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I was on the edge of madness, my legs ready to crumble beneath me, when he was just a few feet away. Close enough that I could see the agony mixing with pleasure on his face. Every stroke of his hand along his cock made his body, and mine, tremble with need. The water caught in the slight patch of russet hair at his chest glittered a silent invitation for me to lick it clear.

His head tilted back, and he exhaled a whisper that sounded suspiciously like “my Pearl,” but I couldn’t make it out clearly over the adrenaline pumping through my blood and the pounding of my heart.

My finger swirled, dipped to gather more of the slick moisture that ran down my inner thighs as I watched him, weeping with starvation for his touch. We danced two separate tunes but all the same steps as we desperately raced toward the end we both wanted, needed like air itself, yet neither of us was willing to break long enough to take it from the other.

“Étain’s tits,” he cursed and shoved his precum beaded cock from his hands, forcing himself to stand.

Frustration and annoyance slashed vicious lines into his face as he began performing some imitation of pacing in the water, talking to himself in a language I didn’t understand, or perhaps it was that it was just so quiet that I didn’t hear him well enough. The argument with himself lasted too long, and my body was screaming for him to return to his pleasure so that I could return with him. He paced farther and farther away, until his back was to me and his head rested on a dark blue-grey granite boulder. His shoulders shook with the depth of his breath. I could tell he was trying to convince himself that he could breathe away the heat that had been stalking the pair of us over the last tormenting two weeks.

He broke, his hand fisting his cock once again. And I broke with him. I needed him. I wanted him. My body would come apart at the seams if I did not taste the salty sweat on his freshly fucked skin again.

I kept my eye trained on him, kept it focused and wary as I slowly crept up behind him. The only sound was my footsteps crunching gently on the sandy shore of the hot spring. I wasn’t sure what I would do when I got to him. How was I going to explain being out here with him? Did I have to? How was I going to convince him to fuck me, to toss aside everything I had said and done and all the excuses I’d stacked between us like castle walls, and just fuck me as hard as he possibly could?

I was sure that at any moment he would turn around and catch me, but as his elbow flew in a steady, undulating rhythm, he was lost to the world around him, and I wanted to be wherever he was—wanted to fly on those same wings as he was.

My arm slipped around his waist and hefted the weight of his thick cock, stopping his feverish stroking, replacing it with my own easy, measured tempo.

He stiffened for a moment; I could feel the shock and tension tighten, then relax as he recognized it was me. The sound that tumbled free of his lips was a deep masculine satisfaction as if I had saved him from certain death. As if there was nothing he needed more in his life than the feel of my hand dancing across his skin. It filled my senses, and my head swam with the intoxication of it.

I wanted more. I could swallow nothing more than that sound and die a happy Fae.

His body relaxed into me for but a few minutes, soaking in the relief of his starvation finally ending before his senses returned. “My lady Pearl . . .” he murmured to the rock in front of him.

“Shhh . . . shut up, Brittle Spear.”

“We shouldn’t.”

“Shhh.”

“You will regret this when it is done. You will hate yourself, and you will turn daggers on yourself.” He groaned, just barely holding back enough to form some thought.

“I said shut up. Just . . . just let me . . .” I didn’t want to hear all the reasons why we shouldn’t. I didn’t want to hear all the reasons why I wouldn’t want to. I knew them all. I had been tormenting myself with them for days and days. Cold sweats and a fever that burned me day and night were the totality of all the reasons why we shouldn’t. Anything else I had forgotten? I didn’t want to think about it.

I just wanted him. I wanted to be swallowed by the easy way he made me feel unbridled pleasure and asked for nothing of me he would not give.

“Please, my lady Pearl. Allow me some semblance of chivalry. I . . . oh fuck,” his sentence was cut short by my thumb grazing over the sensitive tip of his head to gather the clear beads to lubricate my hand. I hadn’t noticed how much he dripped for me when we were in his room. It made my mouth water to lap it up. “You can’t . . . can’t . . .”

I lifted onto my tiptoes and bit down hard on the meat of his shoulder, eliciting a sharp, heated hiss of delight. “What’s wrong, Brittle Spear, don’t want me?”

“I want you more than the water wants magic. More than I’ve wanted any Fae in a millennia or more, but I want your happiness more than my fleshly delights.” He hissed as I adjusted my grip and began mimicking the same rhythm I had watched him use, but with a firm, slick grip.

“Fuck my happiness. This is what I want right now.” I extended my pinky and hooked it under his balls to press on the sensitive space beneath them.

His hand covered mine, guiding it faster, fingers interlacing with mine. “Swear it,” he whispered through panted whimpers.

“I fucking swear it.”

He moved so fast, like a man dying of thirst seeing a well in the center of the desert. My back was flush against the granite before I could even blink, his hands pulling at my dress with the desperation that sang in unison between us. When he had liberated me from the confines of the far too stuffy dress and flung it over his shoulder, his lips found mine.

Kissing Brittle Spear had never been as electric as kissing Emrys, but this didn’t need those sparks to burn me down to the ground. His big hands cupped my cheek and held me to him, his tongue ravaging mine. Our hearts pounded in our chests, setting a brutal beat to drive us together.

“I’ve waited so long,” he whispered against my burning lips. “I’d have waited for centuries, but you saved me from the perdition of my hunger.” I tried to pull him back down into another kiss, but he pushed my hands away, looping his own around the backs of my knees and lifting me onto the boulder. “And I am starving.”

The moment his tongue touched me, I gasped, fingers finding his long locks and gripping them tightly to hold on. His mouth latched onto me like I was the well that same dying man had found, and nothing could save him but the fountain between my thighs.

The coil at the center of my being had been twisted and strung too tight for far too long, and I knew no amount of caution would have me riding his face for long before I exploded for him. And he knew exactly how I liked it. He had studied my pussy like a scholar the one time we had crossed paths, and now he was demonstrating exactly how much he had learned.

The slight thumping press of suction directly on my clit, the teasing notching of two fingers at my flooded entrance. Not enough to push me over the edge, just enough to add tension to the throbbing pulse of need that threaded around my throat and stole the air from my lungs.