Finally, Rhael moved, his hands knotted in my hair as he began to move his hips, thrusting into my mouth as I hollowed my cheeks, moaning around him.
“Fuck!” He hissed as he tried to control my rhythm, but I resisted him. This was my control. Myturn to give him pleasure and take nothing in return just as he had done before.
Spurred on by his desire I took him deeper, pushing the limits as I swallowed around him. The tip hitting the back of my throat, the sensation making me gag slightly, but I didn't stop. The feeling of control pushing me forward. Continuing to suck, lick and moan until he was panting, almost begging for release.
With a final hard thrust of his hips, Rhael came with a loud groan. His hot, thick, release spilled into my mouth, coating my tongue and throat.
For a moment I thought about spitting it out, but decided to lift my head, looking him in the eyes as I swallowed it, savouring the taste over my tongue as I pulled back, finally releasing my grip on him and leaning back onto the balls of my feet.
Without letting him speak, I rise slowly, reclaiming the space between us. When I stand before him, I can see how barely in control he is. His breathing ragged as he tucked himself back into his trousers. His hands fumbled with the zipper as he tried to take in deep breaths.
“Wanting me doesn't make you weak,” I whispered to him and for a moment, just one, he leaned forward his forehead against mine. His eyes closed as he calmed himself.
“You should go, before I stop being the man you think I am,” he whispered, his voice strained as I nodded my head. Stepping back one pace, then a second.
I leave with my heart racing, my confidence intact and the knowledge that neither of us would be able to sleep tonight without thinking of what had just happened between us.
Chapter Twenty
Rhael
I did not return to my chambers. Instead, I stayed in the confines of my office. Listening as Elara closed the door with a sound much too soft for the damage she left in her wake.
I needed to distract myself, except my feet stayed rooted in the exact spot she had left me in. Hands braced on the edge of my desk, breathing uneven, my magic still singing beneath my skin.
The room already bore marks of my previous angry outburst. A fractured pillar near the far wall, stone split where my temper had struck it one too many times. Fine cracks in the marble were hidden by stacks of books and carefully placed furniture. My office had always been a safe space for my rage, yet I could no longer bring myself to destroy it.
I took a moment, a pointless attempt to untangle the web of emotions that lingered inside of my mind. I had to be calm, to formulate a plan. My role was always to find solutions. Even if they were problems of my own creation.
The image of my sister stepping forward plays over inside my head, relentless like a curse Icannot escape. Olesia had seemed so calm, her back straight as she had offered herself in an alliance to aid my cause. No hesitation in her voice, no fear whatsoever.
I should have been proud. Averan would have been proud. In reality I felt frustrated. The thought of my only sibling no longer being here, turned my stomach every time it crossed my mind.
My hands dug through my hair as I finally moved. Turning my back to the door and pacing like some kind of caged animal. My wings twitched relentlessly beneath the skin of my back. Itching for me to release them along with my anger. To remind myself that I could level stone if I needed to, that I wasn't weak.
Yet, I was unable to stop this, to stop my sister from being thrown into the hands of a man who I would have once considered a friend. Aasim had turned cold in the seven years since I had seen him last, he had always been dominant and unyielding, but he had never been this intent on seeing my destruction.
The worst thing was, Olesia was right. She has always been right, ever since she was a child. Ever since my mother had walked that small bundle into our lives, I knew she would spend her life time proving me wrong.
For years she had begged to help me carry the weight of the crown. Offered to take the role of second in command, but I had never been able to let it go. She was too innocent, toogentle, too pure. If I did not know better I would have assumed she still believed in true love and fairy tales.
The position should have been hers, it was her birthright, from the moment Averan’s blood soaked into stone and our futures rearranged themselves, into something neither of us were supposed to live through.
The images that I try to keep at bay flood me next. The way I had held my older brother's body. How his wings had laid wrong against the marble, torn and broken, as if death itself rejected them. I could still feel the scream that had come from my throat, how it had broken the silence of the space that had turned into my brother's resting place. My brother had not died in some grand battle, it had been betrayal. The fault of trusting the wrong person.
My fault.
The thought sank its claws deep into my chest. If I had not been so foolish it would have never happened. If I had kept my heart cold, locked in stone, like the warrior my father had expected to be, none of this would happen.
The same guilt filled me when I thought of my sister and her fate. If I had not reached for peace so foolishly, believing that alliances could be forged from bridges I had soaked in blood before I burned them, she would not be in this position. Another of my siblings would not be lost to my errors.
My hand slammed back into the desk hard enough to rattle the maps and parchment spread across it. Ink bottles wobbled, spilling black ink overthe wood. I took a moment, staring at the dark liquid, breathing hard.
The ink was me. I bled slowly, quietly, in places no one can see and now my sister would pay the price for another of my failures. A mistake caused by me that I could not reverse. Another life ruined by my cause.
Aasim’s gaze when she had offered herself had been calculating, appraising, as if he was already imagining his possession of her. He had smiled, not cruelly, not even unkindly, but with the confidence of a man who expects the world to give him what he wants. A man patient enough to wait for it to come to him.
I hate him. But no matter how great my hatred for him, the hatred I felt for myself was more.
