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The room is their best available and the innkeeper offers it gratis. Matthias wants to growl – does, quietly, begin to – when Nina turns her luxurious feminine graces at the crusty old man. But she touches Matthias on the thigh, where the man can’t see, where Matthias can’t believe her hand goes, to still him, to reassure him. Matthias is learning to stifle his first impulse. He’s learning patience and, perhaps, a certain open-mindedness – just where Nina is concerned.
Their room is at the top of the stairs and down the hallway, with a window overlooking a square. Trees are visible, however undernourished and leafless, beneath a gray, endless sky.
There is a chair, a cabinet, a small table, and a bed. One soft, warm bed. Their bed.
Matthias flushes at the thought of lying beside Nina again. He closes the curtains: they can’t afford to be seen together. They can’t afford to be together. Not in Fjerda – they would undoubtedly kill Nina, he sees that now – and not in Ravka, where he is unmistakably their enemy. Isn’t he? He always has been. “I will go north in the night,” he volunteers. I will sacrifice my comfort to keep you safe.
“No, this can’t be it,” Nina protests, earnest until she isn’t. “I’m not done tormenting you.” How is he to tell the difference between Nina’s manipulative power and this, when he is so drawn to her he’s a fish on a line, a bird in a net? It is risky for her to be too earnest with him. He feels the heat of it every time. “There must be a place,” she continues, “where we’re not just grisha and druskelle.”
If the world were good, perhaps there would be. But it’s nowhere he’s ever been. “Somewhere beyond Ravka,” he muses, the beginning of a dream he’s begun to build on their long journey. “Beyond Fjerda.” But Ravka lives in her, and Fjerda rages in him, don’t they?
“A place where we’re just Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar,” she offers.
But who are they now? The scaffolding of his identity crumbles more every day. He knows he was wrong about Nina. He suspects he was wrong about most grisha. He wonders if he was lied to. He worries about why. But what is he if not this? “If I go, I can never go back. I would be court-martialled as a deserter.”
She comes closer, sits beside him on the bed. Their bed. He longs for her, impossibly more the closer she gets. “I would be branded a traitor to all grisha,” she tells him, and then, “I know, it’s your whole life. I can’t take that away from you.”
Just as he could never ask her to make such a sacrifice. For all their differences, in this way they are the same. At least that much he can see.
She softens, apologizing. “But thank you for saving me.” She gives more of herself every moment, now nestling against his shoulder, into his neck.
He hates the voice that still surges in him that this, perhaps, is a trap. No: Nina is good, and her trust in him is a gift, and holding her, as he does now, wrapping his arm gingerly around her, is also very, very good. “You did the same for me,” he reminds her, and then attempts to tease her: “and if we stay together, I doubt it would be the last time.” But it comes out like begging, or a promise.
If they stay together? Where, exactly? He’s only known two countries in his life, hers and his, and he hates them both.
She brightens: sunlight. “Oh, the Wandering Isle! I can fit in there, no trouble.” Her voice lilts, transforming.
Never: it would be like inhabiting a children’s story, all giddy songs and manic smiles. “They are infernally happy there,” he protests.
“You’ll come to like being happy.” She looks at his face, traces its lines with her gaze so plainly he can feel it like a touch. Is she drawing happiness over his worry? If only it were that simple. “You’ll never have to grow that damn druskelle beard,” she imagines, her hand cradling his rough jaw. “I mean, you’re welcome to grow a beard,” she purrs, her gaze drifting to his mouth, “but only for the purposes of keeping me warm.”
His heart clenches. Like a wife, she tells him he can grow a beard for her. Like a temptress, but that is the druskelle talking, not who he wants to be. He wants to be hers. So: like a lover. “I will keep you warm,” he says then, his vow hidden there, a basket of words to hold what he means: I am yours and I could spend my life loving you.
