“I know,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, then the sensitive spot beneath my ear. “I feel you.”
He shifts slightly, angling his hips, and the next thrust hits something devastatingly perfect. My vision splinters, my breath catches, and my back arches as pleasure twists tight, winding impossibly sharp, impossibly sweet.
He continues to drive into me, each stroke landingright where I need him.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until I can’t hold on anymore.
Until I don’t want to.
I shatter, my muscles rippling around him, my release cresting over me in slow, rolling waves that shake me to my core. And he doesn’t rush. Doesn’t chase his own pleasure. He just moves with me, drawing it out, letting me feel every lingering tremor, every pulse of pleasure still washing through my limbs.
Only when I sag beneath him, utterly wrecked, utterly his, does his rhythm finally falter. His breath stutters, his muscles tensing as he thrusts once, twice more, then finds his own release with a broken, reverent moan, spilling into me, his body pressing deeper, holding me to him like he’ll never let go.
For a long moment, we don’t move. Our bodies locked together, our chests rising and falling in sync. His forehead drops to mine, his lips brushing over my cheek, my jaw, my mouth.
“You were made for me,” he whispers.
And it isn’t a claim. It’s a prayer.
And God help me, I’m praying too.
Twenty-Nine
For a little while, the world outside this cellar, outsidethis moment, doesn’t exist. There is only him. Only us. The heat of his skin pressed against mine, the scent of salt and chocolate in the air between us. The way his fingers still ghost over my hip as if memorizing me, as if trying to hold onto something he knows is already slipping away.
I close my eyes in an attempt to stay in this moment, tucked into this stolen sliver of time, but reality slices back into me like a blade to the gut.
Alder. The priest. The banquet. The sacrifice.
I’ve seen how the machine responds when Alderic and I are together. I’ve felt the shift. The hum beneath my skin. It doesn’t want blood. It doesn’t want suffering.
It wants connection. It wants the Lovers. Not just the card. But us, together.
But will that be enough?
Alderic’s arm tightens around me as if sensing my thoughts.
I draw a slow breath. “We should get ready.”
He sighs like he doesn’t want to move, but then he pushes up from the table. Candlelight dances over the lines of his body—sun-kissed skin stretched over strong muscle, the sharp dips and angles of his abdomen, the light sheen of sweat still clinging to his chest. He is all strength, all beauty, and I take one selfish lingering look before he reaches for the clothes I brought for him.
“We have a plan. The people think Delphara is their savior, that the machines turning back on is divine will,” I say, finding my dress, slipping it on, and tugging my own laces tight as I force my thoughts back to our strategy. “No one outside the castle knows the truth about what’s happening here. We expose the queen. End the sacrifices. Free the kingdom.”
“But that doesn’t heal the Tower or the machine inside it. It doesn’t fix the problem with the magick,” Alderic says. “It doesn’t get you home.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
He watches me as I cross the room and take his coat from where it was haphazardly thrown over a chair. My thoughts tighten, pulling into shape, into something I’ve already half-mapped but haven’t yet shared.
“Delphara thinks it’s blood,” I murmur, smoothing the velvet over my arm. “She believes that blood is the price of power. But that’s not what the Tower actually wants.” I glance up at him. “At least, not what I think it wants.”
Alderic nods, linen shirt half-buttoned, eyes narrowing. “Go on.”
