Page 9 of His Dark Delights

Lilly

Ren laid me back onto the bed, and I was too physically drained to oppose. With my head on the pillow and the mattress dipping under my weight, I noted how bodily satisfied I felt. My muscles were soft, yielding earth and my bones were flowing water while a glowing sun simmered in my belly.

“Are you alright?” Ren asked, tugging my mind from a drifting haze. I glanced up at him through heavy lids and nodded.

Perhaps I should have felt shame for allowing him access to my body.

I hardly knew the knight, and he might have fae blood on his hands after the state I discovered him in.

He didn’t deserve any part of me, and yet I longed to share myself.

I wanted to explore levels of pleasure with him that were previously unavailable to me.

He leaned over me and brushed a wild strand of hair away from my face. The gentle smile on his sensual mouth made my heart flutter, and a new current of energy lit me up from within.

“Will you share the bed with me tonight, Lilly?” That tentative question contained a storm of promise and passion.

No man in the village would want me for a wife thanks to my heritage. If I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity with Ren, it might never come again. I didn’t want to die of old age, alone and miserable, having never felt the touch of a lover. I knew what came next if I agreed.

“Yes.”

Ren’s darkened blue eyes lit up like the sky on a bright spring day.

His smile widened, and I felt it against my lips when he leaned down and kissed me, softly, tenderly, as if that were our first kiss instead of the manic, consuming from before.

That one was sweeter—a kiss I could hold on to and remember long after he left.

“Will you let me finish working on the barn now?” Ren asked, smirking.

I rolled my eyes and grumbled, “I’m too tired to argue. I’ll be cross if you open your wounds again.”

Ren sat up and placed his hand over his heart. “I swear I’ll be careful.” Something wicked gleamed in his gaze. “Trust that I know when to be gentle, Lilly.”

He put the shirt back on and left me blushing furiously. If I stayed in bed any longer, I’d keep replaying what happened in my head. I got up and fixed my dress in favor of distracting myself with chores. There would be time later to reminisce, but the day was young, and the farm needed tending.

I made a light lunch of cheese sandwiches paired with fresh berries from the garden while Ren toiled, hammering away at the barn and anything else he deemed in need of fixing. He joined me in the pasture, settling in for a late lunch and watching my animals graze.

Millie stared at Ren while chewing grass, and I bit down a laugh.

She studied him with suspicion, and I couldn’t blame her for it.

We’d been alone out here for months before the knight had fallen into our lives.

Having another person on the farm was strange at first, but welcome and refreshing now that he was awake and providing more than I would have dreamt possible.

“Can I ask you questions?” I asked before biting into a plump, red berry.

Ren chewed on a bite of his sandwich and nodded his permission. Though I noted a guarded wall rising behind his eyes.

“Where are you from?” I started.

“The capital,” he answered easily, confirming my suspicion he was a knight for the new king.

“I’ve never been to the capital. What’s it like?”

“To be honest, I spent most of my life hating it. My mother was the only reason I stayed, then I hated the capital more when I lost her.” His jaw flexed, and he briskly turned his head as if he hadn’t meant to say that.

Tight-lipped, he cast his gaze to the thin clouds coasting across the pale mid-afternoon sky.

“I’m sorry.” Unthinking, I turned to relieve his misery. I reached out and placed my hand on his thigh. His next breath shuddered through him when he felt my touch, and he cast his gaze down to my dainty hand on his knee.

“You understand how I feel, don’t you?” His eyes flicked up to mine.

“I do. Life hasn’t been the same without my father. One day he was here and the next he wasn’t,” I replied, skimming my thumb in circles.

“What about your mother? You haven’t mentioned her.”

I stiffened and pulled my hand back. Lips pursed, I held onto my answer until I knew what to say. I took a bite of my sandwich as I thought it over. Ren was a knight from the capital. Telling him the truth might mean my life.

“She left after I was born. I don’t know her.” Mostly true, and half a lie. In a biological and magical way, I knew her. “It hurts that she isn’t here, but I believe she had a good reason for leaving.”

“And what reason was that? I was so close to my mother. She wouldn’t have left me behind for anything other than death.” Ren seemed soured by his own experience and annoyed at the mother I’d never met for leaving me behind.

