I arched my hips. More. Fingers slid inside of me. Two thick, strong fingers at the command of a male so powerful, I trembled. Trembled with need, but also with awe. This male loved me. He had chosen me above all others, not because of duty or a bond but because he loved me. This male was mine.
Those two fingers worked inside of me, curling until they found that spot that I was never able to reach on my own. Only he had the power to draw this sort of pleasure from me. Only he had ever discovered the depths of pleasure that my body could know, and coaxed them from me with loving demand.
He stroked again and again over that spot. I heard my own sobs, begging him to go faster. But there was no answer, not in words. Only the silent, constant demand of his fingers. Then his mouth, back on my stomach, sucking me hard enough I knew I would bear the marks.
I was going to die of this pleasure. Fall into the void and lose myself, willingly, so that I might stay in this spiral of perfection forever. This was not sex, it was so much more. It was my body honoring what my soul knew, what my heart felt with every beat of that golden thread that tethered us.
Please, please, please, I chanted. Aloud or in my mind, through the bond, to the beast—it did not matter. I needed him to go faster, to push me over that edge.
But he refused with every punishing stroke of his fingers inside of me. Until I could not argue anymore. I could notthink. I usually came in a gush, an explosion of liquid pleasure that coated our skin and the bed around us. But this was so much more intense. My climax came in waves, undulating with each scrape of his fingertips inside my pussy. It dragged out over minutes, a wave of pleasure that dripped down around his wrist; another a few seconds later, drenching my thighs. So much, so sweet, that his mouth left my stomach, desperate to capture every drop of me.
I was no longer in my body. I obviously could not be alive. No one survived coming like that. I had no fluids left in my body, I was reduced to a heartbeat and a gasp.
But a hand touched my waist, applied slight pressure. An invitation.
One I would never, ever refuse.
I rolled over—
I jolted awake. My fingers curled into the silk bedsheets, trying to find purchase, searching for something that was not there. Someone.
“Arran?” I whispered into the darkness, my voice pitifully small and broken.
No answer.
No rasp of breath or huff of beastly warmth.
It had been a dream.
I closed my eyes again. And even though I didn’t believe in the Ancestors’ ability to help me, even though I’d cursed them to hell and beyond, the prayer still flitted across my consciousness. Unspoken, but no less real.
Let me dream of him again. Please, oh please, oh Ancestors. Let me see him in my dreams.
Because I knew that when I woke again, I would be alone. Living in my nightmares.
33
CYARA
“Is this how you celebrate Yule in Annwyn?” Percival spat, blood and spittle mingling as they slid down his chin, slowed by the weeks’ worth of black stubble.
“You ought to know by now that I consider any day without blood spilt to be an utter waste,” Veyka said, wiping the blood from her knuckles on a handcloth. At least she had spared the gown that Cyara had spent hours finishing for her. “Now that we’ve established that you’re at my mercy—”
“The chains weren’t fucking en—”
“—it’s question time.” Veyka crossed her arms under her breasts.
She wore no weapons, though Cyara knew she would not leave the suite of rooms in the tower without her daggers and the scabbard. But for now she was unarmed. That was a decision. Much like hitting Percival and blatantly ignoring Diana.
Veyka had a plan. Not that she would share it until she was good and ready.
At least when Arran was with them, he could intercept her rash schemes.
But that was the least of the reasons to miss the Brutal Prince.
Cyara averted her eyes and went back to folding towels.
“Why was Diana taken instead of you?” Veyka asked.
