“Very great indeed,” he murmured against my lips. “You made me come in no time, my sweet girl. I came so hard, it woke me up. But reality is even better than any dream could ever be.”
He kissed me so tenderly, I nearly melted in his arms. My body turned languid and soft, willing and needy at once.
“Let’s see how long you’ll last in real life,” I giggled softly, running my fingers over the hard ridges of his straining cock.
He growled and cursed under his breath. “Not long at all, sweetheart. Not long at all.”
I circled his hard length with my fingers. Shifting down his body, I ran my tongue over the bony ridges of his unusual cock. He bucked his hips, fisting the sheets. I licked the crown of his shaft, gathering a single drop of his pre-seed on my tongue.
He tasted like flower honey, sweet and fragrant with a tiny hint of spice that made my tongue tingle and made his orgasms especially satisfying because they prolonged mine when he came inside me. The sweet taste was typical for shadow fae. The spice came from the dragon. And my man was a mind-blowing blend of both.
“Don’t fight me, sweetie. Relax and let it go,” I cooed, before teasing the tip of his cock with my tongue.
Taking it between my lips, I glanced up at Timur’s face. His futures contorted into a grimace of need. He bit his lips with a moan of intense arousal. But I saw no signs of pain on his face. His tendrils remained hidden for now. He wasn’t connected to me. What he was feeling at this moment was entirely his own. He had no distraction of my emotions to help him with pain, yet he wasn’t hurting, and that made my heart lighter.
I set off his orgasm, and his mouth slackened, his breathing spasmed in rhythm with the golden spurts of his release. I licked them all up quickly, enjoying the pleasant taste.
When I looked up again, he smiled at me. A languid, happy smile that looked genuine even as he wasn’t connected to me, not through his tendrils anyway.
“How are you feeling, Timur?” I asked, mesmerized by that smile of his.
Grabbing me under my arms, he pulled me up his body for a kiss.
“Now, I feel like I’m still in a dream,” he whispered between kisses. “And I don’t ever want to wake up.”
The following night, he was gone. I missed him the moment I locked the doors behind him and hung one of his bracers on the metal hook in the wood. The other bracer he took with him. The magical connection between the two stretched like an invisible string, and I loved the thought that Timur was just at the other end of that string, which made the distance between us appear smaller somehow.
I was left alone in the cave, but it didn’t feel particularly lonely. In addition to the trickling of the water from our bathing area, many outside sounds reached me. Swishing of footfalls never ceased behind the doors that led into the corridors of the Wall. Voices and conversations floated by the patio outside as shadow fae passed by. An occasional rustling of clothes or scraping of weapons when the person happened to walk too close to the doors didn’t scare me. I kept quiet, and they moved on.
To kill time until Timur’s return, I cleaned the cave, washed all our clothes, and made food from the ingredients that Timur had left for me. There wasn’t much I could make without a stove and fire, but I had bread, dried meat, fresh and dried fruit›, and puffed rice to experiment with by arranging them into various combinations and keeping from getting bored.
Once Timur and I had settled in Teneris, I imagined I’d find something better to do. I had hobbies back home that I had so little time for. Maybe I could start knitting again. There was little use for sweaters in Alveari, but I could make blankets or throw cushions. Maybe we could even sell them, to have some extra money? Or to trade them for food?
A scraping noise out on the patio broke into my daydreaming. It wasn’t just the sound of someone passing by. The scraping was persistent, rhythmical, incessant, obviously trying to get my attention.
Quietly, I placed the skirt I’d just folded while organizing my clothes and stilled.
The scraping noise came again, as if someone ran a fingernail against the solid wood of the door. Then came the whisper.
“Elaine…”
My name drifted softly like a breeze through the hair’s width crack under the door. A fae in their shadow form could’ve possibly slipped through, too, had Timur not warded all the doors to our cave with his bracer.
I held my breath, not moving a muscle.
“Are you there, Elaine?” the same whisper asked.
Who was it? Who knew my name in Ashgate?
“Everyone knows your name, Sweet One…”the memory of Suhai’s words echoed through my mind.
If that was true, the fame I’d never sought in Ashgate had caught up with me.
“We don’t have much time, Elaine,” the voice coaxed. “If you want to save the general, we need to make a deal now.”
My heart thudded in my chest so loudly, I was sure he could hear it on the other side of the door too.
“Suhai?”
