7
HOME
SAERIS
IT WAS LATE by the time dinner was done. Everyone was yawning and complaining that they had overeaten. Everyone, that was, except me.
I was wide awake, and I’d barely touched the food on my plate. My stomach was a quarter of the size it had been, and it had already been small to begin with, thanks to growing up in the Third.
Kingfisher walked me through the halls of Cahlish back to his rooms with his hand resting easily in the small of my back.
We had barely been alone since I’d transitioned, and this . . . well, it felt a little strange. There had always been tension between us, but this felt different. I knew him better now. It was strange, but it was as if I knew myself better. I had undergone a major transformation, there was no denying that. But I kept searching for the things that were different about myself, and all I kept finding were things that were the same. The things that really mattered hadn’t changed, and that was reassuring.
I was independent. My temper was still quick to rise. My sense of humor was still dry. I still loved the smell of coffee, and the thick flaky pastries I had first eaten in Ballard.
And I still loved the male walking beside me.
I’d fought my feelings for him for so long that giving them space to breathe
now felt a little frightening.
As I could now feel Fisher’s emotions bleeding into mine, my own must have bled into his, too. When we reached his bedroom, he didn’t immediately go inside. Instead, he spun me around, hands at my waist, and pressed me back against the carved oak door, leaning into me so his chest was flush against mine.
His huge frame dwarfed mine. A wall of muscle met my palms when I laid them against his chest.
“You know I would marry you,” he rushed out. “You must know that I want to.”
Blood rushed to my cheeks. “Oh. Uh . . .” I didn’t have the first clue what to say. “It’s okay. Really. If you’re not the marrying type—”
“I’m not.” His eyes were burning. “The marrying type. I never have been.
Before, the very idea would have sent me running for the hills. I just . . . I could never imagine the kind of love I would need to feel to choose that path for myself. But now I don’t need to imagine. Now I can’t think of anything I want to do more. Marrying you would be . . .” He shook his head, his eyes searching my face.
“Then why?” I whispered. “Back at dinner, you said . . .” I frowned, trying to remember his exact words.
“I didn’t lie. I still can’t do that,” he said, tucking a wave of my hair gently back behind my ear. “I said there wouldn’t be a wedding. Because there can’t be, Saeris.”
“I . . . I’m sorry, I . . . don’t understand.”
He blew out a long, sad breath. “A Fae wedding ceremony is extremely sacred. It is the greatest commitment two lovers can undertake in Yvelia. Not because they swear to love and honor each other for all their days. Not because they give each other their hearts, either. It’s sacred because they give each other their names. Their true names. And I can give you everything else, Osha. But I can’t give you that.”
He’d explained this to me once. A person’s true name held power. With it, a
person could control the other. They could command them to do whatever they pleased.
“It’s okay, Fisher. You don’t need to give me that. I . . .” I shrugged, not knowing what to say. “I understand. If telling me your true name is impossible, then—”
“I don’t know it,” he whispered. “I’ve never known it. We usually receive our true names on our fourteenth birthdays, and my mother—” He blinked.
“Well, she died before I turned fourteen. And my father was already gone. So . . .”
He had never looked so uncomfortable. He ducked his head, not meeting my gaze. “No one knows. If they did, it wouldn’t be good. I’ve hunted through her papers. Her books. I used to hope that she might have written it down in a private journal, perhaps, but I never found one. Her notebooks were full of drawings. Of me, mostly. And of little birds with flashing blue wings. But she drew you a lot, as well.” He laughed softly under his breath. “She really did like drawing you. But you see, that’s why I wasn’t forthright about it before. We can’t get married because I don’t have a true name to trade.”
I stared at him, waiting. When he didn’t lift his head to look me in the eyes, a blast of laughter ripped out of me, startling him. “What? What’s funny?” he asked.
“I don’t have a true name to trade, either, Fisher. I’m just Saeris. You can be just Kingfisher, too.”
I expected him to laugh as well. To realize that he was sad for no reason, but gently, he reached for my hand and slowly raised it to his lips. He kissed me, his warm breath fanning out over my skin. “It doesn’t work that way, Osha. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t given a true name. I was, and unless I share it with you, the ceremony can’t take root. There’s nothing to be done about it. So . . . I do understand. If marriage is important to you, then—”
“Please stop talking,” I breathed. “I think you’re about to say something stupid, and I already told you at dinner. I don’t need to get married. You were
right. We’re God-Bound. That’s far more significant than a wedding ceremony.
