Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

A s soon as Andas trailed his fingers up my thighs, my uncertainty flittered away like the useless thing it was.

His attention remained on my face from where he still sat in the armchair, and I cupped his face, peering down at him.

Our shared look held so much—an entire year of figuring out how this might work. Worrying about it. Missing each other.

My exhale shuddered from my body, and he sucked in a sharp breath at the same time, as though drawing in the very air I’d held in me.

“I’m sorry, my love,” he said, his voice pitched low.

I swallowed. “I’m sorry too.”

He trailed his fingers over the laces at the front of my top. “This is new. I like it.” A hint of growl entered his voice.

I hummed. “Do you?”

Andas smirked and sat back. His magic replaced his hands—and more. I let him pin my arms to my sides, and when his essence slowly began to unlace my leather tunic from the middle of the low neckline, I smiled.

The two sides of my tunic slowly parted to reveal my breasts, and though Andas’s magic held me still, the power at work was all mine. He went rigid in the armchair and the rise and fall of his chest halted.

His expression was robbed of humor as the flat of my stomach was exposed. The tunic had held onto my breasts, but it pooled around my hips now, the last lace remaining threaded in place.

I straddled Andas on the armchair, and his hands replaced his essence. He gripped my elbows and pushed them together behind my back to arch my breasts toward him.

Our shared groans when his mouth closed around my nipple shook the realms. For a brief second, I imagined Orlaith’s knowing smirk before Andas circled his tongue, and then all thoughts of anything but him were thrown outside the cave again.

“I won’t last long,” I told him.

This was nearly causing me to combust.

Andas chuckled, still kissing and sucking his way across my breasts. “My love, that’s my line.”

I didn’t know what he meant. “I’ll just need to be quick the first time, then I’ll last longer for the rest of the week.”

His rich laughter filled the cave, and I frowned, waiting for him to share the joke—but I never got the chance to hear it before my pants disappeared.

He’d left the tunic pooled around my hips.

Andas stilled as I unfastened his tunic and pushed it over his head.

I peered down. “A zipper?”

“Humans have some useful creations.”

They did, and I could barely name one I didn’t dislike. In this, Andas was far more accepting of my creatures, ironically.

I ran my fingers over the zipper of his pants, more curious than anything, but when Andas choked, I peeked up at him through my lashes.

“Did you like that?” I repeated the movement.

His hips jerked. “You’re not going to get a chance to be quicker than me if you keep that up.”

Just like that, a wash of frantic need hit us both.

“I fucking need you, Andas.” I drew the zipper down, forgetting entirely that I could’ve just banished his trousers on the spot.

He steadied my hips, his breaths rapid as I gripped his length and positioned it where we both wanted it.

There was no more build up. I sank down onto him until our thighs touched. My head craned back as joy and the start of hot pleasure filled me.

And desperation.

There wasn’t any time to waste. I gripped his shoulder and rocked my hips hard and fast. A blur. He pushed and pulled me, seemingly furious as he drank in my reactions.

He gripped the back of my neck, and I—needing a better hold—gripped the back of his with one hand.

Forehead to forehead, we stared at each other as we chased our climax.

I’d warned him.

My movements grew erratic as the climax hit too easily and out of nowhere. It wouldn’t satiate me—I could already feel that. I had a feeling that a week of Andas could barely achieve that.

As languidness spread through me, Andas kept rocking me to milk the pleasure from our love making.

I panted. “I can go again.”

“You can,” he replied. “I’ll need a minute or two.”

I peered down. “You finished too?”

His words were dry. “About a minute before you.”

“We only fucked for a minute.”

“Exactly.”

With him still inside of me, I collapsed against him, and our bodies shook with quiet laughter.

“You’re exquisite,” he whispered in my ear. “I’ve missed you so damned much, Silver. I’ve longed to see you each moment of being apart.”

I kissed the base of his neck. “Everything feels right again. I’d worried about a lot of things. I’d worried about how things might be…if they might have changed.”

He nodded. “I flattened an entire city when Keefe told me you’d slept with the new Irish Ríchashaoir.”

I stiffened. “I did no such thing.”

Andas took a breath. “No. Keefe got the better of me that time. Orlaith sent a message through an urchin to inform me that there was no truth to the matter. Then my jealous rage cleared enough that I recalled our bond would have fractured at the betrayal.”

It would have. “Our bond has helped me a lot. And so have the black roses. Thank you. I’ve carried each of them with me.”

And dried the petals to save too.

“Thank you for the pulses through our bond,” he said. “I received all of them, and to my surprise, your love remained with me long after.”

“Did it store in your wings as well? The first time I came back to a black rose, my raven feathers soaked up what I felt, and I could feel your love for three days after. I hoped your crow feathers would do the same with the pulses I sent.” Turned out there was a deeper reason for the painted wings we’d both received.

“They did, and the slow release of your love kept hope alive in me,” he said. “We will need to explore them more to see how they might help us.”

He began to absently trace over the painted raven wings on my back, and I shivered.

Andas spoke again. “Promise me that for every week we are apart, you’ll send a pulse through our bond.”

“One long pulse for ‘I’m okay,’ and two short pulses for ‘I love you.’” I paused, then added. “An extra-long pulse for when I’m pleasuring myself?”

Andas hissed an exhale as he swelled within me. He scooped under my ass to lift me slightly, then began to gently slide in and out of me again.

I stuttered on whatever I’d been about to say, then asked, “I heard what you called your realm.”

