"You talk too much." I wrap my arms around his neck and bring his mouth to mine again, lifting my hips in a wordless invitation.
One that he takes.
His large cock shouldn't fit, but I'm so drenched my folds swallow it eagerly. Zale enters me slowly, carefully as we share a tender kiss. Then he withdraws and slams right back into me, hard, fast, his length hitting deeper inside me. He does it again, and again, and my old bed creaks plaintively under the relentless assault. I lift my legs to his hips, and he takes them, pushing them apart and up, practically folding me in two. I would have thought it impossible, yet he's filling me up completely, hips flush against my cheeks at each thrust. I'm taking his huge length to the base, and loving every moment.
"Can you feel that, vixen? Can you feel how well we fit?" He punctuates each word with a powerful entrance, ramming into me.
"I feel it. I feel it!"He's ruining me for any other man. Now that I've had him, the awkward, fumbling encounters I'm used to aren't even worth the bother.
My legs start to shake and my inside burn hotter, raw need practically blinding me. I'm so, so very close, but Zale draws himself out. Before I can protest, he shifts me under him, and drags my hips up to him, taking me from behind.
This isn't fucking as much as a primal, animalistic coupling, the mindless rutting of beasts. As he barrels into me, his hand reaches out between my legs, to rub my sore, aching folds.
I lose it, coming again, falling forward with the violence of my all-consuming orgasm. Zale fucks me through it, dragging out the blinding waves of pleasures for longer. He grinds into me mercilessly while I moan weakly, and finally, with one last yell, grows impossibly larger inside me, and coats my inside with warmth.
I fall asleep before he unsheathes himself.
CHAPTERFORTY-ONE
FRIENDS AND FOES
Iwake remembering exactly the reason why my inside aches, and I brace myself for awkwardness, or perhaps some indifferent cruelty.
Instead, cocooning my back, Zale brushes his lips over my shoulder. "I didn't want to wake you. I've had word."
I don't know when he went down to grab Grandma Lyn's e-stone, but it's resting on my windowsill, close to the tiny bed we share.
I blink away sleepiness, the objectively more important events of yesterday coming to mind.
The attack. The screams. The deaths, no doubt.
"Good word?"
I need a toothbrush and a shower, not necessarily in that order, but Zale doesn't seem to mind. He hovers on top of me and presses his mouth to mine, coxing my lips open.
"I'm yucky. It's morning."
"Good thing I'm yucky too, Hel." He kisses away all my protests, and my skin shivers with awareness again.
"Aren't we supposed to get you back to some throne?"
"Later."
I can't argue with that impeccable logic, with his hands doing what they do best.
He opted to forgo awkwardness altogether and fuck me slowly, thoroughly, another time.
In the shower—thankfully warm, I wasn't sure the house would still have a functional boiler—he finally let me know the city's quiet again. Some demis pushed back against the rebels, who retreated when faced with magiks, as I knew they would. Koll, my guard, was wounded trying to get to me in the square, and some of Zale's men were crushed under the collapse of the Hall of Peace.
No one is likely to forgive, or forget last night anytime soon.
As I dress in one of Grandma Lyn's hand-sewn sundresses, the only clean option I have in this house, I wonder where this thing between Zale and I will go, when he'll rage against my kind and I'll tell him what he needs to hear: that the demis are responsible for the hatred, the violence. That things need to change on Xhera if both castes are to coexist without attempting to murder each other.
Nowhere, in all likelihood, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. Grandma Lyn taught me that men come and go, each one right for a time. When we part ways, I'll be fine.
I will.
* * *