Chapter 9

Rowan

IN MY ARMS, AURORA IS as warm as a fire on a winter night, as soft as a mattress beckoning to the weary. And her mouth is like a portal to a new world, one where everything tastes of honey and wine and the sun never sets beyond the golden horizon.

But it doesn’t satiate my thirst for her. And as her breath dances across my mouth, my hunger for her only grows.

I know the stories, know how this entire elaborate ritual is supposed to end. And when Aurora meets my eyes, her cheeks flushed pink even in the darkness, I know she’s just as starved as I am, just as willing to play it through to its conclusion.

Holding her aloft with one arm, I reach with my other hand to yank the cord on my trousers free. The lightweight fabric slips down easily, and as it settles about my bare feet, I use my free hand to guide Aurora’s soft white skirt up her calves and past her knees, bunching it high around her hips. She wraps her arms around my neck, her breathing growing heavy as her lips close over mine once more.

I can’t look down, trapped as I am by the magic in her kiss. But I need not see to know my way. The head of my cock finds the warm wetness between her legs with ease, and she lets me in with but a trembling whisper of breath across my cheek.

She’s so wet and ready for me that there’s almost no resistance as I bury myself inside her. I hold myself there, as deep as she’ll let me go, and pull away from her mouth to look into her eyes. The green of her irises is dimmed in the low light, and they appear almost black as I gaze at her.

“Aurora,” I whisper, if only to feel the shape of her name on my tongue. For so long it’s felt like a forbidden word, like something I could only think in the stillness of night, when I was alone in bed in the guardhouse and no one could see what thoughts of her did to me. Now I want to taste it again and again, drink it like fairy wine and damn the consequences. I’d happily get lost in her realm and never return to mine.

“Rowan,” she whispers back. She unwinds one hand from around my neck to trail her fingertips across my cheek. Her thumb brushes my mouth, her fingers gliding across my brow. Then she drags her tongue along my bottom lip, and I grow harder inside her.

With her in my arms, I kick my feet free of my trousers, then dig my toes into the soft earth, using the leverage to push my cock deep inside her. She gasps, just a whisper of a sound, and it makes my body tremble for her.

With each thrust, her breasts bounce beneath the thin cotton of her ivory dress, her hitched breaths warm on the shell of my ear. The back of the dress is pulled taut with ribbon, so I grab hold of the bow and tug it free. As the neckline loosens, I reach up to slip it off one of her freckled shoulders, then the other.

Now her dress is bunched around her waist, and her small round breasts look soft as fresh-milled flour in the moonlight. I lean down and capture her firm pink nipple between my teeth. She catches her breath as I suck it into my mouth, roll it around on my tongue. And around my cock, she gets wetter.

I release her nipple from my teeth and find my way to her mouth once more. She cradles my head in her hands, but her fingers are firm, demanding. Each time I try to break away from the kiss to draw the breath I so desperately need to keep pumping into her, she whimpers against me.

And there’s very little I can do to hold myself back.

I pull my lips from hers. “Aurora,” I whisper, my breath sending the thin green strands of hair around her face fluttering. There’s a small silver bell woven into her hair, and it sings out a tiny sound as we gasp against each other. “Where do you want me?”

“Inside me.” At my low back, I feel her ankles lock around me, trapping me there, her soft walls wrapped around me. “It’s safe.” She kisses me again.

On any other day, I’d be more careful than this, but it’s Beltane, and it’s Aurora Silvermoon, and it feels like a spell has come over me, or perhaps like I’ve tripped into the fairy world and have no chance of finding my way back.

Whatever the reason, I succumb to it all.

I couldn’t pull out even if I wanted to.

With one final thrust into her soft wet pussy, I spill everything I have into her. She kisses my neck when I tip my head back, her tongue tracing the line of my throat, and I swear she tightens herself around me just to feel me squirm.

