onto her between gentle assaults from his mouth. She was overcome with the sensation, exposed and completely at his mercy. But Daughters, she wanted it. Reveled in it. Grabbing fistfuls of his hair and pulling him in, willing him to press harder, to take her, taste her, set her on fire.
He lapped rhythmically, and Mia thrashed on the bed, eyes rolling back in her head. Heat building inside her, torturous and enveloping, wordless pleas filling the air. Just as she thought she could take no more, she felt another pressure, urgent and hot. And, parting her wet lips with his hand, he slowly eased a finger inside her.
Sparks in her mind. Blinding light in her eyes. Mia groaned as he went to work, curling and stroking, his rhythm inside matching the increasing pace of his tongue. She began to shake harder with each ragged gasp, writhing as a flood swelled inside her, pressing against some hidden dam, higher and hotter. Tric worked his fingers and his mouth, his tongue and his breath, stars colliding behind her eyes, curses slipping past her teeth “O, fuck, O, fuck, O, fuck” until the dam shattered, the flood spilled along with a wordless cry from her lips, spine arched, head thrown back as she silently screamed his name.
Tric slowed, withdrawing his hand, still drawing gentle circles on her soaking lips with his tongue. And then, he kissed her, tenderly, as if her sex were her mouth and he were saying goodbye for the very last time.
He lifted his head as Mia untangled her fingers from his hair. Shot her a crooked smile.
“Are you all right?”
“Where … the ’byss … did you learn to do that?”
Grinning, the boy pulled himself up the bed, collapsed beside her. “Same place I learned to dance. Shahiid Aalea offered a few pointers, should I ever find myself seducing some marrowborn daughter or somesuch.”
Mia sighed, heart still hammering in her breast. “I’ll thank her next time I see her.”
Tric smiled, leaned over and kissed her. She could taste herself on his lips, tongue entwined with his own. Reaching down, she found him still hard as stone, hot as iron. She wanted more. But a cool fear burned in back of her mind, rising in volume even as she kicked off her remaining pants leg, swung herself up and straddled him. She tore off her shirt and he lunged at her breasts, kissing and gnawing. Leaning back, she grasped the burning spear of his cock, pressing it against her aching lips. Running him back and forth, tempted to simply sink, inch by inch, all the way down.
“I want you,” he breathed. “Mother of fucking Night, I want you.”
Her lips found his, her breath to against his skin. “And I you. But…”
“But what?”
“I don’t know if it’s safe.”
He took hold of her hips, mouth on her breasts, pulling her down as she dragged him along her aching lips. The tip of him slipped inside her—O holy Daughters, it felt good—and she almost lost herself then. Wanting. Needing. More than she’d wanted or needed before in her life. But she tangled her fingers in his hair, pulled him away from her aching nipples. Leaning back, she let him have another inch of her, groaning from her depths. But then she stopped. Tightened her grip and rose up off him, leaving herself empty. He sighed, but she smiled, giving him a playful slap and pushing him back down on the bed, sliding onto the sweat-soaked fur beside him.
“Not tonight, Don Tric,” she whispered.
Tric lay back in the tangle of pillows and furs. Trying in vain to catch his breath.
“You’re a cold one, Pale Daughter,” he managed.
She took his hand, pressed it between her legs. “Say again?”
“Maw’s teeth, you’re just being sadistic now.”
She laughed, lying back in the pillows and staring at the ceiling. Narrowing her eyes and twisting the shadows, watching them writhe. The fear was gone. Swallowed utterly by the knowledge burning in her mind.
He’d do anything to have me at this moment. Anything I asked. Kill for me. Die for me. Bathe in the blood of hundreds just so he could breathe his last inside me.
Mia arched her back, slipped one hand between her legs. Pressing at the sweet ache she found there, she closed her eyes and sighed.
This is the strength that topples kings. Ends empires. Even breaks the sky.
She ran damp fingers over smiling lips.
This is power.
She awoke hours later from a blissful, dreamless sleep. Stretching like a cat, squeezing