—chapter contains explicit content😏—
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"He tastes like every dark though I ever had."
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I NEEDED air. Oxygen to allow the wind to sweep away my mind and my thoughts that cried out. Screamed and tore at my very being with every second I resisted what I wanted.
Gods, I wanted to give in so badly. So very badly. How many more times would I have to repeat the same mantra over and over until it held no more value? How many times until I truly forgot, and the names reappeared when something happened to him?
I walked through the tavern in hurried steps, eliciting a few confused stares until I threw open the door and walked out away from view. The sun had already set, and the night was new, wind whipping through all around me while rain pelted every inch of my body. A slow, languid rain that seemed to know exactly how I was feeling. I stalked to the side of the building, my back pressing against the cool stone wall as I leaned my head against it with closed eyes. A feeble attempt to pull my running thoughts back into my mind.
The rain trailed across my body, calming drops of water that seemed to draw me back into reality.
I knew he would follow. Even if he wanted to stay up there, he would not leave me out here unprotected with the Flame and Hybern rolling about. Of course, he would. It was Rhys.
And so, when I heard the soft creak of the door—a small sound compared to roaring thunder that answered in its wake—I knew it was him.
Even over the rain, I was hyper aware of every step he took toward me. The soft crack of sticks under her feet. The rustle of his shoes as they hit the ground. Rhys stopped mere inches from me. Waiting. Watching. And yet not pushing. A presence. As though he knew every thought going through my head.
When I felt as sorted as I could be, my eyes finally opened, staring up at the sky as rain hit my face. Searching for the bright stars beyond the cloud cover.
And then I looked over. Watching Rhys watch me.
He stepped closer. Breaking the silence that enveloped us for a moment. "Tell me what you're thinking, Danika." He pleaded, "Tell me and I will listen." I could scarcely hear his words over the storm around us. But they still carried. Still punched through me.
I didn't answer for a long moment, simply staring at his eyes. Watching as the rain dripped across his golden features, wetting his hair and molding around him as though he controlled that too.
This time I could not close my eyes. This time I could not look away or tell myself something that would stop it. Because this time I knew it could not be stopped.
"I..." I trailed off, squeezing my eyes shut and feeling as the rain ran its cool hands down my shoulders. Down my face. A caress. Something to center me. And it was enough. Enough in that moment for me to get the breathy words out. "I am thinking that I look at you and I feel like I'm dying." I repeated his words, barely audible over the rain and yet I knew he heard them. "Like I can't breathe. I'm thinking that I want you so badly I can't concentrate half the time I'm around you...And as much as I want to give in..." again I squeezed my eyes tight, "I can't." my voice broke on the last word.
"Why?" No judgment.
I looked at him, my gaze unflinching as I muttered, "Because everyone that I let myself care about leaves. Death or betrayal, it doesn't matter they're all gone. And..." I choked back the burning in my throat, "I don't want you to leave too."
And maybe because I thought I deserved it. Maybe this was atonement for my crimes. The crimes, if given the chance, I would commit again because they had been so carefully placed in my mind. So carefully crafted that I could not shake them.
My darkness was a part of me. And as much as I loathed it, I could not change it.
This loneliness...this loneliness was my punishment. My curse. The very loneliness that disappeared when I was around him. Chased the darkness away and filled me with understanding and peace and—no.
To have that ripped away...snatched from my grasp as though it was never there at all, it would destroy me. Shred me to pieces until I was nothing more than a mere shell of existence.
Rhys took a step forward, and I could not bring myself to stare into his eyes. For fear of what might be in them and for the terror of the fact I might very well forget after all.
And then his hands were on me. His thumb caressing my cheek as he drew his rain-soaked forehead to mine. Leaning on each other in a way that felt like he was trying to bear the burden of my mind. To lift a bit of the weight from my shoulders and put it on his own.
I could not breathe. Could not feel nor worry. I simply existed, utterly and irrevocably lost in a word of thoughts and wants. Of walls and needs.
I found that I was simply drifting. Torn between two worlds. One that everything in me wanted to go toward, that everything in me told was right. And the other, full of darkness, full of sorrow.
It should have been an easy decision. And yet I felt more pulled apart than I ever had.
But I found myself putting my hands on his shoulders, resting my forehead against his as though he were a lifeline. The only thing keeping me grounded in this otherwise spinning world.
"I won't leave." he promised, voice carrying through the thundering scene around us.
A shuddering breath. "You don't understand, Rhys." I murmured over the pouring rain, "It's not only that." I shook my head and yet still made no move to pull away from his embrace. "You are good and selfless and kind and everything and I...I am a monster."
I did pull away then, only so far as to look at his eyes, blurry with the water clouding my vision and yet it could have been clear as day. Their strained expression, the almost pained look as he stared at me.
