by Alex Lidell
Flashing her teeth, Lera bent her head and bit Tye’s ear. Hard.
He roared, his voice echoing around the tiled room, and buried himself deep in Lera with a single stroke.
14
14. Lera
I gasp, suddenly unable to fill my lungs. Despite longing for the very cock that’s suddenly inside me, the sheer size of Tye’s intrusion makes my whole body tighten. Too big. Too long. I want to scream even as my hips rock against the male hungrily. My sex clenches around the thick, thick shaft, finally full after days of mindless craving.
Tye’s hands grip my bottom roughly, the sudden sting as he lifts me up and down along him turning to molten pleasure that curls my toes. I push my hips forward, greedy for more friction. A familiar undeniable need to hold the connection between Tye and me consumes my body and echoes in Tye’s dilating eyes.
Not want. Not desire. But a need for a mate’s connection, the kind that broke many otherwise productive evenings back in Lunos. Broke many beds too. The impossibility of feeling the mating bond through the veil flitters inside my head like a small annoying fly. My body little cares for what’s possible, only for what exists.
I breathe in the pine-and-citrus scent of the powerful male inside me, the slap slap slap of wet skin hitting skin echoing through the bathing chamber. Each thrust hits a spot so deep that the vibrations spider through my core, raising me to a greater height from which to fall. My heart quickens in rhythm to the pulsing cock slamming into my channel.
Thrust. Thrust. Thrust. Hard. Fast. Deep.
And yet not enough. Still not enough.
“Tye.” I don’t know whether I mean his name in plea or command. Just that after so long apart, the primal part of my soul is so very ravenous.
The male’s glazed eyes flicker, and he claims my mouth in response, a clash of tongue and lips. He slaps my bottom, the shocking sting magnified by the water and abused flesh, and swallows my guttural moan, never slowing his deep thrusts. My taut nerve endings ride the wave of sensation, a tsunami that turns pain to pleasure to desperate need.
I try to retreat from the onslaught. Tye holds me firm and thrusts deeper than ever.
My muscles spasm, clamping around his cock. My mind blanks, the coming release inevitable. With the next heartbeat, the wave I’m riding finally shatters. Pulsing waves of dizzying pleasure radiate from my throbbing sex, making my breath race. Tye’s thick warmth fills my channel.
“Stars.” I mean to scream, but the words come out as a panting gasp. Tye’s arms come up to support me, his lips brushing mine in a kiss so sweet that I let myself relax into it, savoring its—ow.
“You bit me.” I pull back, looking indignantly at the male.
“Did I?” Amusement dances in Tye’s eyes, their glaze sharpening to a roguish emerald focus. A warning bell tolls in the back of my mind, growing louder when I try to get down and find myself trapped against the muscular male, his arms as implacable as steel. Tye licks his lips, his gaze brushing down my naked body. “I just recalled that I meant to taste you, lass. I think I’ll take that treat now.”
My fuzzy mind tries and fails to follow Tye’s meaning. Now? What does he mean now? After the climax of moments ago, my whole body feels like a lump of dough. My exhausted sex stirs and—my eyes widen. Not only is Tye’s shaft still inside my channel, but it is hardening again.
I gasp as Tye hoists me out of the water and lays me flat on my back at the bathing pool’s smooth edge, my backside hanging free over the lip. Tye’s strong hands stroke the skin along the inside of my thighs, cupping my bottom gently before pulling my knees apart and stroking the folds of my exposed sex. He licks his fingers slowly.
“Mmmm,” says Tye.
That quickly, I want his hardness right back inside me.
Green eyes dancing with a roguish flame, Tye hoists my legs atop his muscled shoulders and blows a long hot breath over my apex. Jolts of sensation zing along my thighs and calves and toes, making me squirm.
Tye’s hands clamp along my thighs, restraining me in place. A moment later, his tongue replaces the breath, trailing luxuriously along my folds. Flicking his tongue over the hood covering my bud, Tye swirls it around as if savoring a sweet.
