Chapter 2

2

RAINA

T ime blurs thanks to the haze of Fever Lilac passion.

Alexus makes love to me, slowly torturing with his body and his magick. Worshiping.

His temple. His only temple.

I believe those words.

Our bodies move in perfect time, every kiss and touch marked by its own intimate desperation. The need we share is so intense that tears of relief spill from my eyes with each orgasm that crashes through us.

It happens three brutal times—once with Alexus on top of me, another with him lying behind me, and a final event with me astride him, so lost to sensation and connection that time seems to stop when we finally climax.

After that third collision, we come down from the high of bliss for momentary rest. That’s all it is, though. A few short minutes of reprieve.

“I need water before I wither.” Alexus leans over me, that dark, enchanting face so entrancing. “You?”

I shake my head, fist my hand in his hair, and drag his mouth back to mine. He tastes like sex and the vanilla of the Fever Lilac flower carrying us through this perfect night. I can’t get enough.

But he pulls away. “Water,” he says with a smile in his voice. “Then more sex.”

A pout twists my face as I trail my fingertips down his muscled chest, his abdomen, and into that silky trail of glittering dark hair below his navel. I don’t want water. I want one thing, and he’s about to take it away from me.

A sexy smirk curls the edge of his mouth. “You naughty temptress. That dust is having its way with you, isn’t it?” When I graze my fingertips along the length of his cock, that smirk unfurls. “Give me two minutes.”

Reluctantly, I let go of him. He rolls off the bed and struts across the room to the ewer and basin, then pours a glass of water and tilts it to his lips.

I lie atop the sheets, head propped on a stack of pillows, watching him. He’s so tall, so naked, so glistening with sweat and gold dust. His hair is loose and tousled, hanging in waves just above his broad shoulders. That wide, scarred back—marked with a wheel of runes—tapers to a narrow waist and the tautest, roundest ass I have ever been so blessed to see.

Drunk off him as I am, I still register the coolness of sweat on my skin, the heat of the fire crackling in the hearth, and the carnal glint in Alexus’s eyes as he turns around and pins me with that emerald stare.

He sits back on the massive wooden writing desk and unfolds his long body like an invitation, feet shoulder-width apart. His cock is half-hard, his balls hanging heavy between his legs. He’s lovelier and more enthralling than any man has a right to be.

A thought flashes through my mind as I study him. I’m not against being taken across a desk. In fact, I imagine it, being ridden hard, and it only makes the hunger and ache inside me worse. My body responds, tightening, wanting something to clench. Wanting him.

I bite down on my lip, trying to stave off my desire, but it’s no use. The Fever Lilac has me locked in this sex-addled state, and even if it didn’t, I’m too addicted to Alexus Thibault to let this moment pass.

With one brow cocked mischievously, he lifts the glass in my direction. “Want some?”

The innuendo in his sultry voice is clear, and suddenly, I’m parched.

In answer, I crawl off the bed. For those first few steps, the muscles in my legs tremor, and I worry they might not hold me long enough to carry me across the room.

But Alexus’s cock twitches against his inner thigh, and his gaze flares at the sight of me, and before I know it, I’m standing between his knees, taking long swigs from the glass as he rests his hands on my hips, kisses my shoulder, and waits with the calm patience only a three-hundred-year-old man can possess.

When I finish, I set the glass on the basin table and thread my fingers into his hair. We share a lingering look, one that speaks a thousand words without any utterance. I love you, it says. I need you. Take me. Break me. Mold me. Fuck me.

I kiss him, relishing the taste of his sweet mouth, sliding my tongue over lush lips, slick and cool from the fresh water. Greedy, I reach down and stroke him, deepening our kiss as he draws me ever closer, those strong hands holding my waist.

How I love the feel of him. That smooth sheath covering all that rigid delight. That firm head, and the tiny pearl of longing that always greets me. It takes mere seconds before he’s hard as the stone beneath our feet.

If I had any modesty before, any propriety, it’s now gone, because I can’t stop imagining him standing behind me, pushing into me until I can’t think around the pleasure.

And so I break our kiss, and in brazen fashion, step to his left, where the top of the desk is clear, and drape myself across it. I spread my legs wide enough to give him quite the view and all the access he needs.

I turn my head to look at him, my fevered cheek pressed against the cool wood. His eyes are bright with love and lust in the firelight.

Turning toward me, he runs a rough hand along the curve of my back and down my ass, cupping my bottom. “This is a braver move than you realize. Have you any notion what it does to me to see you like this?”

