Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

“ K eep telling yourself that,” I whispered. “That’s what you’d like to think, but you want far more. You need far more.”

Just like I did.

Unbalance was like a statue. He still gripped my waist, and I clutched his shirt in my hands.

“No one gets to tell us what we can and can’t have.” A ballsy statement when Gaia might use her magic to kick my ass at any time, but the words were out, and I had no urge to take them back.

Andas’s fingers twitched, and I could feel through our bond how much he wished to touch me and believe me. I could also feel his steely resolve, which was a credit to both men who’d formed him.

“You will force me to make the decision, won’t you?” he said roughly. Andas grabbed my wrists and drew my hands off his shirt and body. He held them by my sides. “You’ll force me to kill you.”

“You won’t kill me,” I said calmly.

“I won’t have a choice,” he roared. “There won’t be anything left if I don’t. We are as much pawns as everyone else in the realms, Silver. You must accept our fate as I have.”

But I could see through him now. I had access to his essence. “You haven’t accepted our fate. You hope as I do.”

“The hope of a fool.”

“Then fools we’ll be until we’re forced to be otherwise.” I twisted a hand free and lifted it to his face. Balance didn’t tug at me, and I could feel a calm in Andas too. “There is no path to be walked in this moment but ours. You must feel it too. Will you walk it with me?”

Whatever had to be done about Keefe wouldn’t happen in this instant, and where I would’ve needed to explain that to anyone else, Unbalance accepted my words without a blink. His power was opposite, but in many ways it was the same.

His jaw clenched under my hand. “If I walk this path, I will never find the strength not to walk it.”

“You would waste this gift?” I replied. We were being given a lull, and I wished to take advantage of it.

“Why do they give us this time now, when the realms are withering to nothing?” he snarled.

I studied his lips. “Because the demands on us will never stop. There will always be creatures dying or wars erupting. If we won’t take the stolen moments that belong to us, then we don’t deserve a chance. This is our test. Will you fail it for both of us?”

I kissed his jawline, and he stiffened. I kissed closer to his mouth, and he groaned. “Walk the path with me, Andas. Why not see where it leads? How can you fear the possible demise of the world more than the demise of us?”

He gripped my hair and pulled me away. I had a bare second to feel crushed by the finality of his rejection before he said, “I don’t fear anything more than the demise of us. I fear giving it power. I fear hastening our demise. I fear that hoping now and taking all you offer may deprive me of years of your company, even if I can only see you from afar.”

I smirked. “You’d rather be miserable for a long time than happy for a second.”

Andas’s throat worked. “There’s a long list of things I’d rather. On the top of that list is that we were two average fae—or even idiot humans—with none of these burdens.”

His grip in my hair loosened, and both of us were breathing hard.

“And if we were two average fae, together in a cave, with no demands on our time?” I said with difficulty. “What would you do then?”

Andas smiled slowly. “We’re not two average fae, my Balance.” His dark essence seeped into the cave, and my silver essence poured out to match it. Andas glanced at our magics, then back at me.

“If you plan to turn from this, Andas, then do it. Please don’t toy with me.” I gritted my teeth and made to pull away.

He gripped my tunic and dragged me right back. “But that’s exactly what I plan to do to you, Silver. And you’ll be very happy we’re not two average fae by the end.”

I wasn’t sure who moved first.

I gasped as our mouths met, teeth, tongue, lips, and all. We’d never done this. We’d never chosen to damn the consequences and cast aside our responsibilities and just kiss . My body had been denied for too long. Far too long.

I ripped at his shirt and my tunic at the same time.

“Slow down,” he growled.

Unbalance was telling me to slow down. I panted, “I can’t.”

I was desperate and didn’t care who knew it at this point. I looked up into his eyes…and realized that he was barely hanging on too.

“When we’re driven apart at last,” he hissed. “What we share here is the dream I’ll torture myself with until my bitter end. This will be perfect.”

I pressed my thighs together. “How long does perfect take?”

Andas grinned. “Longer than you’d like. But I can’t have you combusting.” He held my hair and craned my neck. “Don’t look away. I want to see it.”

I looked into his dark green and amber gaze and didn’t budge as he dragged a finger down my vest, slicing it neatly with his magic. My trousers came next.

Unbalance tugged the two sides of my vest apart with his free hand, and then he did budge his gaze from mine. He’d never looked more serious as he took in my bare chest, and my nipples tightened further under the intensity of his stare.

Dark eyes slammed back to mine as he palmed one of my breasts.

An exhale fell from my lips, and he smirked, drawing up his essence to circle and squeeze my nipples. I jerked, eyes widening.

“Yes,” he breathed. “You see all that will be done to you.”

“And all I’ll do to you,” I replied. Observing and learning was my strength, was it not?

