by Jack Whitney
His face faltered only noticeably to her as she was staring at him so intently. She allowed her finger to slowly rub herself side-to-side, watching as his mouth slacked, his eyes darken… Her eyes rolled in the back of her head as she bucked her hips against her own fingers, and she reminded herself to keep quiet.
She could have ended herself so quickly, but she was enjoying watching him stare at her. And when she opened her eyes, she hated him all over again. He’d taken his length from his pants, and was stroking it in his hand as he watched her. Her chest heaved, feeling heat rise on her throat. She stroked herself harder, allowing her mouth to open slightly, a low moan emitting from her throat. And then, she willed herself to cross the space between them.
His eyes danced over her face from beneath his hooded brows. She reached out to touch her hand against his on his length. His eyes fluttered as she moved his hand and teased the tip of him, already feeling the stick of his own on his head. He leaned down to kiss her, but she pressed a finger to his lips.
“Let’s see how quiet our Venari King can be.”
Her knees hit the cold stone, and she took him into her mouth before he could utter a response. She heard an audible breath leave him, along with a slew of curse words. Her tongue played with his tip, finger barely touching him as she enjoyed the noise of his quickened breaths in her ears. She felt his hand in her hair, and she tilted her head back to gaze up and him. He’d clapped his own hand over his mouth and closed his eyes. She paused and reached up for his other hand, making him look down at her as she sucked on one of his fingers.
“My castle. My rules. I want you to watch as I bring you to your end. My King.”
A deep purr emitted from his throat, and she moved his hands to her head as she took his full length deep down her throat. His weight shifted, and she heard him mutter a low, “Fuck, Aydra,” under his breath. She moved his length moved in and out of her mouth, allowing her tongue to continue to rake the underside of him and tease the tip of him between strokes. She grasped his backside with one of her hands, the other wrapping itself around his length as she tongued the tip. His grunts filled her ears, and she knew he was getting close. The curl and dig of his fingertips in her hair made her own moan emit from her throat, sucking him harder. And when he finally came apart in her throat, she didn’t stop. Continuing to savor him and swallow the juices flowing from his insides. An audible moan emitted from him, and he grasped at her hair in an attempt to pull her away. She allowed her tongue to rake him again as she licked the last bit of him off, sucking on his length until he began to flinch in her mouth. He yanked her hair back, and she was forced up onto her feet, a chill of goosebumps running over her skin at the tug he had on the roots of her hair.
“So not very quiet,” she said with a raised brow.
He swallowed hard, the bliss of his undoing still radiating over his features. He merely stared at her a moment, his fingertips grazing her throat as his breaths evened.
“What?” she asked.
“Fucking… You…” He was staring at her as though she was something new, as though it was the first time he’d looked upon her face and he was trying to figure out the darkest secrets of her core.
“Draven?” she said, feeling her weight shift.
His thumb rubbed the corner of her lip, and his eyes danced over her a moment more before he once again kissed her. Desperately, this time. He grasped her hips hard in his hands and hoisted her up onto his waist, fingertips digging into her flesh as he turned them so that her back crashed into the glass of the window with an audible echo in the quiet hall. His mouth was on her throat, fingers between her legs, and she felt him growing once more against her.
She grabbed hold of the rough window siding, the rock scratching her palms. Her eyes closed as his finger delved between her thighs, and then she felt him tug on himself. He pulled back to meet her eyes, the look in his gaze something maniacal she’d not seen before. She gasped as she felt him fill her, and her body limped on the spot, mouth agape just as his was.
His teeth tugged at the skin of her collarbone, pushing her flush against him as he began to thrust inside her. The stone ravaged her bared butt. A moan threatened her lips, and he shoved his hand over her mouth. Her fingers gripped so tightly to the stone she felt it break beneath her nail beds. The back of her head hit the glass, and she arched herself against his torso, feeling her end coming close. And then he kissed her fiercely as he fell apart with her, both their moans stifled by the mouth of the other.
Her legs wobbled when her feet hit the ground. She blinked as she brought herself back to reality, forcing her breaths to even.
“Perhaps you should come to my room later instead of yours,” he said as he buttoned his pants.
She pushed her hand through her hair to try and tame it, staring at the window to see her reflection. “Why’s that?” she breathed.
He stepped forward and pulled her hoisted dress down around her hips to hide the scuffle, then straightened over her, his torso flush against her back, fingers wrapping softly around her waist.
“Because I want to hear your screams when I taste you.”
His breath on her neck made a chill rise on her skin, and the words made her heart flutter. She swallowed hard as she turned, and then she reached up to straighten his ivory bone crown.
“Careful, Venari,” she muttered. “We’ll never make it to dinner.”
His arms settled on either side of her, palms pressing into the stone as he leaned over her figure. “Would that be so bad?” he said against her cheek.
Her lips twisted upwards just slightly, and her chin tilted up, nose nudging his. “It wouldn’t.”
