Maeve
I expected this to feel awkward. So much time has passed. We had each other for a single night, and then months went by. Should I have forgotten what his hands feel like? Should my body be tense and unyielding when he climbs next to me, carefully bracing himself with a hand to the mattress as he leans over to kiss my lips, my jaw, and down the slope of my neck while his free hand glides over my hip to my thigh?
Instead, I melt into his touch. I drown in him. Every ache and pain fades and is instantly replaced by a dizzying sense of belonging and being beloved. It’s natural. It’s like touching and being touched by him is something I was built for, like he was made for me and I him. Yet, I’m not as agile as I was once. Moving around–being thrown this way and that way is obviously off the table, but Soren… knows what to do.
“Oh!” I cry out, gripping the sheets when his mouth dips between my thighs, his arms snaking around my legs and pulling me down the mattress. My eyes flutter closed as his tongue parts my folds, and he growls against the tender, aching flesh, sending a vibration of pleasure skittering down my spine that settles where he’s now licking and sucking me into a heated frenzy.
I haven’t been touched like this since him. Since that morning before the train. I continue gripping the sheets as he tugs me further down the bed until he’s kneeling on the ground at the foot of the bed with my thighs resting on his shoulders, my ankles locked and toes curling when he slides his fingers inside of me to further push me toward the edge.
“You were,” he rasps against my clit, smiling as I moan against the sensation of his voice and fingers pleasuring me in tandem, “amazing down there, Queen Maeve.”
“In the library?” I pant, already too overcome to stop myself from falling over the edge of reason, the edge of no return.
“I love it when you’re mean.” He grins, and then his tongue drags through my folds again, rendering me useless.
“You’re acting like our world isn’t crashing down around us right now,” I whisper then whimper a moan.
“I’m kneeling for my mate,” he breathes, pressing a rough kiss to my inner thigh. “The rest can fucking wait.”
All I see is stars as he showers me with me praise and fucks me with his tongue and fingers until I’m begging for him to let me come, but every time I get close, he slows his movements, savoring the way I’m begging and pleading his name.
“I want you inside of me,” I beg, clawing his shoulders as I try to sit up. “Please, Soren, I’m dying for it.”
He rises and takes off his shirt, then his pants, holding my gaze as he skillfully drags his belt free of the loops. But I can tell he’s hesitating, likely going over the logistics in his mind as he scans my naked body. He reaches for me, kneading one of my breasts–so much larger than they were when we were together the last time–and trembles with a sigh. “Fuck, Maeve. I’m not going to last long when you’re like this,” he says hungrily, his pupils blown wide like he’s on the verge of shifting. “Seeing you like this… I want to keep you like this forever.”
“Keep me pregnant forever? Absolutely not!” I scoff, glaring, but he shushes me, leaning down to kiss me and stealing the words from my tongue.
“Turn around,” he says sternly against my lips.
My heart is in my throat and beating out of rhythm as I slide off the foot of the bed and turn, closing my eyes against the sensation of his arms wrapping around me and his mouth pressing into the crook of my neck. He leans us forward so I’m bent over the edge of the bed, my hands braced on the mattress, his mouth leaving searing kisses along my shoulder blade.
His cock teases my entrance before he slowly guides himself inside of me, hissing out a breath as my inner walls grip him tight. “Fuck,” he growls, kissing my shoulder. “I missed this.”
I rise on my toes, breathing through the stretch as he fills me up, holding himself there for a moment like he needs a second to regain his composure.
He finds my breasts as he begins to thrust, taking his time as he pulls out and presses in again until we both begin to groan, and the pressure builds.
“Yes,” I gasp as tension coils in my lower stomach. “Goddess, yes.”
“Are you going to come for me, Princess?”
I arch my back as he grips my ass, thrusting into me harder than before. My inner walls spasm and clutch his cock so hard he bites down on my shoulder but not hard enough to break the skin. It still fills me with so much heat I nearly scream his name, and his teeth graze my skin as he loses himself in my body…. It’s enough. It rocks me to my center, and I fall over the edge into blinding, white-hot pleasure.
He grips my throat as I ride out the orgasm, his other hand braced on the mattress at my side, but then he tilts my head to the side and…
I suck in a breath, biting back a scream as he sinks his teeth into the crook of my neck, marking me.
The smell of blood briefly reaches me. He bites down harder, groaning as he rocks into me. Another orgasm sweeps through me, taking me by surprise, and then he’s coming unglued.
Soren grunts, his teeth still clamped to my neck, and spills inside of me.
Gasping, he pulls away, his forehead pressed to the ridge of my shoulder while I struggle to catch my breath. A bead of blood drips down my neck and trickles between my breasts, but I don’t feel pain.
I feel… everything else. Everything warm and rich.
The mate bond echoes through me at first, like a warm summer breeze. It’s… beautiful. But still just out of reach.
I turn around to face him, caressing his cheek, and press a soft kiss to his mouth before moving to kiss his jaw, then down his neck…
He clasps the back of my head, pressing my face against his neck, “Bite me. Mark me, Maeve.”
“Is that possible? I’m a witch–”
“I don’t give a fuck. I’m yours. I want to carry your scar.”
Something unexpected ripples through my body. The faint mate bond I feel burrows deep, igniting my powers, which shimmer through my skin. I lick his neck, and he groans, tangling his fingers in my hair, his cock growing hard again as my teeth graze his skin.
I bite down on his neck, hard, hard enough to break the skin.
But I’m not a shifter.
I’m something else.
I’m the only one of my kind…
But I have him.
