The fucker stopped and stepped back. I let out a grunt of protest and grabbed for him, but he slapped my hands away with a laugh. “I don’t want to come on your stomach our first time, Vox. I want you to come inside me. I want you to make me yours, and I’ll make you mine, even if it’s just this one time.”
There was an urgency in his tone, and I realized he believed this would be our only chance. I swore to the Goddess herself it wouldn’t be, but I could give him this.
I grabbed his jaw, kissing him hard. “This is just the beginning of something. Sometimes it’ll be you and I, and sometimes we’ll have Avie between us.” His cock jumped between us at that. Yeah, Avalon could only make this more…everything.“But this won’t be the last time, Lierick. I swear it on my life.”
I spun him toward the rock wall, dragging his pants further down his thighs. Pressing my arm between his chest and the rock face in front of him, I spat on my other hand. I rubbed a finger around his tight hole, pushing it in slightly, making us both moan. Then another finger, stretching him, preparing him, making him grunt.
Fuck, he was tight. Would I fit?
“Vox,please,” he groaned.
Lining myself up, I pressed inside him. His body stretched around me, then pulled me in. Holding myself back from thrusting balls deep was the singularly most restrained I’d ever been in my entire, pathetic life.
Finally, I was buried inside him, as close to another man as I ever could be. I kissed the back of his neck, burying nose in his soft golden hair.
Once I thought he’d had enough time to adjust—and I’d gotten ahold of myself, so I didn’t blow in three strokes—I started to move. It was everything. Not like making love to Avalon, which was like holding something soft and gentle and perfect in your hands. No, fucking Lierick was something more primal. More wild, filled with burning need. Different, but not better.
“Fuck, Vox,” he moaned, the sound muffled by his forearm. I held him tightly, moving with longer, wilder strokes. His handwas on his cock, stroking in time with my thrusts, and it was too fucking much.
I wrapped my hand around his and squeezed, and he came in hot spurts all over his chest and the stone that was scraping against my knuckles. Like I’d been granted permission, I came inside him, buried so deep that I never wanted to leave. I kissed his shoulders, his nape, his spine, peppering every inch I could reach with soft caresses.
Finally, our panting subsided, and I pulled out to the sound of our combined groans. “That was…” I whispered, still not ready to face him.
“It was,” he agreed softly.
It had to happen again. Again, and again, and again if I had my way. I turned his face and kissed him once more, trying to convey the tenderness that didn’t come to me naturally, the emotions that I kept suppressed for everyone except Avalon, who refused to let me hide them away.
He smiled as he moved back, bending down to pull up his underwear, but kicking his pants off the rest of the way. “Let’s go clean up,” he said, a small smirk on his face.
Smiling at him, I nodded. Kicking out of my clothes except my own underwear, I picked them up and carried them down to the water’s edge.
Everyone else was still floating on the surface, and it looked idyllic. The kind of moment you wanted to live inside forever. Avalon turned her head to look at us, her cheeks flushed pink. It might have been the sun or…
Hayle’s lascivious wink let me know that everyone knew what Lierick and I had just done, but none of them seemed to care. Not even Zier, who looked like he was sleeping in the water.
Tugging at my hand, Lierick led me into the cold water, and I hissed a little at the chill on my overheated skin, until I lowered my body temperature to match.
I walked out toward Avalon, wanting to check in on her. I wanted to make sure what had just happened was okay. Because as much as I wanted Lierick, I needed Avalon just as much.
“Okay?” she asked as I scooped her into my arms, treading water without the use of my magic. I enjoyed the weight of the water around me.
“Better than. Is it okay with you?”
She wrapped her legs around my waist and kissed me. “I couldn’t be happier. I love you, Vox. If my only success in this lifetime is to show you just how worthy of love you are, then that would be more than enough.”
Fuck, I loved her so much. Kissing her back deeply, I told her that over and over again as we floated in this quiet little oasis, a place of calm before the storm that was brewing on the horizon.
Thirteen
Zier
Unlike the other Lines in West Ebrus, the Eighth Line weren’t particularly devout. We didn’t spit in the eye of the Goddess or anything, but we went about living, without any active acknowledgement of a higher power. We had temples, and an annual holiday that was celebrated across all of Ebrus, but I wouldn’t be the only person in the Eighth Line that thought it was just for drinking a little too much and celebrating with family, rather than reverence to the Goddess.
All this was to say that I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten here, to this point, floating in the middle of a freezing cold, hidden lake, listening to mortal enemies fuck behind a boulder like the rest of the world was deaf. The sex sounds were only minorly drowned out by the soft laughter of a woman who made my heart beat so irregularly that I’d seen a doctor after she’d left Eaglehoth a little over a month ago.
When I’d first seen her in my office, my brain had almost shut down. My heart knew that this was it. This was my person. That was a ridiculous sentiment, but it was only compounded by our dance together at the Tournament of Second Heirs.
Then I’d sent her off into danger and hadn’t slept a proper night since.