But still, his thumb brushed against my cheek, his other hand holding the scope of my nape as he drew soft circles on my neck. His gaze was piercing. A reckoning; a hammer drilling into my mind fast as waves crashing against the shore.
We stared. No walls; no shields between us. A window into the soul.
And before I could process his lips were on mine. Warm and careful and soft and yet it was demanding. All consuming.
The world ended and began with his touch. With his lips.
And I could not remember why I had resisted. Could not remember a single thought I had about anything other than this exact moment.
My lips melded with his as though they were made for me. A single fleeting kiss, as he pulled away as fast as he had leaned in. But Rhys did not go far, again resting his forehead on mine, breathing heavy, chest rising and falling in beat with my own.
And as he did, the words he whispered felt like they were seared into my mind. Ingraining themselves into my very being as though they had joined with my thoughts. "If you must see yourself as a monster, Danika, then we will be monsters together."
And then I was gone. And then I forgot.
I closed my eyes, hand clasping around his wrist as I held his hand on my cheek. Keeping it there. Wanting it there and not caring what it meant. It was all I could do to nod at his words, his head resting against mine as my thoughts, for the first time in my life, quieted.
A serene feeling I had never felt before. A feeling, now that I had gotten a taste, I did not know how I would see the world the same. A feeling of utter peace.
Rhys did not wish to change me. Nor would he. Darkness and all, he accepted me as I was. Would become a monster for me.
And so, I kissed him again, leaning up and connecting our lips as my hand slightly rested on his chest. He returned the kiss immediately, the rain still pouring all around us and yet it seemed so inconsequential.
This time it was me who pulled away, not going far. I inhaled a deep breath and stepped back a mere fraction, nodding my head half in a daze as my hair was once more soaked through with the cold rain. "We should go to sleep." I whispered, still looking at him before my eyes flickered to the clouded night sky.
He didn't answer for a long moment, staring at me the exact way I stared at him, "All right."
We lingered. Still staring as we stood outside. Rhys was the first to move. Turning his body toward the door and yet his head was still angled toward me. I put one foot in front of the other, walking at his side as we made our way through the bustling tavern, crowded with the beginnings of nightfall.
The attic door shut behind us after we climbed the stairs. I did not trust myself to look behind me. To look at Rhys in his soaked clothes without wanting...that. Whatever he was or something.
I looked down at myself, silently cursing the gods in my mind. With a sigh, I turned to him. "I have to change." I said, pursing my lips before I looked him up and down. "So do you." I added with a cringe.
Rhys arched a brow at me, no doubt coming to the nefarious conclusions his mind usually went to. My suspicions were confirmed the second his lips tilted into smirk. The High Lord opened his mouth, no doubt prepared to say something dirty, so I cut him off before he could say anything.
I rolled my eyes, "I am not sleeping in soggy clothes that will only make the bed colder." I said, then waved a hand in his general direction. "And you are not sleeping next to me and getting the sheets soaked like a wet dog."
His feline grin did not falter, instead it widened. Rhys leaned back on the wall, his wings flattening to accommodate the motion as he gestured a hand. "Please," he said, "be my guest."
I narrowed my eyes. A challenge. Plain and simple. "Fine." I bit out. It wasn't like I was modest. I had done far worse.
Pleasant surprise washed through his eyes while he watched me turn around toward the armoire at the edge of the room. And yet I could have sworn I saw a flash of something else as well...hunger.
I weaved around the bed, pulling it open and grabbing another pair of fleece lined leggings as well as another long-sleeved shirt. This one black, but of similar style to the one I wore under the sweater.
I felt the piece of his stare on my back. His gaze drawing trails across my skin as I felt him rake his violet eyes align my body.
Well, I couldn't back out now, could I?
I didn't dare cast a glance behind me as I began to peel off my clothes. Starting with my sweater and shirt, peeling away the damp clothes and revealing my bare back to Rhys as I tossed the clothes to the edge of the room. The pieces of fabric hitting the floor with a soft smack before I began to peel off my pants.
It was almost as though I could feel the way his eyes raked up and down my body, the heat in them warming my skin. Warming my core.
And then I tossed away my pants along with the other clothes, throwing them off as though I wasn't completely naked. The cold nipped at my bare skin as I reached for my new clothes.
Slowly I pulled them on. And only when I was fully dressed did I turn back to Rhys. "Happy?" I asked, my palms faced up.
He didn't answer, and I took in the sight before me. His arms were crossed on his chest, his fists curled in a white-knuckled grip as he clenched his jaw. His gaze was searing. A stare that I didn't trust myself not to give into.
