Page 76 of Fae Reckoning

My breathing came out in furious pants. “How dare she hurt you like this?” Given the chance, Talisa would delight in spending her days tearing apart my beloved bit by torturous bit and feeding them to her pygmy ogres.

El clutched my hand. “I thought I was going to die. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, you know? I really did. I believed that was it for me. But I survived. And the scars will fade. Edsel took good care of me. I’m actually surprised the bruising is still there ‘cause I’ve started healing a lot faster now.”

The explanation dangled between us, accelerant to my righteous fury: her bruising remained because she’d suffered layer upon layer of devastating injury. Even a fae body could only heal so fast when there was this much healing to complete.

Her hands were once more on my cheeks, drawing my eyes to hers: “I survived her. You survived her. And now we’re here together.”

My tattoos faded a little.

“She’s already broken so much,” she went on. “But she hasn’t broken us. Not truly. We can repair everything she’s done, especially now that your sister’s alive.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but again she seemed to read my thoughts, beating me to say, “Yes, I know. Some damage is so deep it seems impossible itcould ever be fully erased. But we decide what we make of our lives, don’t we? We didn’t get to choose what happened to us, but we do get to choose what we do next. And we’ve both gotten the fuck up, dusted ourselves off, and pieced ourselves back together. Sure, the pieces might not be glued in perfectly straight yet, but we’ll get there. And with time we might be able to see the fine lines of where the glue is, but we don’t have to waste our time looking too hard.”

The silver light of my tattoos receded entirely, then it was just the warm yellow glow of my lumoons across her face.

“We can’t determine what others do, but we can decide our own actions and reactions, right? Thatisin our power. That’s what Zako used to tell me. And right now I choose to not let her win. I choose to tell her to go fuck the sunshine off, because I’m gonna live my life my way—not because of her, but in spite of her. I love you, Rush. Against all odds, I ended up here and we found each other. Let’s not lose another moment of our lives together to her.”

I stared at her, love and amazement winding together in my heart to warm my body all over again.

“Make love to me,” she whispered, pulling me down over her body so that nothing but our clothing separated us. “I want to feel only you. To know only you. I want only you. Can you give me that?”

“I can give you that, my love. I give you all of myself. I’m all yours. Only yours.”

Whatever words might have come next, I devoured.I claimed her lips as if I owned them. I feasted on her body as if she’d always belonged to me. And when I drove inside her, I possessed her wholly, even as I felt myself surrender entirely to her.

I forgot about maps and dying fae captives. About the horrid, vicious false queen. I even forgot about all our losses and injuries. Because right there, right then, every desire was being answered.

The beast within me plowed into my mate until I pushed her over the edge of one powerful ethercrest after another and she lay limp in my arms, gasping and panting, shaking and crying. I clenched all over, shuddering at the pure ecstasy of our togetherness, and shot off into her in hot, spurting streams, her scorching walls squeezing my dick as it pulsed inside her, filling her with my very essence.

My beast and its possessive claim over my mate finally were sated. She and I were a single, entangled, sticky, sweaty, sloppy mess. Unconstrained joy bubbled up inside me, spilling out in laughter, no matter our circumstances. Her responding laughter was so bright, so joyous, and so free, that I understood then we’d already won at least one monumental battle. Despite all the damage done to us, we’d surged free of it. It no longer chained us—not unless we chose to let it.

Our clothing lay discarded in heaps around us. Ivar’s cutlass, my dagger, and throwing knives lay within easy arm’s reach. My leg was draped over El’s thigh, my arm along her stomach. Lazily, I circled one of her nipples witha finger.

“I could do this all night long,” she said.

“I could do this all life long,” I countered with a smug grin I didn’t even bother trying to contain. Elowyn was spectacular—and she was all mine.

“You’ve got yourself a deal. Just a few, tiny, little things to accomplish before then,” she said in what was perhaps the understatement of the millennium. After glancing down at her naked body, she added, “I don’t see a map.” She sighed.

“No, no map,” I said, resigned to facing the responsibility that seemed never to leave us for long.

“Well.” She grinned wolfishly. “It was worth a try.”

I grumbled in pure male satisfaction. “Damn right it was.”

She groaned, and the playful smile fell. “No map, no way to save the captives.”

“Unless the others have come up with an idea while we were gone.”

She perked up. “You think they might have?”

“It’s not very likely after all the discussing we’ve already done, but you never know.”

“Time to head back, then?” she asked with such obvious reluctance I couldn’t resist a chuckle and a long, languid kiss that pretended we had all the time we wanted already.

I added a final soft kiss to her swollen lips and relented, “Time to head back.”

With more laden sighs, we disentangled our naked limbs. I reached for our clothes and weapons. I unclasped a sheath from my borrowed weapons beltand slid my dagger inside it before passing it to Elowyn.

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