The weight of what he’s done. The care. Thewhybehind it all suddenly makes my throat feel tight. Then I notice that Curio’s fully kitted in his own armor and weapons. I stare at our reflections, at the way we seem to complement one another, to match. In his own profound way, Curio’s just shown me how I fit within the dynamic of the Order, and it does more to banish my fears and worries than anything else has. There’s no doubt in my mind how he sees me, as I take in the two of us standing shoulder to shoulder.
I’m his equal in every way.
Not some slave stolen in the dark of the night. Not a conquest to capture and then cast aside. I’m worthy of veneration and fervent regard needed to create something this exquisite. I’m worthy of the blood, sweat, and time that went into the stunning, thoughtful details that I’m discovering on my body one by one. A scattering of stars down the black handle peeking above one shoulder. Clouds and raindrops etched into the grip of the weapon guarding the other side. The hidden blades of two daggers are tucked horizontally low on my back. Scorpions are carved on the handles, the stingers of their tails barely visible past the sides of my waist. Another set of daggers are sheathed at my hips, their scabbards have small vines and even tinier flowers etched into the borders.
How Curio feels about me is written all over his work, and I’m both awed and overwhelmed.
“These are how the stars looked in the sky the first time I wanted you to be ours,” he tells me, pointing to the handle of what has to be a sword sheathed at my back. “Your ax has the day you left and then came back to us,” he continues, drawing my eyes to the other handle with the rain and clouds. “Moonflower vines.” He gestures to the daggers belted at my waist. “They grew all over my mother’s garden, and you carry their scent… Maybe fate was trying to tell me something even then,” he muses, his fingers tracing slowly up to my arms. “These are the same style as the one you stole from Tarek that first night in the ludere.”
Curio pulls the knives from a hidden spot on the inside of my vambraces, and I laugh at the memory. I really did love that knife.
“But this might be my favorite,” he confesses as he unhooks my ax.
Curio brings the pitch black weapon in front of me, and I immediately notice that the edges of the blades aren’t black like the rest of it. Confusion furrows my brow, and then recognition flares through me.
“The chakram,” I exclaim as I take it in, pressing fingers to my mouth as though it will keep my emotions trapped there.
He made the edges of my ax from the weapon Leto tried to kill me with. He split the solid circle, melding the silver halves with the sable metal he forged the rest of the ax with. It’s a breathtaking, poignant fusion of my past and my future, and my eyes start to sting.
“What doesn’t kill us fortifies us,” I whisper, reciting what he said to me when he first told me that he’d kept the chakram and wanted to use it in my kit somehow.
I run my thumb along the vicious edge and marvel. I’ve spent as long as I can remember surviving and adapting, and now it’s as though I’m holding the physical manifestation of that struggle in my palms. Something that should have killed me but didn’t, something that I survived will now cut down anything that stands in my way.
Tears well in my eyes as I look up at Curio. Somehow, completely unexpectedly, he’s wholly and unequivocally rocked me to my core.
I take the ax from his hands and in two strides set it on his work table. Then two more strides after that, I reach up and pull Curio’s mouth to mine.
ChapterThirty-Eight
CURIO
Auset kisses me like she’s drowning and I’m her next breath of air.
I’m stunned at first by her reaction. I wasn’t sure how she’d take the professions I etched into every piece of her kit. Worry’s been eating at me all day, knowing I’d finally show her pieces of me the only way I know how to expose them. I didn’t even get to reveal the grooves I painstakingly carved into the metal of her blades to help direct the blood that will eventually bless them, away from her grip. Or the blades of the daggers that I shaped to look like scorpion tails. I carved fettiks into the handles too, wanting her to have a constant reminder of where she belongs, even if she chooses to leave us.
But the flick of Auset’s tongue at the seam of my lips is all it takes for me to forget everything but her mouth on mine. The feel of her in my arms, the way her lips beg me for more, it pulls me from my shock and launches me into something I’ve been dreaming about since I first laid eyes on my Moonling.
Hunger unfurls and smelts my veins. My cock hardens and I grasp her face and begin to claim her right back. Her hair is braided tightly in a line down the middle of her head, the plait hanging long down her back. I wrap the tail around one hand and pull, forcing her to tilt her face back and relinquish some control to me. Greedily, I swallow the moan that escapes her, instantly needing to feast on more. I back her up to the edge of my work table and drop a hand to lift her on to it.
She welcomes me between her thighs, and I take my place pressing her to me as we devour each other. Tongues clash and twine, as our mouths envelop, suck, and nip. She tastes like home and fucking vengeance, two things that call to my soul and anchor me to this world. I growl as Auset soaks all of my senses in everything that is uniquely her. I’m drowning in her, and yet it’s still not enough. I need to sink into her hot, wet pussy and fuck her until my brothers and I are all she can see and all she’ll ever want again.
Our armor collides unforgivingly as we try to crush our bodies closer. I want to peel her out of each piece I just meticulously fitted to her, but I know there’s no time. I want to scream with how much I want her, but duty fucking calls. Tar and Riall gave me a little space to get Auset ready, knowing what I’ve been working on and that she’ll need help the first few times getting in and out of her kit until she can do it herself. But I know me fucking her on my shop table while they wait back at the house isn’t going to go over well. Especially when there’s vital information waiting to be collected.
I give myself another moment to get lost in the taste and feel of my Moonling. I nip her top lip and then suck the bottom into my mouth, my thumbs caressing her cheeks as I angle her the way I need to let my tongue show her exactly what I want to be doing with my cock right now. I grind up into her thighs, the rind covering her there just tight enough for me to feel the beckoning heat of her cunt. She moans again and I pull away from her before I lose all sense of right and wrong and take her here and now.
Our foreheads press together, both of us panting and lost to each other.
“Fuck,” I lament, skimming my lips against hers for another quick sip before denying myself any more. “Listen to me right now, Moonling, and listen good,” I growl against her mouth. “I’m going to fuck you so long and so hard that you’ll need a month to recover from it, but it will have to wait until after we meet our contact,” I promise her, and the frustration that flashes through her features makes me bite back a disgruntled snarl.
Auset’s silver eyes are glassy with desire. Her lips are kiss-swollen and the same pinkish-red assiruberries. My fingers pulled a few strands from her braid, and they now hang free, framing her gorgeous face. All I want to do is rumple her even further, to finally crack through her failing defenses and dig into the center of who she is and why she’s ours, but we need to go.
A resigned huff falls from her lips, and she leans back on the scarred and worn table that I do all my best work on.
“You Scorpions keep promising things to that effect, and yet here I sit…unfucked,” she practically pouts in theI will slit your throatkind of way that is an adorable expression of Auset’s displeasure.
It makes me even harder.
I want to soak in her ferocious displeasure, listen to her growl warnings at me while I tease her body, edging her until she’s on the brink of murder and insanity, but I’m pushing it as it is already. I give her a smile that speaks of all the foul and dirty things I plan to do to her when we get back.
