Page 89 of A Light So Blinding
It was that easy. Seeing him here, lit by the blue and gold lights of wisps floating around them, he had become rather magical to her. His skin might’ve been green, and he might’ve had tusks and horns, but he was still the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
The dark color on his cheeks had spread. Down his chest, up to the tips of his ears. Not a blush, then. Anger.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, her eyes darting around the crowd that was already forming around them. “Bjorn?”
He wasn’t listening to her, though. His breath came in great, heaving inhalations that lifted his body up and down. He was clearly not in a sane state of mind. Astrid glanced around them, realizing what a terrible situation this was. There were too many people. So many trolls were setting up wares or had already been selling for hours now. He was going to lose control, and then where would they be?
She couldn’t let this happen. She couldn’t. Because if this happened, then they were going to be kicked out of thiskingdom. If she didn’t get him under control, then she would have to leave.
Astrid wasn’t going anywhere without Rose.
“Bjorn,” she said again, sharper this time.
When his eyes turned to hers, she could see they were already ringed in red. He’d thought he was ready for this, to be back home with his people, and he’d been wrong. She could see the despair in him. She could feel it. Astrid tugged a bit on her power, looking through all the anger in him and all the heartbreak that radiated around him.
He wanted to be here. He wanted to feel like he belonged, but then they had disappointed him. Betrayal was strong in the mix of emotions that radiated around him. It was an emotion that she didn’t know how to control because it was so strong.
Until she got an idea in her head that maybe wasn’t the best she’d ever had. But they were compatible. They had wanted to touch each other for days on end now, and if she played her cards right, he wouldn’t be thinking about anything but her.
Glancing around them, she decided an alleyway was good enough. He’d wanted a bed, romance, a soft evening where he wooed her until she could do nothing other than fall into his bed. He was a romantic at heart, but life didn’t give him the chance for romance like he wished.
She would have been disappointed if she weren’t so excited.
Grabbing his hand, she all but yanked him in the direction she wanted him to go. Bjorn was surprised enough to follow, but she could still hear his heavy breathing and the chuffing sounds he made when he was so angry he couldn’t think. It was a dangerous game to play, but she didn’t think he would ever hurt her.
Even angry. Even when he was so far gone that he didn’t know his own name or the names of others, he knew her. She had to believe that.
Red rage poured off of him in waves that only she could see. It tried to cling to Astrid, to drag her into the depths with him. She refused to get stuck in that with him, though. It didn’t want her to calm it or even to speak with it. His rage was uncontrollable.
But she could distract him.
The alleyway was empty. It looked like it curved at the end, and she had hope that it was a dead end. When she found exactly that, Astrid resolved herself to a dead end street to somehow seduce him. Bjorn turned from her and pounded his fist into the building, the stones cracking around the force of his strike. And then quietly, so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, he said, “Leave.”
She’d left him alone in this quite enough. Instead, she walked up to him and placed a hand on his back. The warmth of her touch always seemed to calm him, even if he was still shuddering under her touch.
Slowly, Astrid smoothed her hands up his back, feeling the ridges along each side of his spine. The power in his back made her shiver with desire. He was very strong. So capable.
“I can think of other ways to use that anger,” she whispered, before leaning forward and pressing her lips to his shoulder. Then she slid her hands back down and tunneled them underneath his shirt.
It was like she’d plunged her hands into a fire. Bjorn’s skin was so warm, muscles twitching beneath her touch. She wanted to press her lips and tongue to the deep valley between his muscles, to trace all of that power with her lips. He was so warm. So capable. And if this was the time when she could distract him with her body, then... so be it.
Pulling up his shirt, she did just that. Astrid licked him. Which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best thing she could have done. She didn’t even know if he liked that.
But the deep groan that rumbled through his chest made her see stars at the touch of her slick tongue to his skin. Then he rolled them, and her back was pressed against the wall he had just been punching with his fist.
Breathless, she stared up into his gaze that was still somehow soangry,but also like he wanted to devour her whole. That was exactly what she wanted. She wanted him to devour her, just like he had in that tent.
Somehow, he knew. Bjorn gave her a look that was perhaps a little chiding before sliding down onto his knees before her. He didn’t even look to see if anyone could see them. He just tucked his hands underneath the skirt of the dress he had made and pulled it slowly up inch by inch.
“I’m not going to fuck you here,” he growled against her skin, his nose trailing up the inside of her thigh as he pushed her skirt higher and higher. “But I am going to tend to your needs. Then I will bring you back to my home and I will fuck you into oblivion, bright one.”
The first touch of his tongue between her legs made her see stars. Astrid gasped and grabbed onto his horns, holding on to him just as much as she was keeping him where she wanted him to be.
He was sotalented, and perhaps it wasn’t even that. It wasn’t that his tongue knew where to go or that it was abnormally quick—although it was both things—but Bjorn was so enthusiastic. He groaned at every taste of her, like he had never tasted anything so delicious. He wanted to devour her, lick and suck at her flesh, and listen to the soft sounds of her pleasure.
There wasn’t a part of him that shied away from her taste. He didn’t make her feel like this was a chore in the slightest. She’d heard so many priestesses speak of an experience like this, and how it was always a gift from someone else.
Bjorn made it seem like he was the one receiving the gift.
