Page 131 of Clash of Kingdoms

Footsteps sounded behind me. They were heavy, which meant it was my father to cheer me up after my mother had failed. They slowed as they came close then went quiet altogether.

I continued to look at the shadows from the trees, which were growing longer and longer with every passing minute. There was a chill in the air now, the kind that made bumps appear on my arms.

He moved to where I was on the grass and sat beside me. Black armor was visible on his legs.

My father hadn’t worn armor since the last battle.

I turned to look at him, expecting to see dirty-blond hair and the blue eyes identical to mine. But eyes the color of the forest looked back at me. He had dark hair, so dark it looked like obsidian.

I stilled at his appearance and blinked, assuming my mind was playing tricks on me like it had in the past. But my eyes focused once again, and his appearance didn’t change. His stare was intense, just the way it was in my memories.

Words left me because I couldn’t speak. All I could do was breathe harder and harder. My throat grew hot and wet, and then my eyes started to ache as the tears coated the surface. “I…” I shook my head, my mind unable to string words together because I was shocked and happy and overwhelmed. He looked the same, but he also looked different. His face wasn’t as pale anymore. There was a human aspect to his eyes now. I knew this was a different version of Aurelias from the one that had left.

He was human.

Finally, I was able to say something. “Aurelias…” Tears streaked down my cheeks as the emotion broke the surface.

His hand cupped my face, and he leaned in to kiss me, a soft embrace. It was gentle and slow, a kiss to heal our gaping wounds. Then he kissed my tears away before he looked at my face again. “I’m home, baby.”

We entered the abandoned cottage where we were first together, the air stagnant from lack of use. It was dark because there were no candles or fire, but we knew the place like the backs of our hands, so we made it inside and upstairs to the bed that was last used by us.

Clothes dropped to the floor before we made it onto the bed, our mouths locked together in the most scorching embrace we’d ever shared. My back hit the sheets, and he moved between my thighs, his body hot for the first time. I could feel it when my palm touched his skin, feel the rushing blood underneath.

He kissed me as he rocked with me, his mouth devouring mine with purposeful kisses and heated breaths. His hand dug into my hair and fisted it.

The wait was killing me. I tugged on his back. “Get inside me,” I said it between his lips, my words muffled with his tongue in my mouth.

He guided himself to my entrance then sank in with a moan.

My moan escaped as a quiet scream because it’d been so damn long. My nails clawed at his back, and we rocked together, both of us shaking because it felt better than it ever had. It felt different…more intimate…more potent.

“Baby…”

I’d had dreams where he called me that. Fantasies with his deep voice in my mind, my fingers down the front of my panties. It was real now, and it was so hard to accept, it nearly brought me to tears.

My orgasm was nearly instant, just a few minutes after he was buried inside me, his hot flesh warming the bed and the sheets around me. I squeezed him with my thighs as my center pulsed, as my eyes glistened with satisfied tears.

He was about to come. I could feel it. Feel it in his hardness, see it in the blotches of color on his skin.

But then he pulled out and released on my stomach, rocking his hips hard into me as he finished.

It was abrupt, and I hadn’t anticipated it. He’d never done that before. And then I remembered he was human now…so his seed was fertile. He didn’t ask if I’d been taking the herbs, and I hadn’t because there had been no one since him.

But my disappointment was short-lived, because all that mattered was the man who was in my arms, who was over me that very moment, his cheeks red with blood, his skin sizzling hot.

“I can’t wait until you can come inside me again.”

His lips caught mine, and he kissed me hard, a sexy groan coming from his chest.

He started a fire for me in the hearth even though the sunrise was visible through the closed curtains. We’d been up all night, and even now, I wasn’t tired. It was the first time the pain was gone from my chest, the first time I felt like me again.

My fingers touched his jawline, feeling the thick scruff that had grown through his journey. I continued to look at his face, unable to believe he was really there with me, that he had sacrificed eternity for a single life with me. “I didn’t think you would come back.”

He grabbed my thigh and hiked it over his leg, bringing us closer together. He smelled different now, still like sandalwood but with a heavier dose of manliness. “I didn’t want to…but I was miserable.”

My thumb brushed his bottom lip.

“And I knew I would always be miserable.”

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