Page 25 of Atop the Faerie Throne (The Fifth Nicnevin #5)

Twenty-Four

Rhoswyn

I wake to soft hands running down my spine, caressing the curve of my ass, bringing me to wakefulness with a slow, lingering kind of sensuality that makes me melt.

How is it I went to sleep snuggled between Jaro and Lore, and now I’m waking up beside Drystan?

“Good morning,” I murmur into the pillowcase.

I try to bring my arms down so I can turn over and embrace him, only to pause when I realise they’re bound to the headboard. His low chuckle is completely humourless as I tug against the rope.

“Want to rephrase that, huntress?”

There’s a level of lethality underlying his voice that sends a shiver running from my spine to my wingtips. A silent query flutters down the mating bond, checking for consent, and he relaxes when my arousal answers for me.

“Good morning, master,” I groan, finally blinking open my eyes to watch as his lips caress my shoulder blade, replaced by the scrape of teeth against the juncture of my neck and shoulder.

What did I do this time? I wonder silently as my body arches towards the punishing onslaught.

And that’s what this is. Punishment. I can feel the darkness in him radiating down our bond, coated in an ice-cold layer of steely control.

His hand cups my ass and squeezes, making me gasp. A second later, he releases it, spanking me hard enough to make the flesh heat.

I blame it on the fact that I’m still tired that I don’t notice the glimmer on the pillow until he does it again.

My engagement necklace.

It must’ve fallen off when I died, and in all the chaos, I forgot to look for it.

Drystan notices where my attention has gone, and my next spank is considerably louder, the sound echoing around the room.

“You promised you’d never take it off.”

Oops.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

It’s not just losing it that I’m apologising for. I know my death bothered him as well.

“You are forever pushing yourself into harm’s way.” His disappointment stings more than the palm of his hand. “After you were repeatedly told not to. Worse, this time you knew you risked the life of the Goddess-damned Fomorian as well.”

My disbelief is enough to make me twist my neck to meet his eyes.

“You’re mad that Caed could’ve died?”

He raises a single brow, and it takes everything in me not to stick out my tongue in response. I don’t understand him, even with the bond.

“I was trying to forgive him,” Drystan says, straddling the backs of my thighs and pinning me down. “Had I known I was subjecting myself to his intolerable presence for naught, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

“That is the most twisted male logic—” Another hard spank cuts me off, and I scream in shock. “Drystan!” Shit! That slip earns me another, just as harsh, on the other side. “Master!” I hastily correct.

My ass is glowing, and more embarrassingly, I’m soaked. Thanks to his weight on me, I can’t even rub my thighs together to ease the burning ache that he’s responsible for. The worst thing about the bond is I can feel his satisfaction as he caresses the reddened flesh, admiring his own handiwork. Even if having him play with my ass like this wasn’t such a turn on, I’m pretty sure I’d be on the edge of coming from that alone.

“You died.” He spanks me again. “You lost your engagement necklace.” Another spank.

“I’m sorry,” I plead, as the humiliating slick of my own arousal drips past my clit and soaks into the bedding. “I want it back.”

Drystan flicks aside my hair and uses his free hand to collar my throat.

“I don’t believe you.”

What? How can he not…?

“I need it back,” I beg. “Please, master. I won’t ever lose it again. I love you.”

Drystan’s bond skips in my mind, and the next strike is the hardest yet.

“I do,” I promise. “I love you.”

In a single piercing instant of clarity that’s completely out of place in my lust-blanked mind, I realise what this is.

Drystan, who has only known rejection and coldness from everyone who was supposed to love him, is concerned that I might not want him anymore. This might be a little about my dying, but the necklace was his symbol of my acceptance. Every time he saw it around my neck, he knew I still wanted him and was still choosing him.

This is his grumpy way of asking for reassurance that nothing has changed. That I still love him.

Of course, being a surly Winter Court lord, he couldn’t just ask me like a normal person.

He’s lucky that my ass is happy to bear the brunt of his preferred method of communication.

“I will always love you,” I whisper as his thumb caresses the side of my throat. “Please, master, put it on me again. I won’t wait to ask next time. I want it back. I should’ve worn it when Lore fucked me, just so they all knew I was yours, too.”

My begging does things to him, even though his face never shows it. Fire lights up the depths of his eyes, turning the amber to magma as he picks up the delicate chain and holds it towards my lips.

“Kiss it.”

My breath whooshes out of me as I follow the order, pressing my lips to the snowflake gem and sighing in relief as he finally, blessedly, threads the chain back where it belongs.

“We’re not done yet,” he murmurs in my ear as he clicks the clasp back into place.

We aren’t?

“I want to come,” I tell him flatly.

He shrugs, all regal and unaffected despite the way he has me pinned and tied at his mercy. “You’ll come when my cock is buried in your ass and not before. Every time you die, I’m going to make sure your ass is sore inside and out. Maybe that’ll finally teach you to take better care of yourself.”

I freeze, but he’s already moving, reaching for something on the nightstand. His hands return, slick with oil that only gets colder as he works it along my crease. Goddess, what kind of magic is this? And how am I so turned on when the only thing he’s played with is my ass?

His hands leave my cheeks, settling on the mattress on either side of me momentarily as he uses his knees to kick my legs wide. Once I’m spread open like an offering, he raises my hips and shoves a pillow underneath. I squirm, trying to escape, but there’s nowhere to go. My hands are tied, and with him like this, I can’t do anything but hump the cushion in frustration. The way it lifts me gives him better access to everything .

