by Alex Lidell
Yet River wanted so much more than just to be inside Leralynn. He wanted to conquer her. To enter her so fully and intimately, to bring her to such heights of overwhelming pleasure that neither of them would ever forget this moment. He wanted to make her scream with ecstasy, until she knew—not just in her mind but in her soul—the answer to the challenge she’d put before him.
Heart and breath racing, he swirled his fingers through her slick folds without warning, making the girl moan loudly—thank the stars for thick stone walls—then plunged a finger so deep inside her, he thought she would retreat from the pressure. But she only pressed harder against him. A new trickle of arousal dripped onto his desk beneath her. Yes, Lera was more than ready for him—which was convenient, because he needed to be inside her now.
“I’m going to take you, Leralynn.” River’s words came low and raw. “I’m going to take you as you are. And show you who I am too.”
Lera’s backside undulated beneath his hand in response, her hitching breath frantic with need.
Yanking open his fly, River positioned the dripping head of his cock at Lera’s entrance. He’d intended to go slow, to push inside with a gentle pressure to let the girl adjust, but Lera’s frustrated growl put an end to that plan.
Gripping her hips, he sheathed himself inside Lera’s channel in a single stroke.
11
Lera
My back arches as River’s impossibly large cock thrusts deep and hard inside me. I grasp desperately for the edge of the desk to brace myself. His sheer size momentarily overwhelms me, focusing my whole being on the hard, hot, slick cock that throbs powerfully inside my tight channel.
And then he starts pumping.
In and out, in and out, the head of River’s cock slides through me, melting my bones to a pliable blazing metal. My sex clamps around his throbbing intrusion, my channel first trying to restrain the great force inside me, then to urge it on instead. Heat pools in my sex and simmers my blood, my need rising. Rising.
River’s desk creaks under his powerful thrusts. Through the open window, the clamor of students calling to each other in the courtyard and the harsh sounds of construction are a distant reminder of where we are. Of who River is when he’s not in this room with me.
This only sends a new spike of need through me, and I buck, urging River to go faster. Harder.
Instead of yielding to my demand, the male inhales sharply and grips my hips in an unyielding hold that sends a message of its own. He will take me for who I am—and give me who he is as well. A commander. A warrior. An immortal king he does not remember he is, though his body does.
A whimper escapes my lips, turning to a desperate moan. Everywhere River’s cock touches turns more sensitive, more hungry. Even with his hands on me, my backside pushes up to meet his powerful hips as they slam into me, the slap slap slap of his heavy sac coming a fraction of a heartbeat later. Again. Again.
Cock still moving inside me, River bends his body over mine. His hard chest presses into my back, his hands sliding along my outstretched arms as his woodsy scent caresses my nose. Pressed between the heaviness of River’s hot body and the cool, unyielding wood of his desk, I feel the strange combination of being trapped and safe, captured and savored.
Then River’s canines scrape along my neck, and my thoughts stop.
“I love you, Leralynn,” he whispers into my ear. “You. As you are.”
Before I can answer, he pulls us back just enough to slide his hand beneath my hips, his fingers tracing the hood around my swelling apex. Explosions of sensation race through my core, tormenting my thighs and toes and spine until I’m gasping for breath.
The combination of River’s cock and teeth and fingers is like a set of blazing shackles that I can neither escape nor stand a heartbeat longer. The approaching edge of pleasure looms before me, as inviting as it is frightening for its cosmic drop. For the fact that under River’s skillful command, I’ve no control of what’s to come.
“River.” His name is breathless on my lips, and I don’t know if I’m begging him for reprieve or acceleration. My muscles clench, my channel tightening around his shaft as the building sensation courses higher and higher and—
The male sinks his teeth into my neck just as his thumb brushes over my exposed bud.