The last shards of ice between them finally melt, and they meet in the space between them. Nina’s lips, like the bed, are soft and yielding. She is soft – soft skin, warm and plump under his hands, under his mouth. He is hungry for her -- his skin, his soul want her so loudly, like a storm inside his chest, it rumbles through him and comes out a groan.
She sighs, like a knife. Like a match on flint.
There is nothing in the world as good as her mouth, open for him, tightening to a pout, a bud against his lips. She does it again and he is fascinated by the taste of her, and her tongue. No, this – her fingers in his hair, her fingernails scraping just this side of pain on his scalp, tugging a little, ohhh, this. Nothing in the world is as good as Nina pushing his coat off his shoulders, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth, while her shoulders, her arms, her body are full and resilient under his hands. His hands are in love with her body. She presses herself against his chest or he clutches her against him, they are the same.
He would give up everything, he thinks, he would give up air for her mouth under his and the way her fingers rake his scalp and her tears glistening in the lamplight. Her tears? He freezes. “Did I hurt you?”
She stands, turns away. “This is madness.” But she’s in his lap not a breath later,
She is in his lap, Nina, straddling him. Her tear falls on his chest.
If he hurt her – if she doesn’t want this – if she doesn’t want him – did he force her? -- she would be right to reject him – if there hadn’t been a storm – he doesn’t deserve –
“I’m perfectly fine.” She takes his face in her hands, brushes his nose with the tip of hers. “Come back to me.”
Come back to me. He would bury himself in her. “But you're crying." He brushes his thumb over her cheek, wiping it dry.
“Happy tears, my druskelle,” and she captures his lips in a kiss, this one hungry, and he is hungry, too. Happy tears; what a miracle she is. She leans into him, permission to hold her hips in his hands, cradle her against him. She tugs at him, relying on his strength to keep them both upright. This he is glad to give her, to be the support she relies on so she doesn’t fall. She tugs and pushes and, oh, she grinds. For once he’s not embarrassed to be hard; he clutches her hips and she groans into his mouth.
Nothing is better than the sound of her pleasure. She pushes back into his hands and then grinds against him again. He will hold her here, let her take him wherever she wishes him to go. Now she works at the button at his neck, then the next, and he works the fastenings of her dress, as greedy for her skin as she seems greedy for his. She slips off his lap and he follows, would follow her anywhere, stands in front of her, waits for whatever’s next. Her hands, her dangerous, powerful hands spread his shirt open across his chest, pushing the fabric down his arms and off. Her hands that leave sparks in their trail – is that her grisha talent or is it what it feels like to want someone with your skin? To feel desire in your muscles?
Nothing in the world is better than undressing Nina. No, nothing in the world is better than Nina watching as you undress her. Nina seeing him want her, reading his desire as if it were words on his face. Her skin flushing pink, blushing across her neck, her delicious neck that deserves a kiss, and she groans when he kisses her there so he nibbles. Her dress pools at her feet and nothing is better than Nina’s breasts beneath sheer fabric, honestly nothing. He kneels in front of her, against her, as she slips her shoulders out of her underdress and lets that fall, too.
When he turns his face up to hers, she’s pulling her hair out of its binds, letting it fall thick and luscious over her shoulders. There are goddesses Matthias has heard of but none could be as worthy of worship. He presses his face against her belly, drags his nose across the pale skin there, and her breast, a perfect thing. He brushes his thumb across her nipple; she shivers. He makes her shiver. He licks; she shivers. He loves this game: he pushes her underclothes down over her hips; she gasps. He is the champion of the world’s best game. This is where he was meant to be, kneeling here, hard as ice for her, hot as fire for her.
In Nina’s face is something warm and eager, but also something like empathy, and the tears are still glistening in her eyelashes. Matthias doesn’t know how to be this fortunate, how to hold this much goodness. “Stand up, you big beast,” she tells him, her fingers already unfastening his trousers. This is how they were meant to be, her skin and his skin, just hers and his. He stands and there is nothing in the world as good as watching Nina unfasten your pants. She bites her lip while she does it, until he bites it for her, sucks at her mouth, curls her body against his body in a bow, both of them bare now, just his skin and her skin.