I rise on my elbows and shake my head. “Show me,” I sign.

As though that command is all that’s needed to spur him into action, he stands. I expect him to nestle himself between my legs and begin, but that isn’t what happens.

He lifts my right leg, placing my knee on the desk, opening me more fully. Then he kneels, sliding one hand over my hip and down my thigh while the other rests atop my raised leg, gently holding it in place.

“Fucking perfect,” I feel him murmur, his breath warm against my skin. “Arch your back for me. Let me see all of you.”

The second I obey, a low growl rumbles from his chest.

He tongues my clit and sucks it into his mouth, alternating between that and biting my lips, devouring me from behind, much the way he did our first night at Winterhold. I’d been taken so off guard that night, having the Witch Collector feasting on me in such an erotic manner, to have my body open and vulnerable when it had never been so boldly explored before. It scared me that I loved it as much as I did, and that I wanted so much more from him.

When pleasure crested and I’d tried to crawl away, Alexus had dragged me back to his mouth and continued his assault, ultimately knowing that my true desire didn’t match my physical reaction. I’d needed relief and wasn’t sure how to endure the journey to get it, other than to escape it all together.

But I didn’t fight him. It was that act, the act of yielding all to a man I trusted with my very life, that heightened each moment forward. The feeling of relinquishing control to someone who could show me what bliss truly is. I almost came from that alone. From that tiny bit of domination.

Tonight is no less consuming or startling. He’s been inside me. Released inside me.

And he doesn’t care.

I am the only thing he needs. The only thing that will satiate this blinding hunger. There are no boundaries tonight because the Fever Lilac has obliterated them all. Pleasure is everything, and the love and trust between us is overwhelming. There isn’t a part of me that isn’t his, no part of me that doesn’t want to please him.

I grip the edge of the desk and move along his tongue as he feasts and groans into my damp flesh.

But things begin to change. Alexus begins to change. I feel it in the way his tongue grows more demanding, his mouth more eager, more starved. It’s in the way his hands move, fingers no longer caressing but digging into my thighs.

“Fuck yes, Raina.” He plunges his tongue inside me, then drags it up the length of my center, that slow, smooth scrape almost too much to endure. “This is mine,” he proclaims. “My clit. My pussy. My ass. All of it. Mine. Do you understand?”

Emphatically, I nod, barely able to summon a coherent thought. If I know anything, however, it’s that I am indeed his. There isn’t a single cell in my body that doesn’t know this as truth.

And he is mine. I’ve felt that way for a long time now, though tonight I feel it on a different level. I’m still just as protective as I’d been that night at the thermal pools, probably more so. But now there’s a special unity between us, something even more possessive and all-encompassing.

He has my heart. My body. My soul. My trust. My love. My devotion. My entire being.

And I have his.

Finally, he takes one last taste and stands. With his hands gripping my ass, he spreads me open and rubs his thumb over the most intimate part of me. I gasp at the contact, waiting and wanting as he teases my slit with the head of his cock, rubbing it around my entrance.

“My little honey hole,” he says in that deep voice, and I swear to the gods I melt across the desk.

Alexus tugs me back into form, and in one swift and punishing move, he impales me, rooting his stiff cock deep inside me. Reflexively, I grip the desk’s rounded edge and try to breathe.

Hard and fast or deep and slow. He hadn’t asked me that question tonight. I usually answer both, and I suppose our lovemaking is a blend between the two options. But tonight, everything before this moment has been Alexus Thibault’s brand of tender. His brand of gentle. It was wonderful and passionate, and my heart feels so full from the connection we share.

But this shift in the air…

This shift in him…

I don’t know what to expect. I’ve glimpsed his more animalistic side in moments of anger, and to a degree when we’ve been intimate. But I want more than a glimpse. I want him to stop tempering his lust, to unleash that part of his nature on me. To use me. To plunder my body. To fuck me into a state of utter oblivion. I can always feel him holding back, as though I’m breakable.

Slowly, he wraps my hair around his hand and tugs me up, pressing his other hand atop the desk as he leans over me. Gods, he fills me so completely, his cock stretching me.

“I feel what you want along the bond.” My face heats as he trails kisses down my neck before returning to my ear. “Have you done it before? It’s not so simple as what you envision.”

I shake my head because it’s the honest answer. Nephele has, with Colden, and she swears it’s bliss. But as for me, I’ve explored my own body, a little, but Finn and I never ventured into that territory save for touching and teasing. It seemed too much. I didn’t want to let Finn Owyn have all of me. In truth, I held back so much from him.

