Page 47 of The King has Fallen (The Kingdom of the Krow #1)

~ YILAN ~

“I had no time to tell him. You appeared bare minutes after he did!”

“And he just stumbled on your location?” he growled suspiciously. “Is it him you’ve been meeting while I slept?”

“No! He knew… they send patrols—my singing in the angel tongue… it’s how I’ve been telling them to leave me here—and he knew that wasn’t the plan.”

His stony expression didn’t change.

I blew out a breath. “He thought you were trapping me. Coercing me somehow. I told him you weren’t, but I couldn’t tell him about the mating.” I gripped his shirt in both hands and didn’t break eye contact. “Melek, he has to get in and out of this camp safely. He has to function out there without being taken. And you want him to help me get out… I can’t have him… preoccupied .”

“You didn’t tell him at all.”

“No, but I will speak with him as soon as we’re safe and alone.”

Something in him tightened, and his face went harder if that was possible.

But he leaned down and cupped my face with one hand. When he spoke, his voice was a soft growl.

“I know exactly what type of talk I would expect to have if I had been separated from my bond-vowed and we had both been in danger.” His fingers curled in, his nails just a hairsbreadth from hurting on my cheek.

I gripped his wrist. “That is not the kind of conversation I will be having with him,” I said bluntly.

“You told me you had no mate.”

“And I didn’t, until you,” I said earnestly. “We are—we were bond-vowed. Intended. Betrothed. Whatever you want to call it.”

“And you didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”

“Not when I’d already decided not to take him,” I said honestly.

He grunted, his eyes shadowed, but I saw the barest hint of hope in his gaze. “Are you lying to me, Yilan? Making me a fool?”

I wanted to weep, and shook my head. Stepping closer to him. “No. And I never would. Melek, our bond is real and true and… precious.”

“And yet, you were promised to someone else.”

“I am almost thirty. I am years past the age of taking a mate in our culture. It was… I thought I’d never find you.”

He just stared at me, but his thumb stroked up and down on my cheek.

I gripped his wrist tighter and the front of his shirt with my other hand. “Melek, there is nothing in this world that I want less than to belittle you. Can’t you see that?” I breathed.

He was so tense, the flat plane of his chest feeling like warm steel under my hand.

He stared deep into my eyes, and a low rumble began in that chest. I leaned in harder.

“Please, Melek. I’m not—”

“I have to find Gall today. I have to take him with me when I go to the front.”

I blinked at the sudden shift in subject. But he didn’t move away from me, so neither did I.

“Why? You said—”

“He is trained to fight, and I fear when I leave—and I have to leave tomorrow, Yilan—that someone may try to use him against me.”

My head spun with the arguments, points, and sheer facts that he resisted when he spoke about his King. But as I tried to figure out which to raise first, I hesitated.

He looked so pained. So afraid—but always for me, or for Gall. Even for Jann. His fear was never spent on himself.

It was half the reason I loved him.

With a heavy sigh, I reached up to take his face and draw him down to me. He resisted for a moment.

“Melek, please,” I whispered. “We only have hours. Please… believe me. We will both leave tomorrow. But I’m not going until you do.”

“I think I believe that you want no one but me,” he muttered sullenly. “My question remains of what he’ll expect when you are… reunited.”

I shook my head. “You know I’d never taken him before. And I won’t. His expectations, if he has any, won’t matter. Because I’ll tell him that I’m mated. I have no qualms over telling anyone that, Melek—when we’re both safe. I waited to keep everyone, all of us, safe.”

He was searching my eyes as I spoke, but on that last word, he groaned and dropped his head to kiss me, wrapping his arms around me.

He was trembling.

When he kissed his way from my mouth, along my jaw, to my neck, I sighed with relief and let my head drop back, wrapping my arms around his neck.

When he made it to my ear, he nipped the lobe sending a cascade of goosebumps down my side, then he turned his head and whispered, right in my ear.

“You have no clue how it torments me… the thought of you gone and alone. Away from me. From my protection. The thought of other men looking at you—I could kill them just for that, Yilan,” he breathed.

“But—”

“But I will not,” he rasped. “If he is true to his word—if he protects you, gets you out of here, makes you safe… it is me who will owe the life-debt then, Yilan.” He took a deep breath, but didn’t move, just held me against him. “If he gets you to your King safely, I will swallow my pride. And when we are reunited, I will bow to him in gratitude. Because losing you… Yilan… God—”

I inhaled sharping, turning my head and taking his mouth, whimpering when he gripped my face and held me into the kiss.

He shuddered when I reached for his weapon straps, then his buttons, then his leathers.

His body seemed to rock with waves of tension, then of need.