The bed is good but Nina is better, pink and warm and perfect laid out where she belongs, on soft, clean sheets, her hips full in Matthias’ hands. He wishes he had twenty hands, he wishes he could hold every part of Nina, feel every curve all at once. And her hands race across his skin like sandpipers on sand and then linger at the small of his back, against his rib cage, his neck where his pulse races, his thigh. His thigh, as she slides her body closer, under him, and she opens her legs. She makes him shiver.
Nothing, nothing in the world can match this moment. He wants to dive into her, cock first, it’s already heavy, his hips rehearsing the thrusts his body craves. But he is learning patience with Nina. He is learning to stifle his first impulse. Her hands have stilled, have gentled his hips, those dangerous hands. His hips will have to wait.
Matthias kisses her sternum, pulls one nipple into his mouth and savors it, savors the resilience of her breast under his mouth, then moves to the other, adores it, slides lower. Lower still, he gathers her hips in his hands like a bowl to the mouth of a starving man. He is: he’s starving for her. “Are you sure?” she asks, as soft as her skin, soft like her voice usually isn’t, soft and hesitant.
He looks across the landscape of Nina’s body, into her wide, apprehensive eyes, and he winks. It makes her gasp. He makes her gasp.
She is better than anything in the world. She tastes like the sea and she moves like the sea, her hips curling in waves, meeting his mouth. He builds a map of her with his tongue. Her fingers find his hair, her powerful hands lighter than a breeze, gently steering his explorations. This is worship, Matthias realizes. He is a priest of her and this is his ordination.
She coos with a dove’s voice, whines like wind and he understands her. He feels it too, wants her as much, wants her more. “I want you,” she tells him, like a secret.
He lifts to see her face. “I’m yours.” He licks his lips. “I am yours, you must know that now.”
Her hips squirm in his hands. He misses his feast. “No, here.” She twists lower in the bed and now, oh now her dangerous hand has his cock encircled – might as well have his throat, he may never breathe again.
Matthias doesn’t respond. His body is remaking itself. Moments ago he could understand the wind.
Even more secret, she confides, in a whisper: “inside me.”
She guides him, it reminds him of holding hands almost, guides him just there, where she is plush and warm and made for him. This is sacred.
Her name is on his lips, Nina, and then her mouth opens against them, and carefully, never as carefully in his life as this, carefully he slides into her. Just an inch, but it feels like yielding. This is the best magic, the truest magic; there is nothing better than this. Deeper, ever so slightly deeper and he is enveloped by her, her palms light and trembling like feathers on his face, her lips and her cunt open for him, her body everywhere around him. He has no mind, only body. He has no body; they have one hungry body, together.
She curls her hips, drawing Matthias inside her even further. He answers with his own curl, up over her like another wave. They are both the sea now, deep ocean rumble in his chest and Nina’s sweet, sweet mouth fallen open in pleasure. She sighs, she groans when he leaves her almost empty just to fill her again, to yield to her again.
A man could lose his mind this way.
Nothing is as marvelous as every single thrust inside her. Each one is more searing than the last. With this next thrust his body is new, shining from under his skin with the goodness of parting her thighs. He needs a new language to describe this tangle of sensation and adoration rising and deepening in him, in them – her voice is lower now, moans escaping her when he fills her again, again. There is only honesty between them, the truth of him, the truth of her.
There is only the sound of his name in her voice, wrapped in pleasure.
A bodily eclipse begins between them where the tip of his cock kisses her deep inside, an abyss of almost and then he explodes with yes. And yes, and yes, his cock leaping inside her as she takes his mouth in a new kiss, with his new body, still spilling inside her, explosions shaking him but she is the still ocean, receiving him, drinking him in.
Her hands are velvet down his sides. He is made of warm silk. He has no need for words, or will, or bones. Soon she’s slotted against him, head on his chest, legs intertwined with his, one soft hand on his belly.
“Are you hungry?”