate use of our leisure time, and while I’d dabbled in reading, needlework and even tried my hand at painting, nothing had stuck quite like drawing. It was the only thing that still opened up that quiet blank place in my head, where I could just disappear into the strokes of the quill and float back up a while later to find something beautiful. Except, the desk in the library hadn’t worked. I’d had to move a smaller one into the tattoo room for the sparks to really turn into flames.
Lucky for me, Tap was more than accommodating, and some of our most memorable nights had been spent on the cushions after I was done pressing ink into parchment while he decorated his skin.
“What have you been working on, Feather?” he asked, closing the door behind us only most of the way out of habit.
I pushed it the rest of the way shut, his eyebrows raising when the latch clicked into place.
“We should let Ramsey rest.”
His tongue swept across his bottom lip. “Am I to assume we will… not be?” I just smiled and went to my desk, unstacking my labors and spreading them out in the order I wanted. “What’s this?”
Tap examined the pages, the borders of which recorded every pattern he’d tattooed himself with, featuring my scroll in the corners. I’d drawn my favorite moments of our time together,some mundane, some sweet, and some very, very explicit. Once I’d assembled them, I realized they were an excellent gauge of where I was in my cycle.
By the time he got to the final one, which was my personal favorite and depicted my recollection of how he’d held me by the throat and made me watch us in the bathroom mirror, he was open-mouthed and sweating.
Tap’s control was very close to snapping.
It shouldn’t have pleased me so much, but it sent a spike of heat through my veins.
Tap didn’t lose control. Ever.
“Feather. This is…” He grunted and caged me against the back of the desk, his hips against mine as he examined the sheets. “Is there something I should know?” He lowered his head and breathed in deeply as he kissed along my neck. “Have I been missing the signals that badly? I thought we had at least another week.”
“I think it’s just not as aggressive this time, but I didn’t take my tincture yet.” He ground me into the desk, his rigid length pressed up against me as his head fell back and he groaned. “I can… or, we can have a few days to ourselves again. Up to you.”
“That should be up to you, Phin, not me.” His voice had gravel in it, and his eyes had gone solid ruby.
“Maybe I’ll take it tomorrow, then.” I watched as the man I loved, the one I craved more than life crumbled.
He took his spectacles off and flung them somewhere across the room before diving toward me, both hands cradling my face as his split tongue coaxed my lips apart. He kissed me like he was suffocating and I was air, like salvation itself was found in my lips. In the end, he got what he needed—I was the one left breathless when he finally pulled away.
His arm swept the pages off the desktop, the whole of them fluttering as they caught the air before slowly falling to the floor.
“I’ll fix that later,” he promised, and settled me where he wanted me before dropping to his knees.
I was wearing one of the dresses I’d bought in Revalia, and his hands slid up my legs at the same time they pushed them apart. He drew my ankles up over his shoulders, forcing me to lean back on my elbows as his mouth danced along my thigh. My fingers tangled in his hair as heat consumed me, a flush of warmth washing over me from head to toe. Tap latched on to me and sucked, causing every thought to evaporate.
“I love this dress,” he muttered, alternating teasing my entrance with his tongue and fingers, sucking, and licking until I was a trembling mess.
In the end, it was his red eyes looking up at me with such devotion that did me in. I came with a rough shout on his fingers and nearly fell off the desk.
He scooped me up and turned me toward the cushions spread out all over the floor. “We’re just getting started, beloved.”
“Wait,” I said on a gasp. “Look at the back.”
After setting me down, he stripped off his own clothing a piece at a time while reaching for one of the discarded pieces of parchment. He flipped one over, finding the new symbol I’d created for us.
He reverently traced along the lines. “This is my sigil. But it’s not. Not exactly.”
“No, it’s… ours,” I said, suddenly embarrassed and worried he’d think I defaced his sigil.
“Ours.” His smile was slow. “Yes. This is you, here, and this is me… but they’re wrapped together. I can’t tell where one stops and the other starts. It’s perfect.”
Relief washed over me, and then confusion as instead of returning to my side, he went to the cabinet and collected a pot of ink and his enchanted quill.
“What are you doing?”
