Chapter 39

CHAPTER 39

WREN

It had been too long. Finn was her addiction, the one thing she craved more than anything, more than air. Wren was hardly aware of the two of them moving, but everything was suddenly a rush of motion. He took her hand in his, and they all but ran up the grand staircase in the centre of the house.

Wren had no idea where they were going but Finn moved unerringly, without hesitation. They fell through a doorway into a stately bedroom and she was in his arms again, right where she wanted to be. He kicked the door shut behind her and brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with a degree of focus and determination that would never be rivalled. She returned that kiss with a burning need of her own.

There was no one like him. There never would be. Great light, she had missed him. It had only been a matter of days, but it felt like months.

Wren buried her hands in his hair so she could pull him to her, hold him. His own hands were busy with her clothes, pushing back her boyish garb to caress the soft skin beneath, revealing each inch like it was a precious gift. She shuddered against him, and gasped as one questing hand curved around her breast. The pad of his thumb brushed against the sensitive skin of her nipple, which tightened, aching for him. She gasped out loud and let her head fall back as the warmth of his mouth closed over it and that deep drawing heat shot through her with each stroke of his tongue.

In moments she was pressed against him, crying out her need, and Finn didn't pause, not for a moment. She could feel his erection through his clothes, trapped between them, his cock hard as steel. He was as determined as ever, dedicated to their mutual pleasure but focused in the first instance on hers alone.

He walked her back until she came to the bed and kissed her body everywhere he could as she lay back on it, hands and lips exploring, as if he would claim her by touch and taste alone.

Wren's desire pooled inside her, rich and intense, driving any other thoughts from her mind. His scent encircled her, tangled itself with hers, a rising musk of desire and need. They were together and that was all that mattered. All efforts to drive them away from each other, and to keep them apart, had failed and there was a sense of triumph in that.

His clever mouth and artful fingers brought her to ecstasy, arching off the bed, crying out his name heedless of who might hear. It didn't matter and she didn't care, not this time. She wanted the world to hear, to know.

Finn was smiling down at her, watching her with those beautiful eyes as she came back to herself.

‘What is it?' she asked, a little wary.

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Just…just wanted to see your face.'

‘I think you can see a lot more than that,' she teased, reaching for him. He was still clothed. ‘You have me at a disadvantage. You really need to take these off.' She tugged at his shirt, pulling it from his belt so she could slip her hands beneath it, eager to touch him.

The necklace with that peculiar pendant fell out from beneath the material, and hung between them, swinging like a pendulum. The wave of cold that came off it made her freeze. It was dark and she felt that unpleasant shiver like something shadow-wrought had pressed to her skin.

‘What is it?' he asked, suddenly concerned.

‘What's that?'

He frowned, his dazed eyes struggling to focus on it in irritation. ‘A…a gift. Nothing.' And he took it off hurriedly, dropping it onto the clothes he had already shed, before kissing her again as if determined to rid her mind of any thought but pleasure.

He was good at that. Far too good. He could make her forget anything when he touched her like that.

Wren ran her hands down the line of his back, tracing her way across the scars she knew too well, old and new. The shadow kin had bitten him there, when he had been trying to defend her. She had poured the Aurum's light through him to save him. She had made him her own.

He shivered and caught his breath as she tormented his skin, warm and soft, stretched over the iron of the muscles beneath. His body was a marvel, honed to perfection, sleek and strong.

She didn't know how he got himself out of the rest of his clothes so quickly, but he did. He shed every remaining item and then he gathered her in his arms again, the two of them entwined together on the bed, skin to skin and body to body.

‘Great light, I missed you,' he murmured as his mouth claimed hers again, his kiss stealing her breath. He moved against her, sending a ripple of warmth and pleasure throughout a body she thought already sated, but moments later that hunger was back with a vengeance. That was his magic, his effect on her. Nothing would ever be enough where he was concerned.

‘Show me,' she told him. ‘Show me how much.'

Light poured through her, racing along her veins, filling her with fire. It burned away the shadows that still lingered, and with it came joy, with pleasure. Her hands stroked his sides as he rose over her. She could see the glow that came from her playing over his flesh like iridescence.

‘You're made of magic,' he whispered in awe, and then he entered her, slowly, deliberately, taking his time to savour everything. His cock stretched her and filled her, and made her complete. It was like exhaling after holding her breath for too long, this sense of relief, of rightness. He held himself there, as if caught in a spell, frozen by pleasure, letting it wash through him and trying to adjust to this new reality where the two of them were one. Her body was not so patient. How could she be? She squeezed herself tightly around him, feeling every inch, that deep delicious slide of skin on skin, and Finn opened his mouth in an oh of surprise.

Her hair curled around his hands on the sheet, binding him close as if never to let him go. Shadows were coiling up from the corners of the room, thrown into sharp relief by the light in her, and she couldn't stop them. She couldn't stop any of it. Part of her didn't want to. He was hers and she was his. They belonged together.