We’ll live our lives together and be happy, no matter what.”
I couldn’t read him. His expression was so guarded. It felt as though he were trying to peer into my soul. Clenching his jaw, he exhaled down his nose, then said, “You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” I laughed, but then sobered quickly, knowing what I was about to say. “I love you, Fisher.” It was the first time I’d said it. “I love you, and nothing else matters beyond that. Wherever you are, I’ll beg the gods and all the fates to let me be there, too,” I whispered.
A slender tendril of shadow trailed along the line of my cheekbone, caressing my skin, soft as a butterfly’s wing, as Kingfisher’s eyes flashed. “Good,” he growled. And then my feet were off the floor, and his hands were below my thighs, lifting me. I reacted, wrapping my legs around his waist, looping my arms around his neck, as he kicked his bedroom door open at last and carried
me inside.
“Say it again,” he growled.
My cheeks were burning. “Say what?”
“Don’t play with me.”
“But I—”
“Please.”
I leaned back so that I could look at him properly, and the open, raw emotion on his face stole my smile. The hope in his eyes destroyed me.
Like there was a possibility that it wasn’t true. Like there was any realm or reality in which I didn’t love him, but he was praying that I might. He was out of his godscursed mind. “I love you, Fisher. Of course I do. Always. Forever.”
His mouth slammed down onto mine. The kiss was pure fire, and relief, and a culmination of all the unanswered tension that had been mounting between us for the past few days. He tasted me, his tongue exploring my mouth, his heart racing against my chest as he wound his fingers into my hair.
When he drew back, the quicksilver in his eye had formed a fine corona around his iris. “There are too many pricked ears in this godscursed manor,” he
groaned. “They aren’t going to like what they hear over the next few hours.”
A shiver sank into my bones at that. He planned on being inside of me for hours. He was planning on making me scream. Gods . . .
When he kissed me again, cradling the back of my head in his hand, something within me shifted. A pin falling into place inside the tumbler of a lock. I could suddenly feel the air inside the room. The way it eddied around the furniture and rose up to bloom against the roof rafters. I didn’t understand how I knew to do it, but I felt the air thickening. The molecules swaying with the tide of the room stopped, stilling, and my ears suddenly felt as if they were full of cotton wool.
The instant it happened, Fisher noticed, too. He stopped carrying me toward the bed. His spine stiffened, his demeanor changing in an instant. “What just happened?” he asked breathily. “Something . . .”
“I don’t know. I just . . . I didn’t want anyone to hear us. I reached out, and I did it.”
He turned his attention back to me, his dark waves falling into his eyes as he ran the bridge of his nose along my jawline. “That’s a neat trick, Little Osha. An affinity to a small magic, perhaps. I wonder how many others you have up your sleeve.” His voice was a deep rumble that started somewhere down in his boots.
“I can’t wait for you to show me.”
He had a level of faith in me that I had struggled to have in myself over the past few days. The marks on my hands didn’t move underneath my skin the way his did sometimes. They were locked in place, the lines beautiful and intricate. I had no idea what they meant, or what I might be capable of because of them.
Fisher’s hands skated over my bare arms, fingertips tracing the script that wound around my wrists as if he were contemplating the same thing—but he said nothing further about the binding. A wave of euphoria rocked me as he ducked, running the bridge of his nose along the line of my jaw a second time.
Things had been hard after my mother had died. Hayden was even more of a handful then than he was now. For a few months, after I’d made sure my
brother was out cold and dead to the world at night, I’d go and lay on the cracked roof tiles and smoke myself into oblivion. Getting high wasn’t the answer. I knew that even as I did it. But, for a brief period of time, it was a crutch that helped get me through the day. I’d stopped when I started feeling like I needed it instead of wanted it.
The high that came whenever Fisher looked at me was way better than any bliss I’d found on the rooftops overlooking the Third. There was no stopping this. And why would I want to stop it? He was more than an addiction. He was life itself. We were separate beating chambers of the same heart now.
