“I said,do you understand?”
I nodded, quaking but for an entirely different reason. This time, I wouldn’t have to close my eyes.
I understood what came next.
We were to conjoin in that place between my legs, below the part he’d coaxed pleasure from in the smithy, the part I’d explored on lonely nights in my cot, when the work from the guild was done. But this was incomparable…nothing had ever matched the throb of need pulsing from us as he bunched my skirts to gather at my waist. No memory could hold a flame to the fresh feel of his fingers blazing a trail up my calf. Yes, he’d touched me, many times, but never with this intention. Never with the certainty he’d breach me.
My thighs tensed as Demetri’s hand stilled.
“We do not have to do this.” He nuzzled his nose against mine, the tip of it cold. “I promise you.” His touch became devastatingly soft, too soft, skimming down my leg rather than up it. A wave of panic bled from the dip of my neck to the pit of my stomach at the thought of it leaving me entirely. “Tonight has been enough.”
Skin pebbling, thighs exposed, I listened to the call of my body…my very-much-still-alive body: the blood pumping through every capillary, my thundering heart, the dampness seeping from between my legs.
“I want this. I want you,” I affirmed, nails digging into his arms through his sleeves.
“All the same, if you need to stop, I will stop.” He leaned back, the air vacuous between us.
I grasped at his shirt, worried he would disappear like ash on the wind if I didn’t hold on tight. “No, I want to do this…withyou,” I repeated, craving the press of his body, the pain of the friction.
He lowered, one arm bearing some of his weight whilst the other stroked idle circles around the tops of my legs, streaking through the evidence of my want, so perilously close to that place I wanted him to explore.
“Do not stop, Demetri. By the gods, do not stop.”
Going rigid, a devilish grin spread like treacle across his face, revealing those straight, white teeth. “Did I not tell you to not say my name until I asked?”
His hand hovered above the damp of my arousal, the tips of his fingers skimming its bud.
“It was for good reason, too,” he continued, swiping down the length of my sex with barely-there fingers. I reared, chasing their touch. “Because now, you’ve only yourself to blame for what I’m powerless to stop.”
With that, he cupped me with unexpected firmness. I gaped at the sensation as his palm flattened to the most sensitive part of me, pleasure fanning outward, forcing a buck from my hips.
“Fuck,” he hissed, watching himself toy with me. Rotating his hand in torturous, slow circles, Demetri rubbed me just as he used to, as if we’d done this every day, every turn, for cycles upon cycles, the pace and pressure exactly how I preferred it. But then, two fingers dipped into my centre, not far enough to unseam me, but enough to cause me to gasp.
They edged deeper, delving as far as the acolyte’s.
I gathered the memory like dirty linens and hurled it onto an imaginary pyre, watching it burn to dust. The Dendralis had claimed eight cycles; they would not have our final turns, too.
“More,” I instructed, gripping his wrist and urging him in, his fingers still cautious and gentle.
He obeyed with a deep, claiming kiss, feeling me the way one never could or would again, tracing my walls with a come-hither curl and coaxing a moan from the depths of my chest. Yes, it hurt.Good. I wanted it to. It was an unnameable sensation, pain indistinguishable from pleasure.
“You are dripping over my hand,” Demetri breathed into the crook of my neck. His fingers edged deeper, the stretch and fullness balancing on a sword’s edge. With the intrusion came more of those delectable, delicious circles, the bite soon drowned by bliss.
“Remember to breathe. Just like I’m doing…that’s it,” he murmured, studying how the rise of my chest matched his own.
He moved faster, his upward strokes honed and precise, eliciting a tightening deep, deep in my stomach. Eyes shuttering, the feeling pulled tighter and tighter. I bit into his shoulder, trying to smother the obscene sound clawing to be free of my throat.
It escaped all the same.
“Hush, darling girl, or all of Thromarra will hear you—and those sounds are only for me.”
Demetri slowed his pace, his mouth finding mine.
“If you need to, give them to me,” he said against my lips. I lapped at him, invading every part of his mouth. “Pour them onto my tongue. I’ll lick you clean of every one.”
So I gave them to him, glutting him senseless whilst he worked at me until I was a panting, drenched mess.
He withdrew, the sound of it slick and wet, more debauched than any moan. Knees quaking, hands trembling, I clung to his arms as I widened my legs, readying to meet him, readying to know him in every way. His patience was over. With frantic hands, he unbuckled his belt, grasping hold of his arousal, heavy and thick, veined and beading. I peered down my nose, desperate to witness the moment we’d join.