“What’s that?”

“Your realm.”

“What realm?” He picked up his pace.

I groaned. “Eldritch.”

Andas portaled us to the bed, and I shrieked at the change of angle as he sheathed his cock completely within me.

“What Eldritch?” he demanded, slamming into me.

“What Eldritch?” I gasped, though the words came out garbled.

I met his thrusts, relishing in the harsh slap of our skin—the sweat, the clash of our magic. The anger. We were both venting a year of frustration and rage.

I flipped him and pinned his shoulders with my power as I rode him hard, grinding down with every pass

Andas reached a hand down and circled my clit without mercy.

I screamed my outrage and gripped his hair.

I was tossed onto my back, then batted onto my front before I could think. Andas pressed a hand in my lower back to keep me still, then spread my ass. His magic slid up between my folds, toward my lower back, but paused halfway.

He said tightly. “Before this week is up, I’ll be exploring this.”

My body clenched in response. I hadn’t known that was possible. I didn’t get a chance to reply before he was in me again, shoving me into the mattress with each savage burst.

The covers muffled my screamed encouragement and fury.

I dislodged his hold and kicked onto my back. He was sitting on his haunches when I straddled him again, shoving his length into my entrance.

Intertwined in sitting, we thrust together with an impossible and wild tempo. It was brutal. It was needed.

It was our outlet.

This was our cave. Nothing but us existed in this cave. But there had to be room for us to acknowledge everything we felt. Without words sometimes, and maybe with words eventually.

For now, this felt right.

I felt Andas swell in me this time.

I choked on a breath as his climax spurred my own. His roar filled my ears, and a sigh rose to my lips.

One of acceptance.

One of gratitude.

We could do this.

Andas guided me flat, and I felt him pull on essence to harden himself again. We locked gazes as he slowly moved in and out of me, cradling me in his arms as if I were the most precious thing in all the realms.

The way I cradled his black roses.

I clutched at his back, wrapping my legs around him to help him move as deeply as possible.

The desperation.

The frustration.

The love. This round was us.

We rocked together lazily, knowing the climax would come and in no hurry to attain it—so sure were we of its imminent arrival. Our bond was open and shining. My worries were gone, as was my pain.

Surety blazed between us.

And we had another six days.

This climax was a quieter affair.

“Silver,” he hushed, bowing his forehead against my shoulder.

I held him to me as I trembled my way through the waves of pleasure. They went on and on in a way the first two hadn’t, and I allowed them to catch me up and carry me for the duration.

When the aftershocks stopped, we were both left breathing hard.

I stroked up and down his back as he slipped from me at last.

Andas gripped my chin and kissed me softly. He searched my expression.

I smiled. “I enjoyed every moment.”

He relaxed and grinned. “Enjoy is an understatement. You’re worth the wait, my love. You’ll always be worth the wait.”

I curled in front of him under the blanket. War—and the several hours or more of our love-making—had taken its toll. Andas’s kisses on the back of my neck grew further apart and fewer between, and eventually, his breathing evened out.

I couldn’t help myself.

Opening to the paths, I peeked at the week ahead. A week of us. And of healing from the intensity of war and strife.

This week would renew us and our realms, and we could thank Orlaith for that. And Keefe’s timely sleep.

An added glimmer caught my eye from ahead. Gold.

The path I shared with Andas was a shimmer of silver and black, but ahead the path shone with the color my mother’s essence had been.

And yet not.

The color was vibrant and bursting with life. The color was complex. Not just light and balanced as my mother’s essence had been but carrying the undertones of ancient knowledge. An awareness of darkness and unbalance.

I drifted up our pathway until I stood upon the vibrating golden hue.

The gold mixed with our paths for a time.

I studied it more closely. The color mixed with the silver in the path predominately. Particularly for around nine months, and thereafter, the golden linked to Andas’s darker essence too. After a time, the gold ventured off…

Onto its own path.

I blinked as the hairs over my body lifted. Every one of them.

My breaths grew shallow, and I could do nothing but stare at my future. Andas’s future.

Our child.

We’d have a child. Just one—I could sense that was so from the finality of our gold child.

From the finality of our gold queen, who would replace Kallik.

She would become the Queen of all Fae in truth, not just of light creatures, but both balanced and unbalanced beings.

She was the missing piece. The completion to the war always faced by these realms.

Our daughter would ride a land kelpie-pegasus hybrid that matched her unique mixed essence.

Yes, we’d have a daughter. Not any time soon—Kallik would reign for longer than she wanted to, and then she and Faolan would stay on as my daughter’s trusted advisors. But when the tide started to shift back to balance in thirty years or so, my child would be born. And she would be the catalyst to finally end the war twenty years later when she was crowned as the gold queen.

Joy filled me. Joy—and pain and hope. Perhaps only Gaia had a word for the enormity of what I felt.

“What is it?” Andas said from sleep, tightening his hold around my middle.

Tears slipped over my face in the dark.

My love was at my back.

We rested in the home of our hearts, where our daughter would be born and grow strong.

My life was perfect. Disastrous, of course, but utterly perfect for me.

Andas would discover the truth for himself soon enough. I couldn’t wait to see his face when he did.

“Sleep, my love,” I whispered. “We’re together and safe.”

His breaths were already even again, and my smile softened.

I closed my eyes and matched my inhales and exhales to his, along with the beating of our hearts. I let the shining of our bond cloak us and safeguard us from the wearying emotions and actions of what must lay ahead.

And together, we slept.