My head swam as he buried his face into the crook of my neck and inhaled deeply. He did that so often now, especially when he thought no one else would notice. Goose bumps broke out all over my body as he drew the air into his nose, over my skin. I was boneless. Limp. I couldn’t even hold my head up with him standing so close to me. “Do I smell the same?” I whispered.
Fisher cradled the back of my head in his hand, supporting its weight as he pulled back and looked down at me. “Yes,” he said roughly. And then, in the same breath, “No. Before, you smelled like fresh crushed leaves and the mountain air before a cold snap. A subtle hint of spices and citrus, and fire smoke.”
I stared at his mouth, watching him speak, mesmerized. “And . . . now?”
“Now, those scents are amplified a thousandfold. You smell like excitement.
You smell like laughter. And peace. And love.”
“Those things have scents, do they?” I said, teasing him softly.
He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, nodding. “Mm-hmm. Memories and scents have always been heavily interlinked for me. I smell something, and I immediately experience the association.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t liken me to the smell of melting sugar, then. Or the warmth of the sun. Or . . .” It was so hard to breathe properly when he was staring at me like this.
“You forget that I’m a winter creature, Saeris,” Fisher murmured. “I don’t
crave the attention of the sun. The snowcapped mountains, the forest, the frozen river . . . those places are my home. You are home.”
He held my face in his hands, lightly stroking my cheeks with his thumbs.
He studied my features as if seeing something only he could see—and he couldn’t bring himself to look away. It was thrilling to be witnessed so thoroughly. A little frightening, too. I always found myself waiting for the moment, the slight twitch of his mouth, the shadow falling across his eyes, where he took in my flaws and realized that I wasn’t perfect. It was like waiting for an ax to fall . . . only the moment never came.
“Beautiful,” he whispered.
“Fisher—”
His eyes had been fixed on my chin; they snapped up to my eyes. “No.” He shook his head. “Let me enjoy it. I can already feel what you’re thinking, and I
want none of it.”
“But—”
“I despise the gods, Saeris. I’m Oath Bound by this land and the blood of kings. I swore I would never offer up a word of gratitude to them again, but you have made a liar of me. You’re a gift that cannot be ignored. My heart . . .” He swallowed, giving a tiny shake of his head. “I’ve killed more people than I can count. I lost the parts of myself that knew how to feel anything other than pain and sorrow centuries ago. But for better or worse, you have brought me back to life.”
His mouth came crashing down onto mine. I had stilled the air in the bedroom, but Fisher stilled my soul. This was what peace felt like. My chest burned. My throat. My ears. Beneath my palms, Fisher’s pulse pounded as he plunged his tongue past my teeth and claimed my mouth.
Pressing a hand into my back, he pulled me into him, huffing a strained breath down his nose. He was hard. Everywhere. All of him. His chest was all packed muscle. His arms, wound tight around me, were bands of steel. And his cock? I could feel just how hard that was, straining against his pants; the head of
his erection dug into my stomach as he curved himself over me and rocked his hips forward, groaning.
“Three nights. That’s how long I’ve paced this room, fantasizing about fucking you raw, Saeris Fane.”
I gasped when he dipped to lave his tongue against my neck. The noises he teased out of me were borderline embarrassing, but I didn’t have it in me to care right now. “Only . . . the past . . . three?”
“I was praying you’d live all of the others.”
I didn’t want reminding of the fact that I’d nearly died. Not now, with his strong hands on my body and the sound of the blood in his veins roaring in my ears. “I want you,” I whispered. “Please . . .”
Take me.
Claim me.
Fuck me.
Own me.
The thoughts hammered like a war drum in my head. They were all I could think . . . and I knew that my mate could hear them, too.
“Careful, Osha,” he said roughly, kissing along my jawline. He stopped when he reached my ear, tugging on my earlobe with his teeth. “You might just get what you wish for.”
Grabbing mindlessly at his shirt, I arched my back, melting into him.
“Please. Please . . .” I made a strangled sound when I felt his teeth again, this time at my neck. The blissful prick of his canines at the hollow of my throat made me go very still. “Oh, fuck,” I panted. “Fuck. Fisher . . .” He didn’t bite me.
The sharp points of his teeth had broken my skin—I could smell the blood already—but he didn’t press further. He hovered there, his heat making my head swim, the smell of him wreaking havoc on my insides, the shape of the sinful smile at his mouth brushing teasingly against me.
