Page 14 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Eight

“You were sensational! Your speech? It was so honest, so simple. You’ve won them all.

” Dwyn preened, giggling as she kicked her heels off.

They’d scarcely gotten through her bedroom door before the siren had begun undressing.

“Firi, help me with this, would you? The buttons are at the worst spot. It’s almost as if—”

“Almost as if servants are supposed to help you with it before bedtime, rather than you stripping nude all hours of the day?” Ophir finished the thought as her fingers began to work on the buttons of Dwyn’s pretty blue dress.

After, Ophir turned and offered her back without being asked, knowing it was her turn to step out of her blush gown.

The servants knew enough by now to expect that the women would not be clothed unless they were given proper forewarning.

Dwyn needed very little encouragement to have her hands on Ophir. Her fingers worked against the buttons as she planted hot, light kisses on the soft place where Ophir’s neck met her shoulder.

“I wanted to get you out of this the moment I saw you in it,” Dwyn said.

Ophir smiled, back still to the siren. “Yes, but you say that regardless of what I’m wearing.”

Dwyn’s fingers stopped.

“What?”

Dwyn rounded her slowly, a mischievous smirk tugging her lips up at the corner. “I have a wonderful idea.”

“Again, you say that regardless—”

“Yes, because all my ideas are good. Hush, Firi. Believe me, you’ll like this.”

Dwyn took her hand and led her to the enormous full-length mirror mounted beside the armoire. The wooden frame had been carved with elaborate twisting designs. Some looked like they could have been crows; others serpents or lions, but most were just the miscellaneous twists of the fantastical.

Dwyn stood behind her and said, “Look at yourself.”

Ophir fidgeted. “Yes, I’ve seen myself. It’s a very pretty dress.”

“No,” Dwyn corrected, “don’t look at the dress, look at yourself .

Look at those golden eyes of yours. Your irises are brighter and more royal than any crown they could put on your head.

Look at the slope of your nose, Ophir. Look how it curves up ever so slightly at the end.

Count your freckles. See how your teeth are sharp enough to tear out a man’s throat. Look at your—”

Ophir tried to turn. “I don’t want to—”

“I said: look ,” Dwyn insisted.

At first, Ophir looked only at the siren.

She looked at Dwyn’s coffee-dark eyes, the gilded undercurrent of her skin, her full, pink mouth, her cascading hair.

She described Ophir’s shoulders, the pink blush of her soft cheeks, the sharp line of her collarbones, the gentle curves of her breasts, the cinch of her waist. She relinquished control at last, ceding to the siren’s instructions.

Dwyn watched in the mirror as Ophir’s eyes obediently traced every feature Dwyn listed.

Dwyn urged them closer to the mirror, an arm’s length from its glassy surface.

“Make me a promise?” Dwyn said.

“What?”

“For the next fifteen minutes, don’t break eye contact with yourself.”

Ophir blinked rapidly. Her heart rate spiked, cheeks flushing with heat. “What?” she demanded, spinning toward Dwyn.

“We’ll restart the clock now, since you’ve already lost. Now, look yourself in the eye,” Dwyn said as she slowly lowered to her knees.

“Dwyn, what are you—”

Dwyn disappeared beneath the blush chiffon of Ophir’s skirt and stole the words from her mouth.

No teasing, no tantalizing, no foreplay.

Ophir suddenly understood why they’d needed to be closer to the mirror as she collapsed against the cool, silver surface.

She braced herself with her forearms as her knees buckled, a moan escaping her lips.

She leaned her forehead to rest against the mirror, but at the last second, she caught her reflection.

Holy fucking shit .

Ophir swallowed, gasping against the rhythmic pleasure of a warm, wet mouth working between her thighs as she locked on to the golden eyes looking back at her.

She watched her pupils swell with telltale arousal as wave after wave of tantalizing ecstasy soaked her.

She could see the way her lips parted, the teeth that flashed as she groaned, the tendons in her neck that went taut.

Her fingers tensed against the cold mirror as if trying to dig into the solid surface.

She gasped for air, drinking in the contrast of hot and cold.

Ophir stifled a cry as two fingers slipped inside her, flexing gently as if beckoning her to climax.

Her eyes had closed again as they rolled into the back of her head.

The moment she felt Dwyn’s lips clamp around her clit and suck, they popped back open in shock.

The breath left her lungs as she fixed eye contact to the mirror for the final moments before she knew she was going to come.

She bit her lip to stifle her scream but couldn’t stop the sound, absorbing the glistening of sweat on her skin, the blush of her cheeks, the glaze of her eyes as pleasure clouded her ability to think or see.

Like climbing a spiraling staircase, she was wound tight as she was carried up ten steps, then twenty, then another and another and another more, until there was only one left before she reached the top. She knew that the top of this staircase had no landing. Once she crested the final step—

Ophir broke, collapsing against the mirror as she choked on her cry.

Her body tumbled from the top of the staircase through the dark, sickly-sweet void, into oblivion as pleasure coursed through her.

She flexed and tightened as its final pulsations wracked her body.

Dwyn waited until Ophir’s legs, her stomach, the wet grip of her innermost self relaxed before she slowly slipped her fingers out.

Ophir groaned at the sensitive contact as Dwyn freed herself from the chiffon and grinned up at her, lips shimmering, hair askew, skin dewy and flushed from the heat of being trapped beneath her skirt.

She bit her lip to stop the wicked grin from spreading.

Ophir lowered herself to the ground, a final pulse still coursing through her as she joined Dwyn on her knees. She wrapped her fingers in Dwyn’s hair and drank in the kiss, tasting sex and sunshine on her tongue.

“Did you look?” Dwyn asked, breaking the kiss.

She panted, unable to stop herself from smiling.

“And? Can you appreciate how fucking incredible you are?”

Ophir averted her eyes, but Dwyn grabbed her chin.

“Hey, you’re the princess—soon to be queen. Nothing, no one , embarrasses you. Own who and what you are, Firi. You are power.”

Ophir examined her face and saw the same look she’d seen before. She had seen it when Dwyn told her that she was a deer limping through the forest. She’d seen it on the cliff when Dwyn had struck her into conjuring a snake. And she saw it now.

“What is it you’re trying to get me to become?” Ophir asked. Her question dropped to a barely audible register as she reflected on Caris’s goals for unity, met with her inclinations to tear the world from its seams.

Dwyn smiled at her, running a gentle finger over her lips. She searched her eyes for a long time, studying, appraising, weighing, allowing a curious silence to fill the room until at last she said, “Everything.”