She couldn't stand it any longer. She couldn't wait.

‘Finn!' she cried out, desperate now. ‘Please!'

It was all he needed. Finn surged into her, deep and hard and hungry, as if he no longer had a will of his own or a mind to reason. His cock filled her over and over and all was need and desire. His pace was intense, driven by that endless hunger she created in him, which was reflected back in her.

She shouted his name again, and other things. She didn't know what. There were words of othertongue in there, and words of joy and need, words which owned him and which gave him all she was.

It was bliss. It was everything. She broke apart in light and darkness, in waves of dazzling pleasure, and even as he started to lose his rhythm in release, she rolled over, taking him with her, seizing control of their lovemaking. Beneath her, Finn arched on the bed, desperate to please her and racing to match her pace. She pinned him down as she rode him, binding him with body and with magic, with love. Great light, she had missed him, missed this. He was hers and she was his and the light flooded through both of them, blinding and terrible, while shadows coiled against their skin, weaving untold enchantments, leaving them both enraptured. He cried out her name, helpless and overjoyed, aglow from within as her power surged through him, lost to himself as he came.

Magic and desire were a potent combination and, adrift in it, Wren didn't care where it led and what it did to her. But this was Finn, her Finn, her everything. She was safe with him. She always would be.

She tumbled over the edge with him and cried out his name over and over. He wound himself around her, as she slumped down onto his chest, little aftershocks still shivering their way through both of their bodies. He cradled her close like she was something precious, a treasure.

Wren found that she had tears on her face, and her hair, long and dark and far too wilful, fell loosely around her. It still teased his skin, like it was stroking him, and he lay beneath her, clearly trying to remember if he had ever had a name to begin with.

Magic, she recalled. There was a vital part of her that was magic. And when she made love to him, it was part of that too. It filled him as it filled her. Part of that addictive pleasure, part of that hunger, came from something far beyond either of them.

He looked dazed. Lost.

‘Finn?' Concern speared her. What did she do to him in moments like this? What could she do to him? ‘Finn, are you all right?'

‘You…' he whispered hoarsely and words seemed to fail him. ‘You are more than life itself, Wren. More than anything. I was lost until now, lost without you. But that was…' He lost himself again, gazing up into her eyes, adoration plain on his handsome face. ‘I am yours, body and soul. You know that, don't you?'

She did. Of course she did. How could she doubt that, looking at him right now?

And for the first time she truly understood what that might mean. And all the dangers that might entail.

Finn was Ilanthian royalty, the blood of Sidon, no matter how he might want to deny it. And she…she was something else.

Finn dozed, drained, and Wren watched him, searching for signs that she might have harmed him in some way, that she might have stolen something from his spirit or changed him. But he just sprawled there, loose-limbed and sated, breathing softly. She had pulled the bedclothes over the two of them in the night, but as dawn sent seeking fingers of light through the tall windows, she slipped away from him, wrapping herself in one of the silken throws which had slid onto the ground while they made love again in the moonlight. The city was waking up outside the walls of the embassy and reality was going to come thundering back around them at any moment. She knew that. It was inevitable.

She slept a little. Her head was filled with Finn. When they had been in the forest – scared, desperate, running for their lives with only each other to rely on – it had been so easy to fall in love with him. And now they were together again, she knew that she was never going to want another man. Not like him.

Because there was no one like him.

But she also knew that she was not entirely human. Not really. There were shadows threaded all the way through her and a dark goddess claimed she was her child. Her creation, anyway. Elodie had never explained that. Perhaps she couldn't. Wren had command of ancient powers, threads of light and darkness that warred against each other and seemed intent on making her their battleground.

And she woke once more with thoughts full of creeping shadows.

Wren stared up at the palace on the mountain as the sunlight struck its white walls, blue roofs and golden domes. It was perfection, cold and beautiful, but it would never be her home.

Strong arms slid around her, and Finn's body pressed to hers again, all the comfort she could ever need. He kissed the top of her head gently.

‘Couldn't you sleep?' he asked. There was a wariness to the question, doubts underpinning it.

She nodded. ‘I just woke up before you.' It sounded so simple, but as a statement it held a multitude of meanings she didn't want to go into. ‘We have to go back,' she told him after a long moment of thought. ‘And they'll try to pull us apart again.'

‘Roland? The council?'

She gave a brief and bitter laugh, although it wasn't from humour at all. ‘Everyone.'

Wren felt him shrug, a gentle roll of his shoulders. ‘They'll do the same if we stay here. Or worse.'

‘So what do we do?'

There were so many answers to that. Run away, face them down, do as they were told, and all the iterations in between.

‘We do what you want,' he said at last. ‘And I'll be there with you. But for now…' He pressed his mouth to her bare shoulder, kissing her there. His lips moved up slowly, inexorably, to the column of her neck, then to her jaw. ‘Come back to bed, heart.'