He flicked the tip of his tongue over the two points where his teeth had punctured my neck, slowly licking away the blood.
“You taste like the end of the fucking world,” he purred. “Just kill me and be
done with it. Nothing will ever be better than this.”
Fuck!
My body had a mind of its own. I reached up, winding my fingers into Fisher’s thick waves, desperately trying to pull him down onto my neck, but he just chuckled, the sound of his rich, deep laughter eliciting an explosion of need right behind my solar plexus.
“You’re much stronger than you used to be,” he mused. “But I’m still stronger, Little Osha.”
In a second, he’d picked me up, thrown me down onto his bed, and pinned my hands over my head. With one leg on either side of my hips, he straddled me, his massive frame looming over me. Dark waves hung into his face, throwing his features into shadow as he smirked suggestively. “Are you particularly attached to those clothes, Osha?”
“Yes!” I laughed, trying to pull my hands free. He was right, I was stronger now, but he was always going to be stronger. And he had gravity on his side, too.
“Then I apologize,” he answered with false contrition. Tendrils of smoke and shadow spiraled out of him from his hands and his chest, slipping up from the open neck of his loose shirt like serpents. They snaked around my arms, sliding over my body, leaving a trail of heat in their wake. Particles of magic flashed and caught the light, made manifest as Fisher’s power collected and pooled at the center of my heaving chest, slipping beneath my shirt. They diverged, splitting into a hundred even finer threads of power, and then went about its work. My shirt didn’t stand a chance.
Where Fisher’s shadows touched, the cotton disintegrated and vanished, leaving no trace of its existence behind. My skin was exposed, little by little, until I was naked beneath him. A fire crackled happily in the grate; I was far from cold, but I broke out in goose bumps all the same. My nipples stood proud, my chest rising and falling rapidly as Kingfisher took a long moment to look over my body.
“You are the single most stunning thing I have ever seen, Saeris.”
“This . . . is hardly . . . fair,” I panted. “You’re fully clothed and I’m naked as the day I was born.”
His smile turned a little lopsided. “You possess the kind of magic that could undress me, I’m sure of it. Care to give it a shot?”
“No! Gods, no. What if—what if I set you on fire or something? Or—or, I don’t know, accidentally dismember you?”
He laughed wickedly. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he lowered himself and slowly took my right nipple into his mouth. You won’t.
He sucked, pulling gently on the bud of flesh, and my back arched away from the bed. Gods, that felt good. He was driving me fucking crazy. I was going to scream if he kept that up . . .
“Magic is all about intention, Little Osha. You would have to want me dead to set me ablaze. Likewise, you would need to hate me pretty badly to conjure the kind of energy that would sever flesh and bone.”
There had been a time when I’d hated him that badly. But now . . .
The tips of his canines were visible. I stared at them, transfixed. His lips brushed my nipple as he spoke, and shivers cascaded up and down my body.
Now there wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for this male; he slowly began to move down my body, peppering light kisses over my skin as he went. The underside of my breast. Rib cage. Stomach. Hip bone . . .
“Where do you think you’re going?” I sounded so breathless.
Kingfisher huffed, smiling as he ran the tip of his nose along the skin that led south of my belly button. “Come now, Osha. Where else would an acolyte kneel to worship but at the altar of his god?”
Sinners. The heat of his tongue parted my flesh, and I lost the ability to think. It . . . it turned out that Fisher’s altar was the sensitive flesh between my thighs, and I was . . . I was his god. “Holy shit. That . . . that feels incredible!”
For over a hundred years, Fisher hadn’t eaten a single thing inside that maze. Malcolm had suspended him in a perpetual state of hunger, never dying of that hunger but also never satisfied. He’d always seemed half-starved
whenever he’d eaten back at the Winter Palace, and I could never understand why. The way he ate me now was just like that—like he was still starving and could not be sated.
He growled into my pussy. “Fuck! You taste incredible.”
His hair was so thick; I wound my fingers through it, pulling his head down onto me. Groaning low and deep, Fisher laved the flat of his tongue between my wet folds, and I started to unravel.
It was a disconcerting feeling, coming apart for someone. I could count on one hand the number of people I’d lowered my walls around during sex, but I didn’t have a choice with Fisher. He demanded all of me. No half measure would do.