And yet the idea of Alexus taking me that way? It seems right, and tonight, I hunger for it. If anyone will ever know me that intimately, it will be him and him alone.

No sooner does that thought strike me, another hits. He knows what I desire isn’t simple because he’s done it before. Of course, he has. After three-hundred years, it would be impossible that he hasn’t.

I shouldn’t be jealous of the woman from his past who was lucky enough to experience Alexi of Ghent giving himself over to such passion and power, the woman—or women—he claimed in the manner I long to experience.

And yet I envy them. Was it Fleurie? I can’t think about that. Can’t let my mind go there. It’s probably wrong of me, but I want to be the sole person to have ever been pleasured by him this way. I want something of him that has never belonged to another. Only to me.

“Remember that the yearning you’re feeling tonight is even more powerful under the haze of the Fever Lilac,” he informs me. “So be careful what you wish for, because I fear I might not have enough restraint to do anything but grant your every desire.”

And I don’t have the control to do anything but beg that he do just that.

Images rush through my mind and along the bond. Images that have tortured me for weeks, in waking and in dreaming. I try to be reasonable. Wise. Careful in what I show him.

Just like our first time, nervousness and anticipation swell within me, but I trust this man so wholly. He will give me what I want, and he will make it divine.

A harsh breath leaves him as he utters my name, that husky voice raw and rough. “Are you certain?”

He presses his cock into my core, and I nod against his grip.

He kisses my neck again, dragging his teeth over my fluttering pulse, licking the sensitive place just beneath my ear. “I’m going to fuck you here then. There’s something about having you spread across this desk I can’t resist. I need to come in you like this.” He brushes his mouth along my cheek. “I’ll give it to you so good, Raina. I’ll give you all you can possibly take.”

Tears of overwhelming pleasure well in my eyes as I angle my face to kiss him, panting into his mouth. I grip my breast and tweak my nipple as he begins moving inside me. The building desire is already that intense, enough that I need all the sensation I can get.

His hold on my hair relaxes, allowing me to brace myself on the desk again. But that’s the only reprieve he offers.

Alexus begins his torture anew, pumping into me, sinking deeper with every thrust, even as his magick begins crawling over me.

Through me.

It’s a cruel form of pleasure. With each punishing thrust of his rigid cock, Alexus’s power teases my body. It feels so real. Like a hungry tongue working my clit and laving my breasts, guiding me to the brink of orgasm but refusing to let me plummet over the edge.

And yet I love every moment of his sweet torment.

More, more, more, I think along the bond.

Harder, harder, harder.

Deeper, deeper, deeper.

He splays his warm hand across the small of my back, and I feel something liquid dripping onto me. When I look over my shoulder, I catch a glimpse of Alexus spitting, just enough to wet me. I don’t know what to think of myself, because that sight makes me tighten around his cock in a crushing grip.

He brushes his thumb over me again, wetting me where no one else has ever touched, rubbing small circles. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”

I nod and push back against his touch, trying to claim what I need, but I’m too tense.

As though sensing the issue, Alexus says, “Fever Lilac eases discomfort. Important for many wedding nights. Relax. Breathe. I’ve got you.”

My body responds with trust, tight muscles loosening and uncoiling as I take deep, calming breaths.

“There you go,” he says, gently easing the tip of his long thumb into my ass.

Though there’s a small bite of pain in the beginning, it dissipates quickly. He slips deeper, and the sensation that follows is mind-altering. To be so filled, so claimed, so penetrated—by the man I love—is everything.

“Someday soon, I’ll give you more,” he says. “Do you want that? To feel my cock here?”

“Yes,” I manage to sign, needing him to know just how badly I want to experience that feeling.

Pinned beneath his grip, his thumb buried deep, Alexus begins moving again. His thrusts become longer, dragging his thick cock out to that broad tip before sinking back into me so hard each impact inches the heavy wooden desk across the floor, scraping at the stone tiles.

Gods, it hurts. The good kind of hurt. The kind only he has ever given me. I’ll feel him tomorrow, and the next day, too, and perhaps the day after that. A constant ache between my legs that will remind me of every second of this night.

“Hold on,” he commands, and I grip the desk as though my life depends on it.

He uses his right hand to pin my knee to the desk as his left hand presses on my lower back, that thumb working me as he slams his cock into me over and over, giving in to the carnal need singing in the bond between us.

This time, when my orgasm threatens, his magick doesn’t relent. It pulses through my clit, a brutal vibration that sends me crawling again, doing my damnedest to flee such unfathomable pleasure.

