Page 34

With a spell, his clothes disappear, only his cloak whips upwards in the sky and flutters slowly back down.

Quin looms over me, knees spreading mine to settle there.

His arms brace either side of me just in time for his cloak to settle over his back like a blanket.

I swallow nervously. He’s all tightly refined muscle and smooth skin, and I suddenly don’t know what to do with all of that.

He shifts my knee slightly, and I grab his back to steady him. “Your leg—”

“The cloud gives way perfectly when I need it to,” he murmurs.

He’s not in pain; he won’t be.

I swallow and nod.

What was desperate and impatient before has settled into something achingly exposing. And slow. Quin sinks his gaze over every inch of me and I have to steer it back to my flushing face.

He raises an eyebrow. “Could it be... Cael?” he lowers his lips to my ear in a wolfish whisper, “Are you finally afraid of something?”

I grit my teeth and snatch him into a kiss, and his chuckle pearls over my lips.

He always could tease me into proving otherwise .

I kiss him again, softer this time. “But who knew you possibly hid that , your majesty.”

He doesn’t expect it and his laughter rips up the air, the cloud rising and falling with each bout, sending achy jolts where it’s already aching.

He shifts knowingly and the short gap between us feels syrupy, the air heavy and hot.

His hair combs mine where it’s splayed and tangled, and it tickles.

Every slight shift, every flicker of our uneven breaths—I feel it all.

Caresses and coiling nerves. An ache that builds and builds.

My toes curl in wispy cloud and I feel silky tendrils puff around my feet.

And Quin’s lashes tremble—like he feels me through his magic too.

His hand grips the cloud as he steadily, slowly inches his body towards mine.

Air billows between us and his warmth rushes nearer.

The first touch comes to my stomach, a blunt, fleeting touch that lifts again with our hitched breaths and leaves a wet trace to cool on my stomach.

The fleeting touch is followed by a lingering one, heavy, warm.

Long, thick. Pressing next to mine. Pulsing.

A pulsing that vibrates through the cloud, through Quin’s very being.

A pulse that trips my own into something erratic—

His body presses down on mine, hot and firm, and protective like an anchor to help me through the rush of this unknown.

I know theoretically . I know through the lens of a healer.

I know from dreams and imagination. But I didn’t know the trembling, panting reality.

Didn’t know the solid feel of these hard lines.

Didn’t know this unbearable mounting something slinging through my body.

Didn’t know staring into someone’s eyes could be so vulnerable.

I grip Quin’s shoulder blades, pressing tightly. I feel his expanding chest on thick breaths. I feel the harder bite of the flutette jammed between us.

I feel his question slide down my neck and pool at my collarbone. “Can we?”

My limbs shake. Not from uncertainty or fear. This is something else—a collision of all the memories of us that led to this moment. All the banter, the teasing, the spoken support and the unspoken. All the anger and surges of frustration. All the times he’s looked at me and shaken my insides.

All the times I’ve felt.

They’ve led to this.

And it feels inevitable. I whisper into the waves of his hair.

A tremor rolls through him and I feel the fading of his restraint once more. I skim over his back, my touch light and then hard. A touch that commands.

His hand finds mine and grips it above my head. His fingers glow with a spell that feels oily, slippery. He deliberately runs his fingers down the length of my arm to tell me—

This is what’s coming.

He wants this now.

His eyes are dark on mine, his lips parted; his desire is unchecked—

This is Quin letting me beneath all his masks .

We are both at our most vulnerable here. And we’re sharing this moment together.

My throat is too jammed up to speak. I lift his glowing fingers and steer them on a gasp between us.

His eyes flash, his pulse wild beneath my fingers. His lips part like he might say something, like there’s one last thing he needs to be sure of. But I shake my head before he can. I know. I want this. I want you.

Something in him breaks. A shudder runs through him, and Quin cannot control it anymore, he growls into a messy kiss, fingers shaking between my cheeks as he searches and skims .

The slick spell rubs up against me with a desperation I feel mirrored in my panting against Quin’s mouth. I’m ready to break apart for you. To break apart with you. Together.

All in a rush.

I claw at his back, pulling him closer and closer, because I too am losing control. Let us be free for these moments. Let us enjoy a moment of coming completely undone.

Through the shifting gaps in his hair, the stars glint brightly.

More brightly when Quin skims me there again and shallowly dips in.

His slick spell is warm and a million nerves wake up under his exploration.

His finger presses inside and I clench. Not from not wanting.