A tiny vibration starts deep inside Tye’s chest, and I suddenly realize the male is purring. Him or else the tiger coiled so tightly beneath the magic’s shackles that he cannot escape—yet still wishes to share in his partner’s pleasure. In all our pleasures.
I let out a contented sigh. The moment I do, the bastard between my thighs scrapes his teeth along my engorged apex.
The world blinks. My nerves rouse with sharp need that takes my breath. Makes me so wet that the dampness tickles warmly as it slithers down my thigh. My sex clenches, the fire exploding between my folds unbearable after the release I had earlier. I flex my hips. Shift my bottom. Buck.
Tye’s iron hold keeps me in place, an added punishing nip to the inside of my thigh warning against further squirming about. Ordering me to endure each glorious, maddening flick flick flick of his skilled tongue. Stars. The throbbing inside me is already echoing along my spine. How can my body take more?
Not that Tye seems to care, his tongue moving ruthlessly over me. Left side of my bud. Right. Each touch sends zings of intense sensation. Left again again again before stopping a single rough stroke away from toppling me over the edge of the abyss I cling to.
My hands dig uselessly into the floor, finding no purchase. With Tye’s powerful arms holding my legs against his shoulders, I can’t move. Can’t do anything but feel each and every touch. And lick. And suckle.
A mangle of scream and groan escapes my lungs, need raking each inch of my skin. The pressure inside me is so intense that my muscles tremble uncontrollably, my breath coming in quick little gasps I can’t slow. One more lap of Tye’s tongue and I know I will tumble in the abyss again. I brace myself.
The lap never comes. Instead, Tye’s fingers claim my channel.
With a frustrated moan, I clench greedily around the intrusion. The skilled callused fingers tease my channel, forcing my desperation higher still while always stopping a hair short of release no matter how much I try to rock against them.
“Please,” I finally whimper. “I can’t. Tye, please.”
Tye returns his tongue to my bud with a growl, his fingers still sliding back and forth inside me. Flick-thrust, flick-thrust, the duet of tongue and fingers plays me like a tuned violin, plucking a new sensation with each precise touch. My thighs press in, blocked by Tye’s wide shoulders. Flick-thrust. Flick-thrust.
The approaching abyss widens its maw. My whole body shakes.
“Now,” Tye says against my bud. With a self-satisfied growl, the male takes my whole engorged apex between his lips and sucks.
Need explodes in shards of howling bliss, a blaze that tightens every muscle in my body. Again. Again. The spasms come in waves, one crashing atop the next until I can barely draw breath into tightened lungs. The molten heat between my legs spreads through my backside and spine, rolling down the backs of my legs with pleasure so intense, it hurts. My head swims, my core sated down to every tiny crevice, even as my body shudders in the aftershocks.
As the last one subsides, I realize Tye has pulled me off the ledge and now cradles me gently against his chest. The feel of his warm cheek resting atop my head is so perfect that I know I could stay like this forever and be absolutely content.
And yet we both know I can’t.
15
15 Lera
“In Tye’s defense, he said he wouldn’t bed you,” says Arisha the following morning, eyes trained pointedly on the sprawl of papers on her desk, a faint pink blush rising up her cheeks. She’s told me that cadets couple up at the Academy all the time, in spite of it being technically against the rules—which doesn’t make it any less scandalous to my by-the-book roommate. “And it sounds like there was no bed in sight. Does this mean you two are—”
“No. We are friends. Possibly fr
iends. Maybe ones who enjoy a tumble in the sheets now and then.” I cringe, thinking of the searing look Katita gave Tye and me from across the cobblestone courtyard when we snuck out of the men’s bathhouse—our sex-glazed eyes damning us as surely as my borrowed-from-the-baths clothing. Was it simply bad fortune that the princess happened upon us as the Academy was bedding down for the night—or something more? The notion that Katita may have been waiting, watching for us, fills me with a new type of dread. I’ve been in the mortal lands for less than a week and have already crossed one of the most powerful people here. For an interloper who is supposed to be keeping her head down, I’m doing a damn poor job of it. I clear my suddenly dry throat. “Anyway, this Tye doesn’t know me well enough to even consider anything else. Now, how do I look?”