“Soaked,” he says, thumb stroking my clit once before returning to massage my ass, sinking slowly in to the first knuckle. “You love this, huntress. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

Goddess.

Dark, twisty pleasure lights me up from the inside out with every stroke. I sob into the pillow as he plays with me like he has all the time in the world. His thumb is quickly swapped out for two fingers, then a third, spearing the icy burn deeper inside me with each thrust. He never really gives me time to adjust properly, always leaving me just short of that point where my body yields comfortably to the invasion.

I writhe, pressing my heavy breasts into the suddenly abrasive silk in search of something that might release the pressure inside of me. The cold is torturous, holding me back even though I’m straining for that elusive edge with all my might.

He withdraws, and the wet sound of him coating himself in more oil competes with my own ragged breath to fill the room. The scalding frost is still tormenting my insides, lingering even though his fingers are gone, adding to the sensations building at the base of my spine and the throb of my clit. Then he notches that pierced and slippery crown at my entrance, and I tense.

“Relax,” he orders.

When I don’t immediately comply, he wipes his hand on the sheets and warns, “Wings.”

Pleasure streaks through me, my clit and the membranes on my back inexplicably connected as his hands grip my uppermost wings and use them as leverage to push himself into my body.

I feel every single piercing slip inside, one by one. The oil seems to cling to them more than anything else, chilling them. I whimper. The pillow under my hips puts him at a devastating angle, enabling his cock to hit places inside of me that make glittering dust cascade from my back.

It’s just too much to process. My poor mind can’t take it, and as he slowly seats himself against my burning ass cheeks, tears fall from my eyes. I’m in love. I’m in Hell. I’m so lust drunk I can’t even scream, my nerve endings singing from pleasure-pain that doesn’t make any sense.

“Rhoswyn,” Drystan’s voice cuts through it all. “Do you need to use your safe word?”

I shake my head against the pillow, keeping my face buried so I don’t have to see him or face the truth of how much I want this. The darkness is comforting, allowing me to feel without worrying how much of my violet dust will be covering every inch of us right now, or why I can feel Jaro’s and Caed’s surprised arousal beating down at me.

“Please, master. I need you to fuck me. I need to come.” The pillow muffles the words, but he’s close enough that he can still hear me.

His tongue traces the line of my throat, lips pressing a kiss over the chain of the necklace that suddenly feels more like a collar before moving up to the delicate point of my ear.

“Well done, huntress. You can come as many times as you want.”

Then he moves . His hips drag back, then snap forward, burying him somehow deeper than he was before. There’s no buildup, just raw, explosive fucking. He knows exactly how much pressure he can put on my wings, how to move his thumbs to massage the joints until I’m panting and screaming beneath him.

I didn’t think I could come like this, but the cold burn in my ass combines exquisitely with the wing stimulation, hurtling me towards the stars without mercy. Then he uses the bond against me, sending every single ounce of his own pleasure down it.

I’m gone. I’m so far gone I can’t even hear anymore. Everything is white noise and searing pleasure. My world narrows to our bond, and the resonance of his heartbeat and mine in perfect, racing sync.

He drives into my ass like he’s trying to imprint himself into my every cell, and I come again as he roars his completion to the open ceiling, as untamed and wild as I’ve ever heard him. When he releases my wings to slump against me, he presses open-mouthed kisses to every inch of skin within reach, licking the sweat and dust from my skin with a low groan.

It’s only much later, when he’s cleaned both of us up and my immortal healing has removed all traces of redness from my wrists and ass, that I finally ask.

“Did Jaro and Caed…?”

“They came to find you,” he admits, as I snuggle deeper into his side. “But when you’re in my ropes, you’re mine. They figured that out when their eyebrows caught fire.”

I smile against him. “Were you really mad at me for almost killing Caed?”

Drystan’s finger, which had been tracing lazy spirals over my arm, stills. He takes a long minute to collect his thoughts before he resumes the motion and answers me.

“I was afraid.”

The un-Drystan-like confession makes my lips part in surprise.

“If he’d died after you confessed to loving him, I knew you’d choose to follow. I was uncertain whether you might shun me for causing his death once we were reunited in the Otherworld.”

Because Drystan is the only one who’s yet to trust Caed fully, and thus the only reason his curse hasn’t broken.

“I haven’t been the easiest male to deal with since he joined us,” he admits. “I realise I’ve not tried as hard as I maybe should’ve to forgive him. It was simply inconceivable to me that you might grow to love someone who had hurt you so badly. I could never do the same in your place.”

No, I dare say he couldn’t.

Whenever my dullahan is hurt, a wall goes up. After his Winter Court upbringing, it’s no wonder that those barriers are sky high. I’ve never been able to do that, no matter how hard I try. I think Danu knew that when she set the terms of Caed’s curse, which is why my forgiveness played no part in it.

“I am trying.” Drystan drops a kiss to the top of my head. “It’s not easy.”

I know. “I can’t lose any of you.”

Silence reigns.

A stone sinks in my gut, souring the lingering tendrils of pleasure. Drystan can’t lie, so he can’t reassure me.

I hate that I understand it. I hate that he’s trying, and that at the end of all of this, it still might not be enough. My heart gives a hollow little thud.

“If… if Elatha still has his name… will you…?” I can’t seem to get a full sentence out, but he grasps my meaning.

His sigh ruffles my hair. “That certainly doesn’t make it easier, but at least Bree was able to stop him from issuing any more orders.”

Thank the Goddess for small mercies. If Caed was still a threat to me, even unwillingly, I don’t think Drystan would stand a chance.