Every muscle in my body tightens down on my throbbing sex in an explosion of blazing pleasure. I scream, River’s other hand clamping down on my mouth before the sound can travel too far. The restraint, his warm callused fingers that smell of my own arousal, only heighten the waves of spasms shaking my body. I gasp, shuddering beneath River’s heavy body, as each nerve inside me fires, the world splintering around me. Around River’s thickness. Again and again, until my legs weaken.
I return to my senses slowly, aware first of the smooth writing desk beneath my cheek, then the firm pressure of River’s fingers massaging my lower back, then the final hazy realization that the male’s large cock is still hard and throbbing inside me. Which means… Which means River is just getting started, while I’m a gasping puddle of drained muscle and sensitive sex.
Blinking myself further into reality, I realize that River has pushed my thighs wider apart, the cheeks of my bottom splitting open with a wet sound.
I try to close my legs on instinct and get nothing but a quickening pulse.
“You wanted me to take all of you, Leralynn.” River’s low voice and harsh, unsteady breaths play over my back, making my blood tingle with excitement. “And I will. I will take you completely.”
Before I can reply—not that my sluggish mind could conjure anything that my traitorously dripping thighs wouldn’t name a lie—River swirls a finger in my moisture and presses it with steady pressure past my backside’s sensitive rim. The finger slides in easily and—even as I squirm against the intimacy of the intrusion—zings of maddening need shoot from the engorged nerves right to my apex.
Intimate. Yes. The taking is humiliatingly intimate, and yet River’s presence fills a void deeper than my pulsing sex. The male behind me isn’t toying with me, isn’t just playing at bedding, but giving me the whole truth of his desires. Not because some magic compels him to, but because he wants to. Chooses to. Chooses me.
He may be a different man in his mind, but his needs and pleasures are the same as my River’s. If I close my eyes, I can almost pretend we’re back in Lunos, River bending me over his huge oak desk and taking exactly what he wants—showing me new heights of pleasure in the process. I trust that male with every inch of my body.
Beneath me, River’s blunt fingertip suddenly traces all around my hood, the swollen bud inside it waking with magnificent shock. My toes curl inside my boots, and, as I draw a sharp breath against the blooming sensation, River’s second finger enters my backside, stretching me stealthily.
The urgency growing around my bud has my thighs squeezing against River’s unyielding knees, my thoughts focusing ruthlessly on the tiny spot that controls my body like a fishhook. The knowledge of how open I am to River, how fully beneath his command, somehow magnifies each sensation, my body rousing more and more without regard for common sense.
River traces my hood again, flicking just a hair too lightly over my apex. As I arch my hips into him with demand, his cock and finger withdraw from me altogether, the sudden emptiness devastating.
I whimper.
And then I feel the large head of River’s cock pressed against my back hole.
On the heels of emptiness, the slow entry is excruciatingly filling. Holding my bucking hips steady, River’s strong thumbs dig into the fleshy mounds of my bottom and rub in tiny firm circles. The deep, deep pressure rides the edge of pain, which morphs into molten pleasure as it releases muscles I didn’t even know were tight.
My body welcomes him, though the fullness inside me is enough to make the world flicker.
Moving his hands, Rivers finds the sides of my apex again, playing my body’s sensations like a musical instrument. When the fingers of his
free hand slide into my slippery channel, offsetting the cock filling my backside, a renewed wave of heat ripples through me, making me moan into the desk.
My sex pulses hungrily, blindly. The slow thrust thrust thrust of River’s cock seems to touch every nerve in my body at once. My fingers claw the table, my helpless legs buckling beneath his assault.
River pounds into me now, each thud of his hips and fingers striking right into the center of my engorged bud. The abused nerves of my channel and backside howl with sensation so overwhelming, I don’t know how much more of it I can endure. Our breath is harsh against the stone walls, our bodies meeting in a driving, jerking rhythm, mindlessly seeking release.
A primal keen escapes my lips before I can stop it, my body spasming around River’s fingers, colliding with the echoing ripples from his throbbing cock.
