“To keep the apples next time?”
My spare hand clasped both her cheeks, ensuring thosetroublesome greenswere on mine. “My promise, darling, is I will, for as long as I have, worship you morn, noon, and night. The templum whispers that you may have a tempest in your veins”—I gripped her cheeks harder—“I want to find out what happens when we unleash it on the world.”
She whined as I left her, but I was finished with scraps.
“Where are the candles?” I managed, fumbling for the bedside drawer’s latch. “I want to see it when you take me. I want to witness the way your eyes will roll back in your head.”
Dodging a slap, my fingers found the smooth wax of a taper tied to several others with twine. Cock painfully hard, I lit them from the last dwindling sconce.
Ashara waited, a siren lashed to the mast, pressed to the post with her arms wrapped high around the wood, her body flickering in the new light. After the last one was lit, I drank her in. One more breath of waiting before we collided.
She was magnificent; all breath and fire and abandon.
But then I saw them, the cause of the bumps I’d skimmed beneath my thumb. Long, thick scars scored her breast and hip, streaking her creamy skin like red ink.
She must have seen mine, too; the patchwork of circular wounds, dotting me like a leopard. Her chest stilled, her irises bouncing from mark to mark, tallying each and every one.
“Inquisition,” I explained. Certain I’d need to say no more. “What is done is done, and I endured, darling. Never mind about me, what—” “I don’t”—she closed the distance between us, fisting the back of my scalp and pulling me down—“want”—her eyes, two blazing forests, bore into my own—“to talk about it, either.” She dragged her tongue up the length of my cheek.
“Now be a good boy and fuck me, Demetri.Claimme…as you promised.”
Chapter forty-one
Ashara
The Fulfilment
The Other decreed that no one who practices deceit shall dwell in the beyond; no one who utters lies shall continue before Myeyes even after you have paid unto Him your blood. -6:19-21 - The Book of Dendralis
My calves met the bed, and his body toppled over mine, pinning me beneath him. I gasped, breathless from the crush of his weight, his chest heaving to the rhythm of my own, his hips angled into mine. His hardness was rigid between us, relentlessly grinding against that spot that wouldn’t cease throbbing. But his face…it was a luxury—to look upon him, able to read the desire and adoration in his eyes. I’d become too used to metal, to mesh and chain andhelms. I traced every feature, trying to lose myself in the furrow of his brow, the curve of his smile, the shadow of his dimple that flickered in the light of the tapers. But try as I might, the ghost of Lycandor’s body was reluctant to fade.
I roved over the solid flesh above me, so muchwarmerthan just a ghost. To the pits with guilt, shame, and remorse.Overwrought and useless,anyhow.
As our skin fused together, flush from our chests to our toes, I reasoned nothing in the world or the beyond could ever feel asrightas this. His hand glided between us, reaching down, parting me with confident, already-slick fingers. “You are so fucking wet. Ashara, how are you this fucking wet?” He sighed into my lips, his fingers pressing into my cheeks in mock accusation. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t him; it was Lycandor’s thumb forcing open my mouth, his deep rumble replacing Demetri’s husk in my ear.
A druid, Ashara. They’re consuming us. Diseased.
Thank the Other Demetri wasn’t blessed like Lycandor, for even I couldn’t trust my own thoughts. Truths or lies, either way they would hurt, and I didn’t want to hurt. Gods, I craved somethinggood, something that felt so fucking good. And Demetri’s fingers, swirling round the aching crest of me,felt better thangood. He dragged them to my entrance, moving back and forth, grazing my clit in long, languid swipes. I ground on him, chasing pleasure after so much pain. He dipped them inside me.
Smiling into my mouth, he kept pace, practiced at what made me beg, though he had never dared to breach this far inside. When I panted, nails digging into his arms, I knew he’d sense I was close. So deliciously close.
I bit down on his lip, fiddling it between my teeth as he sunk his fingers into a tight, unexplored space where neither of us had ever been. I sighed, opening wider for him. My body welcomed rather than barricaded, unfurled rather than closed. It was as if he were deep enough to reach up and grab hold of my heart, to stroke and coax and tease it.
And it feltgood. Gods, it feltgood.
“It may hurt,” he warned, an echo of what he’d said on our first night in the templum. His fingers turned gentle, pulling away and taking me down from that ledge.
I cradled his face, stroking his cheeks with the pads of my thumbs, a wobbly smile rippling over my own.
“I know what it is tohurt, Demetri. The whiphurt. The death of my motherhurt. Falstaffhurt, the acolyte, the templum…it all hurt, hurt, hurt.” I kissed him once, chastely, in the centre of his swollen lips. “This? This will not hurt.”
He rubbed my waist, then my hips, in firm, flowing circles, before gripping the base of his arousal, lining its head to the open, aching part of me.
“Make the hurt stop, Demetri. Take it from me. I’m done with it. Take it. Take it all.”
And take, he did.
Sliding into me, the world ceased to exist. There was nothing, just an abyss, an emptiness, save for the two of us, fused as one on the bed. I was right. This didn’t hurt. It stretched, yes—it insisted, it claimed—but it was the farthest thing from pain I could imagine.
