Heart of the Forest (Arwn's Gift Book 1) (26 page)

The first motion wasn’t even explicitly sexual. He flipped me onto my back. I hit those white tiles with a thud and a tiny gasp, as the air was knocked from my lungs. Pressing his hips to mine, he locked me in place as he reached between us and unfastened his trousers and mine. I spread my thighs for him, and angled my hips eagerly, anxious to feel him inside me. But I didn’t want him quiet and contemplative. I wanted him fierce and gnarring… So I slapped him, and he snarled at me, baring his teeth as he impaled me with one precise, quick thrust. A gasping cry broke from my lips with the shock of being forced to accommodate something that large without any preparation.

“Mm, you like that, don’t you, Dy’ne,” he rumbled in my ear. “You can deny it all you want, but this is where you’re meant to be: on your back, stuffed full of elven co—” His words stopped with a gnarl as I twisted my hips, flipping us over again so that I was astride him, resting my hands on those powerful shoulders. I would never have been able to flip him if her wasn’t so fatigued. He slid his hands to my hips like he knew that I was going to stand.

Every time I rose even the slightest bit, he pulled me back down, forcing me to ride him with brutally hard strokes. At first, it was more than a little painful, and I was fairly certain he knew exactly what he was doing every time he pulled me back to him. After a few minutes, as the pain was slowly replaced with pleasure, he loosened his grip on me and started to raise his hips to meet mine. Seizing the opportunity, I stood, his hands falling away from me as he grunted at the loss of my wet warmth around him.

“Hunt me,” I called over my shoulder to him as I disappeared into the tall plants of the garden. My legs were shaking a bit, and I could feel my sex fluttering from the loss of Yorwrath. But he was too gentle, and I didn’t want him gentle. I wanted him mean… I wanted him at his most Yorwrath.

“If you don’t want this you can walk away. I’m giving you a rare choice, Dy’ne. Once I find you we’re not stopping again,” he called as I moved through the tall, thick trees, bushes, and plants. My heart was racing, my pulse high and frantic in my chest. After a few moments, I almost forgot it was a game of my devising, as every rustling leaf made me jump and gasp. He was drawing it out on purpose. The garden wasn’t large enough for me to be waiting in anticipation that almost turned to fear.

And then he pounced on me. We tumbled across the soft earth, but in the end, he emerged victorious, with his knee pressed into the back of my neck. I wriggled beneath him, but there was no getting out of this hold. I’d snap my neck long before I could get the leverage to get him off me. I was trembling as he pulled off each of my boots in an almost leisurely fashion.

“You’re shaking, Dy’ne,” he whispered darkly as his he pulled my loosened trousers down, exposing my raised bottom and sex to the open air. “And dripping wet,” he continued, as he slowly parted my sex with his fingers. “I like this little game. I get to pretend you’re just some bitch I found in the woods,” he chuckled, as he probed at my moist folds, coating his long fingers in my nectar. “And you… You get to finally be used like a Dy’ne should be.” He rubbed my clit in small circles, working his fingers into me. Instinct took over and I rode his hand, leaving me shuddering and moaning into the dirt. It seemed that he knew exactly how to touch me to keep me on the edge of bliss. He toyed with me for what seemed like an eternity, stopping and slowing when his touch proved to be almost too much. “Beg me,” he growled as he moved his knee from the back of my neck.

Without his knee trapping me, I rolled away from him and giggled as I kicked him over. I ran mostly nude back to the middle of the garden and that dais of white stone. He caught up to me and shoved me over the bare altar. He brought his hand down hard on the curve of my bottom with a loud
smack
as I presented to him. I yelped, as the skin warmed, tingled, and reddened.

“I want you like he takes you,” Yorwrath panted as he sat on the altar and held his hands out to me. I stared at him and blinked. It was the first time Yorwrath hadn’t called me Dy’ne. He might not have used my name, but no reference was still an improvement. I took his hands, and he pulled me onto the white stone of the altar. The shimmering pale granite scraped my knees as I straddled his lap. With a swallow, he reached between us and untied his trousers, once again freeing himself from the tight leathery confines. Our gazes locked as I lowered myself over him. Neither of us closed our eyes, though I could watch the muscles of his face twitch as he fought himself. I rode him as he held me in his arms. There was a level of comfort to it that almost made me think he actually cared for me.

