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Much like before, every part of her quivered as she was thrust toward a release she had only one frame of reference for. She quickly discovered that, while beyond good, that sample size was far too small for adequately assessing the explosion she flung her arms around him to restrain herself against.
“Bronze!”
He dipped his head into the crook of her neck and released a deafening roar in time with her wolf that pummeled her body with a force strong enough to bifurcate atoms. There were waves, and then there were tsunamis, and it was clear that, with his final eager onslaughts, they were both riding the latter.
When his soothing fingertips snaked around her back and pressed a trail of support along each ridge of her spine, she didn’t know whether to slide off the dresser into his arms or let him move her however he liked.
Either option would have been fine.
But when his hand drifted to her arm, turned over her wrist, and held it up for his inspection, she thought she saw some of the light leave his eyes. A brief dimming of the eruption they’d just shared.
He swiped a thumb over the pale blue veins beneath her skin, and she tracked his pupils as they narrowed when his light pressure didn’t reveal what he’d perhaps been searching for.
“What is it?” she asked. “Have I done something wrong? Because I have to be honest, I don’t feel like I did something wrong.”
“Perfect,” he whispered, offering a gentle kiss to the inside of her wrist and wrapping his still-shuddering warrior’s body around her. “You’re perfect.”
Content in his honesty and the song he plucked from her body, she smiled at the male, her male, and lamented the loss of all she held within when he carefully slid out from her. Before her bare feet had time to hit the stones, he’d shucked the rest of his clothing, scooped her into his arms, and settled them both beneath the warm blankets of her bed.
When she was fully wrapped, warm, and settled nice and snug against his bare chest, she wondered how long it would take before his pupils relaxed again and that light returned to his eyes.
Soon, she figured. If she had any say in things, it would be very soon.
Chapter 24
Perfect. The echo of that word boomeranged around Bronze’s skull, touching points north and south with such force that it was liable to decimate any remaining foundation he’d fortified within. Clara was absolutely so fucking perfect that the truth of it was strong enough to make him forget the whys of what had gotten him there in the first place.
What would be if she was my why, though? Would that truly be so terrible?
He dragged his lips along the thin underside of her wrist again just to see the way her lips tried to resist curling into the smile he always knew he could coax out of her. He’d learned that neat little trick the first time he’d had her up against the dresser. After that, their coming together had been new and wild and savage. Her nails digging into his ass, the delicate bruises of his grip against her hips. The sex was needed for the both of them, more to affirm just how fucking short life could be. His own had flashed before his eyes when the fall of Clara’s frosted hair had flipped over that fence rail, and even though he was technically immortal, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be killed, rather that his life was just long-lived.
It all would have ended in a heartbeat, however, if Clara had fallen on the minefield.
After that, no amount of holding her would ever have been enough to erase the could-have-beens from his mind, so he made to consume her instead.
Dresser, floor, dresser once more, up against the wall, then her gripping the door of the armoire as he blanketed her from behind and swore out oaths of a different kind against the back of her neck. For untold hours, they had been locked together in a storm with no ending, only moving in the rhythms of frantic need. And every opportunity he had, he would offer up a kiss to that smooth patch of flawless skin at her wrist, unmarred by any sort of soul bond symbol that would have sealed his fate and would perhaps stand to make sense of what was happening to him. Why he couldn’t access his power . . . or, take it one mindfuck further, imagine a future that somehow, someway still saw her by his side as anything other than an aloof monarch.
But when they joined, the symbol hadn’t appeared as it would have had they been soul bonds. His symbol. The mark of his celestial name written in the ancient language of the Empyrean. A distinction that only manifested when two souls contained matching sparks of the Eternal Flame and joined together to create the soul bond.
Yeah, none of that had happened for them. And honestly, it was fine. Good. Great. Better than great, even, because who the hell needed to lug around any more disappointment? And with these checked bag fees? No thank you. Bronze was so sick of the stuff, he’d rather lick Lord Raff’s boots than haul around another ounce of regret.
As Bronze lay on his back, with Clara’s naked form tucked to his side and her delicate fingers running idle swirls across his chest, he was relieved. Honestly and truly relieved. If Clara had been his soul bond, once she fell asleep, he wouldn’t have been able to consciously leave her bed to follow the path of that serving female who had been holding the relic. He would have been glued to all of her sensuous sides and said to hell with the Empyrean.
As that wasn’t the case, however, he was fully obligated to get swept up by the shock of seeing the relic bob down the hallway like a bag of laundry. The sight had hit him almost as strongly as the sight of Clara, clean and healthy and breathing, staring back at him with those molten maple eyes and a gasp on her lips as he moved within her, moved together.
As complicated as it was, he’d decided to stay with her then. And soon, he’d make another decision, then another, and another. That was all life was anyway, right? A series of choices that moved unattached nomads around the playing field while they hoped like hell they still got to pass Go and snag that eternal two hundred dollars every now and then.
Because she wasn’t his. Fate had made that perfectly clear, and he had no right to make choices that included her beyond what they’d agreed.
“Lord Raff knew about the mines,” Clara said softly into the cushion of her puddled hair against his chest. “I wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing at first, but after the explosion, the way he maneuvered around the field was so intentional that there was almost a pattern to it. Always on the tips of his toes, always two steps forward in quick succession, then a step to the left, followed by two more quick steps forward, all near the perimeter of the arena. Why would someone step in such a pattern if the mines were truly random and if he had not known they were there to begin with?”
Bronze snorted. “Sounds like the king’s been sharing some secrets.”
“Unfortunately. It also means we must assume that for the two games to come, the king has favored his champion unfairly.” She lifted her head, and the worried wings of her brows nearly unstitched him. It was the look of a daughter’s lost respect for the male who had raised her. “I knew he was capable of this sort of treachery, but I just didn’t think he would stoop so low as to use it in such a public setting.”
“A threatened male can get pretty damn desperate.”
“So can a gray wolf lycan and, apparently, a Canadian timber wolf lycan as well. Ridiculous, really, given their lineage.”