His pace quickened. Sucking gently against my clit, he slowly slid a finger inside me, and I gave in. It was too much. A wave of pleasure rolled lazily up my body. By the time the wave reached my chest, I was arching away from the bed and gasping out loud. “Fuck! Oh my gods!”
“Mm. I like that . . .” Fisher purred. “No, don’t stop. You can grind yourself against my mouth all you want.”
Fuuuuuuuck, I was going to scream. Fisher hooked an arm around my leg, leveraging his shoulder to pin me down by the hip. He continued to slide his fingers inside me with his other hand, moving faster as he licked and sucked at my core. I rocked against him, feeling my release hovering just out of reach. It was right there. Any second now, I was going to hurtle face-first over the edge — —and then he did the unthinkable: He stopped.
“Fisher! Wha—why?”
He chuckled darkly, the edge of his laughter rough as sin. “Hold on, Little Osha. I’m afraid it’s time for a little payback.”
“What? What does that m—OhhhhholyfffUCK!” I bounded up from the bed
so fast that my spine cracked.
White light filled my head.
A high-pitched hum roared in my ears.
The bright stab of pain at the inside of my thigh electrified my nerve endings. In an instant, the pain became something else.
In Zilvaren, the desert winds blew so hard sometimes that they had been known to strip flesh from bone. This felt a lot like that—ripping apart, one fragment at a time—but in the most addicting, breathtaking way.
Fisher had bitten me and had started to drink. The gods only knew how much of his venom he’d injected into me at once, but I came. On. The. Spot.
No sound.
No breath.
No thoughts.
Just a mindless, body-wide orgasm that felt like it was about to break bone.
I barely heard Fisher’s satisfied drawl over the explosions going off in my head. “Thaaat’s it. Good girl. Ride it out.”
I needed to breathe.
Hah!
No chance.
Tiny black spots danced in my vision.
My pulse throbbed slow and hard at my temples.
Dum.
Dum.
Dum!
I dragged down a breath of air, the room coming back into focus.
My pulse was trapped thunder in my veins. “Oh, shit! Oh, shit! What—what the fuck?”
“Easy,” Fisher whispered. He prowled up my body, his pupils blown wide open. That narrow silver thread of quicksilver still completely banded his right iris. “Easy. That’s it. Breathe.” My head swam all over again as he hovered over
me, keeping his weight off me, and began slowly kissing my neck.
I swallowed, forcing myself to speak around the spikes of ecstasy that were still rippling through me. “What . . . the hell just . . . happened?”
“You passed out,” Fisher murmured into my neck.
“Passed out?”
“Just a little.” He made it sound like it was no big deal. That he made females pass out all the time. “Only for a second.”
“Fisher!”
He pulled back, fixing me in his gaze from the top of his pushup. “I told you once that I was disappointed by how breakable humans were. Remember?”
Oh, I remembered.
“You’re not human anymore, Saeris. Think you can keep up with me now?”
Martyrs. That cocky grin. The taunting glint in his eyes, oscillating between mischief and mayhem. He was so fucking sure of himself . . . and it was such a turn-on.
I wasn’t recovered from the bite he’d administered to the inside of my thigh.
I felt high, actually, and the delicious buzz floating around inside me was making me feel reckless. I wanted him so fucking badly.
“I can take it,” I answered. “Are you sure you can handle me?”
Laughter erupted out of him, and the sound of it caressed my skin, making me shiver all over again. I had to fight to stop my eyes from rolling back into my head. “Honestly, I’m not sure, Osha,” he mused. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
I stripped him out of his clothes, tugging frantically at his shirt and his pants, desperate to be rid of them. He refused to help, insisting that I try to undress him with my magic, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell him the truth—that I wanted to try my new powers, but I was too afraid. I felt the magic spiraling out of control below my solar plexus. In my palms, dancing at my fingertips, too. A storm raged beneath my skin, and I had no idea how to tame it. I had no business being the caretaker of so much magic when I had no comprehension of
what it was, how it worked, or how to control it. And I wasn’t about to unleash it on my mate under these circumstances, when I wasn’t even in control of my own body.
