Page 34 of Unseen

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T hursday seemed to be the longest day of my life. It stretched on and on and on before me, the hours dragging by, marked by nothing but the incessant ticking of the grandfather clock and my own restless feet.

Nightfall brought with it a strange sort of frenzy, a desire for distraction, to forget all the things that lay ahead. I did not take my dinner with Azriel, wary of being too close to him, for fear of any of this nervous energy driving me to do something irrational.

He had not visited me the previous night, and I found myself strangely disappointed. I had fallen asleep staring at the door. Another sign that his affections were simply leaving me incapable of thinking straight.

But in the deep of the night, waiting for the sun to rise and to deliver my aunt to me, I found myself almost inconsolable with loneliness, and staring at that door once again. But it did not open.

Against my better judgement, I slipped on my robe, and crept down the passageway, up the stairs, to Azriel’s room. I paused at the door, asking myself what in Heaven’s name I was thinking. I should return. I should peel my fingers from the handle and go back to my own bed.

But I could not. The thought of being alone in my room was somehow worse than spending the next few hours caught in pleasure and sin in Azriel’s bed.

The door barely made a sound as I closed it behind me, and I tip-toed across the room towards the enormous curtained bed.

“Azriel?” I whispered, unable to discern whether or not the pile of linens was an inert human figure, or indeed just a pile of linens. “Azriel, are you here?”

“I’m here.” The pile of linens stirred, and he sat up, running a hand through his hair. “Hello, beloved. Did you miss me?”

“No.” I snapped, perching on the edge of his bed. “I… I simply did not want to be alone, and since it is just you and I in the house…”

He chuckled softly, and as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw that he was not wearing a nightshirt, his chest quite bare. “Well, I am moved that I am a better choice than solitude.” He reached out, his fingers grazing the lace neckline of my nightgown. “You should take all this off.”

I slapped his hand away and huffed out a sigh. “I did not come here just for that.”

“ Just for that?” He asked playfully, lying back upon his pillows and tucking his hands behind his head. “What else did you come here for then, wife?”

“I… I don’t know. Comfort?” We both laughed at the same time, which made us laugh again. “Yes, I know, the irony of me seeking comfort here with you is not lost on me.”

“I fear I am not much good at comfort. One struggles to conjure up that which one was never allowed to experience.”

I frowned, reaching out in spite of myself to stroke a hand over his stomach. “You had a very sad childhood, didn't you? ”

He scoffed. “Oh Evie, come now.”

“Would you stop trying to play the part of the uncouth heir and speak with me. Just… speak with me.”

His head snapped in my direction then, and he sat up against the pillows. “Speak with you? About my sad childhood? Well, I can sum it up for you. I was born, my mother died, my father was cruel, the end.”

“Do you remember her?”

Azriel sucked in a breath through gritted teeth, running his hands along his thighs. “Barely. I was three when she died. I only remember that she spoke to me in Spanish, which my father hated.”

“Do you still speak it?”

He shrugged. “Enough to speak to my mother’s family when I am in Barcelona.”

“What was she like, your mother?”

“Beautiful.” Azriel cleared his throat, shaking his head. “But all children think their mothers are beautiful. They are angels in our eyes, are they not?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I pulled my legs up onto the bed, smoothing my nightgown over my thighs. “Mine died bringing me into the world. Well, in the days thereafter in any case. Childbed fever, I’m told.”

“Is that why you didn’t want children?”

“I suppose that was part of it.”

“And now?”

I looked at Azriel with alarm, hoping he could not see my widened eyes in the darkness. “What do you mean, and now?”

“Do you want them now?”

“I suppose I don’t have much choice.”

“Hmmm.” Azriel shifted against his pillows, sinking down further into them. “What is your father like?”

“My father?” I huffed out a laugh, tracing my fingers along the floral embroidery on my robe. “My father is perhaps the most pathetic man I have ever met.”

“That was rather candid.”

I looked back at his face in the darkness, able to make out the tip of his mouth as he smirked. “That is a further irony of our relationship, is it not? I have no secrets from you, Azriel. You are the one person I can bare my soul to.”

“Almost as though you can trust me?” The playful questioning in his voice did untold things to my stomach.

“I do not think I could ever truly trust a man who holds a signed death warrant with my name on it.” I dared a small laugh. “But yes, I suppose something akin to trust is there. Something close enough.”

