I moved over his body, not with him inside, but with a knee on either side of his hips. I gazed down at him, wanting to remember the beauty of him the first time. The glow had spread to the tips of his hair, as if every strand were dipped in moonlight. He was a thing of light and magic, but as I used my hand to help slide him inside me, he was all silken skin, and muscle.
I slipped the head of him inside me, and found I was almost too tight. I’d performed all the foreplay on him, and received none for myself. I was wet from the pleasure, but tight, so very tight.
He managed to gasp out, “You’re not open enough.”
“Is it hurting you?” My own voice sounded whispery.
“No,” he whispered.
“Then I want to feel you force your way into me. I want to feel each inch push inside while I’m this tight.” I wriggled my hips a little lower, fighting for each delicious inch. I was so tight that he touched every bit of me, sliding heavy and slow over that spot inside me.
I meant to have him inside me as deep as he’d go before my release, but my body had other ideas. It was as if my body being so tight around his made his body press just right, just exactly right against that one spot. One moment I was trying to be so careful, easing him inside me, and the next I was screaming my orgasm, my body bucking around his, the movement forcing more of me down the shaft of him faster than I would have managed without it. And as long as I could keep pushing him inside me the orgasm kept going. It kept on as I shoved him inside me, and somewhere before the last inch of him went inside, he started helping to push.
I sat on top of him with our bodies wedded as close as man and woman could be, the orgasm dancing me above him. I was aware, vaguely, that my skin was glowing — a moon shine to match his own. The wind of my own power blew my hair around my face, garnets sparkling in fire. My eyes glowed so brightly that I could see the colored shadows of the green and gold of my own eyes at the edges of my vision. I screamed and writhed above him on wave after wave of pleasure. This had not been planned, or achieved with skill, but more by luck; a key sliding into a lock at the perfect moment. Our bodies took that moment and rode it.
I heard him scream my name, felt his body buck under mine, felt him drive himself home as hard and as fast as he could. He hit the end of me, and that orgasmed me again. I threw my head back and screamed his name to the heavens.
He went still underneath me, but I couldn’t focus my eyes enough to see him, not really. My vision ran in streamers of colors. I collapsed forward, and forgot. Forgot that he was still hurt. Forgot that I was wearing the queen’s ring on my right hand; the ring that had once belonged to a real fertility goddess.
I had a second to realize that the skin of his stomach under my hands was no longer raw, but felt smooth and perfect. I blinked down, fighting through pleasure’s afterglow to see him. His stomach was as flat and perfect as his illusion once had been, but this was no illusion. He had his tentacles back, but as a tattoo so bright and life-like that a glance made them seem real. They were a picture, drawn upon his skin.
I saw all that in three blinks of an eye, but there was no next blink, for the ring suddenly came to life. It was like being plunged into water with an electric current in it. It was not enough to kill, but enough to hurt.
Sholto yelled under me, and not from pleasure.
I tried to take the ring away from his body, but my hand seemed glued to his newly decorated skin. The power blew out from us, as if the magic spilled away over the bare rock. I could breathe again.
Sholto gasped, “What was that?”
“The ring.”
He gazed down his body at me, and my hand pressed to his abdomen. His fingers touched the tattoo, a look on his face of wonder, and of loss. It was as if he’d been given his dearest wish, and in the same moment experienced a loss that would haunt him forever.
I heard metal rolling along rock. The sound made me turn. The chalice was rolling toward us, though the ground was utterly flat. I looked to the other side and found the spear of bone rolling from the other side. They were going to touch us at the same time.
“Hold on,” I said.
“To what?”
“To me.”
He grabbed my arms, and my hand was freed from his stomach. I grabbed his arms without thinking, putting the ring against his bare skin, again. Sometimes Goddess pulls us by the hand down our path, and sometimes she gets behind us and pushes off the cliff edge.
We were about to be pushed.
CHAPTER 16
WOOD, METAL, FLESH; ALL OF IT HIT US AT ONCE. WE WERE LEFT clinging to each other in the center of a blast of power that splashed the lake up over the island. We drowned for a moment, then the world literally moved. It felt as if the island bucked up and dropped down again.
The water cleared, the earth stopped moving, and the chalice and spear were gone. We were left wet and gasping, huddled naked together. I was afraid to let go, as if our arms around each other — our bodies still wedded together — were all that kept us from falling off the face of the earth.
Voices came, yells, shouts. I picked out Doyle’s voice, Frost, and Agnes’s harsh call. The voices made us both turn, blinking water out of our eyes. On the shore, which was a lot farther away than it had been before, were all our guards. We were back in the dead gardens of the sluagh, but the lake was full of water now, and the Island of Bones was in the middle of it.
Doyle dived into the water, his dark body cutting the surface. Frost followed him. The other guards did the same. Sholto’s uncles discarded their cloaks and hit the water after my guards. Only Black Agnes stayed on the shore.
I looked down at Sholto; I was still on top of him. “We’re about to be rescued.”
He smiled up at me. “Do we need rescuing?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
He laughed then, and the sound echoed against the bare stone of the cavern. He hugged me tight, and laid a gentle kiss on my cheek. He breathed his words against my skin: “Thank you, Meredith.”
I pressed my cheek against his and whispered back, “You are most welcome, Sholto.”
He buried his hand in my wet hair and said, softly, “I have long desired you to whisper my name like that.”
“Like what?” I asked, face still pressed against his.
“Like a lover.”
I heard movement behind us, and Sholto released his hold on my hair. I kissed him on the lips, before I lifted my body to see who had made the island first.
Doyle — of course it was Doyle — walked toward us. He gleamed black and shining, water dripping down his nakedness. The light caught blue and purple gleams from his skin as he moved toward us. The light seemed to dazzle on his skin and on the water — reflected brilliance. My skin was warm in the light. Sunlight, it was sunlight again. Like noonday come to this shadowy place.
There was a green haze to the bare rock where Sholto and I lay. That haze took the shape of tiny stems, reaching out over the rock, anchoring themselves as Doyle came to stand beside us.
His face struggled for an expression, and finally settled on that stern face, the one that had frightened me as a child when he stood at my aunt’s side. Somehow the expression wasn’t nearly as frightening with him naked, and given my now so intimate knowledge of him. The Queen’s Darkness was my lover, and I could never again see him as that threatening figure, simply the queen’s assassin, her black dog to fetch and kill.
I stared up at him, still pressed tight in Sholto’s arms. I sat up, and his arms fell away from me, reluctantly. Since I was still riding his body, it wasn’t as if he stopped touching me. His hands slid down my arms, staying in contact. I glanced at Sholto’s face and found him looking not at me, but at Doyle.