Page 21 of The Ballad of the Last Dragon

Chapter Twenty-One

T he Cunning Fox Inn holds our reservations, granting us rooms for the night.

Two rooms—Cadoc bunking with Neith and Jaromir staying with me—a deliberate choice that has me trembling with anticipation.

Neith flashes us a knowing grin, but Cadoc pauses, a furrow to his brow as he studies the two of us. Neith drags him away and bids farewell for the night.

Jaromir leads me by the hand to our room. I stumble over eager feet, wondering if he still remembers the promise he made days ago in the safety of his tent. When we reach the door, he ushers us in, quickly lighting candles and placing the lantern on the bedside table. The room is filled with the soft orange glow of fire light. A bed large enough for the both of us is against the far wall, a chair is tucked in the corner, and my heart leaps at what sits in the center of the room. A large wooden bath, ready and waiting to be filled.

I spin around to find him already grabbing the nearby bucket.

“I get to bathe?” I grin and bounce on my heels.

“We get to bathe,” he says, laughing.

A shiver of delight races up my spine. The only thing more enticing than a bath, is a bath with him.

“I’ll fill the tub and then we can light the coals.”

“I get to take a warm bath?!”

His answering grin floods me with heat as if I’ve already stepped into a basin of hot water.

It takes longer than I prefer, him running back and forth to fill the tub, but it’s better than asking someone else to do it and awkwardly waiting and watching. I busy myself by quickly washing with the tabletop basin, ewer of water, and my soap. I know I’m about to soak in a bath, but I’d rather not stew in my own filth. I’d much prefer to laze in the water for as long as it holds heat, and that will be far more relaxing if I know the water is somewhat clean. I fumble with the package Kingsley sent with me when I first departed on my journey. I shrug off my doublet and lift my tunic over my head. Then I pull down my short pants and stockings. I scrub my skin until it’s raw, and reach for the white tunic I wear to bed and a fresh pair of short pants. My hair still needs washing, but at least my body feels clean. The comforting scent of black currant envelops me, and for reasons I can’t quite name, tears blur my vision.

I don’t want to go back to Hollowden. Not anytime soon, at least. I’m happy with my life on the road, with this quest, with Jaromir. Yet, I ache for my narrow cot in the corner of my small room, the one Kingsley and Brigitta set up for me. I miss the shitty ale and wine we served and my nights of badgering Kingsley with big ideas while waiting for Petey to wake up and head home.

I’ve always known I needed more than that town, than a life graced by charity. And I have that now. I have purpose, adventure, and people who care for me, not out of pity but out of mutual understanding.

So why are my eyes burning?

Jaromir appears, and I quickly clear my throat and wipe my nose. He frowns, dumping the last bucket of water into the large tub, striking the flint to light the coals before shutting and locking our door. In three strides, he’s before me, studying me with that penetrating intensity. “You’re upset.”

“No,” I say, “I just wasn’t prepared for how memory is triggered by scent.” I give a theatrical sniff of his clothes. “See? Now it’s as if I’m on the road, rubbing up against the horses.”

He steps back to pull his tunic over his head.

Any notion of wistfulness is gone as I drink in his imposing form. He’s all hard lines and sharp edges. Heat pools in my stomach, and I want nothing more than to feel every inch of him against me.

“Tell me your thoughts.” His voice has taken an even rougher quality.

“I was thinking I’m ready to make some new memories.” It sounded cleverer in my head.

His mouth tips up in a soft smile, before he frowns at the tabletop basin behind me. “You couldn’t wait for your bath?”

“I’d rather not see leaves and dirt floating in the water. I plan on relaxing in there until my skin is wrinkled like a prune.”

His baritone laugh makes my stomach flutter. “I’ll do the same.” He stalks over to the basin, and dips a nearby cloth into the water. Welkin above, I swear the way he wrings the water out is damn near obscene. So is the way he runs the cloth over his rippling muscles, down his abdomen, and dipping into his low slung trousers.

When he begins to unlace them, he nods toward me, an unmistakable command even without words. I tug my tunic over my head, revealing my upper half. A strip of cloth—my breastband—is all that remains. Jaromir sucks in a sharp breath. His eyes greedily rake down my form, his throat bobbing. When his stare finally meets mine again, his mouth is slightly parted.

