Page 17 of The Bone King and the Starling

Distantly, I hear him continue to speak. “You come for me like the gods designed it so because they did. Lohr and Raya working hand in hand. I’d have combed all of Wrath in search of you if I knew you existed. My perfect…little…” And then he says one word, one treacherous impossible word, and it skewers me like a dagger in the night. “Wife.”

My orgasm crests at the feeling of him leaving my heat and suddenly he’s lower, fingers lubricating my ass with my slick before the pressure increases a hundred-fold. His erection pushes into my body, into my impossibly tight rear end. He grunts above me, throaty and loud. “Augh! You are too tight, little one. Fuck…”

“It…hurts…” I try to say, but my voice is starched and inaudible.

He pushes deeper, the head of his penis fully inside of me, but little more than that. He can’t come in more. He’ll split me in half.

Fortunately, he holds where he is, hips retreating on each thrust, but not edging inside of me any more than that. He holds himself up on his arms, his ribbed abdomen clenching and rippling and dripping with sweat. His forearms bracket my head and his face twists. “Ach, little bird. Would that I were sorry for this, I could stop now. But I am not…”

His hips are rocking slowly and his face is twisting in passion. He closes his eyes and presses our foreheads together. I can smell the scent of my sex on his skin. I whimper and he groans, “I’m about to release. Tell me again, tell me who owns you.”

“Calai,” I whisper.

“Yessss,” he moans. His body stiffens and he arches up and his shoulders bunch by his ears and the strangest sensation fills my ass hole as his erection enters into me with another little shove and the bright burst of his semen spurts into me in a blasphemous, erotic way.

I don’t like it, but cannot help crave it. I want to do more for him, anything he wants, knowing that it’s my body driving him to such destruction. But I also know, and remind myself, that this is only just this once. His words are lies, because there is no such thing as forever. There is not even tomorrow for us.

He moans and as he comes, he kisses me all over my face, rubs my body, massages my breasts. I cannot know how much time has passed. All I can do is hang on for dear life as the surge of heat pulls through my body and the king roars loud enough I’m sure they can all hear him throughout the hall — if not the entire village.

He’s panting by the time he drops onto me, slightly to the side, just enough so that I can breathe. My chest is heaving even though I was still by comparison to the heavy labor he just performed, the war he waged over my flesh.

“I have taken you everywhere, little bird,” he moans, his cock sliding out of my ass in a way that makes me clench. I lie there in the bed, his seed decorating my body like blood on a battlefield. I am utterly spent, my lower lip trembling from exhaustion and from the mental anguish brought on by his words.

“Gods, I cannot believe I waited for so long.” He tilts his head towards me in the bed. We lie on our backs side by side. I ache all over. My heart is beating so hard. “It was worth the wait.” His eyes crinkle at the corners when they meet mine. “You are sensational. An exquisite being. To have had your virginity in every way it counts is the greatest honor.”

His chest moves like a wave with each of his labored breaths. I feel myself tearing up. I don’t know what to say. “Thank you, your highness.”

He flinches and then his brows crease. He reaches for my face and it is my turn to flinch. He growls and suddenly, he’s rolling closer to me. He presses his lips to my forehead and then each of my cheeks, the tip of my nose, and finally, my swollen lips.

He pulls blankets and furs up over me, but he himself slides from the bed. He’s angry again, brows drawn, and presses on my chest when I try to sit. “Sleep. You need it. I will return with water and wine, some food, too. Are you hungry?” I… I don’t know what to say. I thought he was upset. “You must replenish yourself. I will return shortly, my princess. Don’t leave the bed unless it’s to use the bathroom. And don’t wash up. I like the sight of my seed spilling out of you.”

He brushes his thumb over my bottom lip and I watch him walk out of the room, bare-assed. I hear the whooping and hooting from the great room as he enters it and I frown, unsure of what it all means.

I try to puzzle through what he said to me at so many different points in the night, try to make sense of how I’m feeling, but it’s all too much and the moment I close my eyes, I fall asleep to a single thought.

He called me princess, not queen.

THE VIRGIN

The gods are merciful,” I roar, my arms stretched over my head in triumph as I reenter Winterbren’s hall. The hall has been cleared of most people, three of the tables already cleared and packed away to make space for the thralls laying rushes out. A bonfire has been newly lit in the center of the space and my warriors sit around it stoking the flames. “And the gods are merciless…”

A few lingering souls sit scattered at the remaining two tables, though I note with displeasure that Olec is still among them. He sits with his man, Torbun, though their wives are absent, and Olec is half asleep, slumped over a table while Torbun laughs riotously at something he or some other schmuck has said. He hails me when I appear, cheering with the others, but I ignore him and move towards my warriors at the fire.

“You there,” I call to the nearest thrall. “Ale, wine, a platter for my female and me.” The female looks at me with enormous eyes before nodding once and scurrying off.

I slump onto the floor while my warriors laugh at me and shake their heads. “Where is Puhyo?” I ask Daneera, snatching her ale from her fist on its way to her mouth.

She snorts. “Making himself at home with a female in the stables.”

The other men snigger at that. “You’ve lost several good men and women this evening.”

I glance around — there is only one other female in my party besides Daneera — and laugh, “Hilde has found herself a companion as well, then?”

Another chorus of cheers go around. My thirty gathered are twenty now, with those who’ve sought lush pastures elsewhere for the night. I mind not, so long as the majority of my warriors remain together to defend against any who might think to ambush us. And I need the additional guard tonight.

I drain Daneera’s ale and toss the goblet aside, leaning back fully onto one elbow and letting my cock flop against my inner thigh. “I do not know how you men get anything done, and if it is half so pleasurable for a female, how you lot get anything done, either.”

More sniggering. Fuzier shouts at me from a few places away, “So does our sweet young queen know she’s taken her king’s virginity yet?”

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