Chapter 50

Fifty

Rhoswyn

“ T here’s nothing you can give him?” I ask, incredulous, as I cradle Bree in my lap against the pillows. He’s completely naked—as am I—claiming that anything but my skin feels like torture, and my fingers rake soothingly through his hair as he trembles.

I’m three seconds from trembling too. The icy room is freezing. My nipples are rock hard and begging me to get beneath the blankets, but Bree swears he’s too hot, and the flush taking over what little skin isn’t obscured by ink tells me he’s not lying.

He’s been like this since dinner, over an hour ago.

“Even if there was, Nicnevin,” Kitarni replies through the door. “It would take me days to brew it. Bricriu’s options are a sleeping draught, suffering, or…”

“Fucking!” Lore sticks his head around the crack in the doorway for a second before Kitarni yanks him back with her long twiggy fingers.

“Yes. That.” I can hear the high priestess’s wry amusement, though right now I fail to find the humour in the situation. “In fact, that might help it pass quicker.”

“How long?” Bree demands, chest rising and falling raggedly.

Kitarni hums. “I can’t imagine that a synthetic fever would last as long as the real thing, and the potion is designed for a female fae’s reproductive system, which is much more complex than a male’s. Given how much you drank… I would say… without sex, it should clear your system in a day or two. With sex, much faster. Maybe hours. But those are estimates. I didn’t brew it, so I can’t be certain.”

“And it’s not going to… influence him?” I won’t press for sex if he can’t really tell me no because his body hurts too much, even if it would help him.

She pauses. “Given that he’s still in a place where he’s able to follow conversations and respond, and the lack of a fever ‘instinct’ in males, I believe it mimics the physical effects only. I wouldn’t worry that it might interfere with his ability to make decisions for himself.”

“I’ve had this before,” Bree interrupts, grinding his teeth. “They used… they tried lots of things to make me comply before you freed me. I’ll live.”

He shifts on the mattress, looking into my soul through emerald orbs glazed with feverish pain. I can tell he’s going to turn me down. He’d rather suffer than risk it. It’s frustrating that he’d willingly take days of pain rather than fuck me.

“Let me help you,” I beg him.

His eyes fall closed. “I wish I could say yes, but I don’t want to hurt you. This feels too much like before. My instincts are running wild right now. If you had any idea the thoughts going round in my head…”

I swallow, but don’t push.

“Lorcan, I shall go and assist Drystan and give them some privacy. You keep watch, but don’t do anything rash,” Kitarni warns. “Rose, if you need the sleeping draught, it’s just outside the door.”

The dryad’s footsteps echo as she heads away, and silence overtakes the two of us, punctuated only by Bree’s shallow breaths and Lore’s intermittent sighs from outside.

Brushing a lock of hair away from my púca’s forehead, I swallow as he leans into the touch and then groans. Is my presence helping or hurting him more?

“Use me.” I’ll do anything. “I’ll tie myself up. Gag myself.” I can’t believe the words are falling from my mouth, but my own awkwardness is not worth his suffering. “Do whatever you need to make yourself feel safe.”

Please.

I don’t dare speak the word. If I could charm him out of this, I would. But I swore never to use my magic on him again.

“Even if I just use my mouth,” I whisper. “Would that work?”

He peeks out from beneath sinfully long lashes. “Dragonfly.”

“I love you,” I whisper. “I can’t watch you torture yourself like this. Drystan and Lore are teaching me that I enjoy rough sex, and nothing you do would ever?—”

“Come here.”

My heart lifts, and I let myself slide down the bed until we’re nestled facing one another. His cock is a brand against my stomach, spreading a thin trail of pearlescent pre-cum across my lower belly that chills in the icy room, making me shiver.

His hand reaches out to stroke my cheek.

“You love me?”

I nod, eyes still burning.

“I love you too.” He takes a deep breath. “I need you to know that, because I think I’m about to fuck you like I don’t.”

His hands fist in my hair, tugging the strands roughly as he urges my mouth against his and claims my lips. It’s the most frenzied kiss full of scraping teeth and unhidden need. His forked tongue flicks out, tasting me, and he moans.

“Drystan isn’t here,” he groans against my lips. “Lore won’t stop me.”

“I don’t mind.” I flow easily down his body, allowing his desperate hands to manipulate me until I’m eye level with the angry purple head of his cock. “I have my safe word. Lore is right outside.”

“And definitely not listening to every sexy little sound,” the redcap pipes up, and I feel Bree tense.

