Page 30

Aldronn

May stirs against me as I slowly come awake the next morning, blinking against the brightness already striking the outside of the tent. My hand tightens on her stomach, pulling her back against my morning erection.

She squirms, rubbing her ass against my hard length.

I come fully awake, my cock aching with need. I growl into her ear, making her shiver in the most delightful way. “Minx, do you really want me to take you right here where anyone can hear?”

“Yep, uh huh, completely on board with that plan.” She nods her head. “I can be quiet.”

“I think you’re lying.” I nip her ear, scraping across the delicate skin with my tusks, until she gasps. “And you just proved me correct. You make far too many delightful noises, my bride.”

Instead of denying my words, she wiggles against me harder, making my cock throb in my pants. My playful bride, pushing me in ways no one else ever dares. I love it.

My hand drifts down her stomach, fingers plucking at the fastening of her leather pants until I can spread them open. I dip into her underwear, the callused tip of one finger stroking over her clit.

She jolts against me and moans.

I pull away, playing a game of seduction, even though it’s torture to stop touching her. “You’re not being quiet.”

My bride picks up the hand I have stretched out in front of her, that arm running under her head to serve as her pillow. Pulling it to her face, she plasters it over her mouth.

My fingers flex, the tips digging into her cheek as I growl, “Minx.” Holding her like this, muffling her, while others wait on the other side of thin leather, is one of the most erotic experiences of my life.

I dive back into her clothes, stroking over her clit and making her body arch. My moon bound gasps against my palm, and our minds connect as a flood of her desire courses through me.

It’s so intense I almost come. Then I grab hold of my steely will and wrench my body back under my control.

May’s legs strain against the leather of her pants, trying to open wider and give me more access. Her voice fills my mind. “Fuck, I want these pants off, but I also don’t want this to stop for a single second.”

“Do you know how wild it makes me to feel you so responsive?” I shift my hips forward until she’s pressed firmly to my erection. “Feel that? Feel how hard you make me?”

Her muffled inhale teases my skin as she rocks back into me, rubbing against my cock.

I stroke her clit over and over, her pleasure ratcheting higher and filling my body with need.

She moans, licking my palm, her hips straining forward, begging for my fingers to slide backward and fill her.

I chuckle, loving the way the sound excites her. “Naughty girl, I didn’t say you could come yet, did I?”

My bride grinds against my cock. “I want to make him as wild as he makes me.”

“You do.” I lick the shell of her ear, then blow over it with my next words. “Never doubt you do.”

She pants through her nose, trying to get enough air. I’d be worried, but her thoughts make it clear this adds to her excitement.

The pad of my finger teases her entrance, picking up her wetness and bringing it forward. I make little circles around her clit, moving slowly inward as she writhes and bucks in my grasp. Her pleasure thrums through my body, joining the hot press of my cock rubbing against her ass.

Her lips move against my palm, the sound muffled by the muzzle of my hand. So she uses her mental voice. “Please, Aldronn.” She begs so prettily, my bride. My erection leaps. “Please.”

“Do you want this, May?” My fingers drift backward to circle her entrance. “Do you want me to ram my fingers so deep inside of you that you forget your own name?”

She nods so vigorously my hand almost slips from her mouth. Instead, it tightens. “Ah ah ah. We’re keeping you quiet like you promised.”

She whines high in her throat, the sound full of need.

“Goddess, what you do to me,” I groan, grinding my cock against her ass.

I shove two fingers deep into her core, feeling both the hot, wet tightness of her around me and her satisfied sensation of being filled.

She sobs against my palm, her entire body quivering with need.

“Come for me, May.” My thumb swipes over her clit. “Come now, my little queen.”

My bride obeys, pleasure exploding outward in a tingling wave of warmth that crashes over me through our bond. She clings to the forearm and hand over her mouth, screaming my name into my palm.

Finally, she falls limp and sated, the mental connection fading as she calms.

My hand slips from her face to turn her head so I can take her mouth in a hot and possessive kiss. Then I ask, “Feeling better?”

May nods and gives one last wiggle as I pull my hand from her clothes. The movement brushes against my erection. After rolling in place, she reaches for the front of my pants.

I catch her hands in mine. “It was enough for me to feel your pleasure.” And it’s true. I’ve never been a selfish lover, always ensuring my partners had a good time, but this is new.

This is the first time I’ve chosen to ignore my own needs for someone else’s.

Feeling her orgasm, knowing I caused it, that I brought her to her peak, is satisfying in an entirely new way. Yet it’s more than that. It’s recognizing that maybe I can do what Wranth talked about and put May’s happiness above mine. Is this love? I’m still uncertain, but it feels like a step along the path to love, whereas before, I couldn’t even see a way forward.

“Besides, we’ve lingered long enough.” I bring her hands to my lips and kiss her knuckles. The noises from outside make it clear to my keen hearing that everyone else is awake. “If we start anything more, we likely won’t get away with it.”

