Warlord and the Waif by Chloe Parker

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CALDER

I SLOWLY REMEMBER what it is to be wild.

As Ella sleeps beside me, her hair spread across my chest, I realize that she’s brought a spark back to this castle. My life since the curse has been no life at all. Rage makes my shoulders blaze with pain, so I must temper my passions at all times, careful to maintain control over my emotions. Gone are the days of the carousing young fool who thought he could take on the witches of Myste.

I slew Sylv’s sisters in the heat of battle, but the cost was far too great.

And as a consequence I have been here ever since, languishing in my cold castle, treating my old friends with nothing more than curt nods and demands.

Until Ella.

I don’t know what compelled me to buy her contract. All I know is that I liked how she laughed in the face of adversity, that she faced it head-on. This brave human woman has brought chaos to these halls, and I’m unsure how I lived so long without it.

And I’m starting to believe Portia’s theory that Ella might break my curse.

My intention is to wake her throughout the night, to show her unending pleasure, to take her to the brink and make her come for me more times than she ever has with another man. So I’m disappointed when dim sunlight touches my face through the portrait window, streaked with the planet’s upward rain on the glass.

It is the first time in six hundred years that I’ve slept through the night without pain.

Ella is still beside me, her mouth parted as she slumbers, her eyelashes fluttering against her rosy cheeks in a dream. I roll onto my side to smooth my hand over her wild red hair and she nestles into the plush furs beneath us. The blankets have slipped low to reveal her freckle-dusted shoulders and breasts. My cock stirs at the sight of her splayed out in my bed, and I can’t help but touch her.

I duck my head and wrap my mouth around her breast, sucking the tip into my mouth and tracing my tongue over her peak. She sighs, still asleep, and a sense of satisfaction settles over me when her hand curls into a fist, twisting the furs in delight. My right hand cups her other breast and I flick her nipple.

She arches her back, stretching.

“Calder,” she murmurs in a daze, her voice low and hoarse.

I make my way down her ribs and belly, marking her with open-mouth kisses under her breast, past her navel, toward her sex. She moves with carnal fluidity as I drag the blanket down her ribcage, past her hips, revealing her to me completely. Her eyes flutter open when I clutch her round hips and lower my mouth to her sweet cunt, taking one long taste of her by running my tongue from her opening to her jewel as I meet her glazed stare.

She says nothing, merely raising herself onto her elbows to watch. I love that she keeps her eyes on me; that I can see the pleasure on her face as I feast.

I drink from her as a goblet of ambrosia, her sweet scent invading my senses. I taste her arousal, and the faint hint of myself on her, marking her as mine. The intoxication goes straight to my cock, and the only thing I want more than to fuck her now is to pleasure her.

She takes in a shaky breath when I open my mouth wide, clamping down on her, sucking on her swollen sex. I lash my tongue against her, and she bites her lip, twisting the furs beneath her in her fists. When she bucks her hips, I hold her steady, pulling her into me, pressing my fingertips into her backside until I know it hurts and she whimpers in delight.

Her body pulses, and her muscles spasm faster and faster. Her jewel is engorged, aching for me, and I wrap my lips around it when she calls my name again and I hold her tight, lapping at her and winding her up as she crashes down.

I draw back, sated, and rise to draw a bath, the steam rolling warm and comforting off of the surface of the water. It’s cold in the room, and Ella pulls a blanket up to cover her chest as she crawls to the foot of the bed, the blush on her cheeks betraying her sudden and surprising modesty.

“Don’t.” I stop her, stepping back toward the bed. I move to where she sits, taking her hand from the blanket and tossing it to the floor so she’s naked before me again.

“I’m cold,” she argues.

“Is there not enough heat between us to warm you?” I ask, my gaze roving over her breasts and the soft roll of her hips.

