She had no idea what was in the herbal tonic she took on the first day of every bleed; maybe it was the same leaf. She only knew that Marie had started sending it to her rooms shortly after she met Ger. She’d taken it ever since, out of habit.
Adeline grinned, though she felt her lips flicker at the effort; the restraint.
“Taken care of.”
And that, apparently, was all he’d been waiting for.
Kai was upon her the moment the words passed her lips, pressing her back against the cushions again, pulling her underwear over her hips as she struggled with his belt and finally worked it free. He pushed his trousers the rest of the way off and kicked them to the floor and then there was nothing between them at all, and Adeline’s back bowed off the sofa as she felt the heat of his skin on hers, as his stiff cock pressed against her, his movements so slow and tender it bordered on torment. Kai’s teeth caught at his own lip, frowning and heavy lidded as he pored over her face, consuming her every gasp and moan. He slid his hard length up her slick and swollen centre and back again, slow,soslow.
“I thought,” she gasped out, “you weren’t teasing?”
A spent flicker of a grin. “I never said that.”
But he bent his head to her lips, and let her wrap her fingers around him. And Goddess, now that she held him in her hand and felt just how thick he was, she could have sobbed with sheer want as she guided him to her. She was so ready, so achingly wet for him, that it took just one swift thrust for Kai to bury himself deep inside her.
Their voices mingled together, Adeline’s cry so loud in her own ears that she almost missed the groan that dragged from Kai’s chest. Neither of them moved at first, revelling in this small relief, this delicious new torture. Her body fluttered and tightened around him, adjusting to the way he fit inside her, filling her so wholly that she could barely catch a breath. She rolled her hips just once, and he exhaled raggedly, pinning her in place with one hand.
“Wait,” he gasped. “Fuck, I – I need a minute. I just –Adhlas, you feel too good.”
She whimpered, gave a broken nod, and raked her hands down his back, biting her lip with the effort of holding back.
Kai was breathing hard as he slid his hand between their bodies, his fingers slipping in the wetness between her thighs, tracing slow, wide circles. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast and then - when his tongue drew her nipple against his teeth, her body moved of its own accord, arching into him, and he finally drove himself deeper inside her. She was starting to tremble beneath him already, but Kai was moving now, building a steady rhythm, withdrawing and returning to her, hard but slow so she could feel every inch of him as he set her alight. She crossed her ankles around his back and lifted her own hips, needing him deeper, deeper.
Adeline’s throat was becoming hoarse with wave after wave of moans ripping through it. She tried to meet each of his thrusts with the rise and fall of her hips, but release was building with every wet circle Kai teased between her thighs, every groan he breathed into her neck.
His fingers narrowed, those circles growing more erratic with each thrust into her body, but closing in, his thumb just barely brushing her swollen bud.
When he pulled back to watch her, bracing his free hand on the back of the settee, his eyes were lit with that wild, electric intensity she’d come to understand he normally smothered within himself. The fierce, burning light she’d come to crave. And she was burning too, burning from the inside out, the flames of her own want and his chasing one another, consuming her whole.
“Look at me,” he said, and it was the King who spoke to her, commanding and sure and a little taunting, even as his words broke on his fractured breath. “I need you to look at me, Adeline.”
She moaned something unintelligible even to her own ears, but Kai just grinned that rare, wicked grin.
“I want your eyes on me. Watch me while I make you come.”
The words undid her.
The unexpectedness of Kai,herKai, courtly and upstanding, demanding her pleasure for himself. It was like he’d given her body permission to tighten desperately around him and topple them both over the brink, her climax rippling through her in waves and spasms as Kai pressed them both harder into the cushions just to stay inside her. He moved faster and more erratically as she neared the edge of her orgasm, until he drove into her with one final surge and a hoarse, brittle groan.
She wrapped her arms around him, drawing him to collapse against her as aftershocks ran through them both. She smoothed her hands down his back as he caught his breath, and when he did, Kai turned his face and kissed her, slow and sweet.
“So,” she said, minutes later, when she’d found her voice once more. “That was why you stayed?”
His laughter was muffled against her bare shoulder.
Chapter 39
Kai
He was being selfish. He knew he was being selfish.
The Empress Vanjir’s offer hung around Kai’s neck, growing heavier by the day, making it harder and harder to draw a comfortable breath. He had to make peace with Os and tell him about the rumoured settlement off the coast of Dhalias. He had to cast a vote among the Merrow.
He had to tell Adeline.
There was a strong chance he would have to leave for Dhalias, if that was what was best for his people, and he had to tell her.
It wasn’t as though the moment hadn’t presented itself, time and time again. They’d been together more often than not in the days following the tournament. He’d gone to bed in her rooms every night and woken beside her every morning. They’d spent lazy hours talking about nothing at all, and there’d been many times when he’d felt the words moving through him, when it would have been so easy to tell her.