Turning about in the center of our narrow dorm room, I display the dress uniform the quartermaster’s courier delivered for the Academy’s monthly parade inspection. The short-cropped red vest sits snugly across my chest, the gold trimming shining between the double rows of buttons. Lower, the pants flare in a bow to feminine sensuality, the material flowing along with each movement. A glorious mix of military discipline and courtly elegance. Neither of which I displayed last night.
“Perfect. It shows off your swollen lip in the best possible light.” Arisha’s head never comes up from the notes and sketches littering her desk. “I don’t for the life of me understand why normally sane and reasonable people lose their wits for a day each month to have the whole Academy turn up in dress uniforms on the courtyard lawn. It literally accomplishes nothing with the exception of seeing whether the pants still bloody fit.”
“There is something to be said for gathering everyone together,” I say, recalling River’s crowning ceremony in Slait a few months back. For all River’s stoic tolerance of Autumn’s elaborate planning, when he finally strode out to the dais to take his vows, the energy of the court hummed so loudly that it made my very blood sing. And not just my blood. I turn quickly, lest Arisha looks up to read too many delicious memories in my face—not the least of them being the sight of River striding back into the antechamber, his epaulettes gleaming with the same molten heat as his eyes.
“There is something to be said for seeing Tyelor in his dress red.” Arisha shuffles her journals. “Let’s return to what happened with you two last night again. For scientific study.”
My eyes narrow. “Are you just seeking gory details, or is this actually helpful in working out the veil problem?”
“Both.” This time, Arisha does flash me a sly grin. “Plus, as I little expect to be bedding anyone—much less the upcoming Prowess champion—any time soon…or ever, I’m entitled to live vicariously through you.” She frowns. “Wait, no. Being you would mean dealing with all four of them, wouldn’t it?—Because I don’t want to spend an extra moment in a room with Coal or River, forget a bed. As for Shade… Well, he was a swoon, but now I can’t look at the healer without remembering the hair his wolf shed onto the clean linen.” She shifts in her chair. “Now that I think on it, I’ve the better end of the bargain.”
“They aren’t as they seem,” I say, weaving a thick braid down the left side of my head. Despite all that happened the previous day, I feel better than I have in some time. Energized. Alive. “For a time there yesterday, Tye and I connected the way we’re meant to. It was the same with Coal. Coupling has always woken a deeper magic between us, even when I was human. It was how I was first able to harness my power.”
“Well, shall I write ‘bed the headmaster early and often’ at the top of our to-do list, or can you recall that one on your own?” Arisha blinks at me innocently, and I throw a shirt at her from my dresser top. It falls short, snagging on her bedpost. Her mischievous grin fades as she seems to realize something, clicking her tongue. “I wonder if we’ve not been going about this the wrong way.”
“I’ve been going about things the wrong way so much that the laws of probability say I should have stumbled into something correct by now,” I mutter. “What are you referring to?”
“What you just said, about the males not being as they seem. Everything I’ve read about the veil amulet and what you’ve told me of yourself contradicts that statement. The veil doesn’t change someone’s essence, only their explanation for it. Both Lera of Lunos and Lera of Osprey had the same childhood emotional experience—just dressed up in different clothes.”
“So?”
“So, instead of waiting until the males regain their memories, maybe you need to accept their personas as they are. Stop calling them ‘not real’ and forge bonds with these males who are here now, frightening as it may be. You five may need each other’s strength long before a magical key drops from the skies to reverse the veil.”
“I’ll think about it,” I say, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Tye is right. I can’t lie to save my life. Everything about Arisha’s theory is bloody reasonable, except the one gap that is so wide, not even Tye’s athletic prowess can leap over it: the males’ new personas have no room for me in their busy lives. The energy I gained last night starts to fizzle.
“You should talk to River,” Arisha says.
I swallow, my gaze searching for somewhere else it needs to be just now. Outside on the swaying branches or maybe the book on my desk in case a strong desire to study should suddenly strike me. My back stiffens in spite of myself, and the smile I force onto my face feels like it’s cracking through dry lips. Stupid. I clear my throat. “Talk to him about what?”
