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He smirked as his fingers slid along my thigh. “Obviously. All this for me, Skald?” He brushed his fingers past my core with only a feathering touch. My clit tightened, flickering with desire like a flame flaring under the pressure of wind. “Since your mind is cruel to you, I’m going to be crueler, okay? I’m going to win this battle over your thoughts.”

I nodded, whimpering as I tilted my hips toward his hand. I felt…empty. “Give me your cock.” The words slipped out.

He straightened and stared at me with his wild hair framing his face and a cocky smile twisting his lips. With his palm against my clit and his other hand darting to my jaw, he held me in place against the soft moss. “Say it again so I can punish you.” My lips parted, but no words came out. His command left me melting into his touch and bucking against his hand. He arched an eyebrow. “Come on, baby, try to tell me what to do again. Your mind likes to go to dark places on nights like these, so I’m going to fuck you so hard that you’ll be begging for me to stop. But…” he paused and leaned into me, his breath hot against my neck as he kissed my vein and then the shell of my ear. “You’ll forget everything else.”

Tears stung the back of my eyes. Hel, I craved the freedom of a clear mind. This panic was a fleck of dust compared to when anxiety controlled me and the gods had their claws in me, but it still broke me into dozens of shattered nerves, and if I wanted my mother and Drak to survive tomorrow, I had to be pieced back together.

His finger pried my mouth open, and his lips crashed into mine. I ground against his hand, but he gave me nothing, leaving me empty and wanting, and desperate. My slickness grew heavier, dripping down my seam and wetting his palm.

“Remember, you’re mine,” he said. “You don’t belong to your thoughts. Not the gods, not the fates. You’re only mine. Tomorrow, leading our sieges on the castle and the temple, you’re in charge. You’re the goddess we follow into battle. You make all the decisions, but right now, you do what I say. Now bite down on my finger, baby, because I’m going to torture you.”

I obeyed as his finger trailed along my core. He bent forward and sucked my nipple into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth. He swirled just outside of my pussy. Words blurred together as I tried to speak around his finger. I tried to beg, but he hushed me and let the tension build, his fingers never slipping inside.

How hard did he have to hold back from taking me? Tears slipped out of me as I resisted biting him again, this time sucking on his finger with the need that he sucked on my nipple. Pleasure stacked, and only when he pushed me over the edge did his fingers spread me open.

A moan escaped me as he pulled his fingers from my mouth and pussy, sucked my wetness off them, and then gripped my hips. “Keep begging, Lux. I’m not done.” His cock pressed at my opening and when he thrust, I gasped. My pussy already clenched around the tip. “I know you’re sensitive, but relax for me. Let me in.” His hands gently massaged my waist before his fingers dug into my hips harder and he tugged me farther down onto his length. “Take a breath.”

Again, I obeyed, and when I exhaled, all I could think of was him inside of me, filling me, making me come again.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “Good job. Take all of me.”

It was all I wanted. He fucked me slowly until I came undone again, warming his cock with dripping evidence of my pleasure. He praised me again, but I barely registered it as he slammed hard into me, again and again, breaking me and putting me back together.

When he came, I swear I caught the shimmer of tears in his eyes, but it was too dark without a torch, and the moon barely filtered through the shadow of the wall beside us.

He slid out and left me with a kiss against my temple. Breathless, I could say nothing as he slipped away. When he returned with a damp cloth from a nearby hot spring, he cleaned us both up and then commanded me to sleep.

I nodded, eyes already closed, exhaustion and the quiet in my head inviting me under. He’d left me full of him and my mind empty, so sleep came easily, and so rapidly that I barely heard him whisper how much he loved me.

“We have to survive tomorrow,” he said. “Because I refuse to go without marrying you first.”

Drak

“Iwill not die until I build you another library.” I swallowed hard and looked around our destroyed home. “Right here.” But Lux didn’t hear me, as she was already breathing steadily and her eyes were sealed shut. She first obeyed when I told her to bite my finger, and now when I instructed her to rest too. “Good girl.” I kissed her forehead again and tore my hands off ‌her, just for now.

I stepped through the missing doorway’s arch and left her to sleep, but I refused to go far from her. Thankfully, Soren sat stooped over the campfire, where I could see the outline of my home in the dark. A pale glow from the moon silhouetted the stone, and though I couldn’t see Lux from here, I kept an eye on our house.

Soren sat with one foot on the rock, his arm looped around his leg, and the other stretched out with the heel of his boot dug into the dirt. I landed a hand between his shoulder blades, but when he didn’t look up, I invited myself to sit across from him.

“Worried about Axel?” I asked.

Soren scrubbed his hand through his dusty-colored hair before it fell back into his face, as unruly as him. He shook his head and plastered a smile on his face. One that looked as fake as the smile I was forced to give King Roderic when he took an interest in my mother and promised to make our lives better.

“I’m worried about myself,” he said. “What will I do without vampire souls to steal?”

I laughed. “Well, you’ll have plenty of pieces to sell, and no undead chasing after you.”

“Exactly, I’ll be bored as fuck.”

I stifled another laugh. Soren and I could continue this way all night, just like when we were boys. In my complaints, he crafted jokes, and in the shadows where we both lived, he brought beauty with his paintings. Though I was the older of us, he was like a protective brother, and when I thought I needed his help the most, he couldn’t give it. I should have realized he would have done it if he were capable, but my anger blinded me.

I stared at the flames between us, watching the embers crackle and flicker up into the night sky before they winked out. “I have an adventure for you.”

He perked up, sliding his foot off the rock and facing straight at me with his feet flat on the ground. Resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers steepled, and his eyes glittered with intrigue.

I smirked. “You’re too easy.”

He flung his hand out and cursed. “Don’t fuck with me like that.”