Page 138 of The Savage Queen

She clawed at his back, felt the scars where his wings were torn, and he allowed it. Moaned at the press of her fingertips against his scars and moved her faster against him.

“Together, if you truly bond with the Sidhe King, you will breed desolation and ruin.”

Lir kissed Aisling’s neck, no longer slow but hungry. Licking her windpipe where once she feared he might rip it from her, grazing her collar bone with his tongue, growling at the curve of her breasts as he slipped her hemline into his mouth and tugged with his fangs, tearing a sliver. But that one sliver was enough to rip her bodice entirely apart, exposing the thin chemise beneath.

Lir’s eyes lit with the light sinners extinguished, burning with dark desire. His hands forsaking her hips to move on their own, so that he might hold her. First her ribs, thumbs slipping beneath her breasts. Patiently, the edge of his fingers finding the apex of each breast and brushing them. Aisling arched into his touch. Just a graze at first. Enough to drive Aisling mad and plunge Lir’s expression into abysmal dark at the sign of her pleasure. At the sound of her pleasure, the feel of it as she moved harder against him.

“Aisling,” he growled, closing his eyes the more she pressed.

“Should I stop?” she asked, the corners of her lips curling as she traced the veins in his forearms with her fingertips.

“Gods no,” he begged, standing easily, carrying her with him and setting her knees atop the throne, her back to him. Hedipped his head beside her own, finding her lips then her neck, his hands slipping beneath the hem of her chemise and trailing upwards. At last, his hands surrounded her bare breasts, forcing a gasp from Aisling’s lips. Lir grinned against her cheek. The hardness of him pressed against her backside.

Lir cursed beneath his breath, the throne room overflowing with swiftly growing flora.

“But if we continue?—”

“So be it,” Aisling said against his lips. Words that inspired a shudder from the fae king, rippling through his every muscle as he brought her closer to him.

“Together,” he said, “you and I will bring this world to its knees.”

He entered her. Thrusting lightly at first, torturously slow, then deeply, throwing his head back the moment Aisling reached for the head of the throne and gripped it till her fingertips might bruise. With each stroke, the realm churned, shifted, as Aisling and Lir ripped the tapestry of fate apart and pinned their own stars to the sky.

“You’re mine,” he whispered, against her spine. Fangs scraping down her back. Voice ragged and rough with yearning. As though this wasn’t enough, as though a lifetime of this wasn’t enough, and he needed more of her. Of them.

“And I am yours.”

Aisling bit down on her bottom lip, drawing blood.

He filled her, moving painfully slow, swelling inside and blinding the sorceress to anything butthis. But the feel of his soul as it wrapped around her own, tangling itself with hers till they could scarcely tell one from the other, was euphoric. Couldn’t make the two apart as they wove, as they laced, as they threaded together, becoming one.

As the cord that’d bound them, at last, ripped apart, again and again with every thrust. With every movement. Bindingsomething new. Becoming something new. Becoming one. And truly bound.

CHAPTER XLIV

AISLING

“You know not what you’ve done, Aisling,” the Lady hissed inside Aisling’s mind as she stepped a pace away from her balcony, sheltered by the canopies of the greenwood. Beyond and below, Annwyn stood waiting, watching, listening to Lir as he spoke from Castle Annwyn’s grand balcony.

“You’ve damned this realm and now the gods will wake with fury.”

“Then let them wake,” Aisling replied inside her mind.

Peitho stepped into Aisling’s quarters just as Aisling was to leave. Peitho wore a Cornelian gown flocked by sun-bright beetles that crawled across the folds of her skirts. Her endless tresses were shrouded in a hood of the same fiery hues, shadowing her burn scars. A stark contrast from the leathers she’d worn over the past several weeks trekking to Lofgren’s Rise.

Slowly, Aisling stood from her vanity and Gilrel’s magpies took flight, releasing her braids once they’d woven them artfully together.

“I should’ve announced my intentions to visit you earlier,” the Niltorian princess said, balling her hands into fists at her sides.

“You should have.”

Peitho hesitated at the tone of Aisling’s voice. The princess had made it clear time and time again she was no friend to Aisling and so her presence, here and now, wouldn’t be met without hostility. Especially today.

“I’ve brought you a gift.”

Aisling’s fingers twitched at her sides, eyes narrowing as Peitho reached into her jewel-encrusted belt and unsheathed a sword. She bowed her head, holding the hilt in the palm of one hand and the tip of its blade in the other. An offering.

Aisling approached cautiously, studying the blade. It was magnificent. A slick, black blade polished to perfection, etched in fae runes that dissolved as the eye traveled toward the onyx cross guard, wrapped in the coil of a serpent. Its gaping mouth hoarding a bundle of amethysts between its fangs.

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