Chapter 35: Morning after
The quiet was a living thing, thick with the smell of sex and slow-drying sweat. Kerr’s heart hammered against Elspeth’s ear, a slowing drum beneath the muscle and bone of his chest. They were a sticky, tangled wreck of limbs on the damp sheets. Her breath came in shallow flutters against his skin.
She stirred first, a slight shift of her head. Then her tongue, a warm, rough point, touched the hollow of his throat. A tiny, salt-seeking lick. Then another, a millimeter lower, tasting him.
“So,” she murmured, her voice sanded rough. “The tourney.”
He let out a long, exhausted breath, his hand coming up to rest on the back of her head. “Went as it went. The joust was dull. Sir Perth’s lance shattered on the third pass. More splinters than glory.”
Her lips traveled the line of his collarbone, a feather-light kiss on a knot of scar tissue. “And the duels?”
“Semifinal was the Rivaini duelist. All flair. No bottom.” His words were flat, factual. “He folded after a minute. The final was against a chevalier from Orlais. Smelled of rose oil and arrogance. Broke his wrist in the disarm. He yielded prettily enough.”
Her mouth moved lower, her teeth grazing a hard pectoral. She found his nipple, circled it with her tongue, then sucked it into the warm cave of her mouth. Her hand, meanwhile, slid down the plain of his abdomen, through the coarse, wet hair, and wrapped around his cock. It was soft, spent, sticky with their mixed release. She began to rub it slowly, smearing the drying fluids, her touch both possessive and reverent.
“Mmm. And all those ladies in their pretty silks,” she whispered against his skin, her breath hot. “Swooning from the galleries. They must have been dripping, watching you. All that strength. That speed. Every last one of them wanting a taste of this.” Her hand tightened slightly, a soft, claiming pump.
A sharp hiss escaped his teeth. His hips gave an infinitesimal twitch. “Wasn’t theirs to enjoy,” he grunted, the words strained.
“No?” She lifted her head, her eyes glinting in the near-dark. She shifted her body, sliding a thigh over his hips to straddle him, her hand still working him with a slow, insistent rhythm. He was beginning to fill her grip again, a thickening weight. “Even with all that fawning at your disposal… you ride through the night. You stink of horse and blood. You kick in my door and fill me up good and proper. Why’s that, my lord?”
He didn’t answer with words. Instead, he reached up, a large hand cradling the back of her neck, and pulled her down into a deep, consuming kiss. It was all tongue and heat and shared breath. When he broke it, his voice was a low, rough scrape against her lips. “Because it belongs in you.My seed. In your cunt. In your ass. In your mouth. Nowhere else.”
The crude, simple declaration hung in the air for a half-second. Then his hands were on her, huge and irresistible. He moved as if she weighed no more than a doll, pulling her up his body. He shifted, sitting up with his back against the carved headboard, and dragged her with him, so she was kneeling over his face. He cupped her ass in both hands, his thumbs spreading her, and his mouth was on her.
There was no preamble. He ate her with a single-minded, voracious intensity, his tongue driving into her, lapping up the combined slickness of their previous couplings. It was overwhelming, almost impersonal in its efficiency. She cried out, her hands flying back to brace against his powerful thighs. Just as the sensation began to crest, she felt the blunt, insistent pressure of his middle finger, slick from her own fluids, pressing against, then into, her other hole.
“Oh, Maker, Kerr—!”
“If they only knew,” she gasped, her voice riding the twin sensations of his tongue and his finger. “Those simpering girls. If they knew what it was to take all of you. To feel you… stretching me… burning me up from the inside…” Her words came in ragged bursts, punctuated by sharp gasps. “To have you so deep I can’t breathe… to taste you after, bitter and clean… to swallow every last drop…”
Her philosophical review was cut short, annihilated by a sudden, vicious orgasm. It racked her, a series of sharp, internal convulsions that made her thighs clamp against his head. She vibrated on his face, a keening sound trapped in her throat.
Before the last tremor had faded, he was moving again. His hands lifted her, dripping, and in one smooth motion, he lowered her onto his erect cock. She was so wet, so open, she took him in one slick, sinking plunge, until she was seated fully in his lap, impaled.
“Ride,” he commanded, his voice thick.
And she did. There was no artistry now, no teasing climb. It was a frantic, piston-driven rhythm, her hips slamming down onto his, driven by a desperate, overstimulated need for conclusion. The sound of flesh meeting flesh filled the little room. He watched her, his eyes dark and fixed, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. It was fast, brutal, and over in less than a minute. With a choked, guttural roar, he came inside her, his release a hot, pulsing flood that had nowhere to go but to mix with what was already there.
Elspeth collapsed forward onto his chest, utterly spent. A long, shuddering sigh escaped her. She was liquid, boneless, a vessel filled to overflowing.
After a moment, she managed a breathless whisper against his skin. “You’re incorrigible.”
He was still breathing hard, his chest rising and falling beneath her. One hand came up to rest, almost gently, on the back of her head. His answer, when it came, was simple, final, and utterly truthful.
“My body tells me what it needs,” he said. “I listen.”