And again, Alexus prevents my escape.

“If you try to run,” he growls, his right hand clasping the back of my neck as he lifts his knee to the desk behind me, trapping me with his weight, “I’ll only chase you. And I’ll catch you, my love. And fuck you even harder. You can make damn sure of that.”

These words. His voice. There’s a change I can’t register. Un Drallag, perhaps? That is the darker side of him after all, the side he so desperately wants to forget and bury. A side that feels like temptation to me. It sends a rogue chill coursing over my skin.

To push him to the edge, I try to move away again, using my grip on the desk to propel myself forward. He jerks me back and tsks.

“You like this, don’t you? The chase. Being at my mercy.” He leans down and drags his teeth across my shoulder. “I like it, too. Too godsdamn much. But you don’t get to pull away from me without punishment.”

He straightens, and his hand comes down on my ass, harder than ever before, sending zings of ruthless sensation shuddering through me.

I come instantly. Brutally. Erupting under the touch of this magnificent man and the waves of power pouring off him, power tangled with my own magick, humming in my veins.

As Alexus’s orgasm builds, throbbing inside me, my body squeezes him in spasms, coaxing him to the brink. I close my eyes, still reeling, and move along his shaft. Harder and faster.

The sound that tears from his body when he comes brands itself into my memory. It’s a sound torn between agony and sweet relief, a roar that brings with it a stunning surge of magick.

Wind rips through the room as his thrusts turn wild, sending sheets of parchment fluttering and the drapes whipping. Even the paintings hanging around the room clatter on their hooks, and the writing implements and ink pots, nestled in a wooden tray atop the desk, tumble to the floor.

The walls tremble, Fia’s palace rattling under the power of Un Drallag’s release.

It lasts longer than what should be humanly possible, so long I can hardly take it. With deep groans and grunts, he spills into me over and over, until his pleasure runs down my thigh, and he withdraws his thumb from my body.

But just when I think it’s over, he wipes his release up my cleft, and suddenly there’s pressure where his thumb had been.

“Just a taste of what you’re asking for,” he says, spitting on us again before pushing the head of his cock into my ass with a rugged groan of ecstasy that drives me wild.

He slips in easier than I imagined, and I gasp hard at the feeling, that same initial bite of pain followed by intense fullness. Thanks to his earlier ministrations, I feel more than ready, though. For this few inches, at least.

And so I move against him, needing more, and slide my hand between my legs, teasing my clit. We work together like that, gently pushing the limits, his cock still impossibly hard and thick.

As our rhythm intensifies, his grip on my waist grows firmer as he pants behind me like a man ready to explode. He begins thrusting shallowly, carefully moving a little deeper. I’m still only taking less than half of him, though it feels like so much more.

I don’t expect our orgasms to arise so quickly, but Alexus begins moving faster, and they roll in like a tide, each wave promising to eventually destroy us.

When my pleasure crashes, I pound my fist on the desk, gasping, uncertain if I can bear this, just as Alexus says, “Fuck Raina, I’m coming again.”

Magick roars through the room and pounds through me, and together, we are annihilated by sensation as the world stops for us once more.

In those long moments, tears spill down my face, because I feel Alexus so thoroughly in the bond, our magick so entwined. I feel his unyielding love for me, his deep appreciation for my trust, the overwhelming pride that I am his, and the comfort that I don’t fear any part of him. He treasures me. Treasures us .

After several moments, he lowers his leg and gently eases mine off the desk. My entire body is shaking. I can’t think clearly, but I know I can’t stand on my own. If not for the desk and the hold Alexus still has on me, I would collapse.

Tenderly, he withdraws from my body and lifts me into his arms, carrying me to bed. I feel him cleaning me, smell a hint of lavender, sense the cool touch of a damp cloth on my face, my neck, my breasts, my stomach, and finally soothing between my legs. I register little else until he crawls in bed beside me and draws me to him.

All I know is that I gave Alexus everything tonight, and I would do it a thousand times over.

“We rattled the city, ” I sign against his chest, smelling the lavender on him as well. The Fever Lilac dust is gone, save for a few specs glimmering on his abdomen.

He tugs the cover over us and smiles against my hair just before kissing my forehead. “That we did, my love.”

There are no more words after that. No worries or fears or concerns about tomorrow. No thoughts of gods or wars or death or destruction.

We curl around one another, our magick still tangled, the shimmering threads glowing brightly as the lighthouse beacon in my mind’s eye.

And we sleep.