Page 29 of Lera of Lunos
I stumble back, but there is no escape. Grabbing my hips, Coal lifts me into the air as if I weigh nothing at all.
“I find I’m over the fear of taking you,” Coal rasps into my ear. “We’ll addressyourdemons another time.” His breath is hot on the back of my neck as he shoves me over a saddle stand. Padded leather pushes into my stomach, the saddle’s horn and high back bracketing me on the right and left. The scent of leather fills my nose.
I writhe, trying to reclaim my feet, but there is no purchase. Not with me bent over, my backside high in the air and neither hands nor feet reaching the floor. Coal presses a hand into the small of my back, his other yanking my trousers down in a single motion. Cold air brushes my exposed flesh, my sex so wet that I feel moisture slithering down my thighs, before Coal sheathes himself inside me so fast and hard that I scream with the pure force of it.
20
Lera
“You smell like you had a good evening yesterday,” Autumn says, stepping from thin air into the middle of my bedchamber.
I yelp, dropping the washbasin onto the floor, the liquid soaking my flowing green dress. Fortunately for my soaked clothing, a servant toed into the room while I was sleeping and stoked the fire, leaving the chamber toasty despite the approaching winter. Of course, that also means someone was in the room while my connection with Coal visited my dreams, and if Autumn can smell the arousal even now... My face blazes.
“Isn’t there something to keepthisfrom happening?” I ask, waving my hand in the female’s general direction.
Autumn cringes. “Well, there is common decency. You know, that same barrier that stops beings from striding through doors and windows without an invitation. Sorry, Lera. I lost track of where I was.” With a sigh, Autumn hoists herself onto the edge of my bed, her usually lively gray eyes drooping with heavy bags.
Stepping around the puddle on the floor, I pull myself up beside Autumn, my feet dangling down from the tall mattress. “What’s wrong?”
Autumn pulls up her knees, wrapping her slender arms around them until she looks like a pointy-eared ball wrapped in coral silk. “What’s wrong is that I’ve studied wards for over four centuries.” She lays her cheek atop one kneecap. “I had sound-warded the throne room by the time River was just learning to pull a bow. I’ve built more stable folds and passages through the Gloom than any being in Slait. And I help the Elders Council itself adjust the Citadel’s ancient wards. You know what I’venotstudied during the past four hundred years? Ways to go about opening a bloody portal from Lunos to Mors. Because what insane idiot would ever think to do such a thing?”
“And you’ve been trying to catch up on four hundred years of delinquency in two weeks?” I tug one of Autumn’s many blond braids.
She sighs. “Talk to me about something else. River—no, not River. I don’t want to know the details of anything River. Coal.” Autumn’s eyes perk up, her face lifting slightly. “He’s pounding a training dummy into its tenth death of the morning, by the way. That’s after welcoming the dawn with a freezing dip in the lake. What exactly happened last night?”
I clear my throat. “We had... an intellectual discussion on safety while coupling. The first in what I think will be a series of studies.”
Autumn blinks once then throws back her head with a melodic roar of laughter. “No wonder the poor bastard can’t stop moving. I don’t think their cocks can actually explode, but I’d wager my best talisman that he feels like it might.”
I smack her with a pillow. “How do you know what Coal’s been up to anyway?”
“Kora.” Autumn makes a face. “The nosy, overprotective, controlling warrior princess that she is. I swear she combs the bloody grounds every hour. Not even the library is safe.”
I open my mouth, then shut it, my eyes narrowing. “Did you step through the Gloom into my bedchamber to avoid her?”
A tiny glint sparkles in Autumn’s gray eyes. “Maybe.” She cuts her gaze toward me. “Kora might or might not believe I spend too much time thinking and not enough time resting. And she might or might not have some nasty ideas for how to—what does she call it? Ah, yes—give me a break from myself.” Autumn bites her lip, her face shifting from outrage to something softer, more vulnerable than I’ve seen on her. “I’ve had lovers before, you know,” she says quietly. “Male, female, long stints, quick flights of fun, everything. But Kora... She sees through to what my soul needs, whether or not my mind even knows it. It’s infuriating and intoxicating and... Stars, it’s so intense I don’t know what to do with myself. How do you do it, Lera? Keep being you withfouroverprotective males at your side?”
I consider the question, the answer rising to my lips before I fully know what it will be. “I love them.” The words settle through me. “And every time I’m with them, I discover there is more to each one than I thought. As for being me, I’m not the same version of me that those four rescued from Zake’s barn. I’m something new, something that’s so intertwined with River, Coal, Shade, and Tye that I can’t imagine separating. I know that’s not much of an answer.”
Autumn twines one of her braids around her finger. “It is. It’s just a more complicated one than I wanted to hear.” A grin flashes across her face. “Maybe I better try doing to Kora whatever you did to Coal last night. I’ve never seen the male so exquisitely confused as this morning. Speaking of your four”—her voice drops—“what’sthatlike? I mean, is it always one or...?”
“Yes. Well, kind of.” My face blazes as I remember that one night with Tye and Shade on this very bed. I hop off it immediately, restoring the dropped washbasin to its home atop the dresser, my thighs clenching in spite of myself. “I don’t even know how anything else would work... I mean... Never mind. Yes. The answer is yes. One at a time.”
Autumn raises a brow.
I grab a towel to soak up the water still on the floor. No. No.No.“So what exactly are you conjuring up in that library of yours?” I ask in a pathetic attempt to change the topic.
“Static shields.” Autumn’s usually musical voice suddenly holds a steel edge. A reminder of the power flaming inside that impish body and brilliant mind. “Something like what Viper tried at your trial, but a great deal more refined.” She grins without humor, showing sharp canines. “Once my bastard of a sire shows up, he won’t be leaving again without my say so.”
Once he shows up. “How long, do you think, until that happens?” I ask. “I feel a bit like we are all bait inside a faulty mousetrap.”
“We aren’t bait. We are challengers.” Autumn’s somber tone matches mine at once. “As for how long—not long now, I imagine.” Walking to the window, she points to the tallest of the golden-domed towers, where a new flag—this one maroon with a lion of gold—whips in the wind. “If the weeks-long trek to get here wasn’t enough of a message, River ran up the king’s standard this morning. A claim that Slait Court’s rightful ruler is currently in residence.”
“So, unless Griorgi wants all of Slait to know he’s being challenged, he needs to return at once and be quiet about it, make people thinkhe’sthe ruler in residence.” I shake my head. “If this works, it will be the most silent dethroning in history.”
“It has to work.” Autumn’s face darkens. “But either way, we’ll find out shortly.”
21
