Page 20 of A Palace of Smoke & Mirrors
He gave it to me, his hand forming a tight manacle around my wrists as he took my breath as his own and replaced it with everything I’d ever been missing.At last, my violent gasps softened into something less destructive and more desirable, and it was then that his tongue flicked out to taste me.
The movement was quick—so quick I wondered if he’d even meant to do it at all, but then he groaned and pushed his body onto me, crushing me against the wall, his chest flush against mine, his hips digging into me. His hand fell from its place around my wrists and moved to cradle my face as his tongue pushed inside my mouth, the other hand gripping my side with enough force to bruise in the exact shape and design of his fingerprints as I met each stroke of his tongue with one of my own.
The sound of my panting morphed into a moan as a feeling of desire swelled in my chest and reached for him. I was begging him. Mybodywas begging him, desperate to make up for a thousand years of lost memories, like nothing he gave me wouldever be enough to cover the eternity for which we were destined. Lucais responded as if he knew that and would never stop trying.
My whole body was alert and alive, my heart pounding wildly in my chest. My lungs felt so full of oxygen that I might never need to break my mouth away from Lucais’s again.
As my hands fell from the wall, any resolve to steer clear of him crumbling away like that sandcastle underneath waves of perseverance, I tangled my fingers in his hair, whimpering with ecstasy as his teeth nipped my lower lip. His hair was as soft as silk. My fingertips felt like they were being coated in pure, molten gold as they combed through the messy strands, pressing into his scalp like they’d find somewhere permanent to land. I gripped a handful and tugged gently and—
You better fucking stop that.
His voice was in my mind. And his tone… He wasn’t annoyed that I had pulled on his hair. He wasturned on.
I writhed against him, a small groan escaping from my throat that Lucais swallowed into his own, and he slowed the kiss, pulling my tongue into his mouth and sucking. He explored me so deeply that the back of my head scraped against the wall, the stonework grinding into my hair and scalp with the intensity of his touch. Then he moved, the hand digging into my hip relaxing so he could wrap his arm around my waist, pulling me flush against him. I felt his erection pressing into me, thick and hard and pulsating above the place in my body where it belonged.
My chest heaved, but as my tongue tangled with his and I explored the edge of his top teeth, a thought occurred to me. A very dangerous yet necessary idea.
I have to show you something.
I waited to see if it had worked, if he could hear me through the bond the same way I’d heard him. He nipped at my mouth and nodded his head, still half lost in the kiss. As he licked overthe spot his teeth had caught, I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck so tightly it would have been a stranglehold on anyone else.
And then I showed him.
While I did, Lucais kissed me, indulgently turning his head from one side to the other to ensure he was taking advantage of every possible angle into my mouth. His movements were slow and gentle, the pleasure inflicted upon me by his tongue, teeth, and lips both unrelenting and maddening.
Even as I showed him memories of the nightmares in which he was tortured, he sent pulses of ecstasy and heat rippling through me, his mouth never leaving mine.
The dungeon. A cold, damp floor. Thinning bed of straw in the corner, an overturned bucket plated with iron at its side, and a threadbare blanket crumpled on the ground. Your shoulders trembling beneath the grip of two dark figures. I can’t make them out. I don’t know who they are. I’m trying…
Lucais’s hand slid down from my lower back, cupping my ass and squeezing. He hitched one of my legs around his waist, securing my body against his, and smoothed his hand beneath my thigh, leaving a trail of warmth behind.
Your tattoos. They shove your head into a bucket. Repeatedly. Hold you there. I see the mist from their breath clouding above your head. It’s so cold and damp. Your body falls still. Limp. They pull you out, your head lolls to the side, and they drop you on the stonework. The sound is gutting. I can’t move. I can’t reach you. I never reach you.
Lucais’s tongue swiped my lower lip as he murmured, “More.”
And I knew that, while the evidence of his enjoyment was still straining against his pants and wedged up against my body, he was not talking about the kiss.
The sharp scrape of an iron bar being dragged across the ground. The hollow ring echoes. It hurts my ears. You’re coming around again. They move so fast the bar whips through the air like a whistle, cracking like thunder as it makes contact with your—ugh! I don’t know what. Okay? I always close my eyes here. I don’t want to look. You’re covered in burn marks and bruises. There’s blood all over your body, the ground. It’s been going on like this for months. Lucais—
“Hmm.” He hummed into my mouth, tugging at my upper lip with his teeth, and I sensed that he was about to pull away.
My fingers tightened in his hair and yanked his mouth back to mine. Our profiles fit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We stood with our foreheads pressed together, panting into each other’s mouths.
Lucais, they’re going to kill you.
His voice entered my mind again, the sound a sensual caress without a hint of distress.No, little beast, they’re not. But you might if you don’t let go of me.
Like a rubber band snapping, my arms fell away from him, and the High King stumbled backwards until he hit the opposite wall with a sudden thud. It knocked the breath out of him in a ragged sigh. His lips were swollen, glistening with my kisses, and there was a wild look in his eyes as he stared at me, chest heaving.
I touched the place he’d bitten me with the tip of my tongue, tasting the tang of my own blood mixed with the honey-sweet remnants of his mouth, and then I tried to speak to him in my mind again.
I’m sorry.
With a sharp exhale of breath, he rested the back of his head against the wall and responded out loud. “For what?”
“For all of that.”
He laughed—softly, weakly, but it was real. “Little beast, don’t worry. That is not the kind of torture I am destined to suffer through at your hands. You don’t need to apologise for it.”
