Page 69 of Heart’s Rescue

Rowan

We Are Not A Pair

Voids, there were so many ways I’d wanted to fuck Arryn in here. I’d deliberately led her past a few of the larger houses and to this cabin, the cabin with only one bed, and then I’d stoked the fire until the cabin’s one room turned almost hot even as some part of me realized it was a fool’s errand, that we wouldn’t have enough time. That I’d never have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do with her.

And now here we are, with our few precious hours before the glowsoft orbs die and we’ll be able to teleport to the Crystal City with slightly less risk of being caught, and I can’t seem to stop kissing her. Voids, she feels so good! Her lips against mine, soft and warm and welcoming, opening for me, pulling me in. Just like her dance, which had been so dangerously erotic I can’t believe it’s honestly something they do in the royal court of the Kingdom of the Summer. And the thought that she’d invented a dance just for me, that she’d pulled me close to her like that as some sort of delicious subterfuge as if she needed an excuse to seduce me—

Oh, this is dangerous. This is so dangerous. I plunge my fingers into Arryn’s raucous curls as our lips embrace and our tongues wrestle, and something inside my chest feels like it’s cracking open. I hadn’t understood when Phaedron came limping back to the World’s End with his suitcase and his broken heart, sobbing like someone had just died. I’d done all I could to comfort him, but I hadn’t really understood. Shenarah was just a woman, just another lady he’d entertained in his bed. The Lands Below were full of women falling over themselves to jump into Phaedron’s bed. Why lose his shit over just one?

Arryn’s fingers creep under the hem of my shirt, and my breath catches. My heart is racing like I’ve just fought a void beast, and Arryn’s touch on my bare skin sends sparks shooting across my entire body. I take a deep, gasping breath, then another.

Voids, what’s wrong with me? I shake my head slightly as Arryn’s fingers trace a path up my spine. It’s just sex, for the void’s sake. It’s just enjoying each other, just stealing a bit of comfort from both our worlds.

“Rowan?” Arryn asks.

I pull back, yank my shirt over my head, and toss it to the floor. Arryn’s dark eyes widen. She’s lying on the bed, my old red shirt pulled tight over her chest, her hard nipples outlined against the soft fabric. Lying on the bed and waiting for me.

Just sex. Voids below, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted just sex so desperately in my life. I lie down next to her, kissing those full, sweet lips, dropping my mouth to catch her jaw, the delicate tapering curve of her ears, the soft skin of her neck. She’s gasping and rocking on the bed when I finally bring my hands to her stomach.

And she moans when I touch her. I’m just brushing her skin, just moving her shirt aside, and she’s already moaning. Voids, she makes it easy. Some horrible, horrible part of myself notes that it will never be this easy again, that I’m just setting myself up for future disappointment.

I bury that part of myself as deep as I can and bring my lips to the curve of her shoulder. My hand is inside her shirt, reaching up to cup her breast, and she’s moaning again, moaning and rocking her hips against the bed. I run my thumb across the tight skin of her nipple, and she gasps something that might be my name.

I pull away long enough to help her wrestle free of my shirt, and then my lips are back on her neck, on her collarbone, on the curve of her shoulder. My hand cups her breast, my thumb makes slow circles around her nipple, and she’s moaning soft and low. When I drop my head to her chest and replace my hand with my mouth, taking her soft, dusky nipple between my lips, she makes a noise like she’s coming apart beneath me.

Damn. I trail my fingers down the curve of her stomach and under the waistband of her pants to the place where she is gloriously, gloriously wet. Her trembling hands reach up and sink into my hair, and then she’s clinging to me like she’s adrift in the ocean and I’m the only thing keeping her afloat. I grin, take her nipple between my lips, and circle my fingers over the nub of her sex.

Arryn explodes. Her hips kick against my hand and her back arches, and I bury my face between the two most perfect breasts in all the worlds. As she sinks back onto the bed, gasping, her dark hair sticking to her cheeks and neck, something from last night surfaces in my memory. It wasn’t her first time, but— you’re touching me, she’d said.

Was I the first man who’d ever made her come with my fingers? Was I the first to kiss her breasts, to suck those exquisite nipples? Anger ripples through the haze of my arousal and the desperate, aching pulse of my cock, which has been more or less rock-hard all freaking day. Because if I was the first, then what in the voids was wrong with the men in the Worlds Above?

I settle onto the bed beside Arryn and run my fingers idly over the curve of her belly. She’s staring at the ceiling with a fuzzy, satisfied grin that makes me feel like the King of the Lands Below.

“Damn,” she says, and she makes the word sound like a blessing.

I lean forward, kiss her temple, and breathe the wild, sweet scent of her hair. She turns to meet me, and we kiss again, slowly and deeply. Her fingers trace the ragged edge of my ear, and I swear I can feel that delicate touch all the way to the tip of my cock. She breaks our kiss, drags her tongue across the curve of my jaw, and then her breath is hot against my neck, and her lips are tracing my jugular, and some part of me realizes this means she’ll know how desperately my heart is racing.

Then she brings her lips to my ears, and I’m gone. She kisses the ragged edges, the most unattractive part of my entire unattractive body, and my mind shuts down. I fall back on the bed in a puff of old straw and dust. Arryn follows me, kissing my neck, my jaw. She explores my chest with her lips and fingers, trailing her soft, delicate hands down the ridges of old scars and skin that’s usually wrapped in layers and layers of wool and leather.

When she starts to kiss me, there’s a moment where I honestly think I might come undone in my pants. She brings her lips to my chest first, a string of kisses down my ribcage and to my abdomen, and by then every single muscle in my body is pulled taut as a bowstring. My fists are knotted in what’s left of the fabric covering this straw mattress; I force one to uncoil and brush Arryn’s cheek.

She looks up at me, her eyes burning with dark intensity, and my words evaporate. I was going to say something about mounting, something hopefully funny, but who am I kidding? I told her last night to take what she needed, and right now, she looks like a woman who’s going to do exactly that.

Arryn begins to tug on the laces of my pants, and I stop even trying to find words. I help her pull my pants down over my hips and then kick them to the floor, and then I’m completely naked before her, exposed in the glow of the fire and the heat of the room. My chest suddenly feels tight; I wonder how many other men she’s seen naked. With a horrible, sickening flop in my gut, I wonder how I stack up.

I try to think of something to say, anything at all, that will break the tension between us, cut through air that’s gone as thick and charged as the heat and humidity of the void, but my mind is an utter blank. Take what you need, I’d told her, and it occurs to me that I’m doing the exact same thing right now.

Here I am, I’m saying, with this open, unguarded, naked body splayed out on the bed. Take me if you need me. If you want me.

“Rowan?” Arryn’s voice sounds deeper, thicker.

“Yeah?” I stammer.

“May I… touch you?” she asks.

Her cheeks are flushed, her lips parted. She’s looking at the fire, at the bed, at anything but my eyes.

“Yeah,” I say, and I try to think of a way to make it funny, to make it into a joke, but I can’t. Fuck me, everything in my entire life can be made into a joke, but my brain seems to have sputtered out the moment she kissed me. Or maybe it happened the moment she first touched me.