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I haven’t talked to Violet in weeks.
I mean, we’ve spoken, obviously. In passing when there are others around, or at meals, or while working with her signet. We’ve communicated the necessities, but we haven’t talked. She’s been meticulous to avoid it.
And I miss her.
Every day, every night, her absence is a fog filling my lungs, constricting my throat until I’m nearly suffocating with the deprivation. Tonight is no different. I’m stretched out on my bed wearing only my sleeping pants, though I haven’t actually bothered trying to sleep yet, and likely won’t for some time.
Violet’s probably talking to Brennan. Surely she is. She doesn’t have any other friends here in Aretia, and she needs someone right now, after all the stress of her first year at Basgiath, and then her known world collapsing so suddenly, and then me—
And then me. Me, who just had to have her, and screw the consequences. Me, who selfishly allowed her to fall in love, who stupidly clung to the hope that once she knew me, once she knew everything, I would still be enough.
And now she’s got that hollow look in her eyes every damn day, and it makes me despise myself.
My shadows are a convenient distraction for nights like this. There’s strength and size to build, of course, but I find a different level of satisfaction in developing their dexterity as well. I’ve worked with them until they’re almost their own clever creatures, dancing and playing around my fingertip before swirling down my arm in a cool flow that gives the barest impression of water. I swear I can almost hear them giggle sometimes, in this faint vibrating sound, like something you hear from a long distance away and then convince yourself it’s just your mind playing tricks on you.
Two pounding knocks on my door have me jerking upright, shadows scattering like birds. It’s Violet. I don’t know how I know, but I do. And she’s never come to my door here in Aretia.
“Is everything alright?” I ask mentally before I’ve even slung my legs over the side of the bed.
Her internal voice is distressed, replying with, “How are you so calm? Are you really that good at blocking it out?”
Blocking?—
Oh.
With a rolling surge of desire in my belly, Sgaeyl joins whatever activities Tairn has apparently already begun, and I curse under my breath when my body automatically responds. I need to stop and focus for a minute, but Violet is waiting on the other side of my door and I swear she’s sending me some incomprehensible, quiet sort of pleading sound, so I’m unable to give myself the time I need.
There’s no hiding a hard-on in these pants. All I can do is snatch a pillow off the bed and hold it in front of my crotch while I answer the door, praying she’s already suffering enough not to laugh at me. With a frustrated breath I turn the knob, and—
“Do you have anything to smoke?” Violet asks immediately, eyes locked on mine like she’s already decided not to lower them down my body.
Dammit.
“No,” I admit. “Left it all back at Basgiath.”
She curses in a series of words I’ve never heard put together before, and it would almost be amusing if her face weren’t so flushed, and if she were wearing more than just a short night dress right outside my bedroom. Her hair is all mussed and loose around her shoulders, and another throb of pleasure has me determinedly locking my body into place so I won’t do something stupid, like try to kiss her.
Everything was so much easier before I knew what her lips felt like.
“I have some, uh… chocolate,” I offer, gesturing behind me with my head since I’ve still got a death grip on that pillow. “If you want to just hang out until they’re done.”
She shifts her legs uncomfortably, finally flicking her eyes down to what I’m holding. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
It’s not. It’s a horrible idea, and you should take your beautiful, aroused body back to your room and not listen to a word I say. I’m nothing but a slave to your bare legs and your pretty eyes, and I need to make sure you never know that.
“You could go back to bed and touch yourself,” I tell her impassively, “but I know from experience, it doesn’t work.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t work?” she demands, stricken. She raises her eyebrows suddenly and whispers, “Can you not… cum?”
“Oh, you can cum—“ Another wave of desire, and the door knob rattles when my fist clamps tightly onto it. “Fuck, come here.”
I yank her inside by the arm, too embarrassed and frustrated to care about being nice. Once the door is shut behind us, I irritably launch the pillow towards my bed hard enough that it smacks into the wall with an unsatisfying thump before flopping down onto the mattress. If I’m going to have this conversation, in my room, with Violet standing there clenching her legs together, then I might as well stop pretending.
