Chapter 2: Conduit
I make it as far as the second-floor landing of Riorson House before I kiss him.
To be fair to me, he started it. He's been walking half a step behind me the whole way down the goat path and in through the kitchen door, past three cooks and a very startled Imogen, and every step of the way I could feel him back there like a hand hovering at the small of my back, not touching, and every step of the way the charge under my skin got louder. By the time we hit the main stairs I could hear it. A low buzz behind my ears, like a wasp trapped against glass.
On the landing he says my name, just that, low, and I turn around and grab the front of his flight jacket and pull.
The first spark jumps between our mouths before they meet. It stings. He makes a sound, half a laugh and half something rougher, and then his hand is at the back of my head and he's kissing me properly, deep and unhurried, like he has all night and plans to use every minute of it, and the power in me goes absolutely wild.
It's not lightning, exactly. It's what comes before lightning. The prickle and pull of a sky about to break. It races under my skin everywhere he touches, the back of my neck, my jaw, the curve of my waist where his other hand has settled, and I can feel it arcing between us in a hundred tiny stinging points.
I break away. "I'm going to hurt you."
"You're not." He walks me backward, one step, two, until my shoulders meet the cool stone wall of the corridor, and doesn't let go of me for a second. "Feel."
He takes my hand and presses it flat to his chest, over his heart, and I feel it. Under the leather, under his skin, his shadows are right there, cool and dense and endlessly deep. Every spark that leaves me sinks into him and vanishes. Not resisted. Taken. Swallowed into dark.
"Everything you've got," he says against my temple. "Give it to me. That's what I'm for."
"That's not what you're for."
"Tonight it is."
His door is at the end of the corridor. I've been in his room a hundred times; I know every crack in the ceiling and every scar on the old oak bedframe and exactly which floorboard creaks. Tonight it looks different. The tall windows are open, and the storm-washed air is pouring in cold and clean, and beyond the glass the last of the clouds are still churning over the peaks, lit from inside every few seconds by flickers I didn't send. Or maybe I did. I can't tell anymore where I stop.
He kicks the door shut behind us. The shadows in the corners of the room stir and lengthen, and the lock turns by itself with a quiet click.
"Show-off," I say.
"You love it."
I do. I'm not going to tell him so. I go to work on the buckles of his jacket instead, and my fingers are clumsy and sparking and I swear at them, and he laughs and covers my hands with his and helps. The jacket hits the floor. The swords come off, harness and all, set down against the wall with a care he never shows anything else. Then he pulls his shirt over his head and stands there in the half-dark, and the relic swirls over his shoulder and down his arm like smoke caught under glass, and I forget for a moment what I was going to say.
"Your turn," he says.
My armour laces up the side. He knows it better than I do; he's the one who had it made. He finds the first knot and works it loose slowly, watching my face the whole time instead of his hands, and each lace that comes free sends a small blue thread of light skittering across my ribs. When the armour falls away and it's just my thin shirt underneath, he stops.
"Tell me if anything hurts," he says. "Your shoulder. Your knee. Anything."
"Nothing hurts."
"Violet."
"My left knee's a bit loose from the landing," I admit. "That's it."
"Then you're on top," he says, perfectly matter-of-fact, like he's adjusting a flight formation, and I laugh, and the laugh turns into a gasp when he drags my shirt up over my head and puts his mouth to my collarbone.
The charge goes everywhere at once. I arch into him without meaning to. His hands are warm and steady on my bare back, sliding up my spine, and wherever they go the sparks follow, prickling bright and sweet across my skin until I'm shaking with it. He works his way down slowly, unhurried, taking his time with my breasts until I'm clutching his hair and swearing at him, and the room lights up blue with every breath I let out. The windows flash. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolls.
"That one was you," he murmurs against my skin.
"I know." It comes out ragged. "I can't stop it."
"Good. Don't."
He gets me out of my leathers. I get him out of his. It isn't graceful; it's two people who've spent the whole day in flight gear and have absolutely no patience left, and at one point I get a boot stuck and he has to kneel and wrestle it off my foot while I laugh helplessly against the bedpost. Then he's still kneeling, and he looks up at me with his hands on my thighs, and the laugh dies in my throat.
"Can I?" he asks.
He always asks. Every single time, even now, even with my whole body singing for him. I nod, and that's not enough for him, so I say "Yes. Gods, yes, Xaden," out loud, and he smiles like I've handed him a gift and presses his mouth between my legs.
