CHAPTER 125: ONE HUNDRED & TWENTY FIVE

His pace increases, but the rhythm never breaks. And I light up from inside so swiftly, I do not register the climax until it carves my body off the bed. Lucien’s voice is a distant lull. "Walk me through the security detail within the walls of the castle."

"I..." Small pants. " I haven’t gotten close enough to see the wall, have not been let outside the castle quite yet." He tugs down the neckline of my chemise and I gasp, eyes rolling back in my head as he sucks my nipple into his mouth and bites, as if my answer warrants a punishment.

I moan, eyes shutting as I feel the tension brewing again, and when he lifts my hips, angling them higher to take in a third finger, I come with such staggering force, it makes me light-headed.

His pulls out of me then, and I catch a gleam of violet before he raises his head, drawing on my lips sweetly. First the top lip, and then the bottom. Every inch of me quivers, inflamed by the precious contact. I roll my hips, arching closer as his fingers pump harder, deeper. The lick saturates the air like some carnal sin and a purr rumbles deep in my belly.

"Tell me why you taste like another," he grunts. "Have you been letting people inside my mouth, Valka?"

Being Rafael’s concubine, pretending to be completely enamoured by him has been tasking. He’s been... charming, to say the least. Perhaps, a woman who hadn’t watched him torture her physically and emotionally might have fallen for it, but the gifts, making sure I am well fed, even if I am pretty sure my food is still being sprinkled with substances that dull my senses, and visiting my chamber every night to ’tuck me in’, when in fact, he’s been trying to push the boundaries and get into my pants, it’s been appalling.

Sex, I could easily avoid, because regardless of his fixation with me, he’ll not touch me with Lucien’s child inside me. It physically repulses him. But the kisses, they just happen. And with each kiss I grant him, it is one more leash gone, one step closer to winning his trust while I try glean the internal affairs of his kingdom.

I hate it, but I have no choice.

"It was... necessary," I say.

Lucien pauses, pulling back to look in my face. "I see."

The haze clears slightly, giving him my first real glimpse of him. He looks nothing like he did in the last dream.

The moonlight behind him casts a shadow over his frame. He’s dressed in a jacket I’ve never seen before. Red with stitches of white and gold, buttoned all the way to the top, halting at the elegant arch of his neck. His hair... it’s shorter. It is shorn close at the sides, tapering into the longer strands that sweep across his brow--so much shorter. And it makes him look younger and older somehow, edgier, angrier and severe.

There’s a small scar on the side of his face, matching where he’d been cut with the silver and sprinkled with ash. It’s healed, leaving mostly a trace of red lined with silver if you stared hard enough.

My hand rises to cup his cheek. "You’re back." My eyelids squint, tears stinging my gaze. "You’re here." Not here, but here. Not dead. It was good enough for me.

He looks offended. "I wasn’t even gone for two months." He expels a needy breath. "I was fatally wounded. I still am. Explain to me why you’ve been kissing the enemy while I’ve been fighting through hell and back to make it back to you."

I blink. "You’re mad at me? For kissing someone who was going to kill me?" I don’t add our unborn child. Because a part of me knows that if Lucien caught wind of that, he’d come barreling in here, even if it meant putting his life in danger. I didn’t want that. I almost lost him once. I can’t go through it again. "Would you rather I be dead than alive? Or does having another man’s tongue down my throat make me repulsive now? You asked me to fight. That’s precisely what I’m doing."

"Fighting is a far cry from exchanging bodily fluids."

My jaw unhinges. "Oh my god--We were NOT exchanging bodily fluids. It was just a kiss. Maybe two. Or five." I feel like a child bickering away with a friend. "It meant nothing to me."

Lucien’s expression remains unchanged. "I met an old friend in Averis. She’s agreed to give us an armada on the condition that I spend the night with her."

Something in my chest cracks. "And?"

He shrugs. "It’s just sex. It meant nothing to me--"

My knee slams into his dick and he howls, half-laughing. "I was joking--fucking hell, Valka. You can do it and I cannot?"

"Our situations are not the same!"

He drops his head to my neck, breath warm, voice roughened by a laugh that isn’t really one. "I know. I just wanted you to understand that I’m not entirely unreasonable for feeling jealous. He gets to breathe the same air as you, and this--" his hand slides over my skin. "this is the only way I get to see you. Slipping into your dreams. And every moment I can’t reach you is another day--days--I suffer the thought that he might have done something to you."

My gaze softens and I swallow. "How long until you get here?"

"Soon," he promises, then pauses. "What is that scent?" He nuzzles my throat hungrily. "It’s like..."

My hands dive lower in a bid to distract him and he grunts when I find the hard length of him through his pants and stroke him. That sharp, soft intake of breath races down my spine, making my toes curl.

"Would it be inappropriate," he murmurs, lips grazing mine, "to fuck you in a dream?"

"Very," I say in a breathy whimper, stroking again. "But that has never stopped you before."

I feel him smile against me. "Naughty."

But he doesn’t. He just murmurs against the curve of my ear. "I am beyond disappointed in myself for being unable to maintain this for much longer." My eyes fly open and I see the edges of my vision begin to fray. I cling to him tightly, hesitant to let go, or open my eyes and return back to a world he isn’t in. He laughs softly. "Tell me if I need to die often or experience something close to have you be this sweet and gentle with me."

I mumble something inaudible against the front of his jacket. But in truth, I hide my tears from him. What if this is never over? What if something goes wrong? I’ve read enough books to know that when people often say things like that, they die. Or they don’t make it to the end.

"There’s a dungeon below the castle," he says suddenly as I feel consciousness stir inside me and the world outside begin to grow into a distant, steady hum. "A tunnel used to through, leading just outside the walls. I need you to find out if it still exists."