“Maybe temporarily,” she allowed.“For sex purposes only.”
“Maybe I should take you away somewhere only I can see you and keep you in that collar and nothing else,” he murmured.“For sex purposes only.”His wing fingers parted her legs as he tugged more sharply on the collar, making her gasp.He seemed to have enough magic inside the cubby to vanish her clothes, because she was naked again.
“As long as you fuck me senseless,” she agreed recklessly.
“Is that a bargain, human pet?”he asked, stroking her clit relentlessly.
“Not valid,” she panted.“I’m under duress.”
“True,” he mused, draping her leg over his hip and driving his impressive cock into her.“So wet and wild for me.”
“Yes.”She clutched at him, as crazed as she’d ever been, desperate in her need.
He stroked within her in steady calm, holding the collar and kissing her deeply.“If I thought it would work to keep you safe, I would,” he told her.“That’s why I marked you.Partly to pretend you could be mine always, but mostly to protect you.And it still didn’t work.You’re too wild and free and I cannot bear to cage you even for your own protection.I love you far too much, Arantxa darling.”
“You… you what?”she gasped, her mind whirling with the hovering climax and the words she’d never expected to hear from him.
“You heard me,” he almost snarled.“Remember it, because it’s the only time you ever will.”
He pulled hard on the collar and simultaneously thrust ferociously into her, his wing fingers pressing against her lower back to hold her in place while others pinched her clit.She came apart, frenzied in the shattering orgasm, mind and heart kaleidoscoping with confused realizations.Thrashing in his hold, in the forever comfort of his tenting wings, she unraveled.
But, even in the midst of dissolving like so much fluff on the wind, his words stuck in her mind.
It’s the only time you ever will.
*
Cha must havefallen asleep again because the wrenching transition into Obsidian woke her.“Oh, thank the stars,” she muttered before she even opened her eyes.
“Now may I be released?”Azul asked, more of a demand than a request, sounding fully alert, not a trace of muzziness in his voice.
“Don’t you ever sleep?”she asked in return.“When you’re not enchanted into it,” she hastily amended and not without a little chagrin.
“Fae are different,” he answered.
He sounded cool and remote again and not at all like the man who’d whispered fierce declarations and ravished her until she didn’t know her own name.And it’s the only time you ever will.She shivered in that way that her superstitious mother always said meant someone had walked on your grave.
“Well, I knew that,” she joked, stroking a hand down his wing.
He moved her hand away.“Out?”he asked pointedly.“We are in Obsidian now, as you intended.”
Well, shewasstarving and thirsty enough to drink a lake.“Since you ask so nicely,” she answered in a sweetly cheerful tone, hoping to point out his rude behavior by contrast.He didn’t reply so that was wasted effort.Hmph.It wouldn’t have worked on her either.She triggered the mechanism to open it and, with a rush of wings, Azul was up and out.
“No, that’s all right, I don’t need a hand up,” she called, lacing the words with extra sarcasm.She was still naked, she realized.And the collar was gone.She touched her throat in strange foreboding.“Thanks for taking the collar off,” she said, clambering out.“What are you going to do, now that—”
She peered around in the dimness.
Azul was gone.
~31~
Aftermath for Non-Mathematicians
“Well, you didsucceed in rescuing him from the Citrine Palace,” Dy consoled her.“Which was the point, after all.”
It wasn’t much consolation.Neither were the all-you-can-eat chips and salsa, although Cha was doing her best to eat all she could.They’d stopped at a place in Santa’s Village, which wasn’t too far into Obsidian, thankfully.Dy had resolutely thrown out all everything edible or drinkable they’d brought with them, saying it was too dangerous to consider consuming them after they’d been exposed to Citrine magic for so long and that Cha could wait another hour or two as she’d gone this long.Cha would’ve argued except Dy had done it while she was in the hidey-hole with Azul.
Cha would have been upset at the further delay at filling her empty stomach except that she couldn’t be more crushed than she already was.After hearing the brief version of what had happened with Azul, Dy let her stew in silence, sandwiched between Katu and Warg.At least her physical misery matched her emotional state.