“You can make yourself cum,” I explain, taking a deep breath and crossing my arms, “but it’ll the most unsatisfying orgasm you’ve ever had, and then you’re just laying there all depressed and lonely, but still horny somehow because they’re still going at it, and it’s just not worth the effort.”
Gods, that sounded worse coming out than I thought it would. But the alternative - trying to explain the intensity of being inside a mated dragon’s mind, how the desire for connection is even stronger than the sexual need - feels worse somehow. Hey, Violet, you know how you hate me and want nothing to do with me? Well you’re only going to get some relief by touching another person, so have at it, there are enough men here that you can take your pick of skin contact!
Not happening.
Even though she’s looking up at me with her eyes all soft and pretty, like she wants my skin on hers. Like that same need for connection is what brought her to my room in the first place, whether she understood it or not. I hold her gaze, trying to look as uninterested as possible, because that’s the least I can do for her.
Finally she looks away and releases a disappointed breath. “What kind of chocolate?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit, walking over to my desk and rummaging around. “It’s got some nuts and stuff stuck to the top.”
Another surge of arousal locks me into place for a moment, and I’m breathing through it with a palm planted to the top of my desk, desperately ignoring how every shift of my pants against my cock is just making it worse.
When I gather the strength to turn around I find that Violet has already made herself at home, sitting in the middle of my bed. Not the edge, not the foot, the fucking middle, where I’ll be just inches away no matter where I choose to sit. Yeah, I deserve this pain.
I choose to sit back against the headboard, partly because that leaves just my feet close to her, and partly because even though it hurts all the more, I can’t stand to look away from how lovely she is. She’s lying sideways with her head propped up in a hand, and I’m pretending not to stare while I break the chocolate into pieces.
We’re both moving slowly, and I know it’s because she’s also focusing her attention on grounding and blocking the external sensations. It’s both a relief and a frustration, when all my body wants to do is dive further into it.
Violet reaches out to accept a piece of chocolate from my hand, and the hem of her skirt slides higher with the movement, coming to the top of her thigh and then remaining there even when she pulls her hand back. She’s wearing no daggers tonight, that’s for sure. I’m fairly sure there’s only warm, smooth skin under that slip, all flushed with arousal in interesting places, and probably so fucking w—
“What are you thinking about?” she asks unexpectedly, chewing her first bite of chocolate. I quickly take a bite of my own to stall.
I’m thinking about touching you. Kissing you. Wrapping your hair in my fist and fucking you so deep that you don’t even have to block Tairn anymore, you can just relax into everything that’s happening and cum as many times as you need to. I’m thinking about feeling your legs shake against my hips and your pussy contract around my cock while I breathe in the scent of your hair and tell you every secret thought I’ve ever had about you.
“Sex,” I reply simply.
She rolls her eyes, obviously let down by my answer, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
“Why aren’t you wearing your dragonscale?” I ask in return, attempting to steer the conversation to a safer topic.
What I expect is for her to say something along the lines of feeling safe here, or that it’s incredibly uncomfortable to sleep in, which I’m sure it is.
What I’m not expecting is when she instantly tenses up and looks away, mumbling, “We’re not at Basgiath anymore.”
“And…?”
She sighs. “And all the people here are people I’m supposed to be able to trust. If someone here tries to kill me in my sleep, I’d rather—“ She closes her mouth abruptly, ending the thought like she accidentally said more than she intended.
It was enough, though. I understood her reasoning quite clearly: I’d rather be killed in my sleep than live to face another betrayal.
“Sorrengail,” I bark, suddenly so furious at her that a shadow swirls in my peripheral.
“What?” she demands, but the guilty way she raises her eyes to mine confirms exactly what I suspected.
Quickly I suck in a deep breath, knowing I need to calm myself. Fuck. I can’t be yelling at her right now.
“Don’t you dare give up,” I tell her, keeping my voice as level as I can. “Don’t you dare sit back and just let someone take you from us.”