Stroking his thighs soothingly, I open my mouth, but don’t move to suck him down. I don’t trust myself not to do anything that might pressure him. He needs to feel in control, and that’s what I’ll give him.

So when his hands in my hair urge me forward, I wrap my lips around the velvety skin of his shaft and lave the head of his cock with my tongue. He uses me rhythmically, setting the pace, supporting the weight of my skull as he dictates everything, including the depth. He reaches the back of my mouth, testing my gag reflex as I breathe through my nose and will myself to allow him to push deep.

“Suck,” he hisses. “Goddess. Look at me.”

His cat ears are flat against his skull, and it might be my imagination, but I’m pretty sure his eyes are clearer than they were a second ago.

“Don’t stop looking at me.” He thrusts again, hips bucking like he can’t help himself. “Please. I need your eyes.”

I blink away tears, watching him eagerly as he owns my mouth like he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. He tugs my hair, and somehow the delicious sting lures me into relaxing more, allowing his possession.

Despite the roughness, liquid heat is expanding in my core. My arousal is so sharp it hurts, but I try to shove it aside and focus on him. This isn’t about me, even if I am enjoying it.

Perhaps I’ve been conditioned to love anything my Guard does to me. Maybe I was born this way. Right now, I don’t care. I brace my hands on the tattooed skin of his thighs and use my tongue to caress every part of him I can reach.

Saliva pools and leaks from the corners of my mouth. My lips do nothing to quell it, making slick noises as Bree’s thrusts slowly lose their rhythm, becoming erratic.

Then it’s over. He holds himself so deep that my nose is pressed to his lower abdomen, filling my nostrils with his smoke-twisted honey scent as he empties himself down my throat. His cock jerks and his breath rushes out of him in a long hiss that makes me want to preen.

His grip on my hair slackens, letting me pull back. Then he’s tugging me back up again, pupils still massively dilated as he searches my face for something he’s not going to find.

“Are you okay?” we ask at the same time.

“Is it my turn yet?” Lore whines from outside.

Bree shocks me when he turns to look at the door and snaps, “No.”

“I’m fine,” I promise, daring to reach forward and press a kiss to the tip of his valravn’s beak, where it caresses the lobe of his ear. “How are you feeling? Has it… did it work?”

His skin is still flushed and warmer than a furnace, but he’s stopped shaking. A reprieve then?

Bree looks down between us at the erection that, I only now realise, never went away, then back up at me sheepishly. “I feel better, but…”

“It’s not over,” I finish for him, pressing another kiss to his jaw before I back off. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this, but I loved everything you did to me.”

“It was my honour to spare you this,” he replies, pushing up to his elbows and leaning over me. “But before it gets bad again, I have to taste you.”

I fall onto my back, smiling, and open my legs in invitation.

Lore mutters something from the other side of the door that sounds suspiciously like, “Just fuck already before my cock falls off.”

Bree ignores him, taking his time kissing slowly down my sternum, allowing that talented forked tongue to snake out and tickle the heavy, aching flesh of my breasts. Every kiss, lick, and scrape of teeth stokes the coiling need that I was so desperately ignoring earlier, and I bite the inside of my cheeks as I try not to beg him.

“I love you,” Bree whispers against the skin of my navel. “I’m doing everything I can to become worthy of you.”

“Then lick me,” I challenge.

He meets my gaze again as his breath whispers over skin that breaks out with goose bumps in response. “I control your pleasure, dragonfly. You come when I let you.”

I nod my agreement frantically as his mouth lowers until his lips are inches away from my exposed and glistening sex. “Yes.”

Just as long as it’s soon.

That forked tongue slips out, long and sinuous as it swirls in the pooling wetness at my core and then swipes up. The dual tips somehow manage to swipe either side of my clit at once, making every muscle below my waist clench.

“Bree,” I moan, digging my fingers into the bedding so I don’t do something stupid like grab his ears and grind myself against his face.

In answer, he flicks his tongue rapidly against the bundle of nerves that need it most. My back bows off the bed, hurtling towards orgasm, and my head slams back against the cushions. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pleasure burning me alive.

Only for him to stop.

“No!” I cry out, trying to snap my legs shut, to rub my thighs together. Anything that might put pressure on my clit.

His large hands pin me open, keeping my quivering pussy exposed as I writhe through the agonising burn of his denial.

“Look at me.”

I do, though my eyesight is blurry.

“Keep your legs open. If you move, this stops.”

I’m about to ask what ‘this’ is, given that he’s currently doing nothing, but then he releases my thighs and slides one long, calloused finger inside me.