I turned away, crawling onto the bed on the nearest side, tucked almost against the slanted ceiling and shimmed beneath the quilt. Cool, crisp sheets wrapped around me like an icy hand. But my shiver was from something else entirely as I watched Rhys cross the room to the armoire. As I watched him strip his clothes just as I had done, my gaze trailing across every inch of his toned body without remorse.
And then another shiver as I felt the mattress shift on the other side of the bed, the blanket moving, and then the two candles beside the bed went out.
Darkness hit me the same moment the warmth of his body did. It was an effort not to nudge toward it. But neither one of us moved.
I stared into the dark, listening to that icy rain, trying to steal the warmth from him.
"You're shivering so hard the bed is shaking." he said.
"My hair is wet." I said. It wasn't a lie.
Rhys was silent, then the mattress groaned, sinking directly behind me as his warmth poured over me. "No expectations," he said, "Just body heat." I scowled at the laughter in his voice.
"Try and sound a little less happy, you prick." I grumbled and yet I still sunk into his touch without hesitation.
His broad hands slid under and over me: one flattening against my stomach and tugging me a bit further against the warmth of him, the other sliding under my ribs and arms to band around my chest, pressing his front into me. He tangled his legs with mine, then a heavier, warmer darkness settled over us, smelling of citrus and the sea.
I lifted a hand toward that darkness, and met with a soft, silky material—his wing, cocooning and warming me. I traced my finger along it, and he shuddered, his arms tightening around me.
"Your finger...is very cold," he gritted out, the words hot on my neck. It was only then that I remembered how sensitive he had said wings were.
I expected the thoughts to come. The remembrance of what happened to my friends to weigh on me and stop me from giving in on what I wanted. Their memory, the prospect of that happening to Rhys. And yet...those thoughts never came. Neither did the hesitance, nor the reservations.
My mind was silent. Just as it had been when we had kissed. Utter silence that I had longed for my entire life.
And I found...that I no longer cared about the consequences. I had spent so long fighting whatever this was, and I was tired. So very tired of curving my desires. My wants. And I no longer felt like doing it.
Instead, I would own it. No more hiding. No more avoiding. I would not allow my past to control my life a second longer.
I tried not to smile, even as I tilted my neck a bit more, hoping the heat of his breath might caress it again. I dragged my fingers along his wing, the nail scraping gently against the smooth surface. Rhys tensed, his hand splaying across my stomach.
"You cruel, wicked thing," he purred, his nose grazing the exposed bit of my neck I'd arched beneath him. "Didn't anyone ever teach you manners?"
"They did," I replied, "And yet I find that I enjoy things a lot more without them." I slid another finger down the inside of his wing. "Though, I never knew Illyrians were such sensitive babies."
Something hard pushed against my behind. Heat flooded through me, and I went taut and loose all at once. I stroked his wing again, two fingers now.
The fingers he'd spread over my stomach began to make idle, lazy strokes. He swirled one around my navel, and I inched imperceptibly closer, grinding up against him, arching a bit more to give that other hand access to my breasts.
"Greedy," he murmured, his lips hovering over my neck. "First you terrorize me with your cold hands, now you want...What is it that you want Danika?"
More. I almost begged him as his fingers traveled down the slope of my breasts, while his other hand continued its idle stroking along my stomach, my abdomen, slowly—so slowly—heading toward the low band of my pants and the ache beneath it.
Rhysand's teeth scraped against my neck in a lazy caress. "What is it you want, Danika?" he nipped at my earlobe.
A breathy sound escaped my lips as I arched fully against him, as if I could get that hand to exactly where I wanted it. And as I did, I whispered the barely audible word, "You." I did not need to say anything further.
I could practically hear the grin coming from him as he again nipped at my neck, "Then allow me to oblige." Before I could even process the words, he slipped a hand beneath the top of my clothes, diving clean under my shirt. Skin to skin, the calluses of his hands made me groan as they scraped the top of my breast and circled around my peaked nipple. "I love these," he breathed out onto my neck, his hand sliding to my other breast. "You have no idea how much I love these."
I groaned as he caressed a knuckle against my nipple, and I bowed into the touch, silently begging him. He was hard behind me, and I ground against him, eliciting a soft, wicked hiss from him. "Stop that," he snarled onto my skin, "You'll ruin my fun."
"And what about mine?" I muttered back, my voice no more than a whisper of breath as I again ground against him. I wanted to feel him—needed to feel him. But he clicked his tongue and pushed himself harder against me.
"I want to touch you first," he said as though it was a plea, "Let me touch you." he palmed my breast for emphasis.
I yielded as his hand again began to trail lazy lines on my stomach.
I can't breathe when I look at you.
Let me touch you.
Because I was jealous, and pissed off...
She's mine.
His finger slid along the band of my pants again, a cat playing with it's dinner.
Again.
Again.