“Why did you stop?”

I shiver and pull down my short pants until I’m clad in nothing but my smallclothes. Jaromir lets out a groan, pushing his laces open and shoving his trousers down low enough to free his hardening length. My skin buzzes with anticipation, and my stomach dips. I’d only ever seen him in the dark tent, but watching him run the cloth against himself, take himself in hand while candlelight dances across his magnificent form makes my blood heat and my vision spin.

He advances on me, and I freeze, awaiting the relief of his touch. When it comes, when he slides his rough palms down my bared arms, leaving goose pebbles in their wake, I want to weep.

He sinks to his knees, placing reverent kisses against the plane of my stomach, my hips, my thighs. It’s dizzying, and I grab ahold of his shoulders to keep myself upright. His hands roam the expanse of skin at the back of my legs, up over the curve of my backside, and he squeezes possessively. I’m a panting mess as his hands venture higher, higher. So lost in the feel of his touch, I don’t think to stop him.

When his hands reach the small of my back, he freezes. I’m paralyzed in place, my hands fisted in his hair as he runs cautious fingers against the spots that never see the light of day.

“What are these?” His voice is soft, careful.

I clear my throat, keeping my eyes trained on the wall. “Scars. Have you none of your own? What a sheltered life you lead.”

“Show me.”

This feels like a trap. “Only if you intend on picking up where we left off immediately after.”

Finally, I chance a glance down where he kneels staring up at me. He nods, and slowly stands. I keep as still as possible while he circles to my backside, the side I’ve always carefully kept from view. He doesn’t make a sound, only gently runs his hands over each one. My eyes slip closed, and I try to stay here in this moment with the sensation of his tentative touch.

I was a mere elfling when I docked at the port. Alone. Starving. It didn’t take long for me to resort to desperation. The first time I swiped an apple from the fruit cart in the market, I was giddy. It was my stake in an unfamiliar world, one that perhaps didn’t even notice the point of my ears, and nothing had ever tasted so sweet.

I grew bolder. Swiping breads, and once even a mincemeat pie. It was freedom—it was life. Gone were the days when my ears meant I was hunted for sport. I could appear and disappear at will, and no one paid me any mind. My parents—their sacrifice to see me safe and out of harm’s way, in a new world where I might thrive wasn’t in vain. I had living proof in the food filling my belly and my eagerness to greet each dawn.

The day I went after a braided sugar cake, I was careless. I never thought what might happen if I was caught. I never thought they’d strap me to a post in the middle of town and whip me until I screamed and bled and vomited. I never thought they’d spit on me and call me a thieving knife-ear. That even though so much had changed, in a way, everything was still the same. I was still nothing.

They left me tied to that post, covered in blood, vomit, and tears for the night before they cut me loose. The aim was to teach me that stealing is a sin.

All it taught me was the importance of not getting caught.

Jaromir’s touch brings me back to this moment. He places a soft kiss against my scarred flesh, the heat of his breath chasing a shiver through me. His words, too, are soft as he murmurs against my skin. “Whoever did this, do they live?”

I can hardly focus on his words, so lost in the feel of him. “Um, I think so? I haven’t ventured to Bridgebarrow in years.” The guards all looked alike to a small, terrified child. I don’t think I could picture their faces even if I wished to.

“Anyone who hurts you, I’ll light their pyre myself. I don’t care how long ago it was.”

Before his words can settle in my fog-addled brain, he exhales against my skin, yanking my small clothes down to my ankles and freeing my legs one at a time. He stands, towering over me once more. A hand slides in my hair, tilting my face up, and his mouth descends, brutal and thorough in its pursuit. His kiss is ravenous, angry, before it melts into a soft caress.

There’s a tug at my back, and my breastband falls away. Jaromir kisses his way down my neck, my collarbone, my chest. His tongue is hot and eager, worshiping me until my sanity is fraying. My entire body, naked and flushed, is pressed against his half-clothed one.

That seems unfair.