My cunt clenches down on the intrusion, and my whole body weeps in relief as he slowly thrusts, providing a delicious friction that dulls the barbs of denied rapture. Then his tongue darts out—human this time—providing a warm, wet lick that’s firmer and less teasing than before.

Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t move. I chant in my head. I can’t take another denied orgasm.

Then he adds a second finger and curls up to find that spot on my front wall. I can’t help it. My leg jerks reflexively.

He stills. “Did you just move?”

He knows I did. He’s just playing with me.

My pussy clenches on his motionless fingers, trying desperately to steal an orgasm before he can take them away. “I didn’t mean to.”

Bree shrugs. “Well, you know the consequences.”

But there’s a fine tremor in his hands as he pulls away. A feverish light enters his eyes as they linger over my body.

“Bree.” His name is half-plea, half-warning on my lips.

Without warning, he drags his fingers free, grabs the base of his cock and thrusts into me. Hard. He’s hilt-deep before I can even process what’s happened.

“Bree!” This time, it’s a primal scream as he loses control.

There’s nothing of the clinically controlled male from just moments ago in him as his hands come down on my waist and he drives himself into my body again and again and again. I force my eyes to stay open, to lock onto his, but I’m not sure if he’s here with me or caught in the past.

“I love you,” I whisper, even as I writhe and whimper under the force of his thrusts. “I’m here, and I love you.”

My pussy spasms, trying in vain to hold him in place as he hammers into my body like he’s possessed. Pleasure builds, cascades, then builds again, but I hold the orgasm back through force of will, remembering his earlier words.

I won’t be like the other women who took pleasure from him. I want him to gift it to me. So instead, I whisper hundreds of ‘I love you’s even when I think I might pass out from denying myself.

He comes but doesn’t stop. Doesn’t soften. His seed adds to the damp quilts beneath us and makes the lewd wet noises filling the room louder still. My hands are white knuckled, abdomen twisting and untwisting as I tremble.

“Bree, Bree, Bree,” I chant. “Bree, I need… Goddess. I need to come.”

And slowly… ever so slowly… he comes back to me. One hand abandons his punishing grip on my thigh and moves to press against my lower abdomen, thumb flicking over my swollen nub until not coming is torture.

“Come,” Bree snarls. “Come for me.”

The sound that tears from my chest is inhuman. The leash on my self-control snaps, and I implode. Every muscle in my body tenses as my orgasm rips free.

And it doesn’t stop. No. It goes on and on, drowning me in toe-curling bliss. Brutal and savage and perfect.

I come until I’m limp and delirious from pleasure. I’m not even sure if Bree has followed me, but his thrusts have stopped by the time I come back to my senses.

“Hey,” he whispers, still buried in me. “Are you back?”

Am I imagining it, or does he sound a little bit… cocky about that?

Blinking, I check him over instead of answering. His colour looks more normal, his pupils are no longer blown.

“Has it passed?”

He nods. “I think so.”

Then he pulls free of my body, and I wince as I feel the gush of fluid escape me.

“Did I hurt you?” The concern is back.

“No. I’m just… gross.”

His smile lights up his face. “That tends to happen when your mate fills you up multiple times. Stay here, I’ll clean us up.”

As my heart rate calms, the enormity of what just happened starts to sink in.

He told me he loves me. He was under the influence of the potion, though, and perhaps with my confession, he felt pressured… Butterflies take up residence in my stomach, my self-doubt rearing its ugly head.

“Did you mean it?” I ask as he returns to the room and starts gently wiping the mess between my thighs with a warm cloth.

He doesn’t ask me to clarify. “Yes.” A long pause. “I’ve loved you since I first saw you in Siabetha. I know… you might not really have meant it like that. It was an emotional?—”

I press my finger to his lips, keeping my moves slow and gentle so as not to startle him. “I meant it. Now hurry up. I need to hold you.”

The events of the last few hours are finally hitting, and I can feel the terror I didn’t let myself feel while I was so focused on caring for him hitting me.

“Hey.” Bree chucks the cloth and wraps himself around me, drawing blankets over us both. “The Call just spiked, what’s wrong?”

I shake my head and bury my face in his chest. “I was scared you were going to die, and Cedwyn is dead and Ashton?—”

“Drystan is handling it. He knows his uncle, and he’ll hold the fort while you recover.” He strokes a soft hand down my back, then stops. “Sorry, I forgot, your wings…”

“No, keep going.”

He hesitates but continues stroking my skin. “Rest. I’ll wake you in an hour, and we’ll sort it all out together.”

My eyes slide closed, and I snuggle deeper into his warmth, trusting him to do just that.