My elbows rested on his shoulders as I ground my hips against his and he dug his fingers into my bottom, spreading me as far apart as he could. The angle was amazing. My breath caught as he occasionally forced me to take every last inch of him. He’d hold me there with a dark, happy purr rumbling in his throat as he wagged his hips back and forth. And every time he did it my insides tensed and fluttered around him.

“Do you like that, Dy’ne?” he gnarred in my ear before nipping my earlobe, making me gasp. “You love this big elven cock, don’t you?” I laced my fingers back through his hair and yanked his head back hard. I was going to say something, but he thrust into me again and slipped one hand across my hips to toy with that ever-sensitive kernel of flesh. My hips snapped wildly, as I used his hair for leverage. He had me trembling in moments. “That’s it, Dy’ne. That’s it. Come like the animal you are.” He nipped along my throat as I was frozen in place with pleasure, teetering on the edge as my whole body quivered like it was going to shake to pieces. He continued to thrust into me faster and faster as I tugged at his hair.

Sweat broke out on our bodies. Our skin glistened in the firelight from the braziers as he flipped me around and lowered me to the altar. My legs wrapped around his waist as he thrust into me so hard and fast that I couldn’t catch my breath. I clawed at him, my fingers catching on his jerkin. He sought my mouth with his and kissed me deep and bruisingly hard. The kiss betrayed him. He didn’t hate me at all. It was much worse than that… He loved me. It was after that amazing realization, as I struggled to breathe through his relentless assault on my body, that he finally pushed me over the edge. I tried to arch up against him but was trapped by his body. We shuddered against one another in a mutual climax as I felt him twitch inside me, filling me with his seed as he continued, his kisses swallowing both of our moans.

When we both stopped riding our pleasure, Yorwrath rolled onto his side, taking me with him. He moved one arm to rest under my head, and the other he placed on my waist. He was still trembling. Shaky little breaths passed between his lips. We lay beside one another for a while in silence, our bodies joined under the stars. We fell asleep like that, joined and in silence.

* * * *

In the morning, I woke up alone, sore and half naked, with Aneurin standing over me. He sat on the altar beside me, those odd-colored eyes devouring my exposed flesh. I raised my knee, and he nudged it over with a playful smirk. His eyes darkened with lust as my sex was laid bare to him.

“You are certainly something.” The words escaped his lovely throat in a husky purr.

“Am I?”

“Mhm, Yorwrath ran down the stairs looking scared when I was coming up here. Maybe he thinks I’ll be upset.” He raised his gaze to me.

“Are you?”

“The truth?” he asked softly, and I nodded. “I’m not upset that you lay with him… I’m upset I wasn’t there. He’s earned the right to have you. However, I certainly know I feel…something now.” He sighed and stroked a bit of my hair behind an ear. “Do you think it’s possible to love someone who you don’t remember?”

“Maybe,” I breathed, almost inaudibly, as he continued trailing his fingers through my long dark tendrils, making my skin break out with gooseflesh. “Caoilfionn says you can get your memory back with a ritual.”

“One that would require you to take Yorwrath, Islwyn and myself to bed at the same time.”

“Do you want your memory back?” I furrowed my brows.

“I’m not sure. Looking at you right now I know that if I get my memories back…being the king everyone wants me to be will be impossible.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you are just…everything. When I first saw you throw that rock at Islwyn, I could hardly believe you were real. I thought you had to be practically bathed in glamour to look that good. And seeing the way you act, so fierce and determined…” He smiled. “Maybe that’s why I forgot you?”

“Do you care about being king that much? The Aneurin I knew didn’t. He brought it up occasionally and gathered supporters to keep himself safe. But you want to be king—”

“If I didn’t want to be king, why did I come here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why did I willingly go to the cave to unlock the last of the power if I didn’t want to rule?” He lay beside me on the altar, his face parallel to mine.

“You would have said good-bye. My Aneurin would have said good-bye.”

“Maybe I was stupid and blinded by love?”

“It’s possible. But if you want to be king… Be king.”

“If the old words are to be believed I can’t be king without you at my side.”