His thrusts quick. Harden. More and more until my sex is convulsing around him and his own breaths come in desperate grunts. His unyielding control sends tremor after tremor through me until—
“Now, Leralynn,” the male commands, and the two of us topple off the cliff together.
12
Lera
I shiver on River’s lap, my body curled against his damp chest, my heavy head resting in the perfect, muscled groove of his shoulder. Not that I could stand just now even if I wanted to. My mouth is dry, my skin beaded with sweat, my insides a pool of satisfied exhaustion. With the potent aftermath of the coupling seeping through me, I’m more relaxed than I remember being since stepping foot in Great Falls. As if River’s firm command of my body filled a missing puzzle piece, the scattered pieces of my soul now clicking into place.
His large, callused palm strokes my hair and back, the rhythm echoing the plop plop plop of raindrops pelting the window.
“When did it start raining?” I mumble.
River chuckles. “Sometime between your first and second release.”
Despite my having just done the deed, my cheeks heat, and I bury my face deeper in River’s shoulder, his skin warm velvet against mine.
“You are beautiful when you climax, Leralynn,” he says into my hair, his soothing hand still stroking my skin. “I could listen to that sound all day.”
I could too. Unfortunately, we don’t have that long. Somewhere in this room are the remains of my clothing and my problems—both of which need to be found sooner than later. Gathering my wits, I start to pull myself back from puddle to living being.
River squeezes my backside roughly. ”Stay put before you trip over your own feet,” he orders, taking charge in a way that makes me want to punch him almost as much as it makes me want to mount him and start all over again.
With a chaste kiss on the top of my head, River rises with me in his arms and sets me back down into his chair. The leather is cool against my naked skin, the soft cushion hugging my curled form. Striding around the room, Rover collects my clothes, his muscles shifting beautifully beneath his bare skin. I can’t help but watch him, his dark hair mussed adorably, gray eyes hooded with delicious satiation I’d never seen in the Great Falls’ deputy headmaster. How the male still has energy to bustle around when I can barely lift my head is a mystery of its own.
River stops to pour a cup of water from a chilled pitcher before returning to crouch beside me. “Drink.”
The cold liquid is so stark against my blazing body that my eyes pop open like a child’s toy.
A corner of River’s mouth twitches. “I think I’ve worked it out, by the way.”
“Something in particular, or the world in general? Because I’m not sure I can recall much about the world in general just now.”
“I know why you joined the Prowess team.” River’s smile fades. “Why you won’t take the offer to leave the Academy for the summer.”
My hands close around the water cup, the chill suddenly desperately necessary to focus my heavy mind. Not fair of River to bring it up now, but I can’t make him unsay the words. Can’t undo the reality pressing in on me on all sides either. Shimmying to sit upright, I meet his penetrating gray eyes and wait for him to continue as the pattering of the rain against the glass intensifies.
“You’ve inserted yourself into the middle of any and all danger to befall this Academy ever since you set foot here, Leralynn. A habit that I’ve tried to talk, work, and punish out of you with no success to date. In that light, imagining that you’ve suddenly reformed and decided to leave the worrying of the Prowess Trials to me was utter folly all along.” River swallows, his dear face so tight, I wish I could smooth it with my fingers.
“River—”
He shakes his head. “I promised to accept you as you are, Lera. And for that, it seems I must acknowledge what you are.”
My chest tightens. “What am I?”
“A protector.” River draws a deep breath, his glistening chest and shoulders expanding with it. “You won’t stand aside and let other people defend the Academy because, deep down, you can’t. It goes against your nature. You aren’t inserting yourself into the middle of the Prowess competition because you’ve developed a sudden interest in showmanship, and you aren’t refusing to repeat the year because you worry about the consequences of the delay. No. Everything you do, it’s designed to get you to the hottest center of whatever inferno you believe most likely to happen.”
