“Take what you need, love.”
My pleasure rose. Sensation flared. My feet braced against the tub. And with a final moan, waves of heat cascaded through me. Hart’s fingers didn’t slow as he worked me through it. My limbs turned to jelly, and then he finally wrapped both arms around me and pressed a kiss just below my ear.
Languid and content, I wondered if I’d ever move again. Still, my desire for him only grew with every moment he remained curled around me. With little grace, I turned in the tub so I straddled his lap, splashing water in every direction. “I need more.”
His smirk was sinful as I leaned in to capture his lips in a kiss. His hands were at my waist, my neck, pulling us flush together. Then we were moving, and he stood, lifting me as he went. His lips didn’t leave mine until required. He toweled us off and returned us to the bedroom, slipping us both between the sheets of the large four-poster bed.
I crawled on top of him, feeling a power that had nothing to do with magic in the way his green eyes tracked my movements. He traced the curve of my hips and my breasts as I reached for his length. I wrapped my hand around the silk and steel of him. His eyes rolled back with my first pump, then I brought my lips to his cock and teased the tip with my tongue. A strangled sound left him. I chased it as I licked from root to tip, then took him into my mouth.
His fingers were in my hair as words of worshipfell from his lips. I worked his base with my hand. I’d never fit him fully, but he didn’t seem to mind. He hissed as I dragged my lips along his length. His body was a rigid line of tension as he whispered, “Don’t make me beg, love.”
I nodded, and he hauled me to him, rolling us over so that he hovered above me. His kiss was deep, searching, claiming. He cupped my cheek before guiding his length to my entrance.
Something about this moment felt different. We’d been together in the Oldwood. We’d stolen our moments of joy before the battle. I knew, as rulers, no matter what shape that took, that we’d have to steal moments for ourselves in the future.
But here, now, we had made it. We had both survived. Hart was free of Themis. Kavios was free of the goddesses’ game. We were together.
“Hart,” I all but begged now. I wanted to feel him fill me.
Our bodies came together like they were made for nothing else.
He dipped his head to kiss my neck, my chest, my breast. “This,” he whispered. “I would do it all again for this.”
Then he moved. Each thrust sent a pulse of heat through my body. It matched the ever-present flame of our connection. Forged when it shouldn’t have been. A bond all our own. I hadn’t stopped to wonder what magic might have caused it. I didn’t care now as my fingers dug into his shoulders. He worshiped me with his mouth, with his hands, with each and every movement.
“I love you, Hart,” I whispered, and clawed deeper at his muscles.
His thrusts grew harder, responding to my unspoken demands. His hands were everywhere as he launched me, once again, over the edge. Waves of pleasure cascaded through me. The sweet taste of his joy joined the sensationflooding my body. With a final frenzy of movement, he, too, found his release.
In the quiet moments that followed, he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I love you too, Chaos.”
I kissed him again, long and lingering. Together, in the room abandoned by the Cursed King in a tower of Glanmore Castle, I fell into a restful sleep.
44
Maybe Chaos knew what she was doing after all.
— FROM CHAMPIONS OF KAVIOS
HART
Some days, I wondered if we saw each other even less now that we had a kingdom to restructure. But every night Ember and I crawled into the bed we’d come to call our own and my arms encircled her, with no fear of goddesses, or Blessed, or tyrants, I counted it all as worth it.
We had so much to do. Prioritization was key.
Ember spent her time cataloging the adamas. We needed to know how much the Feared and Storm had collected and how many pieces remained in the city. I was surprised to learn that they had collected most of it in their initial battle. We knew better than most the damage that one or twopieces of adamas could do in the wrong hands. The Feared kept searching for the pieces Ember pointed them toward.
I would be forever thankful that Ember had found a way through for all of us. Not that the throne really existed anymore, but being able to stare at its remains without so much as a whisper was something I hadn’t dared hope for.
Ember’s hope had carried us through.
Though she’d say that my determination had returned her to Kavios in the first place.
She thought I was somehow fit to rule, but she took to it more naturally than I ever had. She knew what questions to ask. How to think about moving the kingdom forward. While we collected the adamas, we still had so much to settle between the humans and the former Blessed.
Even Rodric’s law had claimed the Blessed weren’t to take without consent. Few outside of Forest’s Edge had enforced such a law, and accidental takings were claimed often, but Ember knew how to thread the line of repercussions for their actions versus collective incarceration of the Blessed.
There were plenty who deserved worse sentences than they received, and many citizens who attended our town hall forums said as much. We did what we could with first-hand testimony. We moved the kingdom forward. Thankfully, Rodric’s death—and Vaddon’s, too—had done a lot to ease the humans’ vengeance.