“I know, I know...” She sighs out her own deep breath and mumbles, “…the lightning.”
There’s a few heartbeats where I’m just sitting there, blinking at her in total shock, and then I fucking lose it. One moment I’m in complete control, and the next I’m launching myself at her, shadows tornadoing around us in my fucking rage. Grounding, gone. Dragon sex, forgotten. I’m straddling her, leaning down with my hands planted on the mattress, and every bit of my focus is narrowed on the wide eyes staring up at me just a few inches from mine.
“Fuck,” I say, my voice coming out gritty between my teeth, “the lightning.”
Violet blinks, and then drops her gaze, turning her face to the side to escape my glare.
I don’t even let her finish the motion. I grab her jaw and force her to look at me, at the merest ghost on my face of the devastation that I would feel upon her death.
“Fuck Tairn,” I tell her, my voice steady and deathly calm. “Fuck Andarna, fuck your mother, and fuck any other thing that makes you feel like you only have incidental value. You don’t belong to them, Violence. They belong to you.”
Her eyes are shimmering, that’s why she tried to look away before. It softens me a little, has my fingers loosening on her cheek and my shadows slowing to a gentle migration around the room.
And of course, that’s when Sgaeyl decides to have a moment, and I suddenly find my mind wide open and vulnerable to the flood of pleasure sweeping through me. I gasp, screwing my eyes shut and doing everything I can not to cum in my pants because it’s too much. My body is rigid and I’m trying to breathe through it, but it’s going on for what feels like forever, and then—
And then it passes. I come back to awareness with my forehead pressed into Violet’s shoulder, and her fingers gently stroking up the back of my neck, threading into my hair.
I’m not sure if it’s just the heaviness of what was said, or how raw I feel without a shield between me and Sgaeyl, but all of a sudden my filter is simply gone. I find myself raising my head again and saying, “I think it’s stupid that you’re in my bed, wet, and I’m here with perfectly good fingers, and we’re not doing anything about it. I want to make you cum.”
For some reason that familiar, obstinate expression never even crosses her face. She merely chews her lip and asks, “What about you?”
Me? Getting to touch you would probably make me nut in my fucking pants, but thanks for the consideration.
“I’ll be okay,” I lie smoothly. “I’ve got more practice at blocking it.”
Nevermind that she seems to be doing a far better job at keeping her feelings and mental barriers in place. She’s still looking at me with this strangely awed expression, and suddenly I’m very much regretting not offering my mouth.
“Okay,” she agrees, and I finally hear that slight edge of desperation in her voice, like maybe she’s been suffering more than she’s let on.
My mind is instantly a whirl of different positions, and I’m just about to ask her what she wants to do when she must lower her shields or something, because she’s arching back on the bed. A panting, needy kind of noise leaves her, and just like that I know exactly what she needs from me: Release, plain and simple. No kissing, no staring into each other’s eyes, just hands on skin with as little of me as possible.
I stay with her until that wave seems to pass, and she once again opens her eyes to look up at me. That’s when I finally find the will to climb off and settle back in my spot against the headboard. Violet cranes her neck backwards to look at me, and it stretches out her beautiful throat in a way that has me swallowing down words I know she doesn’t want to hear.
“Come here,” I say instead, as gently as I can.
She crawls over and starts to straddle me, but I put my hands on her hips and say as I move her, “Like this, sit back against my chest.”
Fuck, I’m hard. She settles into the space between my legs, and her body feels so solid and wonderful that I’m barely able to hold back from grinding against her lower back like some teenager. Instead I focus on strengthening my mental shield, and carefully direct her silky hair over to one shoulder.
This is happening. This is happening. She’s in my arms, letting me hold her and touch her, and she wants this. There’s nothing else left to do, so my fingers travel down her thighs to wrap around the hem of her night dress. Suddenly an audible breath leaves her, and those pretty knees jerk apart and collide with my legs in a movement I’m convinced she didn’t intend to make.
“Sorry,” she pants, lifting her ass slightly so I can draw her skirt up.