One moment he’d kiss me deeply, growling for me. The next he’d pull back, his hands tight on my arm, or clamped to the back of my neck, and then the bond would vibrate with fear.

“I’m here,” I whispered whenever he tensed. “You belong to me, Melek. And I belong to you.”

He groaned and dove in to kiss me again. We undressed each other hurriedly, him walking me back towards the bed.

It was crazy, I knew—there was no time. But it was necessary. It could be the last time. I prayed it would not be, but it wasn’t even lunch yet and already the threats were multiple. I knew if anything else happened, he’d insist on leaving so that I would go. Fear clutched my heart at the thought.

With a little gasping cry, I pulled him closer. He growled and picked me up, swinging me into his chest and crossing the tent to lay me on the bed, then crawling up after me.

I trembled with need for him, frantic, terrified of what was to come and the many and varied ways it could go wrong.

There was no time. No more chances.

And so I begged for him, pulled him to me, reached for him, stroking him and marveling at the thrumming need that sizzled between us, lifting my hips, trying to reach him, whimpering when he didn’t take me immediately.

There was a gasping moment when I thought he would. He’d settled between my thighs and pinned me to the mattress, he kissed me as if I was water in the desert. And he rumbled in his chest in the way that teased me from within.

But then, just as his hips began to roll and I thought he’d take me, he hesitated.

He lay over me, both hands in my hair, his breath thundering on my cheek as he kissed me, and he just… froze.

I was gripping his neck, sliding my fingers into his hair as well, and I went still. My eyes flew open—to find him staring down at me, a startled expression on his face.

“What?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”

With a low, rumbling growl, he kissed me, his tongue demanding, insistent, his body pinning me to the bed, and his arousal pressed so close. He kissed his way from my mouth, down to my neck, then back to my ear, holding my head so that I couldn’t turn from him.

“You are mine, Yilan!” he rasped.

“Yes! Yes, that’s what I’m–”

“But if you ever betray me, you will succeed in destroying my people as well.” His eyes were dark, his face tight and pained.

I blinked, staring at him as he rolled his hips and slid against me, so my jaw dropped.

“Melek, what—”

“I cannot be defeated by weapons, Yilan. But you? You would stop my heart. And so take down the greatest army of all time with a simple word.”

Tears blurred my vision. “I would never—”

He plunged into me, snarling his need and his invasion was such a shock I gasped and clapped an arm to his back, clinging as he took me, his breath thundering in my ear, his body shaking, his love thrumming in the bond. And then he threw himself backwards, gripping me, pulling me with him so my stomach plummeted as if I’d fallen from a great height. And when I shrieked and clung, it was to find myself in his lap, his arms around me, his hands clamped on top of my shoulders, holding me down into his thrusts. His head thrown back, and his great, gorgeous throat bare, those tendons at the sides of his thick neck standing proud as he gritted his teeth against losing control.

I was helpless in his grip, capable of nothing except to ride the wave of pleasure of joining with him when he was so desperate.

“Melek… Melek!”

“Hold onto me. Hold me, Yilan!”

He was a storm of need. A hurricane of want. His body probing, pounding, his cries guttural. I was overwhelmed—the force of him within me sending waves of pleasure radiating from where we joined.

And then he tilted his hips and leaned me back, pulling me down so my body arched from where he took me, my breasts bare and bouncing as he dropped his chin, hands still clamped on my shoulders, pulling me into him, and watched himself take me.

“Oh, Yilan… fuck!”

I couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but grab his thick arms and hold on, my nails biting into his flesh. My body began to pulse, my breath catching as he held me into the peak of each thrust, pleasure sparking, growing, expanding with every new joining.

“Yes… God, yes, Yilan,” he grated. “So fucking beautiful…”

That need in my belly tightened harder.

“Mine… you’re mine…”

I was sobbing, crying for him, wordless in pleasure, climbing towards that crest like clawing up a steep hill.

Then he growled my name at the same moment he lifted his hips and impaled me. “ YILAN!”

I broke in his arms, lungs seizing, body shuddering, the entire world disappearing so that I was aware of nothing but what he inspired.

He roared again, then again, and somewhere in the back of my mind an alarm bell rang, but I couldn’t even form the thought.

Then he snarled my name once more, falling backwards onto the bed, and pulling me with him so that I slumped over his body, quivering, shivering, panting, my face in his neck.

And then he wrapped his arms around me and held me so tightly I almost couldn’t breath.

He stroked my hair back, pawing at me, trembling as well.

And when he turned his head a moment later, it was to pant in my ear.

“You hold the keys to my soul, Yilan. And the weapon to take down my people… please do not make me a fool for loving you.”

Still barely able to breathe, I shook my head and turned my head to brush a kiss to his sweaty neck. “I will never choose anything to hurt you, Melek. You have my word.”