“You know, Evie, out of the two of us, I am not the closed book.” He moved towards me, leaning on one hand and bringing the other up to my face, brushing my cheek gently with the backs of his fingers.

“You… You are a mystery. A deep well of secrets. Everyone knows who I am, what I am, but you… You are an enigma. So when you say that you can bare your soul to me, I do not take that lightly, for I do not think you have ever been able to even consider baring even a fraction of your soul to anyone else before.”

His words tore away at my heart, leaving behind a hole, bleeding and coarse, and almost painful. How could this man, this brute of a man, see into the very heart of me, and know me? I did not care for it, and yet I was the one who had sought him out.

When I did not respond, simply sat before him with my hands clutched in my lap so he did not see them shaking, he leaned closer still, and planted a kiss against the corner of my mouth.

“Take off your clothes.” There was no command in his tone, not this time, though his voice was no less devoid of desire .

“And what if I do not want to?” My tone was coquettish. Was I really teasing him? I heard Rebecca’s advice, a distant voice, telling me to take charge, because he’d like that. Yes, perhaps a silly little game was exactly what I needed to stave off the dread of what the coming day would bring.

“Shall I cut them off you again, wife?” Azriel growled, reaching out for me.

I seized his hands in mine. “Certainly not. I do not need you destroying even more of my clothes.”

“I intend to destroy all your clothes in time, and buy you an entire new wardrobe.” He jerked his hands towards him, taking me with them, pulling me against his chest. “Would you like to dress like the Spanish ladies do? Or perhaps the Italian fashions are more your style?”

“I-I do not know.” I gasped as I felt his hard length pressing into my stomach. “Though… I do wonder.”

“What do you wonder?” He exhaled a hot breath against my lips.

“What do you like? You asked me what I liked, and now I want to know what you like.” I moved to kiss him, pulling back from his opening mouth with a sharp intake of breath so I hovered just out of reach. “Do you like to be ridden?”

Desire practically leapt off his skin, sparks in the darkness. He growled again, deeper this time, from a place of need.

“Do you intend to ride me?”

I shrugged, enjoying playing the innocent far too much. “I have never done it before. I doubt I would be much good at it.”

“Then let me teach you. But first, take off your clothes.”

I sat up, straddling his thighs, shuffling the robe down my arms and casting it to the end of the bed.

I peeled up my nightgown, and when my arms were caught above me, my vision obscured, Azriel sat up and seized my nipple in his mouth.

I whimpered as his hand caught fast on the nightgown, trapping me so I was squirming and moaning as he licked and sucked hard.

“Oh… oh god.”

“Is that good?” He asked against my skin, and I nodded in the cloud of my nightgown.

“Yes.”

He moved to the other nipple, giving it equal attention, nipping gently with his teeth so I yelped and wriggled on his thighs. With a laugh, he lifted the nightgown just enough to free my mouth, and kissed me, biting down on my lower lip hard enough to have me moaning.

“I like you like this.”

I laughed breathlessly against his mouth. “I know it.”

He peeled the nightgown the rest of the way off my arms and cast it aside, lying back against the pillows and pushing the linens below his hips so his cock sprang forth. With a firm grasp, he guided me onto his hips, so he was nestled within my folds.

“It will be deeper like this, and you might need to take it very slowly, beloved. Are you wet?”

I shifted a little, and shook my head. “Not enough, I think.”

Azriel, still holding on to my hips, rocked me back and forth along his length.

I was so surprised by the surge of heat in my core that my hands flew to my mouth, suppressing a squeak.

But the feeling was so pleasurable I could not help but repeat it, over and over again, until we were both panting.

Azriel reached between my legs, testing me with two fingers.

“Much better, but still.” He withdrew his fingers, sucking them into his mouth, then returning to stroke my bud, then back inside me.

“Much more of this and you’ll have me erupting between us, beloved.

” He grinned, gripping my hips and lifting me gently, so his tip was nudging at my entrance. “Slowly.”

I bit my lip as I lowered myself onto him. Oh good god, but was it meant to feel this good? I caught myself on his chest, sure I had barely taken half of him, whimpering and clawing my fingers into his skin.

“Oh god.” I lowered myself a little more, but it felt impossible. “Azriel… I do not think I can…”

“Remember to breathe.” His own breath was ragged, as though he were holding back.