A Court of Sunlight and Shadows

My body is a cage, my mind olds the key

Lucien needed to recover; he needed air. Fresh air, before his body went into combustion and his heart shot out of his chest and back over the threshold of that door.

Holy cauldron. He had never felt more alive than this.

Three hundred. He had been in this world for three hundred years, yet he had never felt anything so intense.

He had to run away, because he knew that the moment she touched him, the moment he no longer had the barrier of his clothes separating his body from hers… He would have taken her until she begged him to stop, until the line between hours and days became little more than a blurred confine.

Deep down, in that part of his mind that still allowed him a little control over himself, he knew that stopping was the right thing to do. If she didn't already hate him, she would definitely hate him after that, even if her body desired it almost as much as his.

But Elain didn't know what it would mean to them, to the bond, to go through with it.

He walked for a long time after leaving Elain's apartment, waiting for the bitter cold that hovered in those mountains to finally quell the fire in his veins.

He knew what he was going to do as soon as he was locked within the walls of the room where he slept. He could still taste Elain in his mouth, her sweetness. And his hands still had the feeling of Elain's soft body imprinted against them.

When it was late enough that the city had fallen asleep, he returned to the River House. There was no one there that night and he was happy to enjoy the privacy. He needed to get off some of the adrenaline running through his veins.

His hands were at the waistband of his pants as soon as the door closed behind him. He sank against it, his hands moving frantically along his cock until the first orgasm overwhelmed him.

The second was less frantic, more measured, as his mind replayed every detail he had failed to focus on the first time: the way her fingers had gripped around his hair more tightly as she came, the way she had thrown her head back and opened her lips, his name on them.

The third was in the bathtub. The heat of the water mingled with the heat of his own blood as his hands pounced on his cock for the umpteenth time, imagining what would have happened if he hadn't left. He thought about the way she would have touched him: hesitantly, gently at first. He imagined the desire in her eyes, the uncertainty and curiosity of her movements. Then he would have taken her, savoring every second of her expression as his cock sank inside her, making her his.

When he finally left the bath, satisfied for the moment, he could still smell Elain on himself as he prepared for his meeting with Rhysand. They were to discuss what was going on between Beron and the Spring Court, and he already knew that this would be the ultimatum for Tamlin. Perhaps, it would also be time to discuss what had happened last night, the problem concerning Elain that everyone seemed to be aware of.

Except for him. And her.

On the one hand, Lucien wished not to find out. He wanted to preserve this thing that united them, separating them from everyone else, for a little while longer. If Rhysand didn't speak about it, he decided, he would not be the one to bring up the subject.

He wondered if the shadowsinger would come to the meeting as well, and deep down he hoped he would, so that he would smell Elaine on him, so that he would know, or finally understand, that she was his...

It was maybe one hour after dawn when Rhysand crossed the threshold. Lucien held his posture against the big fireplace as heavy footsteps behind him announced Cassian. And then, after a few seconds, when he had stopped hoping for his arrival, he appeared.