He took a great, shuddering breath, and I laughed. I laughed at the scoundrel, so confident that the first time he’d ravish me, he’d last the whole night, now reduced to a quivering mess after the first stroke.
Ilikedit, the power. I felt almighty, like upon the Blood Tree’s dais, when it all turned to ash. But I stood upon no dais; instead, I was laid on my back, lording from beneath, not above. And Demetri was no tree, but a man, reduced not to ashes, but still desperate, panting like a dog.
“Darling boy,do you need a moment?” I sighed, my voice marbled with want.
“Just one. Then you’re going to mind your tone, you smug little wretch, or I’ll fuck it right out of you.”
“Do I feel good?” I teased, tensing around him, thighs shaking, drenched in my need.
“Good?” he choked. “Darling,you feel like the dip of my heart every time I glanced you across the pews. You feel like coming home to a hearth after an age lost to a storm. You feel like what I hope the bliss of the beyond feels like: eternity, peace, godsdamnedbecoming. You feel like flying. So no, you don’t feelgood; you feel like something the chappellums failed to inspire…divine, fucking rapture.”
He thrust inward. I soundlessly gaped, unable to form words around the motions of him filling me again, again, and again as he made good on his promise to render me silent.
I felt every dip of him, every texture and bump ripple through me, rattling the bed with our abandon. Eyes rolling into the back of my head, I was lost to the feel of him, pushing himself into me like he never wished to leave. “Ashara, stay with me.”Thrust. With hooded lids, I returned to him, face haloed by curls. His strokes slowed, but deepened, and I moaned, a wild, profanesound that would have had my cheeks reddening if I hadn’t vowed to shed shame. “If we had time,” he said as he rolled into me again, stomach taut, shining with sweat, “I’d make a mess of these sheets for turns, if not days.”Thrust. “I’d make up for every lost breath.”Thrust. “Every turn”—thrust—“I was not buried inside you.”Thrust.
Mouth parted, all I could do was gasp, clinging to his strained biceps as he fucked me into the linens.
“Forgive me, darling, but I have neither the self-control for all that, nor the time.” His hips stilled and I wiggled, hunting for that glorious friction, desperate for the feel of him moving within me. “You take me so well.” He bent his neck, peering down to where we joined. “Fuck me, Ashara. You’re perfect…we’re perfect. We were made for each other.” Before I could raise to my elbows, desperate to see how harmoniously we slotted together, he nudged me back down, filling me to the hilt. Breathless, I threw my head back, the thickness of him almost,almost, too much.
“I’m going to fuck you hard and fast and get you screaming before any druids ruin our fun.”
Before my stomach had time to dip, his hand reached down for my clit, rubbing it in tight circles whilst he made good on his word.
Lycandor believed my blood could tremble the earth, but there were other ways to feel the ground quake, and I swear, the very foundations of the templum shook with the colliding of our bodies. If not the stone, then the bed. It creaked with our writhing, the wet slap of us somehow not crude, but a war drum, a protest.
Fuck the Dendralis, it thrummed.
Fuck the chappellums, and the druids, and the acolytes, and the monks.
Fuck the scripture, fuck the templum.
Warmth bloomed, not in my chest, but my core, rippling out from his fingers and a place deep, deep inside me.
“Ashara,” he groaned, slowing, “I’m a man, not the fucking Blood God, and you will be my undoing if you don’t stop clenching around me. I want you undone first.”
“Keep going, keep going,” I begged, wanting that warmth, chasing that warmth.
“You’ll be the death of me.”
With a few more artful turns of his fingers, I unseamed, a great bubbling spilling over from the point where his flesh touched mine, until it filled, top-toe full of the greatest ecstasy that rivalled my blessing.
He smirked down at me, white teeth clasping his lip—eyes hooded, brow furrowed, the bottom of one side of his mouth hanging open. I’d seen that look before, on the faces of devout Thromarrians on their knees before the chappellum’s cloister yard.
He held me tight as he spilled, groaning into my neck, stroking my arms, fisting my hair, his motions desperate and frantic. Our chests rose and fell together, like a tide drawing out. He leaned back, still inside me, still hard.
“You’ve never been more beautiful than in this instant.” His eyes shone with the clarity of truth, though glazed and lidded with lust. Our noses touched, and we wiggled the tips of them against one another, like we used to do in the yard. “Spread out beneath me,” he continued, “flushed, wanting,free. How could this ever be a sin, when to be inside you is deliverance?”
“Silver tongue.” I clicked, tracing the seam of said tongue with my finger since he’d stuck it out at me.
He nipped at me. “My tongue may be silver, but beyond knows your cunt’s made of gold.Fuck, I thought I was done for on the first dip inside you.”
I pulled a ringlet of his hair whilst he licked his lips, eyes skimming every inch of me.
“I can’t wait to do that again.” A kiss, slower this time, deeper, his tongue lapping at my mouth with a gentle sort of hunger. Below, the softening swell of him hardened again, plugging the essence that dripped from within me, wetting the sheets.
“But as much as I want to right now,” he murmured into my mouth. “We have a druid to tolerate and a templum to get the fuck out of.”
After the rush of heat, a small trickle of coldness crept in, just at my toes, contained for now. We were inhisbed, atophissheets, now damp with our lust. It washisshirt puddled on the floor.
