Chapter 3: The Prince's Claim from Behind
The climax that tore through her was a silent, shattering implosion. For a heartbeat, there was no sound, only the sensation of her body convulsing around him, of white light fragmenting behind her clenched eyelids. Then the air rushed back in, and with it came a raw, broken cry that was equal parts relief and devastation.
Dorian followed her over the edge, his own release wrenched from him with a guttural shout, his hips stuttering as he emptied himself deep inside her. He collapsed forward, his sweat-slicked chest pressed against her back, his face buried in the tangled gold of her hair. His weight was immense, anchoring her to the bed, to the moment, to the shocking reality of what they’d just done—again.
Their breathing was the only sound, ragged and synced in the glittering hush. The mirrors held their image: a prince spent atop a queen, a scene of such intimate ruin it felt more vulnerable than any nakedness.
Slowly, carefully, he softened and slipped out of her. The loss of him, that devastating fullness, left an immediate, hollow ache. A visceral craving. He rolled to the side, taking his weight with him, and pulled her against him so her back was to his chest. His arms wrapped around her, his hands splayed possessively over her stomach, her ribcage. He said nothing. Just held her, his lips occasionally brushing the knob of her spine, his breathing slowly easing.
Aelin stared at the wall of stained glass across the room. A shaft of moonlight painted fractured emerald and cobalt shapes on the floor. Her body was a map of sensation: the delicious soreness between her legs, the faint sting on her hip where his grip had been too tight, the heavy, satiated lethargy in her limbs. It was a perfect, physical peace.
And it lasted for all of three minutes.
Because beneath the exhaustion, the embers refused to die. They glowed, persistent and hungry, deep in her core. The hunger wasn’t a thought; it was a cellular demand. The first time in the library had been a discovery. The second, just now, had been a claiming. And now… now her body knew its capacity. It knew the spectrum of pleasure he could wring from it, and it wanted to explore every shade.
The restless energy began to coiling again, tightening low in her belly. It was insane. Obscene. She’d just come so hard she’d seen stars. Yet, the feeling of his spend leaking from her, the memory of his thickness stretching her, the phantom echo of his thrusts… it all fanned the glow back into a lick of flame.
She shifted slightly, pressing her backside more firmly against him. She felt him, soft and spent against her thigh. But she also felt the hard line of his body, the latent strength in the arms that held her. He was here. He was hers, in this room, for tonight.
“Dorian,” she said, her voice huskier than usual.
“Mmm?” The sound was drowsy, content.
She turned in his arms, the silk sheets whispering against her skin. She faced him, their noses almost touching. In the dim, multi-colored light, his sapphire eyes were dark pools, watching her with a sleepy intensity. She saw the moment he read the want on her face. His brows lifted, just a fraction.
“You cannot be serious,” he murmured, but a slow, disbelieving smile touched his lips. There was no refusal in it. Only awe.
“I am,” she said. She slid her hand down between them, over the flat planes of his stomach, lower. She found him, soft and vulnerable. She wrapped her fingers around him. “I want more.”
He swallowed, his throat working. “You’ll break me, woman.”
“You’ll survive,” she said, and began to stroke him, her touch firm and knowing. She used the slickness of their mingled release as lubrication, her thumb swirling over the sensitive head. She watched his face, watched his eyes flutter closed, watched his jaw tense as sensation began to pierce his post-coital haze. “I’m not done. You unlocked this. You don’t get to sleep yet.”
A low groan vibrated in his chest. Under her ministrations, he began to harden, the flesh thickening and lengthening in her hand with a responsiveness that sent a thrill of pure power through her. He was already recovering for her. Because of her.
“You are,” he gasped, his hips giving a tiny, involuntary thrust into her fist, “the most demanding, insatiable creature I have ever met.”
“You like it,” she countered, leaning in to nip at his lower lip.
“I love it,” he corrected, his voice gravelly with renewed desire. His hands came up to cup her face, and he kissed her, deep and languid, tasting of wine and her. When he broke the kiss, his eyes were no longer sleepy. They were sharp, focused, alight with a playful challenge. “What do you want, fireheart? You have me. Tell me.”
She knew what she wanted. The memory of the library, of him taking her from behind against the bookshelf, was a ghost touch on her skin. She wanted that again, but without the panic of discovery, without the rough wood. She wanted it here, in this bed of silk, where the only witnesses were their own reflections.
