Chapter 77 Elena Heart - POV
His thumb found my clit again, and I shattered.
The orgasm crashed through me like a storm, and I couldn't hold back the sounds that spilled from my lips. "Ah—ah—I can't—I'm—Xavier!" My body convulsed around his fingers, waves of pleasure radiating outward until I was trembling, gasping, utterly undone.
He held me through it, his fingers gentling but not stopping, drawing out every last tremor until I lay boneless beneath him. Only then did he withdraw his hand, bringing his fingers to his lips and tasting my release with a groan that made my spent body clench with renewed want.
"You taste like mine," he said, his voice thick. "Like belonging."
I reached for him, my hands fumbling with the waistband of his trousers. I needed him, needed to feel him inside me, needed to be filled the way only he could fill me. "Please," I whispered. "Please, Xavier, I need you—"
He shed the remaining clothes with quick, efficient movements, and then he was above me, his body a shadow framed by moonlight. I could see all of him now, the scars, the muscle, the hard length of him jutting proudly from a nest of dark curls. He was beautiful in a way that made my chest ache.
"Look at me," he commanded, positioning himself at my entrance. "I want to see your eyes when I take you."
I met his gaze, and he pushed inside.
The stretch was exquisite, slow, deliberate, inch by devastating inch. I felt every part of him as he filled me, my body opening to accommodate his thickness. A long, low moan spilled from my lips as he seated himself fully, my walls clenching around him.
"Ah—so hard…" The words tumbled out unbidden, raw and honest.
He held still, letting me adjust, his forehead pressed against mine. His breath came in short pants, his control hanging by a thread. "Elena," he groaned. "I've wanted this, wanted you, for so long."
"Then take me." I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him deeper. "Fuck me, Xavier. Please—"
He withdrew slowly, almost completely, before thrusting back in with a controlled power that drove the air from my lungs. I cried out, my nails digging into his shoulders as he set a rhythm, slow, deep, devastating. Each stroke hit that spot inside me, sending sparks of pleasure cascading through my body.
"You feel so good," he breathed against my neck. "So tight, so wet, like you were made for me."
"I was…" I gasped. "I am, ah, yours, always…"
His pace increased, each thrust harder than the last. The sound of our bodies meeting filled the small space, wet, obscene, perfect. I was spiraling higher again, another orgasm building at the base of my spine.
"Xavier, I'm close, ah—I'm going to—"
"Come for me," he commanded. "Let go, Elena. I want to feel you come around my cock."
His words were my undoing. The orgasm ripped through me, and I screamed his name as my body convulsed around him. I couldn't think, couldn't breathe, there was nothing but pleasure, white-hot and all-consuming.
"Ah, ah—I can't, it's too much…Xavier!”
He followed me over the edge with a groan, his hips stuttering as he spilled inside me. The warmth of his release filled me, and I clung to him as we rode out the storm together.
He collapsed over me, his weight pressing me into the mattress. Our breaths came in ragged gasps, our bodies still joined. I could feel his heart pounding against my chest, as wild and unsteady as my own.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. The world outside the hut didn't exist. There was only this, only him, only the aftermath of what we'd shared.
Then he lifted his head and pressed his lips to my forehead, a gesture so tender it made my eyes sting. “Why are you helping me, Elena?”
Then something made me gasp, I opened my eyes, and found him gone.
“Xavier!?”
I looked at the ceiling. The phantom sensation of his touch still burned on my skin, the echo of my own voice crying out his name vibrating in the quiet room. “That was just a freaking dream?”
My heart was thundering against my ribs, caught in the transition between a dream of royal velvet and the cold reality of... whatever this was.
I gasped, clutching the threadbare blanket to my chest as I scrambled to the edge of the bed. My mind was reeling. One moment I was in a palace, wrapped in the King’s heat, and now? Now I was in a windowless box of a room that smelled of damp stone and cheap tallow candles.
Did I imagine it? Dream it? The kidnapping, the West Wing, the confession... the sex? Was my subconscious so desperate for him that it invented a whole rescue just to feel his lips on mine?
"What the—" I rasped, my throat dry.
The sound of heavy, rhythmic footsteps echoed down the narrow hallway outside. I tensed, my fingers digging into the mattress. I looked for a weapon, a shard of glass, anything, but the room was barren.
Just a small table, a single chair, and a tiny kitchen corner with a rusted kettle.
The door creaked open, the rusted hinges screaming in the silence.
I froze. Standing in the doorway was a man with sharp, observant eyes and a posture that screamed 'soldier' even in commoner's clothes.
"James," I whispered.
He flinched at the sound of his name, his eyes widening in that familiar, startled way. In the first timeline, he was the last man standing. I could still see him, tiny, green, and cold, shuddering in my palms before the light left his gecko eyes. He had stayed loyal until the world literally fell apart.
James stepped into the room, closing the door firmly behind him. He looked at me with a mixture of suspicion and deep, unsettled confusion.
"How do you know my name and my mole?" he asked, his hand hovering near the hilt of a concealed blade.
“It doesn't matter, and did you kidnap me?”
"I wasn't the one who grabbed you in the garden. And as far as the world is concerned, I’m just a baker's apprentice in the lower districts."
I took a shaky breath, trying to settle the "badass" back into my bones. "You’re not a baker. You’re the King’s shadow. And you’re the one who dragged me out of those rosebushes, aren't you?"
James didn't move. He looked at me like I was a ghost or a madwoman. "I didn't drag you here. He did. But he couldn't take you to the palace—not after what you told him about the North Gate. The city is crawling with Grace’s men looking for you. If they find out you've talked, you're dead."
"Where is he?" I demanded, my voice cracking. "Where is Dark?"
James winced at the name, looking at the door as if the walls themselves might be listening. "He’s at the Cathedral. He took your warning. He’s gone to intercept the Silver Sun representative himself because he doesn't know who else to trust with the arrest. He told me to keep you here. Safe."
He stepped closer, his gaze dropping to the floor for a second before returning to mine. "He also told me to ask you... how you knew about the 'me' and the 'mole'. He said you looked at him in the garden like you were seeing a dead man come back to life."
I let out a bitter, jagged laugh, sinking back against the headboard. "Because I was, James. I was."
I looked around the miserable little room. This wasn't a dream, and it certainly wasn't a royal chamber. I was a fugitive, my "cousin" was likely hunting me, and the man I loved was walking into a trap at the Cathedral.
"We have to go," I said, swinging my legs off the bed. My head still spun from the paralytic, but the fire was back. "He’s going to the Cathedral? James, that’s exactly where they want him. They’ve been waiting for him to move in the open. If he goes there as 'Dark' or the King, he’s dead. Again."
“Again?” James frowned, his loyalty warring with the logic I was spitting. "He’s the King, Elena. He has the dragon core. He can handle a few traitors."
"He has the core," I hissed, standing up and grabbing his arm. "But they have the ‘Rebel’. And they have Leo. Do you really think Leo is going to let him walk out of that Cathedral alive?"