“But you fear that your love for me is so deep that with your memories you’d never ascend.”

“No, I’m certain I’d be a terrible king. Everyone would want a pure elf born of my blood, and I couldn’t see myself wanting to take another to bed if I had you.”

“How could you say that, knowing I had your brother last night?”

“A claimed human, even one prized by their master—”

“You’re not my fucking master.”

“I know… But one prized by their lover can be shared for one night—more if it’s family.”

“You shared me with Yorwrath by letting him watch us, but you didn’t let him touch me.”

“Custom dictates otherwise.”

“You broke custom for me.” My words made him sigh and smile.

“Tell me about us?”

“Why?”

“Because I…want to pull you close and kiss your lips and hold you. That’s not lust for a stranger. The lust is there, though. I would do much to lick every last trace of Yorwrath’s seed from your secret flower and then make you forget all about him as I made you scream my name and made your eyes roll back into your head.” I almost said he could, and then I remembered he was a stranger. I knew Yorwrath and Islwyn more than I knew this Aneurin. Sighing heavily, I covered my face. I couldn’t even laugh at him calling my sex a secret flower. I was too caught up in what he said. “It’s strange, I feel drawn to you, and it’s more than being attracted to you. You are beautiful, gods are you beautiful, but it’s more than that. So much more. I’ve never had a desire to hold a whore or common woman. It’s not some…errant desire. So it’s strange.”

“We met almost two years ago. Islwyn brought you to me after you were attacked in Nathton. I was the Cunning Woman for Laeth at the time, so I was used to bandaging up the aftermath of the guards’ brutality. I set your leg, but you had to be kept still because of the severity of the break and where it was located. You spent the better part of a month living with me and it just kind of happened. You fell in love with me, just from watching me with the villagers and the conversations we had at night. It seems…odd to say it. Most claim love at first sight, or some nonsense like that, but ours was slower. You saved me from the market day pogrom that year and got me and all of the elves safely out of the city. There was an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town you had intended to take for yourself. You said you were going to live there as a hunter and trapper while you courted me…but after the pogrom you decided to leave instead. But you helped me move into the place outside of the city walls where you thought I’d be safe and then you left.”

“So an entire month and we didn’t lay together once?”

“Nope. After you left you wrote to me. I had…hundreds of letters from you. And then one day you just showed up with Islwyn and a few others on my doorstep. We got drunk and played dice, and then we went out to the garden, and you had me for the first time in the middle of a rainstorm. Apparently, when you spent yourself you lost control of your power, and you made my garden, which was at the time more or less dead, flourish. Since then we’ve been inseparable, minus the two days I spent in the dungeons of Heves and when you were dead. And these last two weeks…”

“I wish I had those letters.”

“Me too. I miss him.” I closed my lids for a moment and sighed.

“But I’m right here.”

“You’re not my Aneurin. You look like him and sound like him, but you look at me with a stranger’s eyes. There’s no love there. There’s lust of course, but I am lying half naked with my legs spread.” We shared a chuckle, and I crossed my ankles and folded my hands low over my stomach, with my wrists resting on my hips.

“Why didn’t you leave?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“You’re nowhere near an idiot.”

“I guess I’m hoping that…you’ll remember me.” I shook my head. “Hoping against hope and all of that garbage.”

“Is it really garbage?”

“Yes. Because you want to be a good king, and I agree, as much as it hurts me. You can’t be a good king and love me as fiercely as you did.” I tried to keep the pain out of my voice, but some seeped through. He scooted around on the dais so that he was lying beside me.

“Maybe I don’t need to be that good of a king if I have a good queen by my side?” He offered me a conciliatory smile, and I sighed. He rested his hand on mine. It was the first time we had touched flesh to flesh since he came back. His warmth was still familiar and comforting, and it made my body ache for him, in spite of the soreness.

“Yes, because the Redcaps will accept me, a human, as their queen. Right?” I raised a brow, barely containing my laughter.

“They’ll do what I say, or they’ll wish they hadn’t been born with tongues to speak against me.” The simple tone of his voice as he spoke stunned me, and it takes a lot to stun me. I was pretty certain I was getting a glimpse of his Aeon impression, the same one Yorwrath did most of the time. “But you’ll do the ritual?”