The command is guttural, making me freeze before I feel the pulsing, searing warmth of his crown press against my drenched entrance. “Vale, please…”
But he doesn’t push inside.
Instead, he drags the weeping, velvet head of his cock through my slick folds, coating himself in the mess I made. He groans, a low vibration that rattles through the oak, hips jerking slightly as if it takes every ounce of his ancient willpower not to bury himself to the hilt inside me.
“You want this, don’t you?” he whispers, sliding the broad head up and down, lubricating the path, teasing the entrance but refusing to enter. “Want me to push inside. To fuck you. Tobedyou.” He pulls back an inch, denying me. “Bringing you one imaginary step closer to that deluded goal of yours.”
I mewl in frustration, my hands scrabbling against the parchment on the desk. “Please make me finish.”
“I can’t. I’m a poor lover, remember?”
He presses the head of his cock directly against my swollen, tormented clit and begins to grind there. Intense, rhythmic slides, the ridge of his length gliding over my nerve endings, over and over, while the air fills with the sounds of his own unraveling.
“Fuck,” he hisses through clenched teeth, every thrust of his hips punctuated by a guttural groan.
He wants inside. I can feel the desperate, jerking seek of his body. I can feel the way he bears down, as if he is about to shatter his own rule and impale me, only to violently drag himself back up to my clit at the last second. He’s panting, ragged, harsh gasps tearing from his throat.
He’s right there, teetering on the edge with me. I can feel his tremors shaking into mine, until he slams his groin against my ass one last time, ruthlessly grinding his hard shaft against my swollen bud in little pulsations.
The sensation is too much—too heavy, too direct. My world whites out. I scream, my body seizing in a violent release that ripples through every muscle.
And it shatters him.
With a roar that sounds like it was ripped from the chest of a beast, he stiffens behind me. I feel the hot, wet release as he spills over, his seed spurting in heavy, rhythmic jets that coat my curls, run to collect at my lower lips, only to pearl down the insides of my trembling thighs.
The heavy weight of his hand finally lifts from between my shoulder blades, leaving a cold phantom impression where his heat had grounded me. He steps back, adjusting his clothes with shaking hands, his chest still heaving as he looks down at the mess he made.
“Hopefully that improved your mood,” he says, his voice raspy, stripped of its usual smooth cadence. “But I refuse to indulge your delusions.”
I turn slowly, my knees trembling, and lean back against the edge of the desk for support. I should be frustrated, but I’m too thoroughly unraveled, my body feeling heavy and loose, buzzing with a satiation that borders on narcotic.
Besides…what is there to be frustrated about?
I look at him—hair disheveled, eyes dark and blown wide. My husband gave me something far more valuable than a simple bedding. He gave me a tell.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Vale, it is that where he offers no resistance, there’s no value. But where he fights?
There’s the path.
I catch my breath and gift him a languid, knowing smile. “For an act you claim is inconsequential to the curse’s undoing,” I murmur, tilting my head, “you certainly try to avoid it desperately.”
His hands slow on the fastenings of his breeches. The tension returns to his jaw, but he doesn’t scowl. Instead, a slow, terrifyingly beautiful smile curves his lips.
“There is a…new element,my love.One I would rather avoid, lest we complicate things further.” He reaches out and slides a finger deep inside once more. I gasp at the intrusion, sensitive and swollen, as he swipes through the slickness, only for him to withdraw. His eyes lock onto mine, darkening as he brings the finger up between us, the scent of coins filling the air. “You, Elara, are starting to bleed again.”
Chapter
Nine
Elara
The hearth in Daron’s room burns low, settled to glowing coals for the night. A quilt lies over my brother’s body, hiding the marbling that’s spread from his shoulders over toward his collarbone. His chest rises and falls with less violence today.
Still wet. Still wrong.
But not as frantic as yesterday.
I try not to let that small mercy fool me into believing the rot has grown kind and shift on my chair, turning my attention backto the table. Documents are spread across the little table by the window, delivered carefully by Miss Hampshire earlier tonight: parchment more ancient than the oldest grave back home, edges brittle and yellowed, ink faded to ghost-gray strokes.
