Chapter 78: The Unspoken Confession
The dream was not gentle.
It was a visceral, greedy thing. In it, there were no bindings. Her wings were a vast, shimmering arch over Rowan’s dark head as he knelt between her thighs, his mouth a searing brand on her skin. His shadows were not restraints but caresses, slippery and cool as they slid over her hips, her breasts, the inside of her thighs, parting her for him. Lysander was behind her, his chest hot against her bare back, his hands rough and claiming as they cupped her breasts, his fingers pinching her nipples until she cried out. She could feel the hard line of his cock pressed against the curve of her ass.
“Look at you,” Rowan murmured against her inner thigh, his lavender eyes gleaming up her body. “So fucking pretty when you’re desperate.”
Then his tongue was on her, in her, a long, wet stroke that made her back bow. Lysander’s teeth grazed her shoulder, his voice a hot gust in her ear. “Come on, Moonshadow. Let go. We want to hear you.”
In the dream, she screamed. Not in fear. In release. It was a raw, shameless sound, torn from a place deep inside her that she never let breathe.
Elara woke with a violent jerk, a choked gasp stuck in her throat.
The dorm was silent, bathed in the muted silver-grey of pre-dawn. The lace curtains were still. No shadows moved except the natural ones. No warmth pressed against her back.
She was alone.
And she was soaked.
The evidence was a slick, shocking heat between her legs, saturating her thin cotton sleep shorts and dampening the sheets beneath her. Her skin was feverish, sensitive. Every brush of the blanket felt like a touch. Her nipples were hard, aching points against her nightshirt. A deep, throbbing pulse beat insistently at her core, an echo of the dream’s climax that had, apparently, been very real.
She lay perfectly still, breath held, listening to the frantic drum of her own heart. Shame, hot and immediate, flushed through her. This was… filthy. Obscene. She’d had urges before, vague and easily stifled, but never anything like this. Never a full-bodied, convulsing fantasy that left her physically wrecked.
But beneath the shame, coiling and insistent, was the lingering phantom sensation. The memory of Rowan’s mouth. The feel of Lysander’s hands. The impossible freedom of her wings, spread and trembling.
Her hand, moving as if of its own accord, slipped beneath the waistband of her shorts. Her fingers met wet, swollen flesh. She flinched at her own touch, the sensitivity so acute it was almost painful.
She’d never done this. The idea had always been wrapped in layers of fear and propriety. Her body was something to be hidden, contained, controlled. Pleasure was a foreign country, a rumor.
Now, curled in her rumpled bed, the ghost of their voices in her ears, curiosity overthrew fear.
She let a single fingertip trace the slick, hot fold of herself. The contact sent a jolt straight to her spine. Her wings, still bound tight beneath her, gave a helpless, painful flutter. She pressed harder, exploring the unfamiliar terrain. She found a spot that made her gasp, a small, hard nub that seemed to be the epicenter of every shocking sensation.
Thinking made it worse. Thinking was what she needed to stop.
She closed her eyes, and let the dream back in.
This time, she directed it.
She imagined Rowan wasn’t gentle. She imagined he was hungry. She saw his head between her legs, not in worship, but in conquest. His tongue wasn’t tender; it was relentless, fucking into her with rough, stabbing licks while his shadows held her hips down. She could almost feel the scratch of his stubble on her inner thighs.
“You taste like you were made for this,” his dream-voice growled, and her fingers mimicked the rhythm, pushing inside herself, shallow and unsure at first, then deeper.
Lysander was there. In her mind, he was kissing her, swallowing her needy sounds. His hand joined Rowan’s shadows, not to restrain, but to encourage. He guided her own hand, showing her how to curl her fingers just so, how to rub that frantic, aching spot with her thumb while she fucked herself with her own fingers.
“Harder,” dream-Lysander urged, his mouth against her jaw. “Don’t be shy. You wanted this. You asked for it.”
She did. Gods, she had.
Her breathing became ragged, open-mouthed pants. The sheets were tangled around her legs. The room felt airless, charged with her own quiet, desperate energy. She was moving her hand in a clumsy, frantic rhythm, the wet sounds obscenely loud in the silent dawn. The pleasure was a knot, winding tighter and tighter in her belly, a pressure building behind the memory of their faces, their hands, their approval.
She thought of Rowan’s calm dominance, the absolute certainty in his touch. She thought of Lysander’s bright, uncomplicated joy, his laughter in her hair. She thought of the way they had looked at her freed wings—not with horror, but with awe.
They see you.
The knot shattered.
Her back arched off the bed, a silent scream locked in her throat. The climax was a rending, a breaking. It tore through her in brutal, pulsing waves, wringing a broken sob from her chest. Her vision whited out. For a dizzying moment, she was nowhere, nothing, just pure, shocking sensation.
Slowly, she collapsed back into the damp sheets. Tremors wracked her limbs. Her heart hammered against her ribs. The evidence of what she’d done was slick on her fingers, on her thighs, cooling unpleasantly on the cotton.
She stared at the faint pattern of light on her ceiling, reality seeping back in, cold and clear.
She had done that. To herself. Because of them.
The shame returned, but it was thinner now, worn through by the undeniable, physical truth of her own body’s response. A deep, bewildered curiosity took its place. And a gnawing, terrifying want.
What would it be like if it were real? If those hands were theirs, and not her own? If the mouths were theirs? If she could make those sounds out loud, and have them hear her?
She pulled her hand free, staring at her glistening fingers in the dim light. She brought them to her nose, inhaling a musky, profoundly intimate scent that was entirely her own. It was primal. It was alive.
A soft knock at her door made her freeze, her blood turning to ice.
“Elara?” Sera’s voice, muffled but alert, came through the wood. “You awake? I heard… a noise.”
Elara’s mind blanked with panic. She yanked the covers up to her chin, as if Sera could see through the door. The smell of sex was surely thick in the air. The state of her sheets… “I’m—I’m fine!” she called out, her voice cracking. “A bad dream. Sorry.”
A pause. “Okay. You sure? You sounded…”
“I’m sure. Go back to sleep.”
She listened to Sera’s retreating footsteps, her body thrumming with a new kind of tension. The secret pleasure was now a secret shame, but it was also a secret knowledge. A line had been crossed inside her. The theoretical had become concrete. The want had a shape, a taste, a feel.
She looked at the empty space beside her in the bed. The memory of being held between them on the floor, wings free, felt like a promise. And the aching, empty throbbing between her legs felt like a question.
Dawn began to properly bleed into the sky, turning the silver light to pale gold. Elara did not sleep again. She lay perfectly still, replaying the dream, reliving the climax, and wondering, with a feverish intensity that dwarfed her fear, what would happen now.