“Obviously the sex we just had counted as research.”
“Obviously.”
I’d turned over on my side to face him, reaching over to trace a finger over his eyebrows. He’d hummed a little and leaned into the touch, and I thought, I can’t believe this is mine, I can’t believe I get to have this. “It’s okay, you know,” I’d said lightly.
“What is?”
“That we do this here. You and me?”
He’d flushed, refusing to look at me. “It’s not… I don’t… I just.” He’d bitten his bottom lip. “I just like it, is all,” he’d finally said quietly. “I don’t have to think. With you. I know it’ll be okay. That you’ll take care of me. I don’t have to worry about anything else.”
I’d grinned at him. “Ergo, sex god.”
He’d rolled his eyes, but he’d also been fighting a smile, and that was pretty much my undoing. The fifth time had been spectacular.
And we’d refined it over the last year, turning it into something more. Sure, I was still a sex god and said sex was hot. But there was a familiarity to it now. I knew him as well as he knew me. I knew what made him tick, the little things he liked. I knew what it meant when his eyes glazed over as he panted below me. And he knew what it meant when I started trembling, how close I was. I had something that he never gave to anyone else, something to call my own, and I protected it at all costs. It wasn’t something I even really talked about with Gary and Tiggy. For all the bluster, for all the shit I could talk, there were some things that needed to be protected.
I figured I’d given him enough time. I made my way to our room, the door cracked, candlelight flickering inside. I took a breath and pushed it open.
And promptly lost said breath like I’d been punched in the stomach.
Ryan Foxheart was on our bed on his back, trousers discarded and forgotten on the floor. His hand was shiny with oil as he jerked himself off, head rocking back. But it was his other hand that caught my attention. That hand was between his legs, moving slowly as he fingered himself, stretching himself open as he pressed his feet flat against the bed, pushing up to try and get a better angle. From where I stood, it looked like he was already two or three fingers deep. It normally took longer than that; I’d only been in the hall a few minutes or so. Ruv must have really gotten under his skin if he was this worked up.
I watched his toes curl into the comforter as he arched his back slightly, bowing up and off the bed. He groaned my name, long and drawn-out, and it was all I could do to keep from running over and pouncing on him. This was going to be fast and messy, and I wanted to let it build just a little bit more before I took him.
My magic was singing underneath my skin, rushing through my blood. The thousands of tiny little strands that connected us, the facets of the cornerstone we’d built so far, were thrumming. It was a heady thing. Not just the sight of him, even though that was enough to almost knock me off my feet. But the threads that built between us, the little offshoots of green and gold and blue that sparked off in the corner of my eyes, just out of reach. It made me feel more powerful than I’d ever felt before. Sex didn’t always need to be a component for cornerstones; Morgan was proof of that. But it was for Ryan and me, and I had no problem with that whatsoever.
“You ready?” I asked him in a low voice as I locked the door behind me. His hips jerked a little at the sound of the lock clicking.
He shook his head frantically. “Not yet,” he said hoarsely. “Can’t reach. Can’t get where I—”
“You’re getting close, though. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah.” He jacked himself another time or two. “Yeah, Sam. I’m close.”
“Can’t have that, can we? Put your hands above your head.”
He groaned in frustration but did as I asked, pulling his fingers out of his ass with an obscenely wet sound. He rested his hands against the headboard, biceps flexing, fingers shiny in the candlelight. His dick twitched against his stomach.
“That’s real good,” I said lightly. “Keep them there.”
He turned toward the sound of my voice, eyes wide. I waited until his focus was on me before I stalked toward him slowly, first pulling my jerkin off. I might have been a born sex god, but even sex gods could be insecure. It had taken a while for me to feel comfortable under his scrutiny. He was chiseled out of stone by the gods. I was a stick that had fallen out of a tree. But Ryan didn’t seem to mind, seemed to like it in fact. I didn’t know what that said about him, but I wasn’t going to complain.
I let the jerkin fall to the floor, and he made an abortive movement with his hands. He caught himself, though, and let out a long, slow breath, trying to maintain some semblance of control. It was a sight to behold, the Knight Commander of Castle Lockes all spread out and wanting in our bed. No one else got to see him like this. This was only for me.
I popped the button to my trousers, wondering how much longer I could string him along. I was already half hard and itching to close the distance between us. But sex gods couldn’t show they were affected. Sex gods played it cool and collected and sexy.
“You’re thinking about being a sex god again, aren’t you?” he asked, voice rough.
I snapped my head back toward him. His eyes were a little clearer than they’d been just a moment before, and he had that fond and exasperated look on his face that I knew so well. His cock was still hard, and his arms were still above his head. His legs were drawn up, feet down on the mattress. He was exposed but comfortable. He trusted me.
So of course I lied. “No, I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I was thinking about what I was going to do to you.”
“Really,” he said. “That’s what you’re going with.”
“Do you want to be ravaged or not?”
“When you put it like that, I might need a moment to think about it.”
“You’re impossible,” I said with a scowl.
“Sam,” Ryan said. “I am naked in our bed waiting for you to screw me. I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be talking right now.”