My breath catches, each of River’s words striking its target. Protector. The irony of the word choice isn’t lost on me, but neither is River’s own nature.
Now that the male understands what I’m doing, what will he do about it?
My fingers tighten around the water glass, which I drain quickly, my mind racing for footing. I’m swallowing the last mouthful, still settling on a response, when I hear nimble footsteps climbing the stairway outside River’s study.
My eyes widen. River’s do too.
Scrambling into the shirt that River hastily hands me, I discard the now-buttonless coat and wage war on my chest wrap while River kicks the writing supplies he swept onto the floor into the space behind his desk. Inks that survived the previous fall now open in protest at the new insult, spreading in dark puddles across the floor.
On the heels of River’s too-keen words, the sight of him cursing as he simultaneously tries to lace his fly closed and dance away from the spreading ink puddles is almost enough to make me dissolve into giggles.
“Leralynn,” River hisses my name in quiet warning.
I blink at him. Mark his fierce gray gaze. And double over in spasming deranged laughter that refuses to get itself under control no matter how hard I clap my hands over my mouth.
13
Lera
“Tyelor.” River’s control of his voice is a skill to envy. “What can I do for you?”
“Master Han sent me to track down Leralynn, sir.” Tye slides his hands into his pockets, carefully avoiding my gaze. “Shall I tell him that Lera is unavailable?”
My mind sobers to the twin blows of Han’s name and Tye’s cool gaze, harsh reminders of the world beyond this office—beyond River. Despite our hasty cleanup efforts, the smell of our coupling hangs too thick for a fae to miss—especially Tye. I weigh the merits of saying something about it outright, but end up just straightening my tunic instead. Giving River the formal bow of a cadet taking leave from the deputy headmaster’s office, I’m half-relieved and half-disappointed when the male nods his dismissal and starts toward his desk without a backward glance at either of us.
Tye holds the door open for me, my stomach clenching as I step out onto the landing and face the downward stairs. My limbs still feel like partially boiled noodles, and the thought of the climb is as appealing as dealing with Tye just now. Or Han.
“You look well ridden,” Tye drawls.
With my foot halfway down a step, I jerk so violently that my balance falters, and I hop about like a dimwit to find my balance. My gaze locks on Tye, but the hard lines of his beautiful face give away nothing. My hand closes on the railing in a bone-white grip, my nostr
ils flaring. “Was that a statement of fact or a threat?”
“Could it not be both?” Tye cocks his head, looking eerily like a tiger examining his prey. “I could report you.”
Heat rises through me, my blood quickening. I open my mouth to curse the bastard, but force myself to take the high road before I make a bad situation worse. Tye does have every reason in the world to hate me just now—every reason in his version of the world, at least. “If your mission was to show me how threatening a place on the team feels, I assure you that you’ve accomplished it several times over in the past sun cycle.”
Tye’s hands shift in his pockets, and he continues down the stairs at a pace that makes me jog just to keep up, avoiding looking at his smoothly sculpted muscles. With his back to me, the resemblance to my old laughing, feline quint mate is too painful to bear. “The difference is that Prowess has defined every step of my life, past and future. For you, it’s another cord to twist to your liking.”
I grab the top of Tye’s arm as we clear the next landing, the feel of his coiled muscles beneath my fingers excruciatingly familiar. His white sleeveless shirt is damp, the pine-and-citrus scent mixing with the rain, which also hangs in fine beads from his hair. For once, he’s left his red uniform jacket somewhere, and this close, even for a moment, the warmth of his body brushes against my skin. “If by my liking you mean keeping the Academy safe, then yes.”
Tye snorts, turning on me with a flatness to his emerald eyes that chills my blood. “I feel safer already.”
My free hand closes into a fist, and I take a slow breath to cool my simmering blood. There is one thing I’ve not done to repair this void between us, and I owe that to us both. A last-ditch effort that should have been the first. “Tye, I’m sorry.”