My powers burst, sending a flash of heat where we’re joined. Soren grips me harder, hissing in pain, and I pull away, tasting his blood on my tongue.
Muted crimson light sparkles from the mark I left on his neck. It sinks into his skin, leaving a smooth, silver scar in its wake–fully healed.
But my magic travels through his body, giving him a faint golden glow.
I look up into his eyes. He looks down at me, panting, as the magic fades, and the mate bond between us snaps together–and I feel it.
I feel the full force of it.
It’s enough to make me cry.
“You felt like this for nine months?” I whisper, completely and utterly overwhelmed.
“I love you, Maeve,” he whispers, leaning his forehead against mine and taking my hand, smoothing a kiss across my knuckles.
* * *
*Soren*
She’s sleeping as I grip the top of the doorframe, leaning forward to stretch the aching muscles in my back and shoulders. I feel like I lived ten lifetimes in the past… forty-eight hours or so. My brain can’t grasp everything that happened, but honestly, I really don’t give a shit about Blake being a weird fucking mutant dickhead, or “Grandpa Ryatt” stalking around like a shadow, or Hannibal, or the Viper.
Everyone can go to hell because we have… twelve hours, I’d guess, until this baby is born.
I watch Maeve twitch in her sleep, sighing around another tightening that grasps her entire body, but nothing strong enough to make any real progress. It’s frustrating seeing her like this. I want to help her somehow, but… I suppose just being here is enough. There’s not much we can do for her now, according to her mom and Misty.
I close the door and step into the quiet, still destroyed hallway, and run my fingers through my disheveled hair with a heavy sigh.
I let my body decide where I’m going next, which ends up being a cozy but wide study or parlor located on the fifth floor. I’m not the only one seeking refuge here because I find the one man I really didn’t want to be alone with sitting in an armchair near the fireplace, swirling a glass of whiskey as he squints down at the phone in his hand.
Ryatt follows my steps toward the bottle of whiskey he left open on a built-in bar along the far wall. I fetch a glass from a shelf above my head and pour myself a heavy dram, exhaling deeply through the obvious tension filling the room.
I turn, nodding at him in greeting, then move to a dainty antique chair in the far corner of the room, and sit.
Minutes tick by in silence. I’d surmise he thinks I think I own this place now, moving around from room to room as I wish. I drain my whiskey. He drains his. He grumbles at his phone. I check my watch, timing another rush of pain through the mate bond.
I’m pouring myself a second glass of whiskey when the Shadow King, an absolute legend in the Roguelands where I’d spent the majority of my life, says, “We’re not all bad. You’re meeting us at a… complicated time.”
I glance at him over my shoulder to confirm he’s speaking to me and not taking a phone call, and when his eyes meet mine, I feel… I feel like Patton would likely feel coming face to face with this man. Starstruck.
“This entire situation is my fault,” I tell him, turning back to the bar to take a sip of my drink so he can’t see how badly my hand is trembling. “I got Maeve into this.”
“It’s not your fault, necessarily. There’s been some… rifts in the family for a while. And, she would have gotten herself into it eventually. You were her target for so long.” He exhales as I turn to face him. “That’s all she cared about, all she talked about for years when she was shadowing Ella. I’m going to find and kill the assassin. I’m going to bring him to justice. I’m going to rid the world of him and the Spider. Little did she know those feelings were… the mate bond trying to guide her home.”
“I can’t stand here and pretend to be a good guy,” I reply hoarsely. “I’m not going to grovel for acceptance, if that’s what everyone is expecting from me. I did what I had to do to survive and keep someone I loved safe. I would do it all again. Every kill, every lie. I don’t regret any of it.”
“I know. I understand completely.” His soft, almost secretive smile is something I realize I might not get the opportunity to see often, if not ever again. “The Roguelands are… uncontrollable. That’s the reason why it’s still a hotbed for illegal activity. It’ll never change. It’ll never be tamed. Only someone who has lived there, who has bled there, knows that.” His gaze holds mine for several seconds before he looks down at his drink.
I chew the inside of my cheek while wondering if I should start asking him questions about his time as the King of the Rogues. Everyone knows the history, of course. The Roguelands was… nothing back then. A deep, dark forest. Dark enough to hide in. Dark enough to disappear in. He gathered an army there out of misfits, bandits, and slaves. He ruled as king when there wasn’t anyone to rule. He overthrew an evil regime with forces whose training was nothing more than a life of survival in the same forest I’ve called home for so long.
He understands. He’s still the king there, in some shape or form… at least, until Maeve came into power.
I think we both know her authority doesn’t mean shit in the Roguelands.
A gnawing, clawing sensation drifts through my body. It’s something I’ve been ignoring for weeks, maybe months… years, I suppose.
The Viper’s end, and the liberation of men like me, men unable to get out from beneath her, will be at my hand, but I can’t do it from here, can I?
“I’ll stay here with her,” he says as if reading my mind, bringing his drink to his lips. “She’ll be safe. Ella just arrived, and Kenna will be back soon–with Brie. She’s surrounded by family again. She’s not alone, Soren. She’s safe.”
A tingle of understanding prickles over my skin as the… the truth of the matter that I’ve been burying starts clawing to the surface like he knows. Like he can see right through me, see through the mask of bullshit I’ve been wearing since I arrived here.
Since I came face to face with Blake, the only man I think can help me end this for good.
“She’s going to be okay, and you’re going to come back to her, but you need to do what needs to be done. You have to go back.”
I grind my teeth, nodding, and bring my drink to my lips. “I’m taking that freak with the weird eyes with me. He owes me.”
Ryatt smirks, leaning back in his chair, and nods.