I tug at his hair, hard. “You’re overdressed,” I say breathlessly. “It’s woefully poor manners.”

He grunts his agreement, lifting me, and carrying me over to the bed. He lowers me to the soft coverlet with heart breaking gentleness, before dropping to his knees. Yanking me to the edge, he deftly maneuvers my legs over his shoulders.

“What are you—the bath is that way!”

He bites my inner thigh, and I gasp at the sudden influx of heat pooling between my legs. “After,” he says darkly.

“But the water will get— oh.”

His tongue parts me with soft, slick precision, and pleasure jolts through me. Sealing his mouth over my heat, he kisses me, deeply, thoroughly, leisurely. Propping myself on my elbows, I gaze down at him. His eyes are all consuming, holding me trapped in his thrall as he obliterates me with each slide of his tongue and the wet movements of his mouth.

I could die like this and be utterly content.

When his finger presses in, I keen. My body feels stretched taut like a too tight string of a lute, and he masterfully plays me as if he already knows my body by heart. When he groans, the vibration is too much for me to bear, and a sharp spike of pleasure floods through me, crashing and clenching in seemingly endless waves.

He presses one last kiss to me, earning a soft cry, before he pushes me back on the bed and climbs up, covering my body with his.

“No… fair,” I say weakly.

Jaromir presses a wet kiss to my mouth. “Forgive me for being selfish. But I waited years to taste you. It’s only fair I make up for lost time.”

Selfish. Only Jaromir could stare down at me, his face still glistening from devouring the space between my thighs, and call it selfish . That, and the fact that he so casually mentioned the confession he made when he was suffering the venom-induced fever. It’s an offering—a way of showing he remembers what he told me and suffers no shame of it. Something about my expression must amuse him because he grins and places a quick kiss to the tip of my nose.

“The water is still hot. The heating stones will keep its temperature.” He moves to slide down the bed, and I seize the opportunity and flip our positions. He must allow this, because there’s no way I’m stronger, but the flare of surprise in his eyes is genuine.

I make quick work of his trousers since they’re already unlaced.

If he can take what he pleases, so can I.

Dropping between his legs, I lower my mouth over him, his thickness spreading my lips and making something coil deep in my gut. He cries out, I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a word, but it’s more of a guttural sound. I swallow down his length before he can think to object.

“ Fuck.” His hands tangle in my hair, brushing against my ears, and I’m lost in the feel of him stretching my mouth, the salty taste of him on my tongue.

It’s addictive.

Jaromir watches me with his heavy gaze, groaning each time I punch him deeper into my throat. An attractive flush creeps up the hard expanse of his chest, and a tingle starts low in my belly. There’s a vulnerability in this, a trust both received and given, and my head spins from the dizzying pleasure of that.

“Syl, you should—I’m going to—”

I take him deeper, needing to see, to feel, to taste this. His trust. His loss of control.

Jaromir’s head falls back, and I swallow down the spill of his release. When he pops free of my mouth, he yanks me up, crushing me to his chest, and sweeping his greedy tongue into my mouth as if he wants to taste himself on me. He practically tackles me to the bed, running possessive hands all over my body.

“You are, without a doubt”—he punctuates his words with another languid kiss—“going to be the death of me.”

I slap his chest with no real strength behind it. “What a horrid thing to say after acquainting yourself with my mouth. I have half a mind to write a scathing song about this if only to teach you some manners.”

He laughs but it melts into a pained groan. “Gods, your mouth. What am I going to do with you?”

Mark me. Fill me. Love me. Promise to never stop.

“How about that bath?” Much safer request.

He shakes his head. “It’s much too late for that now. I told you I wouldn’t let you leave my bed once I had you.”

Pleasure trembles up my spine as wet heat spreads between my legs. I rub my thighs together, as if it will quell my ache. “What a teasing degenerate you are. Did you ever intend to let me soak in the bath? I have a special diffusing soap I’d very much like to try. You pop it in, and it makes the water thick with its scent. It even spouts little bubbles. Let’s be honest, there are certain places that only come clean with a good, honest, soak. And if you think I’m going to forget the comforts of a long bath—”

Jaromir cuts me off with another bruising kiss. “Syl, you’ll get your bath. First let me make you filthy.”

