Page 34 of The Bone King and the Starling

“Gods,” he gasps and in a daring moment of insanity, I use the moment to plunge my tongue into his mouth. He sucks. Pleasure and desire zing through me. I stiffen and pull myself up using his shoulder strap. My other hand fumbles, finding purchase around his thick, muscled neck.

“Oh,” I mewl. “Calai,” I wheeze.

Our lips are moving frantically against each other now and my hips are doing everything they can to try to create some semblance of friction between my legs. Calai starts to push me back into the pillows, but I cry out at the awful feeling of fabric rubbing against my stitches through the bandages.

“Fuck.” He pulls back and keeps pulling, revolving our bodies until I find myself on top of him, my legs spread and a flurry of cool air tickling my bare behind beneath the short hem of my tunic. “Does it hurt like this?” he says and I rise on the motion of his heaving breaths.

“No.” I’m frantic, pressed close to his body, forearms braced against his chest. I keep kissing his bearded cheeks, working my way in towards his mouth where I suckle and peck at his lips.

His tongue enters my mouth and our kissing turns open-mouthed. I angle my head in an effort to find the most effective way to sear our mouths together. I want to keep my eyes open to watch his pleasure, but continue to lose myself to mine. His fingers are gentle as they move over my behind, touching me through the thin fabric of this tunic. My hips are behaving scandalously, humping, gyrating, craving friction, but…he’s too tall and my body can’t reach the place I feel the greatest need.

I break our kiss on a gasp and shove myself down his chest. Sitting up, I place my bare core over the bulge in his trousers. “Augh!” His head flies back. His hands on my hips tremble. “I’m supposed to be a good boy, Starling.” His voice is so strained, he sounds like he’s being tortured. Which seems only fitting. I feel the same.

I shake my head. “I…made no such…promises…” I gasp. My legs are shaking as I suddenly find the pressure I need and start to rub myself in earnest up and down his groin. The madness from last night has taken me and it has not faded with thedaylight. I cannot seem to extract myself from it, despite the wounds on my back and the fear I still have for him.

“Starling, no exertion…remember…”

But I’m so close, already. I want to feel what I felt again, that spike of pleasure. I feel wild in ways I’ve never felt before. The fear I felt last night slipping from my fingers, denuded by his words…his kindness…his faith in me…his promises… I want to believe him. I want to trust. And I’ve never felt that want before. It’s too much to catch in my hands.

“Calai, I’ve never felt like this. Your kindness…your care…” I meet his gaze as mine starts to grow fuzzy around the edges. My hips jerk. My sensitive mound erupts in lightning. My head tosses back. I gasp his name as I come for him and I spasm as his pelvis jerks up. We moan together. I come down from my pleasure to see his face twisted in rapture. His hooded gaze is on me. He’s reaching for my breasts, fondling them through my tunic. I shudder wildly and collapse onto his massive body, meeting his hungry mouth with mine once again.

In between the taste of his lips, I utter, “I would be a fool not to go with you when you leave this place, my king.” I kiss him desperately. “I’ll be your helper, your mistress, your whore…whatever need you have of me…”

King Calai grunts, his own body twitching beneath mine. He reaches between us to adjust himself and looks a little angry as he meets my eyes. He holds my face in one of his hands — from cheek to cheek, his massive hand wraps all the way around my chin and jaw. He starts to speak, then stops. It doesn’t matter. Over the sound of my panting, I can’t hear him anyway.

“Whatever need,” I repeat.

I feel embarrassed by my declaration, but it is true. To feel like this again, even if only as a hidden secret the king keeps tucked away behind his throne…I would do it. For a time, as long as I had with him, I would take it and I would not regret it.Hopefully. I just don’t know what it would be like to know that he was this way with other females…

“My little bird,” he breathes hard against my forehead and then slowly plants a kiss right between my eyes. It is searing. “I would not take you away from Winterbren as anything less than my queen.”

THE TEMPTRESS

The surprise on her face wounds me, but I release her and let her push herself up on my chest. She looks thoroughly fucked even though she still wears her tunic and I still wear my pants. My cum-covered pants. I cannot believe I emptied inside of my trousers like a young lad… Then again… My gaze runs over her face, its luminous color, her voluminous curls, her lush breasts and hips…and I chuckle.

“You tempt me too greatly, little bird,” I say, laughing outright. “You’ve made a liar of me.” I slide out from beneath her body and resettle her on the bed while she stares. Quickly, before I can command the obedience of my own limbs, I spread her legs at the knees, duck my head between her thighs and press an open-mouthed kiss onto her lower lips.

She gasps and I pull back as soon as I feel her fingers light on the back of my head. I cannot stand the feel of her touch. It sends me to places I find difficult to crawl out of. Dark, dangerous pits where there exists nothing but our bodies, nothing but flesh and want and lust. And she needs rest.

Fuck.

“Fuck.” I groan and tilt my head back, separating our bodies by the length of the bed. Standing at its foot, I grab hold of my lengthening cock through my trousers and watch her sitting there, her brown shoulder gleaming in the torchlight as her tunic slips. “You are a temptation too great for a poor, weak man like me. I want to fuck you like a filthy whore every night, but that is not all that I want from you. I want so much more.”

Cheeks flushed, eyes aglow, she still looks so…uncertain. “But…” She shakes her head, her curls twisting and glistening in the light. She is stunning. Stunning is even too trite a word. “But I don’t…You cannot want me for a queen…”

“Not a queen. The queen.” I feel uncomfortable, and not only because of the semen drying in my pants. “I want you for my wife.” My voice breaks. Does she hear it? I hope, for the sake of my own pride, she does not.

“How…many wives do you keep?”

“One.”

“So, I would become your second?”

“No, little bird.”

Her lower lip trembles. “I…I cannot do that.”

I clench, my entire body tightening. “Why not?”

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