Page 39 of A Baron of Bonds
“From the moment I saw you, felt you, I’ve wanted you. It has never been a choice to love you. Never once did I have to stop and think about whether I did or did not. Your soul has spoken to mine through time and loss, and I have welcomed every second of it.”
Her eyes brimmed with glistening tears, and she placed her free hand over mine still stroking her face.
“I am still healing from that loss, and I wake everyday thankful that you have come back to me. If I have realized anything these last sixteen days, it is that we deserve each other.”
A soft cry left her, and she lowered her head in what I could only recognize as a sense of shame and guilt as tears spilleddown her face. I kissed the top of her white streaks of hair, ones that I had helped in making. I gently lifted her chin and shook my head. “This is my soul speaking to yours, Karus of Felgren. My companion, my love, we deserve each other. You and I. I will show you every day of our lives that what we deserve is happiness, and love, and a future of good things. Together. Regardless of what we will face next, we face it together. Promise me that, Karus.”
She swept forward, urgent, needy, pressing her lips against mine, pushing me to lay back on the bed, and I kissed her in return with just as much urgency.
“I promise, Rev,” she breathed against my mouth. “Together. I promise.”
I shifted my right hand to slip my fingers through hers under the ribbons. I never wanted to hear her speak of not deserving this. I never wanted her to think that she was worth less than what we shared together. I would make her see the truth. If not tonight, then every night for the rest of our lives.
I would worship her body, kiss and touch every inch of her skin until she understood what she deserved. And then, when she finally realized her worth, I’d do it all again, becausethatis what I deserved.
Chapter 24
Karus
Rev managedto touch every inch of me that night.
Every brush of his lips, every caress of his fingers, felt like a rush of power and fire all at once. I glowed over him, under him, tucked into his body as if we were one shape, one being, joining rhythmically with every new position we managed even with our hands bound.
I no longer attempted to restrain my power. It seeped from my skin unbound and wild, flowing between us in green tendrils. I welcomed it, moving against him with it. I would not dampen myself when he did this to me. I would not confine what was mine to show and his to witness in the joining of our bodies.
I wasn’t sure how long we’d been like this.
I wasn’t sure if an hour had passed or four as we wove together in our first night as companions.
His thrusts were picking up on top of me again while he lifted my leg, pressing it to my torso with his left hand, holding my right hand above my head, bound with his. I thought I might perish.
I had found the bliss of release three times already and shuddered to think of what the budding fourth would do to me.
I writhed underneath his body, begging, screaming for him to finish me off right there; a life cut short by unfathomable pleasure.
He stifled my cries with his mouth, his tongue finding mine and settling in to kill me with a final wave of ecstasy I was barely conscious for.
He groaned on my lips and the sound hardly registered. I was already too far gone into some space where stars danced behind my eyes, and a resounding pulse beckoned me into a state of tears and trembling limbs.
He rolled over beside me and pulled me to him, our chests meeting bare and slick with sweat. He reached down and pulled the blankets over us. My blood ran hot, but I felt as if I’d be cold forever as I shivered, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.
I felt as if I’d never return to the normal I had known, forever marked by what he had done to show me just what kind of together he meant.
I laughed as I trembled and cried, understanding with great clarity that I was never to question those things again. Or, perhaps I would, if it meant I got this.
“It’s alright,” he murmured, recognizing in my face how lost in thought, and bliss, and rapture I had become. “I love you, Karus,” he spoke into the night, now silent from my moans and pleas of more.
I slipped my leg, shaking still, over his hip as I always did, tucked in beneath the man who was my sky. The man who held me regardless of my brilliance, my dim, or the complete absence of my glow. I nodded, ready to slip into my dreams which could never compare to the one who held me.
Chapter 25
Rev
I woke slowly,my need for rest warring with my need to comprehend where she was going with those soft kisses.
We had woken once together, both of us needing to relieve ourselves in the washing room after all that tea in the span of night. We both giggled in exhaustion as we were still bound and stumbled back to bed only to collapse onto each other and back into deep sleep.
The tea had worn off by now and from what my stirring mind could tell, where she was headed with that mouth, we wouldn’t need more just yet.