“It’s not as if you’ve gotten away with anything up until this point,” Starfall’s voice rings out.

“We can all hear you,” Lukendevener adds. “It’s excruciating.”

Shadow’s ratcheting purr laugh mixes with Rune’s amused snort.

“Oh, god.” May slaps her hands to suddenly pink cheeks.

I stroke a hand over her hair. “Do you regret it?”

“Nope!” She offers me one of her mischievous smiles. “No regrets.”

I kiss her again, pulling away only when I hear Starfall make pretend gagging noises as if she has hay stuck in her throat.

“I’ll go out first and bear the brunt of the teasing.” I adjust myself in my pants and make sure my untucked shirt covers the obvious tenting of my erection. After one last quick kiss, I roll from the tent to a series of chuckles and a dry “about time” from Starfall.

I don’t bother to hide my smirk as I stomp into my boots and set the cleaning cloth and a waterskin inside the tent for May in case she wants to clean up.

I bring my hand to my nose, breathing in the sweet scent of her arousal, which does nothing to reduce the swelling of my cock.

Wranth slaps a hand to my back. “Good job!”

The other orcs look on, chuckling quietly to themselves as Shadow shakes with laughter.

I’m not used to being teased.

But it’s as my moon bound said. No regrets.

Once Naomi and Wranth leave on Sheevora and the hunters head out, Lukendevener leads May out into the tundra for training.

I follow, and Starfall ambles along with us as we pass the grazing unicorns.

When we reach a spot some distance from the camp, the dragon stops and spins to face May. “Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday. I want you to—”

“No,” I say. “I want to see the scrolls pertaining to mind reading.”

The dragon bristles, his wings rising and flaring wide. “I’ve already perused them and found the most reliable source of information. Jordean of Laravan is considered the foremost expert of his time.”

“I’m sure it is in terms of scholarship,” I say, hiding impatience behind a carefully neutral tone. “My bride, however, is not responding to this methodology. I think it’s worth trying others to see if another approach will help.”

“I agree,” she says.

Starfall lifts her head from where she’s been cropping grass. “Sounds reasonable to me.”

Luke glares at us for several more seconds, his foot tapping with impatience. Then he shrugs, the movement resettling his wings on his back. “Fine. You can look for other methodologies.”

His arm disappears into his hidden pocket and reemerges with several scrolls. He keeps one for himself and holds the remainder out to us. “I will read Jordean’s account again to ensure there’s nothing I’ve missed.”

I gather the scrolls and turn.

Starfall taps her horn on the ground, indicating the area she’s chosen. “There aren’t any bird nests in this bit.”

I nod thanks and spread out the scrolls, each five feet wide and several times that long.

My moon bound remains in front of the dragon, stretching out a hand. At Luke’s cocked eyebrow, she says, “The translation crystal, please.”

He digs it out and hands it to her, and she joins me. “Do you need this or can you read these?”

I stare at the first of the scrolls, lips pulling into a frown. The characters are familiar but slightly wrong, and there are entire words I don’t know. I reach for the crystal. “I better have it. This High Fae is an ancient form. I might misunderstand something important.”

I hold the crystal toward Starfall and shoot her a questioning glance. She taps her horn to it.

May starts to crouch beside the first scroll, but I clasp her shoulders and pull her to standing. “I’d like to try something.”

“Okay.”

“Instead of spending hours dissecting each scroll carefully, I’d like for you to skim each one and see if any of them resonate with you.”

“And if none of them do?” She glances at me over her shoulder.

“Then we go back to doing a closer study.” I wave at the long pieces of parchment. “Which of these have you already read?”

She points out two of the scrolls.

“Did either of them strike you as interesting?”

“Not really.”

I step around her to pick them up and move them to the side, rearranging the remaining scrolls in front of my bride. “I will study these two while you look over the rest.” Perhaps I’ll see something the others have missed.

“Why are you doing this?” She catches my arm before I can fully turn away. “I saw you working on all that king-stuff yesterday. You didn’t get all the way through the stack of paper Kronn has for you.”

“Trust me. There’s always more paperwork. Today, I want to help you.”

“The mission.” She nods. “I get it.”

“No, May. I want to help you .” It’s clearly been bothering her that she can’t get her magic to work, and I’ve hated seeing it. Her telepathy is strong. If anyone knows that, it’s me, who’s felt her power firsthand. “I know you can do this.”

She swallows, her beautiful brown eyes shining with a glaze of tears. A vulnerability lurks in them, one she typically hides behind mischief and smiles.

The sight pierces my heart with a pain so sharp it’s startling. I grew up surrounded by adults who constantly told me I was destined to be king. They believed in me, even as they pushed me to succeed.

Yet everything she told me about her life makes it seem as if no one believed in my bride. How could they fail to notice and admire her strong spirit? It takes the heart of a queen to stand up to a goddess, and my May has such a heart. I can see it, even if no one else can.

