Nik watches me move with hooded eyes, lower lip caught in his sharp teeth. His chest flushes dark red under my palms, the color of desire, but I could already tell he wants me from the way his cock is trying to interfere with my grind. It’s been wedginginto any gap between my body and his before it’s forced out again by the back-and-forth motion.
I raise my hips a little to give it room, and he nestles his cock into my folds with a guttural groan. His hard length is even better to grind on, and I’m so wet, it’s easy to slide over him and rub my clit against the lip of his cockhead. His movements go sharp and jerky, and for a second, I think he might come.
But then Nik’s jaw clenches and his nostrils flare, and he holds out for me, gives me the extra two or three slides I need to come undone. I clutch his arms, hanging on for dear life as an earthquake of an orgasm rattles through me, fusing all my fractured pieces back together in a wash of relief. I slump forward onto his chest, enjoying the random jolts of electricity every time his cock jumps against my still-pulsing clit.
He wraps his arms around me, doing that thing where he rubs his face on me while he breathes in my scent. “Did you get what you needed? Did you learn your lesson?”
“Uh huh,” I mumble against his chest, feeling pigment surging through my new goddess-given channels. I’m probably a hundred different colors right now, because so many emotions have welled to the surface. I feel whole. Exhilarated. Spoiled. Lucky. Being selfish feels really damn good sometimes.
“Good,” he says, and there’s a dangerous edge to his voice that makes me sit up. He pulls me back down. “No. You’re not going anywhere, little mate. Lesson six is for me, too. It’s my turn to be selfish.”
He flips us both over so I’m captured beneath him and catches my wrists with one hand, pinning them over my head. He drags his nose up the side of my neck, inhaling. “I’ve been tormented by the way you smelled when I threatened to hold you down and make you take your medicine. I almost regret that I didn’t do it. You were weak then, so I was right to resist the urge. But today you’re a warrior returning from battle. You’vedefeated everyone on this planet, including me. I think you can take it now. And I’m selfish enough to hold you down and make you.”
My whole body comes to attention, nipples going hard and my pussy tightening with a gush. I love receptive, eager-to-please Nik, but I love this bossy, selfish Nik, too. He’s right, these “lessons” have been for both of us. The scholar is always learning.
I pretend to struggle against his grip, yanking on my wrists and twisting my body underneath his, but I can’t keep the smile off my face. I know I can’t get away, and I absolutely don’t want to. He growls, scraping his teeth over his claiming bite and pushes my thighs apart with his knee. With a twist of his hips, he lines up his cock at my entrance. Even just the urgent press of the head feels amazing.
“I can’t wait. But I’ll try and make it good for you,” he promises earnestly, dropping a sweet kiss on my forehead. His face hardens an instant before he thrusts inside. My body surrenders to the invasion, and then he’s hitting all the right spots with a desperate, wolfish rhythm.
It’s so good. Not expert, not planned. He’s just feeling it, and that’s so sexy. Sometimes you need romance, and sometimes you just need to get railed. Somehow, this is both. The way he’s looking at me with such tenderness while he’s pounding me like a jackhammer? It’s everything I want and need in this exact moment. I’m so in love with him I think my heart is going to burst.
He pauses to push my legs up, planting the soles of my feet high on his chest. Then, with a hungry look, he folds me in half and starts to move.
If I thought he was hitting the right spots before? Now, I have no words, only his name.
“Nik,” I gasp over and over, arching up. My feet give me new resistance to lever my hips against him, and I can tell he loves the challenge of keeping me pinned down and under his control. Color flickers over his skin as he moves with the efficiency of an athlete—blue and gold, lavender and red, occasional glimpses of green gratitude, too.
At the last minute, he lets go of my wrists to sit back, palming my ass so he can lift my hips out of the furs and hit it that much harder. Hedemandsmy orgasm with the entitlement of a king, and I’m totally helpless to resist.
This time I come like syrup, long and sweet and melty in his hands, pigment kaleidoscoping over my skin. When Nik sees my colors bloom, it’s all over. He drops down over me, grinding me into the furs and cursing as he comes inside me.
He keeps moving long past the end of our orgasms, stretching out the moment as long as possible, and I don’t want him to stop, either. He traces over my features, following his fingers with kisses so pure they make my heart ache.
“My beautiful warrior,” he says. “My beautiful queen. I’m going to keep you locked up forever.”
I know he’s joking, but I feel so lazy, that sounds just fine. “I’m going to be a pain in your ass.”
“I have a lot of practice with pain,” he says, and then he kisses me like no one else.
Chapter 36
Nik
Two Weeks Later
There are a lot of lies we tell ourselves. The worst is perhaps that we will have more time tomorrow than we do today. But that’s not how time works. Every day moves us inevitably closer to our last day, each second ticking by a larger piece of our remaining life than the one before and therefore more precious.
That has never been more clear to me than now, with Delphie in my life. I hate wasting time that I could spend with her instead, so every supply order, comm log, and petty dispute between ex-priests wears on me, eating away at my most valuable possession.
Too many tasks compete for my attention: recruiting new apprentices, expanding the network of tunnels under the mountain, adding larger communal spaces and improved sleeping quarters for the new arrivals. The refugees from the Eye are struggling to adjust, and I’ve brought in more mind-healers to help them recover from Zomah and my father’s abuses.
I also have to convince my mother to come back here rather than remain in Olethia. Right now, she’s temporarily housed in Fen’s palace with the other former concubines, being pamperedby a pink-skied pleasure planet and fighting with Fen’s mother over who gets to spoil Aqen.
How can my isolated ball of rocks compete? My only point of hope is that Delphie was once a resident of that palace, and she’s found happiness here.
I think.
When we meet in our quarters to share lastmeal, she tells me about her day. She is working with small cranacs of warriors and miners to paint the passageways as a way to help heal their minds. It seems every time I walk through the tunnels, a new mural or bright wall of solid color appears.
