“What will happen when we have our swords back?” she asked. Her voice was quieter than a whisper. So quiet I almost wondered if I’d imagined her speaking. “To us, I mean.”
Her question scared the shit out of me. What I wanted might be miles apart from what she did. The thing I never wanted between us was a struggle for power, and she was just getting hers back.
“Oh,” she said, pulling back.
I’d taken too long to answer—but that was me, a slow thinker—always wanting to say precisely what I meant, and not a word more or less. She tried to pull away from me, but I moved quickly, grabbing her arms as she sat up. “Stop,” I breathed. “Please.”
Ember paused, her pussy clenching around my cock, which was coming quickly back from half-mast as she moved on me. She must have felt the way I responded to her, because she rolled her hips a few times, touching her clit in slow, deliberate movements. Fluid seeped out of her, onto my thighs.
“Saints,” I breathed. “You feel so fucking good. Stop moving so I can think.”
“No,” she answered, shaking her head in a stubborn way that should have frustrated me, but only made me harder. “I don’t want you to think. I don’t want you to answer. Not right now. I don’t want to know.”
I pulled her back down to me, fisting the hair at the nape of her neck with one hand, and grabbing a handful of her ass with the other. “You are assuming the worst of me, Verona,” I hissed in her ear. “Stop telling yourself I don’t want you.”
I thrust hard into her, and she almost moaned, but bit her lip instead. I kept her pinned to me, my fingers digging into her hair and tightening on her ass as I tilted my hips to pulse inside her, to reach that spot that made her squirm.
When I hit it, she whimpered, so I mimicked the movement several more times, gently teasing her, keeping her still so she couldn’t take me deeper and control her own pleasure. I had to make myself clear to her, even if now wasn’t the time to profess my love.
“Feel how hard I am?” I growled in her ear. “The way I’m stretching you open, filling you up?”
She nodded, arching hard against me to take me deeper, but I kept her pinned in place. I wanted to fuck her as hard as she wanted me to, but I had to make this point, and make it in a way that would carry us through this difficult day. On the otherside of this, when we had what we needed to create a new life for ourselves, we could talk about love.
“No one gets me hard like you, because no one challenges me like you do. I don’t know what’s next, but I know we need time to figure it out. To see where we fit into each other’s lives.”
“Okay,” she replied, gasping for breath as I teased her.
“Do you understand, Ember? Do you understand that I am only this way for you? That I have onlyeverbeen this way foryou?”
Her eyes widened, and I think she understood me. Something changed on her face, and she became liquid in my arms. “Yes,” she moaned, my confession having sparked some new height of pleasure within her.
Good. It had done the same for me. My cock felt like it might erupt.
I pushed her back, releasing her hair. “Show me how I fit inside you,” I commanded. “Ride me hard, Verona. Come all over me.”
“Fuck,” she swore, her lips swollen as she clenched me tight.
I reached forward to grab her ass with both hands.
“Fuck me as hard as you can,” I growled. “Show me how good it feels to have me inside you.”
She slid desperately against me now, her breasts bouncing as I pulled on her hips, thrusting as hard inside her as I could from this angle. “Touch yourself.”
Ember’s fingers went to her clit, and it was enough for us both. The sight of her body moving on me, writhing for me, her back bowing as she silently came all over me, our fluids mixing in hot waves of pleasure as I filled her. She fell boneless against me, entirely spent.
It was the right time to tell her how I felt, by all reasonable measures of that sort of thing. We were, essentially, going into battle. There was every possibility that tonight would go wrong somehow. With the possibility of Chiore’s weapon on the table, anything could happen.
But neither of us spoke. Ember slid off me, kissing me as she went. “I need to get ready,” she said. “Lara and I have to go in an hour.”
“See you at Hemlock House after?”
She slid into her robe, nodding before she bent to kiss me again. “Sure.”
I grabbed her hand when she tried to pull away, not liking the clipped end to that single word. “Don’t disappear on me, Ember.”
“I’m not,” she said, her voice relaxing a little. “I just wish we had more time.”
I brought her hand to my lips, kissing the back of it first, then pressing my lips to her palm, an intimate gesture. “We are immortal, Verona. We have all the time in the world.”