I growled, shoving Fisher back onto the bed and yanking his boots from his feet. I had to have him, and he was not helping. Nope, he was laughing.
“Feeling a little feral there, Osha?”
I hurled one of his boots across the room; it sailed through the ward I’d created, a ripple distorting the air, the sound of it thumping to the floor on the other side blocked out by my unintentional magic. “It’s almost as if you don’t want to fuck me,” I snarled.
More laughter. This time lower. Rougher. “Oh, believe me. I want to fuck you. Need proof?”
I knelt at the end of the bed and watched as he finally relented and helped with his disrobing, easing his pants slowly down over his hips. I stared, my mouth suddenly drier than the fucking dunes, as that cut muscular V that dipped down into his groin was exposed . . . and then his cock sprang free.
He was hard all right. Harder than I’d ever seen him. He was so godscursed big. Fisher kicked out of his pants and tossed them onto the floor, then stacked his hands one on top of the other and wrapped them both around his straining length.
He stared at me, shuttling his hands up, and when he squeezed himself, a bead of pre-cum pearled from his swollen head. “This little bubble you’ve created is trapping your scent, you know,” he said. “The scent of you is driving me fucking crazy.”
I ran my hand between my legs, dipping my fingers past my folds, hissing when I realized how hard he’d made me come when he bit me.
Fisher watched me with hazy eyes, still pumping his hands up and down his cock. “Come. Here. Now,” he ground out.
I obeyed. Not because he didn’t give me a choice. The oath he had bound me with had been broken when I’d died back in Gillethrye. No, I did it because I
wanted to.
“Give me those fingers,” he commanded.
I knew perfectly well what he meant by that; I wasn’t even remotely self- conscious as I reached out to his mouth and painted myself all over his lips. He groaned, eyes flashing with need, when I pushed my index and middle finger
into his mouth.
“Suck,” I told him.
His eyes rolled back into his head, and Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate, slayer of the last dragon and Lord of Cahlish, obeyed me.
Hot air rushed over the back of my hand as Fisher exhaled hard down his nose.
You’re trying to kill me, he rasped in my mind.
I bent over him, withdrawing my fingers and replacing them, flicking his lips with the tip of my tongue before plunging it into his mouth.
Not kill you, I answered. But maybe I will torture you a little in light of that stunt you just pulled.
Quickly, I straddled him, grabbing him by the wrists and pulling his hands up over his head. He could have fought me. Refused to let me manhandle him.
But he didn’t. His cock butted up against my core, but I didn’t slide myself down onto him. Not yet. Positioning myself so the head of his length was pressing right at my entrance, I lowered down a hair’s breadth . . . and then I rocked my hips back an inch, relishing the sight of him squirming.
“Osha,” he said in a warning tone.
I ignored him, lowering my chest, making it very clear that he needed to be quiet and pay more attention to my breasts, which were now right in his face.
He didn’t hold back. My right nipple was trapped between his teeth in the next breath. I let out a hiss of pain as he bit down—not enough to cause real pain, but enough to send a shock wave chasing along my nerve endings. As quickly as he had clamped down, he released, swirling his tongue over the pink bud reverently, as if to make up for the discomfort he’d caused.
When I sink all the way down onto your cock, you’re not allowed to touch me, I
informed him.
I’m just a male, he answered in an agonized tone. I’ve never worked a miracle in my life. What gives you . . . the impression I’d be able to start . . . working them now?
Your stubborn nature. I lowered one more inch. If you touch me, I win.
Fuck, Saeris, he snarled. I was rocking now, rolling my hips the smallest amount, working the head of his cock in and out of my pussy. “You have any idea how fucking incredible you look right now?” He spoke these words out loud, and his voice was so raw. Full of need. The sound of it lit a fire in me that
promised to burn forever.
“Cruel, cruel female,” he chided.
Oh, if he thought this was cruel, then he was probably going to brand me pure evil for what I was about to do. I undulated against him, lowering yet another inch, and when he hissed through his teeth, cursing in Old Fae, I swept down and plunged my canines into his neck.
That was when I sank down onto him . . . all the way to the hilt.
I didn’t draw on him. Didn’t fucking move. I paused there, pulsing around him from the inside, listening to his breath stutter as I let my venom pour into his veins.