The first stroke of his tongue lights me up like a struck bell. I grab the bedpost to keep my feet. He's slow and devastatingly patient, his hands holding my hips steady while I shake, and every time the pleasure builds the power builds with it, climbing, pressing, until the air around us is crackling and every hair on my body is standing on end. Shadows curl around my ankles, cool and soothing. Light spills from my fingertips where they grip the wood. When I come it's with a crack of thunder so loud the windowpanes rattle, and white light floods the room, and for one blinding second I see the shadows rise all around us like dark wings to catch it.
When I can see again, he's grinning up at me. Actually grinning, which he does about once a year.
"Every dragon in the valley heard that," he says.
"Shut up."
"Tairn's going to be insufferable."
"Tairn's already insufferable." I pull him up by the hair, and he lets me, and I kiss him hard and taste myself on his tongue and push him back onto the bed.
He goes down easily, and pulls me with him, and I end up straddling his hips with his hands on my waist, exactly where he said I'd be. He's hard against me, hot and heavy, and when I rock against him he lets out a breath through his teeth that's the most satisfying sound I've heard all week.
I take him in my hand and line us up and look down at him.
"You're sure," I say. "If I lose control..."
"I want you to lose control." His eyes are black and gold and absolutely steady. "I want everything, Violet. Every spark. Every bolt. All of you. Don't you dare hold back from me. Not here."
So I don't. I sink down onto him slowly, inch by inch, and the stretch of it is so good my eyes fall shut, and when he's fully inside me we both go still, breathing. His hands tighten on my hips. His chest rises and falls under my palms. Under my skin the storm turns over, slow and immense, and waits.
Then I move, and it breaks.
I ride him the way I fly, which is to say badly at first and then beautifully, finding the rhythm by feel, chasing the place that makes my breath catch. He lets me set the pace. He holds me steady and watches me with that look, the one he gave me on the cliff, like he's seeing something he's going to remember when he's old. Every time I sink down, light flickers between us. Every time I rise, his shadows rise with me, cool tendrils curling over my thighs and around my waist and up my spine, catching every stray spark and drinking it down.
"More," he says.
"Xaden."
"I can take it. Give me more."
I let go of a little more. The windows blaze. Lightning cracks against the mountains outside, once, twice, and he groans and thrusts up into me, hard, and I cry out and let go of a little more. The charge isn't pacing anymore. It's flooding. It's in my lungs and my fingertips and the soles of my feet, and everywhere we're joined it's burning bright and sweet, and his shadows are everywhere, holding all of it, holding me.
I can feel myself climbing again. Faster this time. Higher. He feels it too; I don't know if it's Sgaeyl or Tairn or just him, but he sits up suddenly, wrapping one arm around my back and pulling me flush against his chest, his other hand at the back of my neck.
"Look at me," he says.
I look at him. His face is inches from mine, lit blue and white, sweat at his temples, the scar through his eyebrow, the gold in his eyes gone molten.
"I've got you," he says, low and certain, right against my mouth. "Let it all go."
And I do.
It tears out of me like a scream. The storm, the five days of holding back, the fear, all of it, out through my body and up into the sky through the open windows in one enormous blinding bolt that lights the entire valley like noon. I feel the shadows rise to meet it, around us, through us, a great dark shape like a dragon's wing folding over us both. I feel him come with a shout that I swallow with my mouth, his arms crushing me against him, shaking. The thunder rolls on and on, out over the peaks and back again.
Then it's dark. And quiet. And I'm boneless, collapsed against his shoulder with his heart pounding under my ear, and the charge under my skin is finally, blessedly, gone.
For a long time neither of us says anything. He strokes my back, slow, from my neck to the base of my spine and back up. Outside, the clouds are breaking apart. I can see stars.
Silver One, Tairn says, sounding like a dragon who has been woken from a very nice nap by the sky exploding. The entire city saw that.
I bury my face in Xaden's neck and groan.
"What?" he asks.
"Tairn says the whole city saw."
He laughs, really laughs, the sound vibrating through his chest into mine. "Good," he says. "Garrick owes Bodhi a week's wine."
I'm almost asleep, warm and tangled in him, when the knock comes. Not polite. Hard and fast, three times, and then Bodhi's voice through the door, steady but urgent.
"Xaden. Sorry. Scouts just came in from the eastern pass." A pause. "Wyvern. A lot of them. We fly at first light."