“It’s okay—“ I have to cut myself off from doing something really foolish, and calling her baby. Instead I just drag the clothing over her head and repeat, “It’s okay.”
Violet’s night dress hits the bed, and another wave hits her. She lets out an agonized cry, her hand shooting out to clamp onto my leg, and that’s all it takes for my hands to be on her. One lifts her thigh to drape it over the top of mine, and the other slides right into her underwear, using that opening I just made between her legs.
Oh, gods.
“Baby,” I breathe despite myself, incredulous at how fucking wet she is.
“Please,” she says in a frantic rush, “Xaden, please just tou—“
"Oh, baby, I know." My wet fingers slide up to her clit, and she lets out the most delicious sound I’ve never heard in my life, long and broken and soft, while my finger makes a few circles over the spot that’s been bothering her. "I know you need this, it's okay."
Foreplay is out of the question. She’s long past wanting teasing touches or a slow buildup, but I’m still gentle with her. My other hand comes up to play with her breast, and I’m just trying to give her a continuous motion that she can settle herself into without too much shock to her senses. It's an encompassing, fuzzy pink bliss, getting to hold her like this while she makes such sweet little noises. It's wrapping my mind in liquid intoxication, and I have to hold myself back from thoughtlessly running my fingers back down through her wet little folds just the for sensory pleasure of it.
Her breathing hitches, and that's all the warning I get before she's cumming, in ragged, heartbreaking little gasps. It fucking rocks me. It’s not normal for my body to identify her release as something just as good as my own, but it does. It’s not sane for me to nuzzle my face into her hair and ask if she wants me to keep going, but I do, and I’m pretty sure I throw a please in there as well.
“Yes,” she tells me, her chest rising under my hand with each breath she takes.
I don’t even have to ask for the next thing, because she’s already pushing her underwear down her legs, and I’m more than happy to assist. Recklessly I draw her other leg outside of mine as well, and then Violet is completely naked in my lap, spread and exposed and so incapacitated with need that I have to remind myself to handle her carefully. She may not mind being held down and fucked right now, but that’s not what she agreed to while she still had a scrap of sanity. Violet chose to trust me with her body in this vulnerable moment, and I refuse to treat that lightly.
“Shhh,” I say when she whines and her hips twitch in search of my hand. I smooth my fingers back over her clit and murmur, “I’m going to take care of it, for as long as you need. All you have to do is relax.”
I don’t ask for an answer but she makes an affirmative sound anyway, and her knees fall open a few more inches as her whole body melts into me. Melts like I’m a safe place for her, like she trusts me for this. Maybe I was wrong about this position, because the breath is catching in my throat, and it suddenly feels far too intimate.
“Is this alright?” I ask, bringing my fingertips down to her slick entrance and pushing in just slightly.
A quick nod is all she can manage, and somehow I know that she's got her eyes closed, releasing that last scrap of control she'd been holding onto. I sink a couple of fingers into her, clamping my jaw together at how fucking hot and wonderful she feels around my knuckles. She’s so wet that everything is exquisitely soft, as comfortable as can be and practically sucking me in, begging me to go deeper.
So I do. I fuck her with my fingers and she moans happily, and I have to remind myself that this isn’t real. This is just a situation we happen to be in, and we’re making the best of it, and that just happens to be my fingers deep inside her while her arousal drips down my hand. We’ve done this before, so it doesn’t mean anything. It’s no big deal.
“Can you—“ Violet starts to say, and then cuts herself off.
“What?” I ask, pulling my fingers out to rub her again.
She asks in the quietest little voice, like she’s having to make an effort to get the words out, “Can you… put it in? You don’t have to… to fuck me, or anything. But can you just put it inside, and— um, and then touch me?”
I’m instantly frozen behind her, my cock throbbing at the fucking thought, even while my mind races to process why should would ask for that.
“Do you…” I start, shifting her ass up onto my lower stomach with one hand and yanking my pants down with the other. Fuck, I’m so hard. Breathe. Be gentle. “Do you just need something to cum on, Violence?”
