Page 37 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

36

Kat

B ut shadows weren’t something I feared anymore. They fell away, and I surged into them.

“Bas—”

He clamped a hand over my mouth and an arm around my waist and carried me into the sitting room. “Not so near the door,” he whispered before lowering his hand.

Fae hearing. The guards.

In silence, I led him to my bedroom. There were no locks on the door, but we’d hear if anyone entered the suite, and that would give Bastian a chance to hide.

Once we were there, I held him, relieved, grateful, aching to finally have the chance when I thought I’d missed it. “How did you get in here? Why risk it?”

“I heard about your uncle, so I needed to speak to you. Then you missed our meeting, and…” He made a low, growly sound that reverberated into my chest. “There were no guards, so I could just walk in and wait.”

It was his double outside, keeping up appearances. No one would suspect he was with me when he could be clearly seen playing the gracious guest.

“And what about getting out?”

He raised one shoulder and one side of his mouth. “That’s future Bastian’s problem. Right now I just want to make sure you’re all right. Your uncle, he didn’t hurt you, did he?”

I ducked my chin, not wanting him to see the marks. Much as I’d played the part for Cyrus and the rest of Dawn, I didn’t want to be a victim, not with Bastian. Instead I gave him a vicious smile that was all me, no act. “Not as much as I hurt him.”

“That’s my Kat.”

It felt good to hear him say that, like it scrubbed away a little of the lie I was living. It gave me the reassurance to slip from his hold and go to the dressing table. He followed as if drawn in my wake.

He watched me pull pins from my hair. “We’re together now. You can tell me what happened.”

I cringed away from that idea. “What if I don’t want to?”

He came up behind me, gathering the thick fall of my hair and pushing it over my shoulder. “I thought you’d want to.” I turned in the tight space between him and the dressing table as he went on. “Process your feelings. Spill the truth. Explain what happened and wh?—”

It was my turn to clamp my hand over his mouth. “If it’s all right with you, I’d prefer we go with you shutting up and fucking me.” I lowered my hand and fisted it in his black shirt, enjoying the way the little serpent buttons bit into my palms. “I’ve had too many people’s hands on my body without my choice, and now I need what I choose.”

He furrowed his brow, mouth opening like he wasn’t sure what to say, whether I really wanted this.

“I need you to help me erase all that. If… if you can. If you want to, that is. I know you’ve just had?—”

This time he silenced me. His kiss said he could. It said he needed to erase some things, too. While he occupied my mouth with a kiss that needed, that consumed, that sent shivers racing across my body, I started on unfastening those little buttons.

He caught my fingers and pulled away an inch, and I felt like the most inconsiderate person in the world, because the shadows under his eyes were even worse close-up—practically bruises. And I’d thought only of myself.

My heart cracked as I cupped his cheek and smoothed my thumb over the dark marks. “And you? How are you—really?”

“How am I? How am I ?” He blasted out a bitter laugh. “I’m this close to losing my damn mind.” He held up his hand. Several small puncture wounds pitted his palm, some healed, some fresh.

He’d done this to master himself. I’d cut half moon nail marks into my palms enough times to understand the cost of self-control.

“I know we have a plan…” His voice was rough, not the smooth spymaster, but someone who fought for each word. “But every time I’m near him, I want to…” His hand fisted, knuckles turning white. “I want to rip him apart. I want to wring his neck. Pound him into the floor. I want to let my shadows crush him until he’s nothing but pulp. I’ve imagined so many ways I can destroy him, Katherine. So many .”

I’d never seen him so raw, so on the edge, so… desperate.

It was almost frightening… would be terrifying, if it was turned on me. But I was inside the space of his arms—I was with him—and his rage was turned outward. Maybe I was sick, but it made me feel safe.

Yet it took a toll on him to hold it all inside. To keep control. To not act on those fantasies.

Perhaps there was a way I could help him as he’d once helped me.

“Then let me take care of you.”

He blinked like he didn’t understand.

“You’ve taken control enough times to allow me to let go. Let me do the same for you.”

“You don’t need to do that for me. I can’t ask?—”

“It’s for me too. I—I need…” I didn’t know how to say it, exactly, but I needed control of something.

Although I’d killed my uncle, which unlike stabbing Robin in a terrified thrashing moment had been a deliberate choice, it was still a choice that had been forced upon me.