“What about dirty talking?”
“I don’t want to know what you want me to do to your ear hole.”
I shoved my trousers and underpants to the ground. “Sex god,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Come on, sex god. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Bossy fucking bottom,” I grumbled as I kicked my feet out of my trousers.
“Sam,” he said, and he sounded a little desperate again. “Come over here and screw me.”
When Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart makes such a demand, one does not hesitate. And no, I didn’t trip and almost fall into the bed, no matter what anyone said. And if Ryan did say anything like that, he was a fucking liar and I would spank the shit out of him later.
He was laughing by the time I pulled myself on top of him, his arms still above his head. He spread his legs a little more, just enough to make room for me to lie on top of him. His eyes fluttered shut as I pressed my weight against him, cock to cock, chest to chest. I reached up and grabbed both of his wrists with one hand, holding him in place, and his breaths came in short little bursts. We were under no illusions that I could hold him in place; if he wanted to get up from under me, he would. But he didn’t, and that was key. He wanted to be held down, wanted to feel like someone else was in control. He’d told me this in fumbling fits and starts, blushing terribly as he looked down at his hands. “We don’t have to do it,” he’d mumbled. “I’m just happy I get to have you at all.”
And what the hell was I supposed to do in the face of that?
Everything I could, obviously.
And it just so happened our kinks lined up for the most part, no matter how vanilla they were. We weren’t Gary and Kevin (oh my gods how we weren’t Gary and Kevin), but we did okay.
And there was the fact that I would have given Ryan just about anything he could ask for. I could admit to still being a little starry-eyed when the thought crossed my mind that,
out of everyone in the world, he wanted me the most, enough to break an oath he made in the name of his mother.
I kissed him, and he made this little noise in the back of his throat, soft and wounded, pressing his hands up against mine, testing how far I’d let him go. I tightened my grip as I controlled the kiss, grinding my hips down against his, letting the slick friction from the oil on his dick rub against my own. He gasped into my mouth, and I swallowed it down, my tongue against his.
I pulled away, watching as he lifted his head, trying to chase the kiss. He frowned when he couldn’t get very far, pupils dilated until there was only the faintest ring of green. “Come on, Sam, please,” he said. “Come on.”
“Not yet,” I said, pushing my hips forward again. “You can hold on for just a little bit longer, can’t you?”
He shook his head back and forth.
“I think you can,” I said, squeezing his wrists tighter, the way I knew he liked.
He tried to buck his hips up, but I pushed them back again, his dick sliding against my stomach as I rolled myself down again.
“I’m ready,” he panted. “I promise. I’m ready.”
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against his. I kissed my way down his jaw to his neck. He turned his head to allow me better access. I sucked on the skin near his collarbone, just low enough that I knew any mark would be hidden by his uniform. That was a lesson learned the first time we started this thing between us. Not only was it unprofessional (which Morgan scolded me for while the King just laughed at me), but Ryan’s knights weren’t exactly a subtle bunch, and they gave him as much crap as they possibly could.
He was begging me for more, begging me to fuck him, to just fuck him godsdammit, and I knew he’d reached his breaking point. The lovely flush had crawled down his neck to his chest and stomach, skin overheating as he tried to wriggle against the friction.
“Just fucking get on with it,” he snarled at me, teeth bared. “Just fucking do it if you’re going to do it, gods.”
And oh. Oh. That’s how it was going to be. He was goading me, and he knew I knew, but I was too far gone to care. It gave me something back, lording over him like this, making him squirm until he was pleading for me to fuck him. I don’t know why, and I certainly hadn’t expected anything between us to bloom like this.
But it did, and he was provoking me.
There was green and gold, and my magic said, mineminemine. He let out a happy groan when I dropped my grip on his wrists and flipped him over. He went willingly, knowing what he’d been working me toward. I knocked his legs apart with my knees while he pulled himself up on all fours, resting his weight on his elbows, face pressed to the side against the pillow.
He jerked his head forward when I breached him with my fingers, two, then three, working them in and out of his hole. “I’m good,” he chanted. “I’m good, Sam, I’m good,” and I slapped his ass, just once, in warning and he stopped. He breathed into the pillow, letting me do what I wanted.
There was a fourth finger, but it only lasted a moment before he growled at me to get on with it. I pulled my hand out and lined myself up, pushing down on his back, causing his chest to hit the bed and his hips to cant up toward me. The muscles in his back twitched as I pushed my cock into him. He sighed and closed his eyes, pushing his hips back toward me slowly until I was pressed flush against him. I waited a beat, and then another one. And another. Then he nodded, just once, a barely there thing as he breathed through his nose. I brought my hips back out and in again, fucking into him as I held him down.
It didn’t take long for him to start those little sounds again, those little noises of grunts and please and more, I can take more. He gasped, eyes flying open, as I angled my hips differently.
“I bet he can hear you,” I said through gritted teeth. “Ruv. You think he can hear you? I bet he can. Groaning like that. Saying my name. Acting like my cornerstone.”