But from the shock of shivers that throttle through me, that have me gasping against his jaw, that have my knees falling into puffs of cloud as I open myself more.

I whine as I bite his chin .

The cloud suddenly lurches up and I love that I can feel his cracking composure, not just in the deepening of his needy fingers, of his quick removal of them, of his repositioning between my legs, but in all the spaces around me. Wisps of silky plumes slide over my arms, my waist, my ankles.

His hand tightens at my hip, against my forearm—the only warning before a sharp intrusion and Quin’s guttural, shuddering gasp.

His eyes flutter closed with unbearable pleasure—pleasure he is taking from me, that I am giving him.

He moves and there’s pain and fullness but also connection.

A raw, intimate connection, but also a deeper one.

It stirs inside my chest and swells—his lovelight inside me, responding to him, recognising his soul—

It unfurls, a mounting ticklish beat that drums through my veins, from deep in my middle to the tips of my toes, to my knuckles, to the sensitive spot at the base of my neck.

Even my scalp prickles with it. With each plunge, the lovelight connects with his pleasure, releasing it inside me. I feel Quin as if I’m one with him.

He is awash with desire, he cannot push himself deep enough, he wants to live in this moment. He moves in me with curiosity and need and such achingly simple joy.

This is something he has always longed for. Something he thought he’d never be able to have. He has always been a man of a million masks: the ruler, the tactician, the symbol. But here, with me, he is just a man. Just Quin.

In his hectic moves inside me, he’s not bound by rules and discipline, doesn’t have to be afraid of schemes and cunning, doesn’t have to keep his mind sharp. He doesn’t have to think. He can just feel.

And the more he just feels, the more I do too; his sweaty skin rubbing over mine, the obscene squelching between us, the broken groans, and my delirious whispers mad with wants .

Wants that make him spiral and move harder, wants that threaten to split me in half.

I clench around him, eager for it. Let him own me.

Let me own him.

I fist his hair, pulling him in to devour my lips too, because I can’t get enough. I refuse.

He holds me harder and with each plunge the cloud beneath us drops, an exhilarating thrill along with Quin’s feelings mirrored inside my veins—and then there are my own. The thickness, the fullness... and the pain from before has shifted.

I throw my head back into the silky cloud, baring my throat. Don’t hold back. You never have to hold back with me.

And he doesn’t.

The cloud drops and catches, drops and catches, drops and catches. His cloak rises off us and settles again each time. The stars blaze and then disappear as we sink into mist, and the wet touch of air over my skin, along with Quin’s sudden swelling and pulsing, has me yelling his name as I combust.

Quin sags against me, uneven breaths mingling with mine. We share a tender laugh of relief, and his fingers soften around me, cradling me closer. I feel the pound of his heart, and the matching pound of my own.

I curl against him, tucking my head under his chin, where the flutette catches my long, satisfied sigh into a whistle.

Quin murmurs into my hair; a spell cleans us up and, as the cloud slowly drops back to reality, another redresses us.

I remain in his arms, and he remains in mine.

The descent is slow. A drift. A glide. A return.

But with every inch we fall, the weight returns.

The kingdom beckons. The people cry. The crown tightens its grip.

I feel it happen. I feel the shift in his body the moment we inhale the smoke, the slow reclaiming of duty. His shoulders tensing. The exhale that is not release, but resignation.

I swallow thickly. “Do you regret—”

Quin’s head snaps toward me, his eyes dark with unrelenting possessiveness and the answer he will not allow to be questioned. He snatches my lips with a snarl and curves a protective arm around me. “Never.”

He steers the cloud and us to the square, above his academy. Before he lowers us to the ground I pluck his spilled fastenings, drop them into my healing pouch, and plait his hair into one fat braid. He raises a brow and I glare. “No one else is allowed to see you undone.”

He leans forward, eyes flashing. “Close, but still not the words I’m waiting for.”

“Those words—I would have said them already.”

“Not on the brink of death! ”

I’m healthy now. I’m allowed to say them. But I’m feeling all of a sudden rather stubborn, and I fold my arms. “Not before you face your uncle!”

His eyes glower, but with a warring twinkle at the edges. “A taste of my own medicine?”

“Approved by your healer.”

Quin barks a laugh and the cloud rapidly descends, coming to a swift halt three feet off the ground. Quin reaches for his cane—

I scoop it away, shuffling off the cloud, to lean heavily against it. “You’ve still got enough magic.”

He stares at me and I snap towards him and lower my voice. “It’s this or carry me, Quintus. My legs? Utterly useless.”