He kissed her again, and her heart faltered in her chest. It was hard to pull away from him, hard to distract herself from the magnetism of his kiss, his touch. It was nothing like any other relationship she’d ever bothered herself with before. He did something to her that she couldn’t explain, as though his touch made her body weaken and strengthen all at once, as though his simply being near her made her feel more alive than ever.
She forced herself to pull away from him a few moments later, and he grabbed her backside in his hands, roughly and forcefully enough that she felt her mouth sag, the corners of her lips quirk upwards in a playful manner. He leaned forward and bit her bottom lip just as he smacked her bottom, and she fought the urge to shove him backwards against the wall again.
“I’ll find you later,” she whispered as she let him go.
Her breath left her as she stepped away, and he held onto her hand for as long as he could, fingertips burning with his skin against hers. She caught a final glimpse of his features in the light of the moons, and the look of the domineering smirk on his face as he gave her a deliberate once over caused a heat to rise on her cheeks.
She could have stayed in his arms the rest of the night as she’d done in the forest. She could have surrendered herself to his embrace for the rest of her life. But teasing him was fun as well. And she liked the game they were playing.
“I see you had a pre-dinner snack,” came a voice the moment she stepped out into the light of the room again.
Her heart skipped, but then she realized who it was. She paused in her step and straightened her sleeve. “Lex.”
“My Queen.” Lex stepped in front of her and reached up to Aydra’s crown to straighten it. “The next time you decide to have a romp in the servants tunnel, you’ll tell me. You don’t know how many I had to stop from going through the doorway. And be a bit swifter next time. People were beginning to wonder where you’d run off to.” She pushed her fingers through Aydra’s hair and then stepped back, but Aydra didn’t miss the curl of her nostrils.
“What?” Aydra asked.
“You smell like sex,” Lex muttered. “Let’s talk a walk outside before Ash comes pouncing.”
A brow raised on Aydra’s face. “Let’s hope he knows better than to think I would allow him anywhere near my bed after his display after the battle.
”
Lex almost laughed. “Men are stupid. He probably has no idea.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“IS THAT WHAT you do?” Draven asked the next morning.
They were on the beach, tucked away around the bend where she usually liked to take her swim. Aydra stripped to her underwear and the lace fabric triangles over her breasts that corseted down around her waist. The surf came up and tickled her as she grinned at Draven over her shoulder.
“Take your clothes off,” she told him.
His brows raised. “Shouldn’t you be doing Queen things? Like taking care of your people? Seeing the Ambassadors and the Council off?”
“I have never been the one to send them off. Rhaif usually deals with that. I am the security commander. I deal with criminals, which lets be honest, there aren’t a lot of those here. So therefore I am allowed a few hours a day of peace should I choose to take it,” she said as she pinned her thick hair up into a messy bun with a strip of fabric.
His arms crossed over his chest. “Is that actually true?” he asked.
“Not at all.” She sighed upon looking back at him, seeing him watching her apprehensively. “Come on, Draven. Get out of your head. Have a bit of fun. You’re allowed indulgence once in a while.”
His feet hit the edge of the water, and she noticed his hesitation.
“You’ve never been in this ocean, have you?” she asked.
“These are the bleeding waters of my giver’s enemy,” he replied with a nod towards the waterfall coming down beneath Arbina’s roots high on the cliffside. “So no, I’ve not been in this one. Only Lovi’s waters.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Lovi’s water doesn’t try to kill me.”
She grinned and walked out of the water towards him. Her lips pressed to his, kissing him deeply and chilling as his fingertips tickled her bare skin. She pulled back after a few moments, biting her lip as she met his gaze. “You’re with me,” she promised. “The creatures like me. Nothing will hurt you.”
“Except you?” he asked, eyeing the blade on the garter attached around her thigh.
She almost laughed. “Only me.”
The water lapped at their chests moments later as she wrapped her legs around him, unable to keep herself from kissing his lips as the sun cascaded onto their bodies. Him. In her home. In her waters. The sun glistening and reflecting back to her in the pale of his sage eyes. Her core felt full when she would pull back to stare at him. The look he would give her, the one that he’d shed on his face the day before, as though he were confused about her presence, unbelieving of her in front of him, made her entire body warm, and not from the sunlight.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she whispered.
He swallowed hard, his hand pressing to her cheek. “I didn’t expect you,” he admitted. “You. This person. This… amazing, fearless, stunning, compassionate woman… Each time I look upon your face it is as though my first time seeing it. These years before, when we would hate each other, I feel as though I was hating a different person.”
Her hands wrapped behind his neck, and her nose nudged his. “As do I.”
“Do you know what I used to do when I came out here?” she asked later once they’d settled onto the sand.
“Talk to the fishes?”
She huffed amusedly under her breath. “No. The fishes don’t really talk back. They just stare at me like I’m crazy.”
“Maybe they have a point.”
She nudged him in the side and then stared back at the ocean, allowing a long sigh to leave her lips before she spoke again.
“I used to hold myself beneath the water,” she admitted. “Stay there until I began to panic. To feel my own lungs struggle against the current over my head, wondering if I’d be enough to bring myself above the water again.” She looked down at her hands and shook her head again. “I know it sounds stupid. Childish—”
“It’s not stupid,” he interjected.