“It wasn’t safe for her to stay.” That was the only acceptable and vague answer I could think of. Then I shrugged and turned the topic back on the knight. “What of your father?”

Ren clammed up at once. His entire frame went rigged, and his fist clenched on his thigh until his knuckles turned bone white. He stared out at the pasture as if living through a memory that haunted him.

“All I got is an unwanted responsibility from him. He doesn’t matter now. My father is dead,” Ren answered after several brittle seconds of silence. He tore another bite from his sandwich, nearly inhaling half of it in one go.

I picked at the crust of my bread, uneasy with the waves of Ren’s soured mood rolling off him. Swallowing over a dry tongue, I said, “Well, you don’t have any responsibilities while you’re here with me. If you need a place to rest, I’ll give you that.”

The first hint of a smile twitched at the corner of his mouth, and a dimple appeared on his cheek. “Rest isn’t what I want from you, Lilly.” He reached over and cupped my cheek in his large, warm palm, and I leaned into his hand. “I’d rather have your heart.”

My traitorous heart reacted as if she knew she was the topic of conversation, fluttering and racing behind my ribs with the need to burst free. I jerked away from Ren’s hand, wide eyed and breathing hard.

“Tell… tell me of the good things about the capital. You seem to favor it a bit more now.” I couldn’t stop to process what he’d said or if he even meant those words. Their memory would hurt too much when he eventually left—and he would.

“I learned to find pleasure when it became available to me. It was like one day the world was in my hands after a lifetime of living on the streets and begging for scraps. Wine, women, money, food, and all the fake friends a man ever needs. None of it filled the hole of my mother’s death.

Not even this damned war—” he cut himself off with a long exhale.

His head fell back, and his shoulders sagged before he peered at me again. “I’d much rather stay here with you.”

My cheeks turned pink, and I didn’t know how to stop that embarrassing physical reaction to him. “As I said, you’re welcome here. Stay for as long as you like.”

“I think we’ll both find some pleasure to ease our pains while I’m here,” he said with a voice like sin and silk.

My pain tied with Ren’s, telling me that on some level we were the same. It was bittersweet in a way, but it connected us. Ren understood the hole in my heart, and I recognized the void in his. And like him, I needed to find pleasure where it was available, if only to ease my melancholy.

Ren offered to wash the dishes after dinner again.

It gave me time to hide in the bath and wash every inch of myself for what came later.

Regardless of my inexperience, I had book-knowledge of what to expect.

Outside of that, the passing knight made me feel unexpected sensations—things books hadn’t prepared me for.

I dressed in my summer nightgown; a pale slip of cream-colored cotton with thin straps over the shoulders and a hem that fell above the knee. I had nothing more provocative to entice a knight into my bed. Maybe I didn’t need it.

Before Ren returned, I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, opened a book, and curled up by the window. In the low light emanating from the fireplace, I pretended to read, and hoped the glow fading outside masked the shaking in my limbs.

He took a bath while I fiddled with the worn pages in my lap. On the other side of the door, Ren was in the tub, naked and lathering soap, into places on his body I dreamed of exploring. Would I get the chance tonight?

My stomach was on the verge of gnawing itself inside out, twisting and churning like an unsettled creature within my abdomen. I chewed on my thumbnail, leg bouncing and heart pumping too hard as if it didn’t quite fit in my chest.

The bathroom door opened, and my heart stopped.

Ren stepped into the bedroom, orange firelight dancing on the planes of his bare chest. The thin towel strung around his hips drew my gaze to the smattering of dark hair dipping to places unseen.

A surge of nervous delight rippled through my core and chest at the sight of him.

I placed the book on the bench at my side and unfolded my legs while sucking in all the air my lungs allowed.

Ren’s lips curled up, and a charged energy sparked through the room’s interior. He lifted a hand and gestured for me to come closer as he stepped forward. I rose from the window and met him at the foot of the bed. His fingers dropped to the towel, and fire spread up my neck to my face.

My eyes clenched shut seconds before the white fabric fell from his hips. The towel pooled around our feet, tickling the tops of my toes.

A hand curled under my chin, and my breath hitched. Soft lips melded to mine in a gentle, probing motion. I exhaled the breath I held as the hand under my chin cupped my cheek and pulled me in for a deeper, ardent kiss.