I reach out for him. My hands land on his arms, biceps tensing under my touch. But he doesn’t pull away.
Leg slung over his hip, I rock in rhythm with his fingers. He slides two along the sides of my bud, brewing tension deep in my belly.
I feel his harsh breath against my neck before he lessons the bite on my flesh, turning it into a brush of his lips, a tender almost-kiss back up to my mouth.
I’m lost in the rising sensations as his fingers move faster, determined to bring me to the heavens—and he delivers me.
My breath freezes for a moment, pinned in my throat.
Lips parting against the corner of his mouth, I let myself fall in the sudden sensations that battle me. Pleasure like I’ve never known pumps through my entire body, all to gather right where his fingers rub—
And then a shudder rattles me and the prince’s other hand slams against my mouth to silence my shout.
His fingers still against me, he presses them against my core and I ride out my climax on them, my hands gripping onto the silky material of his shirt, pulling him closer to me. He obliges, pressing his muscular chest against me, running the sharpness of his teeth along my jawline, pausing to nip here and there.
The prince only stops and draws away his fingers when my bucking slows and the moans turn to hoarse breaths. I slump against him.
For a beat, he is my support, holding me up between his hard body and the wall. And then, in a blink of darkness, he abandons me in my moment of ebbing ecstasy.
He pulls away, leaving me to stagger as my skirt falls back into place.
He stands a bit away from me in the dark, his bright and cutting blue eyes giving him away. He watches me. He watches me for a long moment.
Then he’s storming past me, whipping the door open and disappearing into the corridor.
I lean around the wall onto my arm and look out into the hall. The prince’s bootsteps are silencing on the carpet as he leaves the slave quarters quicker than any human ever could.
And then he’s gone.
I stay by the wall for a long while after.
Finally, I pick myself up and wander to my room.
Sira is fast asleep in her cot when I sneak inside. It makes it all the easier for me to drag myself over to my own cot, fall onto it, then drag my emergency bucket closer to the edge.
Without the prince around, I draw in a long, deep breath—and that does it. It ignites the coughs I’ve been fighting off.
Leaning over the edge of the cot, I let the hacking wrack my body the way the prince’s pleasure did. A tangy taste catches in my throat for a moment before I spit out a wad of blood.
So it’s going to be one of those ones...
The rest of the Quiet is disturbed for me. When the coughing subsides enough for me to lie on my side, no sleep finds me. I think only of the prince, his fingers inside of me, his sweet mouth on mine, yet never kissing me. And I think of all the troubles this may bring.
Then before I can dare drift to sleep, another coughing fit tears through me and I’m ill all over again in the bucket.
Eventually, when I do find some broken dreams, the wordevatecarries with me. It haunts me for the rest of the Quiet.
7
Caspan and Vale stay for a few Quiets and Breezes. They keep Prince Daein busy—and that does decent work of distracting him from me.
Since that moment in the dark room, he hasn’t so much as tossed a look my way. I’m a ghost for the first time since I first served his bedchambers.
And that’snotfine by me.
This feels like Jasper the farmhand all over again.
He had his moments with me in the barn, lips on mine, hands gripping onto my waist beneath my skirt, taking pleasure from my heat. All to ditch me in the end.