My pleasure finally reached, I wrap my arms firmly around her and carry her away from the tree. There’s a downed log not ten steps away, broken clean off its foundation. The stump still remains, and it’s here I set Aurora down. This time when I pull away from her, she doesn’t resist. And when I kneel between her legs, she spreads them for me willingly.

My cum is still spilling out of her. The sight of it makes my cock twitch despite the huge release I just had.

Bracing her bare feet on the stump, she looks down at me with her lips parted slightly, nipples hard in the silver moonlight. I slide my fingers from the wisps of green hair above her slit all the way down to her pussy. She flinches beneath my touch. But when I slide one finger inside her, then another, she tips her head back, green eyes closing. I shift in the grass, completely naked now beneath the treetops stretching all around us, and lean forward to capture her clit with my mouth.

And I swear her whole body starts to vibrate.

She tastes of salt and smoke, of lovemaking after a frantic sprint through the woods. I drag my tongue over her clit and revel in the way she wriggles. Her thigh is warm and smooth as I trail my free hand over it, holding it wide.

And as I look up from between her legs, I get the feeling that she really is the May Queen.

My queen.

When I came here, I thought I was doomed. I trained as a knight in the King’s Royal Army, and to be sent to protect a tiny village in the middle of nowhere felt like a death sentence of the slow, anguished variety. Knights want to protect the royal family, to face battle and prove themselves worthy of their armor. How was I supposed to do that here, where the only conflict that ever happens is over a loaf of bread or a missing hen?

But then I laid eyes on her , and suddenly there was nowhere else I wanted to be, no one else I wanted to serve.

Just her.

Aurora opens her eyes. She looks down at me, dress still tangled around her waist, flowers decorating her hair. On my knees before her, I feel there’s no greater purpose I can rise to, no lofty goals worthy of achieving.

There is only Aurora.

She draws a breath as I drag my tongue across her clit once more, my fingers buried inside her. On either side of me, her dainty little toes curl.

She’s getting close.

So I lavish more attention upon her. I curl my fingers inside her at the same time I pull her clit into my mouth, sucking on it in rhythm with each glide of my fingers in and out of her.

Her breath hitches.

And she holds my stare as she cums. Her juices coat my fingers and drip down my hand, glistening in the scant bit of moonlight filtering through the trees.

Goddess, she’s beautiful. The way her lips open just so, her fingers gripping the tree stump beneath her as her legs tremble.

Something in my peripherals catches my attention, and I glance away from Aurora’s gaze for just long enough to see flowers rising up from the earth all around me. Their petals unfurl in a dazzling display of colors, reaching up and toward Aurora as if she is their sun, as if she’s all they need to survive and thrive.

And perhaps there is truth to that. Perhaps I’m just another flower in her garden, hoping my petals and colors will catch her eye so that she may kneel down and bestow her love upon me.

As Aurora’s pussy slowly stops pulsing around my fingers, she takes a breath, and it’s as if she returns to the world of the living. The glassiness in her eyes fades, and she blinks down at me. I pull my fingers out of her, then put them in my mouth. Her flushed cheeks turn a slightly deeper shade of pink as I suck my fingers clean of her.

I’d do almost anything to get her to blush like that again.

Now she looks around, seeming to notice the flowers for the first time.

“What happened?” she asks.

I stand from my kneeling position and reach out a hand to help her to her feet. Once she’s standing, I ease her dress back over her shoulders, but not before leaning down to press a kiss to her bare clavicle. She shivers tenderly at my touch.

“You,” I say simply.

“ Me? ” She blinks. “I did that?”

My laughter is low, content. “You did, Your Majesty.” I can’t stop myself from reaching up to gently touch the bell hanging from her hair, making it ring softly.

Her gaze flicks up to mine, her pink lips quirking into a playful smile. “If I’m your queen, what are you?”

Something in my chest squeezes in a wholly surprising way. The answer comes easily. “Your knight.”

The playfulness in her smile fades to something softer, and her hand finds mine, our fingers twining together. “Then let’s go back, Sir Rowan. I’m sure everyone is waiting for us.”