He went rigid beneath me. “Saeris.” The warning was calm, but there was heat in that word. Careful.
I whimpered a little as I arched and my nipples grazed his tattooed chest. I’m so tired of being careful, I said into his mind. And then I drank. I laced my fingers with his, digging my fingernails into the backs of his hands, and I ground against him, angling my hips, fucking him as I swallowed him down.
It had been bewildering, tasting him up there on the dais at my coronation. I hadn’t been ready for it. Fisher’s blood was an eternal song. It cleaved my soul from my body. The taste of him was more exquisite than fresh, clean water. His blood was holy, and I drank like I needed to be saved.
His hands closed tight around mine. The veins in his arms stood proud, his muscles tensed. This was killing him, not being able to touch me properly. But the fact that he was allowing this was monumental.
There was something very empowering about a male like Kingfisher relinquishing control and offering free rein over his body. It was an act of trust.
Submission, even. And a lethal creature baring his neck to you was a heady thing indeed.
I could feel the effect my venom was having on him, floating from his mind to mine. Strange. I could tell that this was his high now, but it still made me feel as though I were being buoyed up on a cloud into the ether. No words or direct thoughts passed between us for a while. I felt the deep well of love between us, though. The sensation was so immense that I thought I might die from the sheer magnitude of it. Was it my love for him? His love for me? The lines were so blurred I couldn’t tell where his feelings ended and mine started. It didn’t really matter in the end.
I stopped drinking, my body alive with foreign, unusual energy that didn’t belong to me. Fisher’s cock strained as he thrust up into me, and the walls of his bedroom began to sway.
Gods, he was so deep. So fucking perfect. I couldn’t stop staring at him as I sank down on his cock again, again, again . . .
“Look at you,” Fisher rumbled. “Fucking magnificent, aren’t you.”
I released his hands, leaning back to give him a better view. I was hardly shy in bed as a rule. But with Fisher, my confidence felt electric. How could I not feel that way, when I could still feel his emotions in his blood. He meant what he said. He did think that I was magnificent.
“I’m done holding you back,” I said. “You can use your ha—” I didn’t even get to finish the sentence.
“Thank the fucking gods,” he snarled. Sitting upright, his hands went to my hips. I braced for the shift in gravity, to be thrown onto my back, but Fisher just held me there, fingers gouging into my ass cheeks and my thighs, and he slammed himself up inside me.
“My turn,” he rumbled. I didn’t even react when I felt the sharp sting of pain this time. I knew what was coming the second his canines sank into the swell of
my breast, and I braced myself for that instead. He was more cautious this time.
He didn’t dose me anywhere near as hard. A spike of dizzying pleasure crashed down on top of me, but I didn’t come, and I didn’t pass out. His hands slid up my back, hooking over my shoulders, pulling me down onto him, and the delicious friction between our sweat-slicked bodies began to push me closer toward an inevitable cliff.
“You feel so fucking good,” I moaned. “I want—I want to feel how hard you get. I want to feel you inside me when you come.”
Hell’s fucking teeth, he growled inside my head. I’ll give you what you want, Little Osha, don’t you worry.
I rocked against him harder, threading my fingers through his hair, pulling him down onto my breast. He drank deeper, following my cue, and the feeling of him growing hard as tempered steel inside me stole my godscursed breath.
Yes. Good. Come for me. Come. His encouragement was all I needed. I came apart with his arms wrapped around me and his tongue working over my nipple.
His bedroom went black as midnight, my vision failing. But . . . it hadn’t failed. Fisher’s shadows exploded out of him as he reached his climax, too. They fanned around him, broad and wide, forming the shape of gossamer wings, and then they swallowed me whole.
His magic cocooned us, cradling our bodies as we shook and trembled.
There was no need to speak. We clung to each other for a long while, blood- high and love-drunk.
Eventually, our growling stomachs made us move, though; it turned out that sharing blood and spending an extended amount of time in a Fae warrior’s bed meant that you’d be ravenous after a while.
Fisher watched me get dressed, a small smile playing over the corners of his mouth.
I threw one of his socks at him, pulling a face. “Why do you look so pleased with yourself?” I teased.
And Kingfisher laughed. “Because I am pleased with myself. Because I’m the
luckiest bastard alive. And because you look like you’ve just been thoroughly fucked.”