She glanced sideways to see the sincere expression on his face. “After so many years here of just… nothing. Being told by my olders and the Council to sit beside my brother and keep quiet. To listen behind closed doors as men discussed things they thought me not capable of comprehending. To have to be numb of feelings I should have allowed my core to sink beneath. That no matter how special our mother may have treated me, that I was still nothing more than the simple princess. I have craved so much more for so long. To feel something. Anything.” The squeeze of his hand around hers made her heart constrict. “Don’t coddle me, Draven,” she begged in a soft voice. “Don’t agree with me for the sake of agreement.”
“You should know well enough that coddling is not exactly my strong suit.”
“I mean… what I tell you. Don’t pity me. I have lived a grand life here. My core simply craves more. To feel my heart beat at a faster pace than this resting rate. To feel adrenaline in my bones. A restlessness in my muscles. Being out there on the field with you, with those soldiers… I’ve never felt such life as I did in those few days. To live life rustling through the trees, combating each other with swords and laughter. To be adventurous. It’s what I was meant to do. Not sit here on a throne in pretty dresses.”
Draven didn’t speak. He didn’t turn towards her, instead simply staring out at the ocean. She noticed a daze of sorts wash over his features, as though he were thinking of something far away. His fist clenched and unclenched at his side, and she noticed the vein in his neck suddenly straining just noticeably to the surface. The sight of it made her weary, and she started to reach for him.
“Draven?”
“I wish I knew the peace you speak of,” he said in a quiet voice, his hand moving away from hers. “You’ve no idea how lucky you have it here. To not have to worry of crime in your streets, the largest threat being when the sheep herders do not have enough of the luxury milks your Dreamers crave. You’ve no idea this adrenaline you crave, this so-called adventure you say you want. I live in that every day. If you wanted true darkness, all you had to do was stay in the forest a little longer. I can show you darkness.”
She swallowed hard, and her chest emptied as she thought about the things he did not know. As blue flames flashed before her eyes, and a ringing began in her ears.
“What— with the creatures that crowd your forest?” she managed. “The shadows?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Not the creatures.”
“Then what?” she argued, feeling the frustration rise as he seemed to mock her. “The ships? Having to defend the realm against strangers? Your Infi broth—”
A knife found the skin of her throat. Her heart dropped and he pulled her head back by her hair, exposing her throat.
“You want to know darkness, my Queen?” he growled over her. “Tell me how many infants you’ve stuck your own blade through,” he dared in a quiet voice. “Tell me how many wailing children’s bones you’ve watched be ripped from their insides and pulled into the dirt beneath your giver’s roots. Tell me how you would look upon the face of a child you’ve watched grow for ten years, only to have him marked with the cursed fate instead of the Venari, to be forced with the choice of killing it, or allowing it live and its life threaten this entire land.”
He released her with such force that she fell into the sand. The knife landed in the wet at her feet, and her body chilled at the glare he stared at her with as he stood.
“Do not wish for a darkness you know nothing of,” he breathed.
“Perhaps you should point this darkness towards your own giver instead of taking it out on—”
“Why would I point this on my giver?” Draven spat. “My giver has been the scapegoat of every race on this land. He has been accused of things over the last Age he never did.”
“Like what? Like seducing my own mother into slavery? Betraying her for his creatures?”
“Lies of your Chronicles,” he hissed.
“Then tell me the truth of it. Tell me what your Honest
Scrolls say of it.”
Draven sighed heavily, and she could see the vein in his neck pulsating. “I should have known this would never work,” he uttered under his breath.
Aydra’s stomach dropped. “Excuse me?” she managed.
His hands were on his hips, and he turned back towards her, gaze darting over her heaving figure. “I have to go,” he breathed.
Her heart throbbed in her ears as she stared after his retreating figure.
“I told you you wouldn’t love me after,” she called.
He paused in his step, seemingly frozen to the ground on which he stood. His fist clenched and unclenched at his side once more. His head turned just slightly, and she met his eyes over his shoulder.
“You’re wrong.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
IN THE WEEKS between the meetings, Aydra tried not to let her broken heart show in her features. She poured herself into helping Lex prepare for the Belwark trials happening in the coming days, trying to keep her mind off her own stupidity of allowing Draven to leave her kingdom in anger. But at night, she found herself hardly able to sleep, curled up in his shirt and toying with the pipe he’d given her as she stared at the ceiling or the moons outside.
During the Dead Moons cycle, she crawled outside onto the roof of one of the towers each night, and she sat in silence, wishing she could hear the Noctuan cries and songs from the Forest in her ears. On one of these nights, Nyssa followed her and sat with her, her head lying on her sister’s shoulder as they stared at the bright stars above them.
“You didn’t want to go to the forest for this turn?” Nyssa asked her.
The thought made Aydra’s stomach knot. “Not this time.”
Nyssa rolled over to her stomach then, and began to play in Aydra’s hair. “You seem… not yourself these last couple of weeks,” she said, avoiding Aydra’s gaze.
