Page 91

"Do what?"

"Take a thing I have hidden for ten years and set it on the table like a flower on a war map."

Now it is my turn to go still. His hand has come up. His thumb moves over my knuckles, once, and the touch is careful in a manner that undoes me more than force ever could. I have handled his wounds and his temper and his cold, gilded rooms. I have not, until this instant, handled his tenderness, and I do not have a remedy prepared for it.

"You're supposed to be resting," I say, and my voice has gone unsteady.

"I have never been good at doing what I am supposed to."

"I'd noticed."

"Fiona." He says my name a third way now, and it is neither command nor grinding pain. It is close to a plea, from a man who I would have sworn had never asked for anything in his long life. "Come here."

I should say no. I know all the reasons, and they are good ones, built of law and caste and the contract that made me his before I ever saw his face. Every reason lines up neat as vials on a shelf.

Instead, I move and lean upward to kiss him instead. He answers as though he has been waiting for too long for this to happen. His hand slides into my hair, loosening my braid, and the wooden comb comes free and clatters behind, the care of where it is has left me. This is nothing like the careful thing his thumb did across my knuckles. His mouth is hungry, and the hunger is not the want of a lord taking what he is owed. It is raw, it is an elf who has spent a decade guarding every door in himself, throwing one of them open.

"Tell me this is a choice," I breathe against his mouth. "Not the contract, not duty. I need it to be a choice, or I can't⁠—"

"It is a choice." He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his dark eyes have swallowed all the cold light in the room. "You are the one thing in this keep I did not calculate. The one variable I cannot solve." His hand cups my jaw. "I stopped wanting to solve you. I only want you."

Whatever careful wall I have kept between us since the day I signed my name beneath his goes to dust.

I stop being his healer and his lady and the woman trying to barter her freedom for grain. He stops being the lord of the black stronghold on the hill. We are only this, two bodies in the dark, his heat scorching against me where an hour ago there was killing cold. He is careful of nothing now except me.

His mouth crashes to mine again, harder this time, and the shift in him crosses through me like a storm breaking. One moment he is still, the next his hands are everywhere, tearing at the ties of my dress with a speed that steals the breath from my lungs. Fabric rips, laces snap, and I shove at his coat, fingers clumsy and desperate, pulling the heavy black wool from his shoulders while he yanks the ruined gown down my arms. The chemise follows in a single motion, and then I am bare against the cool air of the keep, skin prickling, nipples tight. He makes a sound low in his throat when he fully sees my naked body, between a growl and a prayer, and the air around us crackles faintly, chaos magic answering the sharp spike of his hunger.

“Amazing.” He says.

I reach for the fastenings of his bottoms, but he catches my wrists, and pins them behind me.

“No,” he says, voice rough. “I take what I want.”

The words excite me inside, and I feel my pussy get wet instantly. He is so much larger, so much taller, the breadth of his chest and the hard planes of his body swallowing the space. Dark brown skin stretches over muscle that looks forged rather than grown. Platinum hair falls in that asymmetrical sweep across one eye, the other black and endless. He holds me there with one hand while the other shoves the rest of his own clothing down, and then he is free, thick and heavy and already hard, the head flushed dark against the deep brown.

He releases my wrists only to lift me onto the bed. The mattress dips under our combined weight. I scramble back on my elbows, but he follows at once, knees spreading my thighs wide. There is no gentleness in how he looks at me now. Only intent, he lowers his head between my legs without warning, and the first drag of his tongue over my pussy makes my hips jerk, and my head falls back. He holds me down with both hands on my hips, pinning me open while he licks and sucks with ruthless focus. I feel every stroke, the flat of his tongue, the scrape of teeth, the way he circles my clit until I am shaking. Magic sparks against my skin where his fingers dig in, tiny flares of heat that match the pulse between my legs. He does not stop when I moan, he doesn’t slow when my thighs try to close. He keeps me exactly where he wants me and works me open with his mouth until I am wet and aching and so close.

“Fuck.” I cry out.

I lift my head to watch, and as my breath becomes broken gasps, and my eyes roll he rises, and stares into my eyes. He gets over me, the weight of him pressing me into the bed. One powerful arm braces beside my head. The other guides his cock to my pussy. He gazes into my eyes as he pushes in with a single steady thrust that stretches me wide, filling me until I gasp. The size of him forces a cry from my throat. He buries deep, but doesn’t pause.

He starts thrusting hard, fast, like he’s waited years for this. Long, deep strokes that rock the entire bed. Each time he sinks in I feel the thick ridge of him dragging against every sensitive place inside me. I try to lift my hips to meet him, but he pins them again, controlling the rhythm completely. I wrap my legs around him instead, and his hands hold my ass and hips, tilting me so he can go deeper. Faint violet sparks dance along his shoulders and across my breasts where his chest presses mine. It does not bind, it simply reacts, as natural as the sweat on his skin and the desperate sounds I cannot hold back. I glance down, reaching for my clit, and he grips my wrist again, stopping me, putting his own hand there.

“This what you want?” He asks.

“Yes… Please… Yes.” I moan.

The dual sensations rush through me, and I drop back, he groans as he thrusts, his fingers circle, and pressing against my clit, and the waves start coming. My pussy clamps down around his cock and the sounds he makes vibrate against my throat as he keeps driving into me. He fucks me through the aftershocks until I am overstimulated, and I come, the climax ripping through me making my legs tremble and soak him.

His own control fractures, and his rhythm stutters. He drives deep one final time and holds, cock pulsing as he explodes inside me, heat flooding me in thick pulses. He drops down over me, almost careful to not put all his weight on, and we breathe heavily as our orgasms settle.

The magic starts to fade, and he brings his forehead up resting it against mine. He pulls out carefully, the slide of him leaving me empty and sensitive. We lie tangled in the ruined sheets, his much larger body curled around mine, one heavy arm across my waist. The keep is quiet again. The only light comes from the dying fire and the faint residual glow of his magic still fading from the air. I feel the slow thud of his heart against my back. My body aches in the best way, marked and claimed and still trembling.

"This changes nothing about the contract," I murmur. I am not sure which of us I am warning.

His arm tightens around me. "It changes everything about me. The contract can keep its terms."

I want to argue. I am too tired, and too warm, and too aware that he is telling the truth. So I say nothing, and let the not-arguing be its own kind of confession.