Violet gasps and arches her head back over my shoulder, and I can’t tell if it’s from Tairn or a response to what I just said, but I’m dutifully positioning myself beneath her. Slowly, making sure she has every opportunity to change her mind, I nudge her folds apart with my cock and lower her down onto me.
She loves it, I can tell. By the little sounds she’s making, by the way she’s clenching me so damn tight and rocking her hips to get me inside faster. And then finally, finally I’m fully inside her, letting her sit in the cradle of my hips while gravity shoves me in so deep that I can hardly stand it.
There’s no way to keep my breathing steady any more. I’m wrecked by this. I can’t focus on the sensation too long or I’ll cum, so I just lock down my mental barriers and bring my fingers back down to her clit.
“Thank you,” she says into my mind, sounding every bit as destroyed as I feel.
I don't even know what to say in response. I'm still in utter disbelief to find myself here tonight, to have her ask me to stretch her out like this, and for it to feel so good that her thighs flex against the top of mine while she shows me her appreciation in the form of breathy little moans. I was supposed to remain detached. This was supposed to be simply a transaction of pleasure, and yet I'm lowering my face to her, nibbling her neck because I’m simply too fucked up to care.
She trembles and tenses in my arms when the next torturous wave hits her, and it feels like the most just thing in the world that I get to be here for her, filling her up and stroking her through it.
“I think— I think I’m gonna—“ she starts to say, and even though we’re tucked away behind several walls of stone, I can clearly discern the crack of lightning outside when she breaks. With me motionless inside her I can feel every pulse of her orgasm wrapping around my cock, hugging me again and again in the most heavenly way.
I don’t know how many more of those I can take. Even with Sgaeyl mostly absent behind my walls, the situation has me so turned on that there’s not a doubt in my mind I can cum just from this. It’s all I can do to merely touch her, helping her through every wave until she’s sagging back against me, breathless and utterly limp.
Was that it? Are they done? I peek behind the wall and immediately regret it, my fingers tightening on Violet’s breast while I fight that sharp flare of pleasure.
Damn Tairn and his absolutely ridiculous stamina.
“Can you go again?” I ask, forcing myself to calm down while I linger a kiss on her neck.
“I— I think so. But you need to cum, Xaden.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“No,” she wiggles on my cock and it feels so good that I have to dig my hands into her hips to make her stop. “Xaden, you need to. Promise me you will, the next time. If you need me to move I can, I can help you, but you need to cum. Promise.”
Fuck. “Okay.”
That makes her relax, and to my surprise she turns her head to press her lips against mine, just once, before she pulls back to look at me.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers, resting her cheek on my shoulder and slaying me with those pretty eyes.
Obediently I find her nipple with one hand and her clit with the other, stroking softly while I gaze at her face, her lashes, her lips. Her cheeks that are flushed, and the way that pink has spread down her chest since the last orgasm.
“Violet,” I murmur, and the words choke me. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she replies, shuddering under my hands.
Something hot from Sgaeyl is gripping my insides, but I don’t care. There’s this swell of peace settling over me, and somehow I know that we’re going to talk again. Violet is going to look at me again, really see me, and she’s going to let herself feel. We’re going to be friends again, whether or not we fuck, or if this just becomes our relationship of random necessity thanks to the dragons.
It’s hope that’s rising up in my chest, prompting me to lean and give her a chaste little kiss on the cheek, as if I don’t have my cock currently hard as a rock inside her. It’s hope that has my palm sliding to the middle of her chest, just to feel her heartbeat thumping against my skin, the proof that I’m awake and this is real.
And when Tairn finally finishes his activities, I don’t need to let down my wall to join Violet in that last round. She’s generous enough to rock her hips against me and give me a little bit more, making it just as good as I could possibly wish for.
We sit there for a little while, just catching our breath and letting the sweat cool on our bodies, and then, still inside her, I reach over and snag a piece of chocolate. I didn’t really get to taste it earlier. It’s quite good.