I wrenched myself away from her sweetness, rising up on my knees and nudging my head against the flowing moisture between her legs.
She stopped breathing, eyes wide, watching me, no doubt wondering if I were already about to break our agreement.
But I didn’t. I dragged my aching head up and down against her, drenching myself in her fluids. Then, my movements harsh and urgent, I grasped both her ankles and pinned them together against my right shoulder.
Her ankles were so slender I could hold them both with one hand. My other gripped the front of her left thigh as I shoved my cock between her legs the way I had in the water.
Torrance went completely boneless, sinking into the furs, her apprehension about me breaking our agreement oozing out of her. Her thighs trembled like the legs of a newborn sontanna in my grip, and I knew if I let go they’d immediately fall and splay the way her weakened arms were now thrown out to the sides.
Skies above, this was much better. Seeing all of her like this. Seeing her flushed, damp, beautiful little face, so sedated by the pleasure I’d given her, her eyes almost closed, but not quite, still searching for me even through her haze.
I slammed between her legs, my pace brutal and merciless. I made a feral, guttural sound as I watched the head of my cock slide in and out of her thighs, the soaked tip dragging through her curls. My balls slapped her rump with each jolt and thrust, and her breasts jiggled so enticingly that I couldn’t stop watching them.
And Torrance, it seemed, could not stop watching my cock. Her fevered gaze was pinned there, as if hypnotized by the driving movement of my shaft.
“Touch me,” I growled. I whipped my hand off her thigh and grasped her trembling arm by the wrist, guiding her hand to my tip. She sucked in a hot breath, and prickles of desire turned to huge, poisonous thorns inside me, piercing, drawing blood, when her hand formed a shaky circle for my cock to drive into.
There was absolutely no tension in her grip – she was too weakened by pleasure for that. But I was so far gone it didn’t even matter. Her feeble, loose fist settled, like a skimming net, around my tip, each of her delicate fingers a silken thread that bound me. Trapped me.
I did not even try to escape. I drove right into that trap, wanting more of it around me, wanting her to bind me so tightly that it hurt. Caught and cornered, giving myself completely over to her fumbling grip, I came, seed exploding out of me with the force of an avalanche, a natural disaster of the body.
My groaning breath fractured as I emptied myself onto her abdomen and chest, spewing all the way up to her throat, pale blue fluid coating her skin like a claim. A map on her skin, just like mine, but this one painting the path of desire, not stars.
I pumped a few more times as my stiffness faded. I released Torrance’s hand, but she did not let go. She slicked her fingers over my head, chin dropped to her chest as she watched in what looked like fascination, rubbing her own moisture and mine over my sensitive head.
“Do you like your husband’s cock, little bride?” I rasped, the question coming out much more ragged than I’d intended.
She took a shaky breath, then withdrew her hand, as if only now becoming aware of what she’d been doing.
“We aren’t married yet,” she whispered.
I did not reply. Did not tell her that I already felt like her husband, that she was already mine in the most irrevocable way. I did not tell her that she’d come to dominate my body and my mind. That I’d thought of nothing but her while away from the castle, and that I did not just watch her sometimes upon my late returns, but that I watched her for most of the night, every night.
I did not tell her that when I’d seen Brekken’s teeth snap near her hand I’d nearly lost myself in fear. The kind of fear I hadn’t even known myself capable of. The kind of fear that should have been reserved only for mated gods, for mortals, for those who had something to lose.
But it seemed now that I did have something to lose. And when Torrance reminded me that we were not yet married, reminded me that this was all just a bargain, a sham, it felt like I’d already lost it.
I released her ankles, and her legs dropped heavily to the sides, splaying open on the furs. Exposed like this on my bed, panting and spread and coated in my seed, she was so perfect it made me hurt, so perfect I wanted to roar.
I did not roar. At least, not out loud. Though the inside of my head was not a quiet place when I lowered myself off the bed. I grasped the towel I’d abandoned and tossed it onto her stomach, covering her and the stain I’d left upon her. Torrance lay still for a long moment, her breathing slowing, before she began to clean herself up. I clenched a sigh between my teeth, wanting to clean her up myself, but that was what a husband would do, and she’d already reminded me in very clear terms that that was not what I was.
Not yet, little bride.
Soon, we would marry.
And she would be mine for the rest of her ephemeral life.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Torrance
Agreeing to Wylfrael’s rule about kissing me whenever and wherever he wanted came back to bite me in the ass in a major way. I was pretty sure my fiancé had some kind of kissing fetish. He kissed me in hallways, in stairways, in the kitchen, as soon as I stepped out of the bathroom in the morning. He kissed me in front of the others, making Shoshen turn away, tail fluffing up in embarrassment, while Aiko and Ashken smiled and Brekken jumped and barked in excitement, mates mates mates. Wylfrael also kissed me when we were alone, with no eyes on us. He kissed me every night in bed, which always deepened into something far beyond kissing.
And not even just in the bed, either. His mouth on mine seemed to strip me of all defences, all common sense, until I was letting him go down on me in the open in the middle of the castle, spreading my legs on stairs and in crystal tunnels, where anyone could have walked by and seen us. Torrance from before wouldn’t have recognized me now.
Sometimes, the kisses were teasing, taunting, often used as a tool to shut me up when I started arguing or asking questions my groom didn’t want to answer. Other times, the kisses were harder, more searching, like he was trying to pull something out of me or get me to admit to something. Like he was trying oh so hard to prove something, to me, to himself, without even knowing exactly what it was.
He tried to kiss me out of questions the day before our wedding when I once again asked him what he would do when I died. We were having a sleigh ride, the gorgeously carved silver crystal structure on skis pulled behind the sontanna, whom I now knew was named Barra.
When Wylfrael frowned and started kissing me in response to my question, I steeled myself, forced myself not to get swept up in him, and said the word I hadn’t had to use even once since we’d started our new agreement. Or, maybe I hadn’t really wanted to use it.
“Stop,” I said into his mouth.
The word jarred him, probably because he hadn’t heard it in so long. He paused, listening, his lips still against mine, as if waiting to see if he’d heard wrong. When I said it again, he pulled away, leaning back against the crystal bench, his arm along the back of the seat, his fingertips draped downward and winding in my hair.