I grip her shoulders and lean over to press a kiss to the top of her head, whispering so that only she might hear, “I believe in you, May.”

Her soft inhale of shock is nothing like the ones she makes in bed, yet it’s just as precious. A tear glides down her cheek, and I brush it away with my thumb, cupping her face as she beams up at me, her strong spirit blazing like the sun.

About an hour later, May rocks back on her heels and shoots me a mischievous glance. “Gotta say I like the sound of this one.”

It’s just the two of us left. Starfall gave up a half hour ago, trotting back over to join the other unicorns. “Bipeds write about the most boring things.”

I agree with her. Many of these scrolls are written in an overcomplicated language that makes them especially tedious. So the thought that May found something is a relief.

“Really?” I lean over to look at the passage she points to, one describing a ritual where the practitioner dances naked under the light of twin moons. “ This is the one you want to try?” I smirk. “I’m far from opposed to the special… requirement of the ritual.” I imagine May, dancing in a grove, her body limned by moonlight. “Sadly, it specifically invokes the power of the moons of Avalon to work, and I’m not letting you go there.”

“Yeah, I hadn’t really thought about that part.” She shrugs. “It caught my eye because I like dancing, and also because it’s the last scroll. If it doesn’t have the answer, I’m out of options.”

“I refuse to believe that.” I stride over to Lukendevener and jab a finger back toward the scrolls. “This cannot be all of the information on mind reading.”

“Of course it’s not,” the dragon snaps, his wings rustling with irritation. “I carry my own personal library, not the accumulated knowledge of all dragonkind.”

“Did you ask Sheevora if she has anything?”

“I did, but the study of elfin magic has never been one of her specialties.”

“And you have nothing else?” I narrow my eyes.

When the dragon hesitates, I stretch out my hand, putting the snap of command into my voice. “Give it to me.”

“It’s from an unverified source.”

I refuse to give him any response other than to extend my hand closer.

Lukendevener snorts and reaches into his hidden pocket, his arm disappearing all the way to the shoulder as he leans forward in a stretch. It takes a while—far longer than any other retrieval thus far—but he finally pulls his hand free and waves a scroll in the air.

“That one’s human sized!” May darts forward, her body vibrating with excitement.

She’s right—this is the first scroll the dragon has shown us that’s a foot wide instead of five.

“It’s not good scholarship.” Lukendevener scowls. “It wasn’t written by a dragon.” The dragon slaps a scroll into my palm with one last muttered imprecation.

A tingle of power zips through me at the first touch of the ancient parchment, my premonition magic flaring to life. I grunt and spread the new parchment out for May. “This is it.”

“These are human letters!” She leans forward, and her smile falls away. “But it’s not English or French or German. I don’t know what it is.” My moon bound pulls out the translation crystal and studies the parchment again. “Shit. That worked, but the handwriting is horrible.”

She hands the crystal to me, and the ink on the paper swirls and moves, reforming into orcish. She’s right—the handwriting is abysmal.

“Can you read it?” I ask.

She waves for me to give her a moment, already bent over, her lips pursed in concentration. Her eyes bounce around at first, then her finger taps at a word. She snorts in amusement, her tone sardonic. “Go me! I found the word ‘the.’”

“It’s better than I’m doing,” I say.

She sits down cross-legged and pores over the scroll. After a bit, her shoulders slump. “It’s not an explanation of how to use magic. It’s a woman’s diary. She’s talking about baking bread for a village celebration.”

“I told you it was nothing,” the dragon says, tone smug.

I growl at him and set a hand on my bride’s shoulder. “You can do this.”

Her eyes fill with that look of wonder again, the one that says she’s amazed I believe in her. The one that makes me want to throttle the adults who ever let her doubt herself so much.

May starts reading again, her finger sliding over the crooked lines of text. “They go to the celebration. There’s a man there, visiting from another village. He’s selling pretty pieces of jewelry, small twists of copper wire made into rings. He claims they can ward off evil spirits. She wants to know if it’s true. She—”

Her breath catches in her throat, her eyes widening.

“What is it?” I ask.

May clears her throat. “She wrote, ‘I went into the house of his mind and found the room with the rings. There I saw he lied. They had no magic.’”

The scroll falls to her lap, and she whispers, “The house of his mind. The room with the rings.”

“This resonates with you.”

“She used a visual metaphor to read other people’s minds, to give her magic shape.” Excitement fills May’s voice. Then she gives a soft huff of amusement. “Fuck. It’s like Sherlock Holmes and his ‘mind palace.’ I guess it’s a good thing Cumberbatch was so hot. I watched every episode.”

I don’t understand colloquialism she’s using this time, but I don’t need to. I know what she means . “You found the answer. I knew you could do it.”

“I really did!” She beams and throws her arms around me, wrapping me in her bright joy.