“I want you behind me,” she said, the words leaving her lips in a hot whisper. “Like before. But here. I want to see us in the glass.”
He understood immediately. A dark, thrilling excitement flashed across his face. He shifted, sitting up, and she rolled away from him, presenting her back. But this wasn't a submission. It was an offering, a choice. She moved onto her hands and knees, the ruined black lace of her nightgown still rucked up around her waist. The cool air of the room kissed the heated, sensitive skin of her backside. She felt exposed, utterly open, and the vulnerability was its own kind of power.
She heard him move behind her, felt the dip of the mattress as he knelt. His hands landed on her hips, his thumbs pressing into the dimples at the base of her spine. His touch was electric.
“Look,” he said, his voice a low command.
She lifted her head. The wall of mirrors to the left of the bed captured them in perfect, horrifying, glorious detail. Her, on all fours, golden hair a messy cascade down her back and over her shoulders, the sheer lace doing nothing to hide the curve of her breasts as they hung heavy beneath her. Her back was arched, her ass in the air, an unabashed invitation. And him, kneeling behind her, gloriously naked and fully erect again, his body a study of lean muscle and intent. The sight was so frankly carnal it stole her breath.
“See what you do,” he murmured, his hands smoothing over the swell of her hips. “See how you look, waiting for me.”
“Stop talking,” she breathed, pushing back against his hands, a silent plea. “Just do it.”
He laughed, a soft, dark sound. “So impatient.” He positioned himself, the blunt, hot head of his cock nudging against her entrance. She was still wet, slick from their last coupling, but he didn’t just slide in. He held himself there, teasing, pressing just the tip inside before pulling back.
A whimper escaped her. “Dorian, please.”
“Please what?”
“Fuck me. Now.”
He gripped her hips, his fingers digging in. “Since you asked so nicely.”
And then he rammed into her.
It wasn't a slow slide. It was a single, powerful, deep thrust that buried him to the hilt in one devastating motion. The angle was different—deeper, somehow, hitting places inside her that hadn't been touched before. The sudden, shocking fullness punched the air from her lungs in a loud, sharp cry.
"Gods!" The word was a scream, torn from her throat.
The sound echoed off the glass walls, loud and shameless. She didn't care. She couldn't have stopped it if she tried. The sensation was too immense, too overwhelming. He was so deep she felt speared, owned, perfectly impaled. She dropped her forehead to the silk-covered mattress, a long, guttural moan ripping from her as he held himself there, letting her feel every inch.
"That's it," he growled behind her, his voice thick with strain. "Let them hear. Let the whole fucking palace hear how the King's Champion sounds when she's getting fucked."
He withdrew, almost completely, the drag exquisitely slow, and then slammed back in. Again. And again.
He set a brutal, pounding rhythm, each thrust driving her forward on the bed, the force of it rattling the delicate crystal ornaments on a nearby table. The sound of their bodies meeting was obscene—a wet, rhythmic slap of skin on skin that filled the room, louder than their breathing, louder than the blood roaring in her ears. Her cries were punched out of her with every drive of his hips, high and desperate and utterly without restraint.
LOUD. LOUD. LOUD. She was moaning, screaming, sobbing his name into the silk, the sounds raw and unedited. There was no quiet, genteel passion here. This was raw fucking, pure and simple, and she was loud in her ecstasy.
One of his hands left her hip, snaking around her body. He didn't go for her breast or her clit. He brought his hand to her mouth, pressing his thumb against her parted lips.
"Suck," he ordered, his voice a ragged command.
She didn't hesitate. She took his thumb into her mouth, her tongue swirling around the salt-tasted digit, her lips closing tight. She sucked, hard, her moans now muffled but no less intense, vibrating around his skin. It was an anchor, a filthy, intimate connection as he ravaged her from behind. The submissiveness of the act, combined with the aggressive dominance of his fucking, created a feedback loop of pleasure that short-circuited her thoughts.
His other hand stayed locked on her hip, guiding her movements, pulling her back onto him to meet every thrust. He was grunting with effort, his own composure shattered. "Fuck, Aelin… you take me so deep. You feel… unbelievable."
She released his thumb with a gasp, drool slicking her chin. "Don't stop!" she begged, the words shattered. "Oh gods, Dorian, don't fucking stop! Right there! Right there!"
