Then a cool breeze sheared through the parapet. Our gazes seized, and we blinked from the savage haze. Withoutmercy, the consequences weighed us down like blocks of masonry, and my eyes jumped all over her.
The teeth marks. The purple splotch where I had sucked on her neck. The detritus of torn clothing scattered everywhere. The bruised lips, matted hair, and rips in Aspen’s discarded bodice.
The clan had invented many names for this state of affairs. Angry sex. Feud sex. Seasons, I had fucked the living hell out of her.
Yes, in the treehouse enclave, I had fantasized while groping my cock. Yes, I’d given myself release in private, with her name shattering on my lips. Yes, I indulged in the sanctity of my cabin.
No, I had not planned to rail this woman against a cold stone edifice. No, I hadn’t planned to ravish her at all.
She deserved firelight, four solid walls, and a bed. However adventurous Aspen was regarding sex, this woman merited sensuous caresses and prolonged lovemaking.
Instead, I lost my faculties and conducted myself worse than a lion in heat. Hard, rough, and fast. I’d pounced with a primal ferociousness beyond impunity. And while I did not regret making Aspen come, bringing her to the height of pleasure, I should have gone about this like a civil human being.
Remorse curdled my stomach. An apology slid across my lips, but she set her fingers against them.
“Don’t do that,” she whispered. “Don’t beat yourself up. I chose this too. And I loved it.”
I wavered. “I failed to control myself.”
“That’s the point. I didn’t want you to.” She brushed that same finger across the seam in my lips. “Did the loss of control feel good?”
“With you, it did.”
“Then it wasn’t a failure.” Aspen nudged her digit between my incisors. “It was passionate.”
Succumbing to the temptation, I nipped that finger. However volatile, I’d given her ecstasy. By that definition then, I rather liked this side of passion.
Aspen beamed. Yet the rosy luster drained from her countenance shortly thereafter, the expression stabbing me clean through. We watched one another, overwrought while her pussy encased my dick.
The agreement we struggled to maintain. The premonition warding me from getting too close, lest I neglected to protect her. The unknown reason she kept to herself.
These obstacles resurfaced like brambles. Regardless of how often one cut them back, their thorns grew.
Taking one final liberty, our gazes held as the firm length of my cock eased from her slit, the drenched edges of her cunt skimming my flesh. Aspen’s eyelids fluttered. She stifled a thin noise, and I restrained a groan. One word. One plea from her, and I would fuck this woman again, and again, and again. It would be easy to roll my hips, puncturing her with another thrust, starting this mayhem all over.
Instead, we savored the motions before the absence of her tight warmth hit me like a phantom pain. Brushing my thumbs across the swells of her ass, I lowered Aspen to the ground.
And quietly, we dressed.
37
Aire
As I escorted Aspen to her cabin, we filled the excruciating silence. I spoke of the knights I had felled and the oak’s roots taking their bodies underground. Much to our surprise, the tree had allied with us.
In return, her leaden voice tallied the details of the explosion, including her conclusion about Reaper’s Fest and how the impending revels expedited her actions. Despite my misgivings about Lyrik, the man supplied Aspen with an effective means to dismantle the armory tent without sacrificing the natural environment.
From her pocket, she withdrew the bottle of fluid from Rhys’s pavilion. After examining the mixture, I contributed a hypothesis. The concoction matched a fertility drug Jeryn had shown us in the rainforest, which brought to mind the roundtable following my return to the castle, when Briar mentioned Rhys’s attempts to resume marital relations with Giselle. Although our clan had dismissed this, it resurrected Jeryn and Poet’s suspicion that Rhys kept one of his heirs a secret.
Illegitimacy was hardly controversial in the lifespan of Royals, provided they married for duty instead of love. Spring, Autumn, and Winter defied that notion. But the tradition of arranged nuptials was certainly the case for Summer.
That aside, the context of any potential dalliance between Rhys and someone other than his wife was where things got complicated.
Aspen had been right to confiscate the vessel. Something about this seemed linked. Why else would Rhys appeal to Giselle for sex? In his position, it only made sense if he suffered from abstinence or required another heir.
His firstborn expressed little interest in the throne. And if a so-called bastard existed—a person with ambiguous but shocking origins that would tarnish the last vestiges of Rhys’s status—it might motivate His Majesty to supersede this unknown figure, in case they ever sought a claim to their birthright.
Pausing beside Aspen’s cabin door, we idled in the glow of a million pigmented leaves. The object of my affection draped her tongue across her mouth, the visual painful to behold. What I wouldn’t give to kiss her, carry her inside, and wrap her in my arms.