“About the fact that you all know—from that first time you went over the wall—that there are magical threats to the Academy. That you want to be a part of the solution. He can’t tell others about the magic for fear of unwanted attention on the Academy—or worse, prosecution from fae hunters—so it limits his options. Let him invite you—” She stops, her eyes narrowing on my face, on the flush that’s probably rising there. “River intimidates you.”
“I’m not afraid of my own mate.” My jaw tightens, the only defense I have against my pounding heart. “I refuse to be.” I pause. “It’s just that, although River has always been our quint commander, before now, it’s simply meant that he had the final word on our missions, not on what time I need to be in my room.”
Rising from her chair, Arisha wraps her arms around me, her frizzy hair tickling my cheek as her comforting scent of parchment and ink calms my nerves. “Now, you listen to me, Leralynn of…of wherever you’re from,” she says, pulling me away enough to look at me over her round glasses. “River is the best deputy headmaster this Academy has ever had. You don’t know what it was like with only that weasel Sage here. What I’m saying is that River is a good man just as he is a good male. That’s one.”
Something I didn’t know was raw inside my soul quiets as I nod. “What’s two?”
Arisha squeezes my shoulder, her small pointy features soft with kindness. “Two is that you really are a cadet now. Not River’s equal. And we are all a little terrified of the deputy headmaster. You feeling the same as the rest of us just means the veil is working as intended—not that something is wrong with you, or him, or the bonds you had in Lunos. Which brings me to thing three.”
“You really like lists, don’t you?”
“Thing three,” Arisha continues as if I hadn’t spoken, “is that if you intend to be digging into Coal’s nightmares, and Shade’s losing time and all the other dark little festering wounds that make the males uncomfortable, they will likely dig into yours as well. So consider yourself warned.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The smile I give Arisha must be genuine, because the girl nods and walks back to her books.
“Now, on the less romantic side of things, I think there is a Yocklol tree near the Academy.”
“Is there a reason I should care about a tree?” I stride over to look at Arisha’s drawing.
Arisha does not meet my eyes. “It isn’t truly a tree. It just looks like one,” she says, laying out a spread of several pencil drawin
gs depicting burns similar to what I saw on Rusty’s forearm, as well as a rough sketch of a yellow-looking trunk with an eye in the middle of it. Scrawled notes, lists, and calculations line the margins of the pictures. “But it moves about.”
A sudden chill runs along my spine as I look at the blight. It is precisely the type of magical corruption I’d told Gavriel I won’t be fighting. Can’t fight. Not without the others.
“If I’m right, Yocklol is what burned a guard recently,” Arisha continues. “Shade had to amputate the man’s arm last night.”
My hand closes over my mouth, my chest tightening. Rusty. The young guardsman from the stables who’d smelled of wrongness. When I told Gavriel I had no intention of prancing around to put out whatever magical fires he found, I’d not thought about the costs. There is no winning, it seems. If I turn into a one-woman stealth operation, I’ll be pitting myself against the males instead of working toward reuniting us. If I do nothing, innocents get hurt.
Reaching over Arisha’s shoulder, I gather the papers into a heap with more roughness than I’d intended. “You shouldn’t have these out of the library. First, it’s disgusting. And second, it is about as far from safe as it gets. If the wrong person catches sight of your drawings—” I don’t even have to finish the sentence for understanding to dawn on Arisha’s face. Sometimes she’s so like Autumn that it hurts—the girl can think her way out of a locked box, but then trip over that same box on her way out of the room. “In fact, we’ll drop this horror trove off with Gavriel before the parade.”
Taking the papers from my hands, Arisha expertly knocks them against the table, arranging everything into a neat pile that would have taken me a quarter hour to replicate. How can a girl who has a place for every pen and sheet of parchment be equally incapable of taming her hair into anything resembling braids? I reluctantly pick up my amulet from my desk—with Arisha in the know, it’s been a relief to take breaks from it in our bedchamber—and I fasten it around my neck. The weight of magic settles over me instantly, making my skin too tight, my body too heavy and awkward.