I can’t help my grin at the promise. I wrap my legs around his hips, pressing my feet to the backs of his powerful thighs. With a slow, deliberate movement, I rub my heat against his increasing hardness, pulling a strangled groan from his chest. I gasp at the way pleasure jolts from the contact.

I wasn’t jesting when I said it had been years. When youth first blended into the early age of adulthood, there was a boy who’d meet me in the barn behind the butcher shop where he worked. He’d never speak to me in public—this was Elmwood, where my ears put ‘respectable’ people on edge—but we shared clumsy kisses and poorly rhythmic motions, following the call of instinct.

But this. Jaromir isn’t even in me, and this is already so much more.

“Sylvaine.” Jaromir’s voice is a soft caress, and I find myself held captive by the emotion in his dark eyes. The unspoken promise, the assurance of care. He gazes down at me as if I’m something precious, something to be cherished, and part of my heart breaks that I never imagined anyone looking at me this way.

He tucks a sweaty lock of hair behind my ear, running his touch down the length, as he always does. “Are you sure you want this?”

There’s something in the way he asks this. It doesn’t feel as if he’s asking me if I want to continue, as I’m rubbing my naked self against him with wanton abandon. It feels like he’s asking if I really want him .

It dissipates any snarky response I might have made. “More than anything.”

Unnamed emotion fills his eyes as he nods once. “This isn’t going to sound very romantic, but I asked Cadoc for a thorough inspection, and you needn’t worry about… consequences of this.”

Now I’m confused.

“I’m healthy. There’s no risk of you contracting any sort of infection.”

Oh. My gut squirms. Not because of the conversation; the man is responsible and thoughtful. I find it utterly endearing he thought this through, and I can’t even laugh at what I’m sure was an uncomfortable exchange between him and Cadoc when he asked for such an inspection.

No, my discomfort comes from my impetuousness. I didn’t think to ask after that. Here I am rubbing up against him like a cat in heat, and any good sense I might have had disappears entirely.

“And there’s no chance we’ll conceive.”

“That hadn’t even crossed my mind. What a foolishly impractical lecher I’ve turned out to be.”

Jaromir huffs a laugh. “Cadoc brews something for me. Something to ensure I won’t put anyone in the position of facing any repercussions.”

It’s irrational, but I can’t help my reaction. Jealousy flares in my gut, a cold sinking feeling. He’s been taking this long before we had a chance to explore our attraction, and yes, he is practical, and it is sweet that he would think to address this rather than expect the woman to. But the fact that this gesture existed before I was even a thought to receive it only sharpens the reminder that just a few short weeks ago, he likely was having this same conversation with another woman. He has no shortage of admirers, as is evidenced by the fact that hungry eyes seem to follow him wherever he goes. And he's only in this position with me because I all but begged him to use me for his physical comforts. And why am I thinking of this right now? I’m going to ruin every—

“Syl, look at me.” His voice interrupts my inner tirade, and I blink up at him, clearing my blurred vision. “Where did your thoughts go?”

“I—” It would be easier to lie. Likely protect his good opinion of me, too. But I’m not in the business of lying. I might stretch the truth for a good story, but that’s for show.

And I’m sick of performing.

“I was remembering you had a life before me, that’s all.”

Understanding dawns his face, and he cups my jaw. “Yes, I did. And I won’t pretend I’ve never felt affection for another woman.” Before I can spin another mental spiral on that thought, he continues. “But you… Syl, you change everything .” He kisses me, a featherlight touch. One of quiet reverence. “You’re more than I ever thought I’d find in this lifetime. More than I deserve.”

My throat tightens, and I exhale a shaky breath, letting a soft laugh escape. “You’re very good with words when you want to be.”

He touches his nose to mine, and my heart swells. “I’m trying to learn to use words. I’ve been told I rely too much on grunting and growling.”

“But I was just becoming fluent in Jaromir.”

He laughs, and I’m entranced by how beautiful he is like this. I kiss him, slowly. Trying to pour everything I feel and wish for in that kiss.

“So,” I say, “you’ve told me how you feel. Care to show me?”