Page 132 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
Gripping the back of his head as Lucais nestled his face into my neck and fucked me against the window like he’d lost all sense of time and space, I ran my fingers through his hair and curled my fingertips against his scalp before I grabbed a fistful at the roots and tugged. I moaned, the sound low and full of indulgent bliss, as I felt his orgasm follow.
His cock pulsated with an intensity that could have been considered violent as he emptied himself inside me, and he pressed his lips against my throat and let out a long stringof moans that crashed into and interrupted each other in the sexiest sound I’d ever heard.
But we were still falling.
The window disappeared, and the sensation of freefalling through time and space and magic partnered with the unrelenting orgasm he’d sent to destroy me from the inside out as we spun through floors and ceilings and doorways. I was torn between trying to escape it and trying to trap it.
Nevertheless, we had a death grip on each other as we knocked into new walls, hitting cabinets that belonged to different parts of the palace, tripping over furniture in other bedrooms, knocking over picture frames and empty lanterns. The whole time, we were desperately kissing, touching, grasping for more like we could find a way to crawl inside the other person if the wave of pleasure lasted long enough to blow all sense of reality into smithereens.
We ended up on a couch in a space many floors below the room in which we had started.
I was on top of Lucais, a hot and sticky mess between our stomachs, and I was trembling as I rode out the last drops of pleasure on him until exhaustion overcame the both of us and we eventually fell asleep kissing.
It was a little while later when I stirred awake. I scowled up at his perfect, sleeping face before I lay my head back down on his chest and succumbed to the intrinsic need for sleep, calling for an overnight ceasefire.
He was such a liar. A conman. A morally grey High King who could not be trusted, even though he was getting sloppier with each of his schemes and secrets. He’d been all over me, inside of me, and lying to my face the whole time.
Just give me one. That’s all I need, and then we’ll never have to do this again.
I rolled my eyes at him before I closed them.
Yeah, right.
We were definitely going to do that again.
forty-three
The Bond
Iwoke up the next morning with something lodged behind my rib cage.
My breath came with greater effort, the beat of my heart slowed with confusion, and I felt it contract when I sat up—a brutal tension like the twinge of a pulled muscle. The foreign object was magnetic, and it gravitated towards something behind me. I turned my head, careful not to disturb the balance of near pain in my chest. Maybe it had broken off something that I’d been sleeping on—
My eyes fell upon Lucais’s face, and I knew.
I simply knew he’d left something inside of me that was permanent and unalterable, and that when he woke up, he would realise that I’d left something tucked inside of his chest, too.
The bond had been solidified. Once. Twice. I thought we might have done it one thousand times in total—or at least, it felt like we had. One thousand crash landings into an explosion of pleasure so acute, violent, and all-consuming that I still felt theechoes of it ghosting across my flesh and bones so many hours later.
One thousand times, I had said yes, more, please.
One thousand times, we told the Oracle that it was right. One thousand times, we carved out tiny little pieces of each other to patch up our respective hearts. One thousand times, we had branded ourselves upon the other with literal blood, sweat, and tears in fragmented dreams and soul stitches.
One thousand times.
forty-four
The Urge to Throw Yourself into Fireplaces
Ihad no idea which room we ended up in—or why we fell through the palace in the throes of passion in the first place—but it was on somebody’s cleaning schedule.
A small faerie came bustling into the room carrying a broom, dustpan, and bucket of firewood. When she realised the High King was naked on the sofa beneath an equally naked woman, she dropped everything with a clatter, and I lurched to my feet, grabbing the throw blanket draped over the back of the nearest chair and wrapping it around myself. My actions exposed even more of Lucais’s body, and the woman’s cheeks turned red, her eyes rounding to comical proportions.
Lucais stirred, presumably from the contact with the cool morning air. He scrubbed at his eyes before he sat up and threw his legs over the side of the couch, bracing his elbows on his thighs. I studied his lean, bare body while he blinked away the sleep, and I had to admit that my eyes would have done the exact same thing as hers if it was my first time seeing him naked, too.
He was hot. He was really quite stupidly hot, and the length of his half asleep boner was almost more impressive than when it was fully erect with the way he was hung. Faelight shone over him in a dim and romantic glow, despite the early daylight infiltrating the fog beyond the large French doors. Lucais was all golden tones and gloom, messy hair and smooth skin—
Bleary-eyed, the High King tilted his face towards mine and smiled.
