I slipped his thumb into my mouth and gently sucked on it, watching as his eyes rolled into the back of his head. I felt him grow even stiffer, his balls tightening beneath me.

I reached back and felt them in my hand. As he grunted harder, his nostrils flared and his balls tightened further still.

He braced my hips with his hands and helped bounce me harder onto his cock, but he did not pummel me from below as he could have done, and instead let me take him to his full release.

When he exploded inside me, I felt the powerful thrust of his hips until he spilled every last drop inside me.

Out of breath, I lay flat on his chest, the breathy whisper of my own orgasm having come in perfect timing with his own.

Were we Muri? One hundred percent.

8

RAYAW

Everything Camila told me had turned out to be truer than I wanted to admit.

It had been a shock to see the first few farms empty, bereft of farmers or crops. It simply didn’t look right. Fields were meant to be tilled.

As we crossed from the medium-sized lots to the larger ones, we saw that those too were empty. I couldn’t believe how blind I had been to give Ges free rein over the entire estate.

All trust had been lost and I was certain there would have been no way I could have healed the rift if Camila hadn’t been by my side.

We had stopped at the dilapidated barn, and it was, once again, one of the greatest moments of my life. I was amassing them like pearls on a necklace, one unforgettable moment after another.

What was life if not a collection of unforgettable experiences, creating the life of the person that lived them?

When you survived on the street, struggling simply to feed yourself, you didn’t have time to consider other people’s needs and requirements. Survival trumped everything else.

I had come to the palace and seen it from the same myopic view. Camila was opening my eyes, helping me see that there was a great deal more to life than merely existing.

You could flourish.

It was also in the barn that I really began to notice Camila’s limping. After our sweet afternoon of lovemaking, she tugged the strays of straw from her hair and clothes, gathered herself, and crossed to the Fayam.

She ran her hands through their thick manes and peered through the slowing rain through the gaps in the wall slats. I noticed how she favored one leg over the other, leaning on it as if she needed the support.

I became aware of the fact that I’d seen her limping like that multiple times over the past few days. Once when we made love too, as I added my weight to hers, she would flinch and silently hissed through her teeth.

Was I the cause of the pain? Or had I merely inflamed it?

I wrapped her in my arms and felt her warmth beneath me. I meant to bring the subject up but immediately forgot about it, losing myself to her sweet scent of flowers and the softness of her luxurious hair.

We looked out on the rainy day, fully engrossed in it, every droplet seeming to act like the needle of a tattoo, piercing deeper into my psyche to remind me just how special my time with her was.

I had made her a promise—to make the palace whole again—and I intended on keeping it. But I could only achieve it with her help.

I held her tightly, knowing that the following few days were going to be difficult, but so long as she wasn’t far from my arms, everything would work out fine in the end.

* * *

The first was the easiest to convert to our cause.

Acis leapt at the chance to attain the farm he’d built before my arrival to the estate. We only managed to convince him thanks to the relationship he shared with Camila.

He packed his things and leapt onto the back of the Fayam that we had brought especially for him.

“Huh,” Acis said. “Looks like me joining you wasn’t much of a surprise.”