There would be no forcing here. I would have a moment of control where every decision was mine taken as and when I wished.

If Bastian would let me.

My chest heaved, the need strong and the fear it would be denied stronger.

He searched my gaze for a long moment, then lowered his hands. “I am yours to command.”

Five words had never stolen my breath quite like that.

I placed his hands on my cheeks first, soaking up his warmth, the familiar presence. I kissed each of those cuts on his palm, silently saying I understood.

He watched me, a kind of stillness radiating from him that I’d never seen before. Only his chest moved, steady, deep.

Finally, it crossed my mind that this might scare him. Control was a matter of safety for him. If he was in charge, nothing bad could happen. At least that was what he told himself.

What I was asking of him… and the fact he’d accepted. The responsibility was overwhelming.

I held his face, making him meet my gaze in case he had used that careful breathing to go away and find false safety. “Bastian? Any time you want me to stop, you say. Any time you want this to change—to go back to normal, tell me. I’ll do whatever you need. I’m only in charge for as long as you agree to it. Do you understand?”

He slid his hands from to my wrists, pressing my palms into his cheeks. “I do. And in case you doubted—I consent to this. Freely. Willingly. Wholeheartedly. I trust you, Katherine.”

His words filled me, not with the drunken power I had felt over Cyrus, but something sweeter, something saner. Something that sustained rather than paring me back to sharp edges.

I finished unbuttoning his shirt and slid it over his shoulders, then moved on to his trousers, enjoying the view as I went. His smooth skin, the hard planes of his chest, the shadows that carved out every muscle. They were more defined than before I’d gone to Dawn—I realised now, it was the hours spent training with Faolán. “You have a beautiful body, you know that?”

His eyes widened and a warm flush crept over his face, bringing back some colour where earlier he’d been so ashen.

Hmm, so he enjoyed praise too. I smirked to myself as I hooked his trousers over his hips and let them fall to the floor. I wasn’t sure there had ever been a time where he was naked and I was fully clothed. “But you haven’t let me explore it properly before, have you?”

He frowned, actually looking contrite. “No, love. I haven’t.”

I couldn’t help giving him a quick kiss, not when he looked like that. “I forgive you. And I intend to make up for it now.”

Taking my time, I caressed his shoulders, letting my thumbs follow the line of his collarbone. I held his biceps, amused by how my hand didn’t even reach halfway around. I noted the prominent veins so unlike my own and how the slight movements of his fingers rippled along his forearms. Gods, it was fascinating.

His chest was next. I’d buried my face in it so many times, taken shelter and solace there, but I’d never had time to simply appreciate it. The way my fingers looked splayed over it, ever so slightly indenting his skin when I pressed. The way it spread when he pulled his shoulders back and stood tall. The way I could hear the solid ba-dum of his heart when I pressed my ear to it.

I stayed there, listening to his rhythm, the reassurance that he was alive and here, when so many things had worked against that. Including the scar that cut through his torso, pale against his rich toned skin. I traced it, thanking everything in the universe that it had not taken him.

Then there was that nipple piercing. Unlike the first time I’d seen him without a shirt back in my rooms in Lunden, I could indulge my curiosity.

I smoothed the pad of my thumb over it, first, glancing up in time to catch him lift his chin. He watched me, eyelids heavy, pupils wide. Holding his gaze, I tiptoed and ran my tongue over his nipple, enjoying the feel of it stiffening. When I closed my mouth around it and flicked my tongue, he sucked in a harsh breath, pressing into my touch.

As I pulled away, I grinned and nipped him before circling to his back.

Good gods, it was a work of art. The Celestial Serpent enhanced his muscles, adding to their shadows. I ran my hand down the cleft over his spine and placed my thumbs in the dimples above his backside.

His back was a shield. When he held me, this was what took the brunt of whatever the world threw at us. He gave me space in his arms so I could find respite.

It made my heart at once full and sore.

Where was his respite?

I was smaller than him, of course, but I slipped my arms around his waist and squeezed. “I’m not a very good shield,” I whispered, “but I’m strong. I can share your burdens.”

“Where did that come from?” He quickly covered my hands, reassuring.

“I was thinking about how much you protect others. How many times you’ve shielded me so I can have a moment. But you need that kind of care, too.”

In silence, he pulled my arms tighter.

After a long while, I planted a kiss between his shoulder blades (I had to tiptoe, of course), and took a step back.