He obeyed, his pace becoming even more ferocious, driven by her pleas. The bed frame slammed against the wall with a steady, rhythmic thump. Her breasts swung heavily beneath her, a sweet ache with every jolt. In the mirrors, she saw the frenzy: her body jolting with his power, her face a mask of agonized pleasure, his form a relentless, driving force behind her. It was the most visceral, animalistic thing she had ever seen, and she was at the center of it.
A cascade of filthy, beautiful truths tumbled through her mind, in time with his thrusts.
Gods, she was getting fucked by Dorian Havilliard.
The Crown Prince of Adarlan. The son of the man who had slaughtered her family, who had destroyed her kingdom, who had sent her to Endovier. Her enemy. Her clever, beautiful, wine-loving enemy was currently buried inside her, ruining her for any other man, breaking her apart and putting her back together with every snap of his hips.
She shouldn't.
The thought was a cold sliver, but it was instantly incinerated in the furnace he’d stoked in her blood. Shouldn’t meant nothing. Politics, vengeance, loyalties—they were distant, dusty concepts belonging to the daylight. This, here, in this room of shattered light and louder, louder moans, was the only truth that mattered. It was body and need and a connection so ferocious it felt like it was carving its own history into her bones.
But she couldn't stop.
Her body was his instrument, and he was playing a symphony of pure sensation. The coil in her core was wound so tight it was a physical pain, a glorious pressure building with every deep, grinding thrust. She was close, so close, hovering on a precipice that promised a fall into oblivion.
"And you regret nothing, do you?" he snarled, as if he could hear her thoughts. He leaned over her, his chest pressing against her sweaty back, his mouth at her ear. His pace never faltered, a relentless, pounding rhythm. "You don't regret letting the enemy prince be your first. You don't regret crawling into my bed and begging for my cock. You love it. Tell me you love it."
"I love it!" she screamed, the admission torn from her, loud and honest and devastating. "I love your cock, Dorian! I love you fucking me! Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop!"
Her climax didn't creep up on her. It detonated.
It erupted from that deepest point he was hammering into, a supernova of pleasure that radiated outwards, seizing every muscle, burning along every nerve. Her scream this time was wordless, a raw, primal shatter of sound that she was sure would crack the glass walls. Her body clamped around him in violent, rhythmic pulses, milking him, pulling him deeper into the storm.
Her vision whited out. She was nothing but feeling, a vessel overflowing with sensation so intense it bordered on agony. She distantly felt his own control snap, heard his roar—a sound of pure, male triumph—as his thrusts became erratic, frantic. He buried himself to the root and held there, shuddering as his release poured into her, hot and endless, another claiming deep inside her.
He collapsed forward, his weight driving her down into the mattress. They lay there, a tangled, breathless heap, his body still covering hers, still joined. The only sounds were their desperate, gulping breaths and the faint, final tinkling of a glass bauble that had shaken loose from the table and shattered on the floor.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The cool silk beneath her cheek. The ache in her knees and elbows. The crushing, wonderful weight of him. The feel of him, still semi-hard, still within her. The sticky warmth leaking between her thighs.
He was the first to move, easing out of her with a soft, wet sound. He rolled off, lying on his back beside her, one arm flung over his eyes. For a long time, they just breathed.
Aelin pushed herself up, her arms trembling. She looked at the mirror. They were a disaster. A beautiful, fucked-out disaster. She turned her head and looked at Dorian. His chest was heaving, a fine sheen of sweat covering his skin, his hair stuck to his temples. A slow, utterly satiated smile spread across her own swollen lips.
He peeked from under his arm, saw her looking, and gave a breathless, incredulous laugh. "You," he stated, "are going to be the death of me."
"Worth it," she rasped, her throat sore from screaming.
She crawled, limbs like liquid, to lie beside him, her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. This silence was different. It was the deep, ringing quiet after a cataclysm. The hunger, for now, was finally, truly sated. It had been burned out in a conflagration of sound and sweat and pure, unadulterated feeling.
As her eyes grew heavy, the last thing she saw was their reflection in the dark glass: the prince and the queen, entwined in the ruins of silk, sleeping in the palace of their enemy. And she knew, with a certainty that was more frightening than any blade, that nothing would ever be the same.