She presses her mouth to mine in a searing kiss, and I lift her in my arms. Then I take her to the bath, stepping into the deep stone pool slowly. The water burns slightly at first, but it feels good when the heat soaks through me. Ella croaks out a satisfied sigh when she hits the water, and we settle in together, her hands brushing through the strands of my hair.

I expected her fire. But her tenderness…

“What did you mean when you said you were mine?” she asks.

I frown, sifting through my muddled memories of the first time I took her on the kitchen table, recalling that the words did pass my lips. She’s drawn my most secret thoughts from me, just as she wrenches pleasure from my every pore. If I didn’t know any better, I might believe she was a witch, sent out of time for even more torture.

I run my hand over her jawline before I respond, studying her sun-kissed face and pressing my thumb to her swollen lips.

“In a thousand years, I have never felt such fire with another being,” I admit, “Something about you…it calls to me. I wanted to have you for myself, to ravish you until you begged for more, but I find that it is in fact I who have fallen under your spell.”

She smiles, an expression so hard to come by in my household. Then a sudden look of concern comes over her and she glances down at my cock, still hard from the rapture of pleasuring her.

“Calder,” she says quietly, “Do we need to worry about pregnancy?”

I narrow my eyes and shake my eyes, not understanding.

“Why would we worry about that?” I ask, “We are not mated.”

She blushes. “I guess there’s a cultural difference here. You wouldn’t call what we did last night mating?”

“You will know when we are mated,” I growl, “There’s ritual involved…pleasure. Only then will you bear me children. And only if you desire.”

“How?”

“I do not know the science; it is simply the way of the Skoll,” I shake my head, stroking my thumb against her cheek, “But I told you your body would always be yours, and you can hold me to that.”

She kisses me and shifts to straddle me, pressing my shoulders back against the edge of the tub until they chafe at my tattoos. Suddenly remembering herself, she looks with wide eyes at my shoulders.

“Wait,” she says, “Did I hurt you? When we…”

“With you, there is never any pain,” I say with a shake of my head. “I don’t understand how, but you are the only thing that has eased the ache in hundreds of years.” I lift her hand to kiss her palm. “You are superior to any salve the Hyperboreans have ever created.”

Ella sits astride me, beautiful in the first morning light. It’s pouring outside now, the rain on the window tracing lines of shadow down her face. She kisses me, and I groan as she lowers herself onto me, gripping the wall behind me. She releases my mouth with a sigh of ecstasy, but stops me when my hands go to her waist.

“Let me,” she says, pressing my arms against the edge of the pool.

For once, I relinquish control.

Ella places her hands on my shoulders, and my hips twitch toward her when she lifts herself back up and down. I pray that this feels the same for her as it does for me: like impossibly soothing heat, serenity and desperation. She leans into me, her red hair tumbling around us both, and I relish the way her scent mixes with mine after a night spent in my bed.

My fingers curl at the stone around the tub, wanting badly to touch her, and I remember the last time I held back as she pressed salve into my shoulders. I yearned for her then, and to have her here now, riding my cock and calling out my name, is a dream. My hips jerk up toward her, and she lifts herself until I’ve almost withdrawn, teasing me with a smile.

She doesn’t sink back down until I’ve returned the control she craves.

Even here, we battle. She dares me to touch her, her breasts brushing my chest and rising to my face. Her mouth falls open in satisfaction when I capture her breast in my lips, biting down on her, and she arches her back.

The pleasure mounts, all control gone. She bends against me and contracts, each muscle working in harmony to take me to the peak. I lean back and let her pleasure me as she wishes, and I don’t try to control myself when I thrust up into her, her fingertips curling around my neck as I go deeper, her panted cries in my ears.

I want to pull her out of this tub and take her back to bed, to keep her naked and splayed across these furs until I’m done with her and, and she with me. But dawn is coming, and I feel I must maintain some level of discretion.

As far as Ioni is concerned, Ella spent the night being punished.

Two more nights of the Hyperborean visit, and then I can have Ella whenever I want, wherever I want, as long as she wants me.