Ryan growled low in his throat, probably a little pissed that I would even say that name while we were fucking. He pushed himself up onto his hands and bowed his back, meeting me thrust for thrust. I slowed down my own movements, letting him fuck himself on my dick. I ran my hand up his back until I reached his hair, curling my fingers into it, getting a good solid grip. I pulled, arching his back even further and fucked into him again. The muscles in his arm bulged as he dug his fingers into the blankets.
I felt a little drunk, a side effect of the magic and the bond between us. It always hit hard in moments like this, making me feel detached and floating but like I was still tethered to him. His grunts were becoming louder, careening us both toward the end. I tugged on his hair sharply, and he pushed himself up until his back was flush against my chest. The angle was awkward, the mattress too soft to allow me to do anything but thrust shallowly.
But it was enough. As soon as my hand was around his dick, still sticky with oil, I only had to fuck into him two or three more times before he was coming over my hand, a strangled moan falling from his mouth. His ass squeezed around my cock, and I pushed up into him as deep as I could, sank my teeth into the meat of his shoulder, and shot off inside him.
All that green. All that gold.
How it sang.
I CLEANED him up as best I could, knowing he’d be sore and sticky still in the morning. He didn’t seem to care, a blissed-out look on his face as I stripped the comforter off the bed and threw it to the floor. The fireplace kept away the worst of the chill, but one learned to ignore the cold when living in a castle. The drafts were always there, even during the summer. When the snows came in winter around All Hallowed Day, the fires never went out.
I pulled the blankets up and over us, tucking into his side. His leg came up and over mine, arm around me pulling me close. I rested my head on his shoulder, face pressed against his neck. I was drawing circles on his chest, and I felt his heart beating underneath my touch. I loved that heart, almost more than anything else in the world. It was important to me.
I said, “You know you have nothing to worry about, right?”
“There are always things to worry about,” he said quietly.
“Maybe. But not this.”
“This?”
He hissed when I pinched his nipple. “Knock it off. You know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, pulling me just a little bit tighter against him.
He was lying, and we both knew it. “Sure,” I said. “Because you normally have middle-of-the-day shirtless pull-up contests that draw large crowds and end up in hardcore gay sex.”
I didn’t even need to look up to know he had a smug smile on his face. “Didn’t seem like you had much to complain about there.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re stupid sometimes.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “But I beat him, didn’t I?”
“Did you?” I asked innocently. “From where I stood, you stopped right in the middle of it.”
“Only because you were— Speaking of that.”
Well, fuck. That was something I had been hoping to avoid. Maybe if I pretended I wasn’t there, he wouldn’t push it. “Gosh, I’m sore. Are you sore? I am a sex god, after all—”
“You’re deflecting. Again.”
Bastard. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He shook me a little, jostling me at his side. “Sam. I know something was wrong. We don’t keep things from each other. Ever.”
“Lies. I have secrets. I’m a wizard. I’m supposed to be secretive.”
“Sam, the one time you tried to keep a wizarding secret from me, you told me that you had a secret and couldn’t tell me, and then told me anyway two minutes later.”
“Secrets are hard. You don’t even know.”
“Sam.”
I sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to let this go. “Vadoma,” I admitted. “She’s getting in my head.”
He tensed. “What? What did she say? Was it about Ruv again? God, I hate that guy. You just have to
ignore her, Sam, I mean she’s gotta be—”
“No, I mean she is literally getting in my head. Like, we were standing there, and then everyone was frozen except for me and her. I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t, if this was a mind game or if she actually froze everyone in that room.”
“Oh,” Ryan said.
“Yeah. Oh.”
“How can she do that? I thought her magic wasn’t supposed to be that great.”
Good question. “I have no idea. It felt… I don’t know. Fake, somehow. Like it wasn’t real.”
He pushed me off him gently, laying my head on my pillow so he could turn on his side and face me. Our foreheads were almost touching, and I could feel his breath on my face. He reached up and traced his thumb across my bottom lip. “You know I’d never let anything happen to you, right? You’re a sex god, after all.”
And I tried. I really did. I tried to hold in my laughter because I was scared. I was worried. But when faced with the earnestness of Ryan Foxheart trying to get a smile on my face, I was helpless. I burst out laughing and didn’t miss the way he looked pleased with himself.
“So dumb,” I said. “It’s true, but you’re dumb.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “But you wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Nah,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
“We’ll figure it out, okay?” he said. “I promise. We’ll figure out what this is, this destiny or whatever. And I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“I really hate that word.”
“I know. But if you think about it, who else is going to have one beside you? Isn’t that the sort of thing that happens to us? I’d say it’s something we should have expected.”
Us. Not happens to you. Us. Like there was no question that we were a team. “Why?” I asked, suddenly curious.
“Why what?”
“Why are you with me? After all this bullshit, after everything we’ve been through, why are you still here?”
He rolled his eyes. “Are you serious? Are you that stupid?”
“There’s the romance I needed. My gods, the heart boner I’ve got is throbbing like you don’t even know. Put your mouth hole on me and let me feel your insides.”