"Please," I managed to say, my mind so clouded with this euphoric feeling that I had scarcely processed what I had said.
He smiled against my neck, "There are those missing manners." his hand at last trailed beneath my pants. The first brush of him against me dragged a groan from deep in my throat.
He snarled in satisfaction at the witness he found waiting for him, and his thumb circled that spot at the apex of my thighs, teasing, brushing up against it, but never quite—
His other hand gently squeezed my breast at the same moment his thumb found purchase exactly where I wanted it. I arched back, my head fully back against him shoulder now, panting as his thumb circled—
I moaned, and he laughed, low and soft. "Like that?"
Another moan was my only reply. More.
His fingers slid down, slow and brazen, straight through the core of me, every point in my body, my mind, my soul, narrowed to the feeling of his fingers poised there like he had all the time in the world.
Prick. "Please," I whispered again, and ground my ass against him for emphasis.
He hissed at the contact and slid a finger inside me. He swore. "Dani—"
But I'd already started to move on him, and he swore again in a long exhale. His lips pressed into my neck, kissing up, up toward my ear.
I let out a moan so loud it drowned out the rain as he slid in a second finger. I couldn't think around it. I couldn't breathe. "That's it." he murmured, lips tracing my ear.
If this was what it meant to be selfish, I never wanted to stop.
I was sick of my neck and ear getting such attention. I twisted as much as I could, and found him staring at me, at the hand down the front of my pants, watching me move on him.
He was still staring at me when I captured his mouth with my own, biting gently on his lower lip.
Rhys groaned, plunging his fingers deeper. Harder.
I didn't care—I didn't care one bit about what I was and who I was and where I'd been as I yielded fully to him. Something I had once promised I would never do and yet I found that that promise was long forgotten. Opening my mouth, his tongue swept in, moving in a way that I knew exactly what he'd do if he got between my legs.
His fingers plunged in and out, slow and hard, and my very existence became that touch. The feel of him, the tightness in my ratcheting up with every deep stroke, every echoing thrust of his tongue inside me mouth.
"You have no idea how much I—" he cut himself off, and groaned again. "Danika."
The sound of my name on his lips was my undoing. Release barreled through me and down my spine, and I cried out, only to have his lips cover mine, as if he could devour the sound. His flicked my mouth while I shuddered around him. He swore again, breathing hard, fingers stroking me through the last throes of it, until I was limp and trembling in his arms.
I couldn't breath hard enough, fast enough, as Rhys withdrew his fingers, pulling back so I could meet his stare. He said, "I wanted to do that when I knew how drenched you were at the Court of Nightmares. I wanted to have you right there in the middle of everyone. But mostly I just wanted to do this." his eyes held mine as he brought those fingers to his mouth and sucked on them. On the taste of me.
My blood heated again and I brought my hand up to his chest, he gripped my wrist. "When you lick me," he said roughly, "I want to be alone—far away from everyone. Because when you lick me, Danika," he said, pressing nipping kisses to my neck, my jaw. "I'm going to let myself roar loud enough to bring down a mountain."
I suppressed a whimper and he laughed under his breath. "And when I lick you," he said, sliding his arms around me and tucking me in tight to him. "I want you splayed out on a table like my own personal feast."
I did whimper then.
"I've had a long, long time to think about how and where I want you," Rhys said onto the skin of my neck, his fingers sliding just under the band of my pants, but stopping just beneath. Their home for the evening. "I have no intention of doing it all in one night. Or in a room where I can't even fuck you against the wall."
I shuddered. He remained long and hard against me. I had to feel him—
"Sleep." he said and might as well have commanded I breath under water.
But he began stroking my body again—not to arouse, but to soothe—long, luxurious strokes down my stomach, down my sides.
Sleep found me faster than I'd thought.
And maybe it was the wine, or the aftermath of the pleasure he'd wrung from me, but I didn't have a single nightmare.
A/N: Rhys bringing down that mountain: rawr.
My friends, my friends I have many questions. But first a statement: I AM MAKING A PREQUEL FOR DANI IN THE FLAME YASSSS. ASSASSIN DANIIII.
Now for my questions: would you guys prefer I tandem write the prequel along with the next book? Or write either one first?
(With the next book, I would like to state—just so that you all know and can take it into consideration—this book, and the nextbook will be left with cliffhangers because I am evil)
ALSO, ANOTHER ANNOUNCEMENT, THE TITLES FOR BOTH:
DRUM ROLL PLEASEEEEEE: the next book will be called...............A Court of Broken Worlds
MORE DRUM ROLLLLLL: the prequel will be called...................A Guild of Shadowed Lies
Also, here is an especially long chapter bc I love you guys. And finally Dani gives in *eye roll* took her long enough
Jeez that was a lot.
Chapter countdown: 4