His magic toying with my breasts had lit a fire in me, but Andas maintained his hold on my hair and stared into my eyes again as he pushed apart the two sides of my leathers. The material fell from my hips and ass, still clinging to my legs, and that somehow made me feel more brazen than if I’d been naked before him.

I expected his hand to lower between my legs, or his fingers to pulse inside me, but Andas pressed me against the wet rock and inserted his knee between my thighs. The friction was immediate, and I stopped breathing.

“I want to see Underhill grind against me,” he whispered, lapping up my startled reaction. “Show me what an animal you really are.”

There was no hiding the reactions of my body from him. “This is your idea of perfect?”

He nodded. “I am still Unbalance, after all. Do you still desire me?”

If Andas wished to scare me off, then he shouldn’t have called me an animal. Because really, I was far more like an animal than one of those court fae.

I moved my hips, rewarded by the flare of his eyes.

Mother be. The sensation was immediate. I could sense the precise movement that would feel best. I circled this time, and my instinct was rewarded with a hotter flush of pleasure. “I’ve given up on anything but instinct, my Unbalance.”

“Tell me,” he said, his voice low, fervent even as I moved against his thigh. “What do your instincts say?”

My words twisted in my moan. “That there are many rewards to be had if one can just suffer a little.”

Andas clenched my ass with his other hand and helped me circle against him. “Is this suffering?”

I shook my head.

“Open your eyes. Look at me.”

I listened, and the greens and ambers of his eyes didn’t mean Cormac and Aaden any longer. They were one person now. They were Andas, and I wanted him .

The force of his stare was uncomfortable. My rocking grew jerky.

“Scared, little Underhill?” he growled.

The mocking edge to his words wasn’t convincing, but the challenge was there all the same. I was too far fucking gone to care. Andas was right—this might be the one and only time we’d be allowed this intimacy. I’d torture myself with the perfect dream until my end as well.

I wasn’t holding anything back.

Gripping his shoulders, I moved against him and then gripped his hair with my other hand. I dragged us nose to nose, our gazes locking and holding.

The cold and wet of the rock under me was forgotten as pleasure tightened my body and mind. At last.

“At last,” he echoed, voice hitching. “Fall into me, Silver. I’ve got you.”

And I knew it. Part of me had always known it. That might not make a difference to anyone else, but it mattered to me. To him. We might be drawn apart again by what we were, but it would never be by choice.

Try as I might, I couldn’t focus on Andas’s eyes as pleasure dragged me under the surface. Languidness spread through me, even as he arched me over the rock and released my hair, even as he slipped his fingers between my legs and crooked them within me. Whatever he rubbed only amplified the waves of fire hitting me in that submerged place. I heard wordless encouragement. I heard my scream when one climax battered against a fresh surge. I made it to the surface and took a frantic breath, only to be shoved back under, choking on my own breath in the doing.

“I want it all,” Andas growled.

And then his mouth joined his hand. Except his fingers hadn’t stopped, and neither did his magic. His tongue. His mouth.

There was no whispered encouragement this time. My body was rigid with lightning, and still I wanted everything he offered. He’d asked for the animal. Here she fucking was. This time I screamed my way through the collision of one pleasure’s demise and the other’s rise.

I screamed until he’d wrung the last of whatever the fuck had just happened from me with his slow licks and the pulses of his clever fingers. Tears trickled over my temples from the sheer magnitude of what we’d created and shared.

And I wanted more. Always more of him.

He rose from between my legs and pulled me upright to perch on the rock, bringing us flush. He’d taken the time to slice my clothing from me. I banished his, then took a moment to absorb his beauty before gripping his length and guiding it to where we both wanted it.

“Silver,” he said as he paused at my entrance, his guttural tone jolted through me. “There’s no going back.”

I felt it too. I felt that we’d sealed our fate. I’d either regret or rejoice this memory for the rest of my existence.

My body felt heavy with calm. My mind too. There was a tranquility in me that I’d never experienced before. Never. There was nothing in me except what I felt for this being I’d been designed to destroy or to be destroyed by. I was meant to love this fae.

He was meant to love me.

Each bliss bestowed upon us would be gratefully received for its rarity and for the suffering we endured between times.

I used his shoulders to lift slightly and sink down on his length. His eyes widened at my soft sigh. His breath halted as I worked my hips to accommodate him.

“You’ve made your choice then,” he choked.

I nodded once, then paused when his cock pressed against a barrier deep within me. The same fire erupt in him then.

“And you’ve made yours,” I taunted.

Unbalance growled, gripping my thighs as he pumped into me. Once. Hard.

I gasped through the slight pain, gripping his arms tight.

He hissed, “I have, and we both know this ends in doom and despair. You should’ve left me to die, Silver.” He bowed his head against my chest. “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”