His backside. That, I simply appreciated.

“Are you just staring at my arse?”

“Staring is such a blunt word for it, but… yes. Yes, I am. It’s perfect, really. And ...” I grabbed it, loving how it filled my hand before I skimmed down to his legs. “You talk about my thighs, Bastian, but yours are…” There were no words to end that sentence; I could only make an appreciative sound.

He chuckled as I moved around to his front, his angry tension gone.

One hand on his chest, I backed him to the bed. Such a novelty to be the one manoeuvring him around. And the fact he obeyed? It was everything I needed.

He sat there, half hard, waiting for me, but I paused, touching his thigh, and raised my eyebrows in question. Was he sure? Caressing his body was one thing, but letting me take charge of actual sex was a step further.

“I want you to touch me, Kat. Burn me, my beloved flame.”

His submission warmed me, filled me. He chose me, chose this… chose us .

So I bent and licked his length, base to tip, letting my tongue curl around his piercing. He shivered for me. I closed my mouth around him and sank down as far as I could, trying to ease my throat to take more, and his shiver became a shudder punctuated with a soft moan.

Mine. That sound was mine. That shudder. The throb of him on the roof of my mouth.

As I lifted, I caught my breath and rolled my tongue over his piercing and the blunt head.

“Fuck!” He jolted, hand plunging into my hair.

Never mind half hard, he strained to attention now, and I lapped up the salty bead I wrung from him.

I went on, swallowing him down as best I could, swirling my tongue, desperate now to taste more of him and know I was the one who’d caused it.

“Please, love,” he huffed out, raw and ragged. “I need to?—”

When I squeezed his balls, he bucked into me with a cry, cutting off my breath. His thighs grew tight, and when I shoved him back, to lie down and enjoy my attention, he obeyed. I let him thrust into my mouth harder, faster, until my eyes watered, because I could feel the way it built in him—the trembling loss of control. The thing he needed.

I triumphed when he bellowed and spilled across my tongue, sweet and salty and thick. I swallowed him down and licked up the last drops as his length twitched and pulsed. And when I sat up, I grinned.

He lay there, panting, eyes screwed shut. “That was…” He groaned, running a hand over his face.

“It was, wasn’t it.”

He peered at me out the corner of his eye. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you smug before.”

I preened, very much enjoying it, though my body throbbed with its own need.

As he got his breath back, I slid my gown off my shoulders and let it drop to the floor. He sat up, gaze flowing over me, slow as honey. “Then again, I’m sure I’d be smug if I looked like that.” I stepped into the space between his knees as he went on. “Still, I’m the one who gets to enjoy you. Be near you. Love you.” Arms looping around my hips, he kissed my soft belly. “Do I get to worship you yet?”

I ran my fingers through his hair and along the edge of his ear. “Do you think you’re ready?”

His groan reverberated through me, adding to that throbbing need. “If you keep doing that, I soon will be.”

I climbed up on the bed, straddling him. In this position, the memory of Cyrus tugged on me, intrusive and unwanted. I screwed my eyes shut, shoving it away. “Bastian.” His name was a reminder, a truth, the salve that would get rid of my wound. “I need you to…”

He held my hips, held me here and now, so I could open my eyes. He looked up at me, eyebrows pinched together in painful understanding. “Erase other places, other times… other people.”

“Yes.” The word ended on a hiss as he slid his middle finger between my legs. Back and forth, he glided, rubbing away one uninvited fingerprint after another, the times I’d been grabbed, the dark nights with Robin, being tugged onto Cyrus’s lap.

My hips rolled, caught in his rhythm, as pleasure kindled in me, embers spreading. And they helped, too. They caught aflame and burned away each intrusion, until the violators were nothing but ash on the breeze of my heaving breaths.

“There she is,” he whispered, every word fanning the flames as he dipped a finger in me.

I whimpered, trying to ride him more deeply, but he only let me have that moment and instead used the slickness to circle my apex. The smooth friction of it rubbed away the world until there was only him looking up at me as he kissed and sucked my breasts, and me, rocking over his hand, chasing, chasing, chasing.

Then I was exploding. The world ended in white-hot flame. It consumed my shuddering body, scorched my cries, took everything base and human and broken and transformed it into a creature of flame that soared.

