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Thaddius did not respond. His eyes had left her face to watch her hands and his fingers on her hips began to bite into her flesh. He bared his teeth slightly. Whatever control he’d retained slipped away and he became a creature made of nothing but thirst, desire.

She found herself on her back, his face suddenly pressed between the valley of her breasts, and then lower, and she had to close her eyes at the exquisite feel of his cool tongue on her flesh, tasting her, suckling her. He reared up only to pull the clothes from his body – first his tunic, then the ties of his breeches – and Farra laid her eyes on the expanse of him and was awed.

The muscles entrenched in his torso heaved with each breath, and she was only spared a few aching moments before he returned his mouth to her, to her stomach, her neck, while she writhed. The pleasure elicited whines from the back of her throat and her sex clenched.

Thaddius’ face suddenly hovered over hers and he blocked out her surroundings, her senses, and any other sign that she might be a captive of the Glacian Kingdom. His forehead pressed gently to hers, his restraint clearly waning. “Will you let me have you, Farra?” he asked.

Her hands tracked down his stomach as he spoke, finally finding and gripping his cock.

He groaned, pressing his lips together in an expression that bordered on pain. “Fuck.”

“I’m yours,” she vowed, hardly aware of the weight in the words, the fate she was sealing.

He took her bottom lip between his teeth, only releasing it to say, “Are you sure, malishka?” He gasped as she stroked him. “Because once I take you, I’ll want to keep you.”

She pressed her lips to the cool skin beneath his ear and felt him shiver in return. “Then keep me,” she whispered darkly, heeding no sense. Only desire.

Fingers suddenly pressed against her entrance, and she gasped.

“So wet… warm,” he murmured, moving his finger upward to that collection of nerves, pulsing with anticipation. He caressed her until she was trembling, begging for him, her body undulating, and every roll of her hips seemed to tip him closer and closer to madness. Finally, with a hissed curse, he reared up and pressed his length inside her.

Farra’s walls clenched around the size of him, the heaviness. For a moment, she wondered if she could withstand him. But he moved with grace, with measured strokes, and soon she was meeting each thrust, welcoming all of him, until he was seated to the hilt, and he buried his face in her neck.

“Farra,” he murmured, his pace quickening. The slide of their bodies against each other only fuelled her. Her limbs were wrapped around him, as though they might be merged, might coalesce and combust. The combined sensations overwhelmed her – the feel of him sliding within her, the frenetic pace of his torso along hers, the gentle worship of his lips. She moaned a plea, and the Glacian heeded it. Without slowing, his fingers came between them, and he stroked her once, twice, three times.

The sensation built to an unbearable point, and there she was suspended, weightless. And then she fell.

He swallowed her cries, eclipsing her mouth with his own, and she gripped his neck as he claimed his own release, his entire form shuddering with the strength of it. Both of them falling, falling, but never crashing.

In the moments that followed, they simply lay staring at each other, their foreheads touching, and they passed revere between them like a silent language.

The next evening, when Thaddius stepped inside his own chambers, Farra was waiting for him, and it took them only seconds to collide and come completely undone.

Farra’s shoulders had long since healed enough that she could be moved and yet she said nothing to Thaddius, nor he to her, when they joined together after nightfall. She found herself delaying the moment, day by day, when they would need to confront reality.

While alone, she berated herself. She made herself promises that she would not continue what she had started. She thought of ways out of the Glacian Kingdom and wondered where she would go if it were not back to the Ledge.

She had heard the stories of a green valley, of course. Her mother, before she died, would let slip tales of the village she was born to. Farra thought she would ask Thaddius to take her there. But then she would think of the moment they would part ways, for she belonged in the glow of the sun, and he on his mountaintop, and she would delay the request another day. Just one more day.

When the door opened earlier than she had expected, before the light had dimmed in the singular narrow window, she turned smiling, expecting Thaddius.

Another Glacian stood upon the threshold and Thaddius was nowhere in sight.

All the fear she had stowed away and forgotten returned to her. She backed away.

But the Glacian merely rolled his eyes and scoffed at the ceiling. “Good god,” he said acidly. “What feeble trade.”

Farra inferred that he spoke of her, though she could not grasp his meaning. “Who are you?” she asked with far more valour than she felt.

He pinned her with a derisive stare. “Phineas,” he spat. “And you are the human who has possessed my oldest friend.”

Farra allowed her eyes to sweep over the Glacian once, taking in his considerable height, his long, unkempt hair. She watched for any sign of attack. “What do you want? Thaddius will return any moment.”

“No, he won’t. Unfortunately for both of us, he has tasked me with standing sentry by the door while he eats and sleeps. If I didn’t, there is little doubt he would have starved himself to keep you safe, by now.”

Farra narrowed her eyes. “You’ve guarded my door?”

“Yourdoor?”Phineas repeats. “As though you’ve already laid claim to what is his. Was his sanity not enough?”