I fisted my hands behind my back. “I wish you had come to me.”
Contrition swept across her features, her gaze softening on mine. “You keep everyone else safe. But who does the same for you?”
My chest clenched. My brethren and the clan guarded my back, but that was different.
She interpreted my silence. “I would do it again.”
“So would I,” I rasped.
Her quest. My rescue. The tower.
For devil’s sake, I should leave before more foolish desires piled on my lips.
Reject me. Claim me.
Ask me to stay. Beg me to leave.
Aspen’s gaze darted to my mouth, then crawled to my eyes. “Goodnight.”
Focus. Discipline.
“Goodnight,” I husked.
My fingers itched to take her hand, kiss her knuckles, and bow my head like a gentleman. Yet tonight, I’d been no such thing, and I forfeited any right to make further contact.
Only eternal lovers did such things.
***
Days and nights passed in a flurry of activity. Try as I might—and I did fucking try—memories took up residence in my head, that frenzied eventide in the woods dominating my thoughts like a recurring dream.
Those luscious tits filling my hands, her legs hooking around my hectic waist, that soaked pussy rippling around my cock. Her head thrown back in primitive ecstasy, that voice shrieking to the treetops, and the delirium of watching her come. The liquid flux of Aspen’s climax running down to my balls, the pulsating ripple of her cunt, and her pleasure ringing through the woods while I fucked every sound from those fierce lungs.
The fury. The surrender. The passion.
Never before had it been like that with another. Each dusk, I cursed the Almighty Seasons. Perspiration leaked down my throat, heat flooded my sac, and my dick stood higher than a flag post as I recalled the taste, sound, and feel of her.
So be it. Given the choice, I would not plead for the fantasies to stop. Not when that was all I’d ever have.
We summarized our excursions to Nicu, excluding that hour of undomesticated copulation. In turn, my liege offered his own ideas and repeated everything verbatim that Jeryn ever said about his medical inventory.
Next came Lyrik. Given his voluntary participation in Aspen’s errand, my trust in the man expanded gradually, enough that I had no objections to sharing the contents of Rhys’s elixir.
As a precaution, we omitted to whom the mixture belonged. Keeping Lyrik in the dark over Rhys’s proximity felt necessary, considering we still didn’t know the man well enough.
Some details could be imparted. But not all.
Standing in his alchemy chamber, the rogue surveyed the glass vessel in Aspen’s hand. “You found this where?”
“The armory tent,” she replied smoothly. “I must have missed it the first time.”
“Odd thing, stashing a cocktail with a bunch of farming tools masquerading as murder weapons.”
“That’s why I took it.”
Leaning against the doorway, I folded my arms. “We wondered if it might be an explosive.”
“Call me flattered,” Lyrik drawled. “Except I know ammunition when I see it. Looks to me like this is something you’d find in an apothecary. Probably a good time to tell you I’m no doctor.”