When I sank back to earth, he caught me. Our kisses rewrote new stories over all we’d burned away. Under me, he was hard again, and I slid along his length, winning a deep groan that rumbled from him into my mouth. I felt it in my bones, my heart, my essence.

I pulled away just far enough to hold his gaze as I guided him to my entrance. I waited there for throbbing seconds, and he seemed to understand he was still mine to command, because he held still.

Slowly, slowly, I lowered myself, groaning at the familiar fullness, the sweetly aching stretch.

“Katherine,” he breathed, hands fisting in the sheets. He had a way of making my name more than its syllables. A prayer to gods who actually listened. An incantation. A purpose and intent.

I rolled my hips, urging him to say it again. It was a hit I needed. A drug whose addiction I’d never even try to break.

He obliged, whispering against my lips again and again as he rose to meet me, driving deeper, until we were both shuddering and slick with sweat and sex, one body with one mind.

But I still had one touch I needed to wipe from my flesh.

Pulse thundering, I eased his back to the bed and took his hand. With a shaky breath, I placed it on my throat.

His fingers stiffened, not gripping. “Are you?—?”

“My body is mine. I won’t be defined by what someone else has done to it. Not anymore. This life is mine. I am mine.”

Hesitation evaporating, he took hold of me.

As his fingers tightened, there were no memories. Nothing unwanted crowding in. Only us.

I took up my rhythm, riding him, a new beat drowning out what went before. Relief flooded me, mingling with my pleasure. This was my body. My choice.

Hands on his chest, I let it drown me, riding the surge of his hips rising to meet mine, the rough cries I wrung from him, the flex of his fingers that were capable of killing but that I trusted to hold rather than destroy.

I lost myself in our mingled pleasure as it peaked together, and only rediscovered myself as I collapsed on his chest. We caught our breath, wrapped in our own satiation. Eventually he lifted my chin, kissed me, and we found each other in that quiet time, slowly emerging to remember the rest of the world existed.

Outside, the sun had set, and when I got up to head to the bathroom, I peeked outside. The palace grounds were quiet and dark. The party had dissolved.

He welcomed me back to bed, pulling me under the covers, and we lay there talking. He spoke about Kaliban, his regrets, how convinced he’d been of his hatred. He asked how we’d met, and I told him the full story of our friendship. We wiped tears from each others cheeks in the glittering dark.

I told him what had happened to Uncle Rufus. I didn’t cry. My heart didn’t crowd my chest, too loud or too fast. The monster was slain. I was safe.

I didn’t need heroes—I’d saved myself. And now my perfect villain had helped me reclaim the last marks that evil had left.

We discussed the revelations about his family. The questions spilled from him, but I had no answers, not even hiding in the corners where Sura had planted the truth. “She’s the only one left who might know more. We could find her—travel under a flag of truce. I’m sure she’ll speak to you about a personal matter like this.” I caught his cheek when he frowned and tried to look away. “She wanted you to know, eventually, that’s why she told me.”

The muscles under my hand went hard. “And I still owe her for that. You haven’t had more headaches since then, have you?” His thumb traced over my brow, gentle, concerned.

“She can tell you more about your mother, you know. Something that isn’t coloured by whatever Braea feels about what she did.” Much as it pained him, Bastian had stood by his decision to kill Sylen. He carried that guilt but had thought it best for his country. Yet I wondered if Braea felt the same.

He made a noncommittal sound and fell quiet.

Softly, the orrery in the sitting room chimed midnight. I felt every strike. “So many nights I’ve lain here, thinking about the fact you were just the other side of something thinner than a piece of paper, wondering if I could tear through.”

He pulled me closer, brow pressed to mine. “I’ve done the same. Sleeping on my side of the bed, wondering if you’re here at that exact moment.” He took my fingertips and kissed them. “Every morning, I wake with my hand still in the space between us, and for a moment, I swear I can feel you.”

I bit back a sob, eyes burning with tears. The cruel parts of the world were creeping back in.

“This is only temporary, love. I swear it.” He held me and let me cry out my mixture of sorrow and frustration and impotent rage. “We will—oh shit .”

I sat up at the same moment he did. “What is it?”

“Fuck. Fuck .” His gaze had gone distant as he shook his head. “Outside. My double.”

Stomach coiling in dread, I rolled to my feet and gathered his clothes. After so long, practicality came easily. “Nothing good, I’m guessing.”

“It’s Sura’s daughter. She’s in the gardens.”