Chapter 21 21
Chapter 21 21
EUDORA
The tower shook again as another explosion hit the outer walls. Stone dust rained from the ceiling, coating everything in a fine gray powder. Oberon felt solid. Unshakeable. We had been so close to kissing. So close to crossing that line – the one between forced marriage and something real. Something chosen. The moment was completely shattered, replaced by the very real face of death. How had I ever dared think I could loosen the mate bond’s cruel grip on me? But, in a small, cowardly way I was almost glad. Glad we were interrupted. Because there would be no coming back from this. No more pretending this was just duty and politics and the mate bond forcing us together. It would be real. And I was terrified at how quickly it would become real. And how vulnerable that would make me. Oberon let me go reluctantly. His hands lingered on my arms just a moment too long before he moved to the window to assess the situation. The muscles in his broad shoulders were tense, the jaw I loved to trace with my fingers so tight I was worried he’d break his teeth. Even in crisis, even when he was too preoccupied to notice me, my body and the mate bond responded to his proximity. It hummed, demanding unmeetable fulfillment.
“How many?” I asked, trying to be the person I used to be. That simple farm girl who had never faced mind games or power plays or oppression.
Oberon’s voice was grim when he answered. “ At least fifty wolves, more coming. They are surrounding the palace but have not breached the main defenses yet. Yamal and the other guards are doing everything they can but that is not enough.”
He looked back at me, those golden eyes were hot. Burning me with something that had nothing to do with the battle beyond these walls. He said, “The wards are failing but uncertainly. Their magic is evidently slow-moving, yet it isn’t instantaneous. We have some time.”
Time for what, I wanted to ask, time to run away? Time to say goodbye? Except none of that came from my mouth since Oberon was looking at me the way he had been before the bomb almost killed us all. Between a blessing and a risk. As if he would eat me whole. “I guess we should… Harmonize the plan,” I blurted, surprised at the breathiness of my tone. “For when the wards fall entirely. For when we need to run or stronghold or whatever.”
Oberon started inching toward me, each stride slower and confident. As if I was some prey exceptional with blood and heat. He answered, “We should. Unluckily….” But he continued to come towards me. My slow and backward steps were charmed and performative as he moved towards me. “We’re… …how we were,” Oberon’s hands appeared on one side and the other, caging me between his body and the stone wall but…. I wasn’t caged. I was wanted. “All I can think about is what did not occur, what might happened … …and what has happened… … I remember how close we were. I recall how your lips were so near to mine… your taste in the wedding’s kiss,” his tone got lower, graver, “How I need to sense you inside me today and now…” My breathing became shallower, my heart hammered and rumbled in the cathedral, and my lips trembled in time with my racing pulse. “There is an army beyond these walls and fifty wolves attempting to kill us,” I said weakly.
“I know.” He murmured, leaning closer. His scent surrounded me, pine and smoke and something uniquely his. “And we are trapped in here, possibly for hours. With nothing to do but wait for them to breach the wards or for reinforcements to arrive.”
His nose went along my jaw, not quite touching but near enough to make me shiver. My face felt his breath, warm and intoxicating. “We could talk?” I suggested weakly. Talking was the last thing both of us wanted, a fact I knew even as I spoke. “Getting to know each other better? Share our life stories?” I felt him smile against my neck.
“What do you want to know?”
Everything, I thought. Every detail, every memory, every secret. But what came out was, “Why did you really stop on our wedding night? The truth, not the excuse you gave ”.
He withdrew a little to meet my eye. The sincerity in his gaze, the exposed vulnerability, stole my breath. “Because I was frightened,” he confessed, his voice raw with feeling. “Frightened that once I had you and I discovered what it was like to be inside you, to hear you moaning my name, I couldn’t let you go. That I’d want more than duty. More than the mate bond. That I’d need all of you, and you’d take all of me.” His thumb went over my lower lip, the gesture feather-light and fiery. “I was right to fear it. Since I am already lost, even though I haven’t claimed you yet.”
My hands moved, my fingers twisting around his shirt almost without me even realizing it. Without meaning to, I needed something to hold onto. “I am scared too,” I whispered into his mouth, the words as unbidden as everything else. “Of what you make me feel. Of how much I want this. All of this. Of my father being a criminal, and your families being dead, and all of the blood between us.”
Oberon ‘s forehead fell onto my head, his breath and mine playing in cooling air between our lips. “Tell me to stop, Isolde,” he begged, desperate. “Tell me you do not want this, and I will. Then I will be the king; you will be the queen, and we will never speak of it again.”
I knew he would. I knew we should, we should stop focusing on anything else except for surviving, on the immediate threat, on being sensible, But the words wouldn’t come. “I can’t,” I murmured, following his mouth, pulling him down to me so I could reach him. “I can’t tell you to stop because I don’t want you to stop. I want this, Oberon.” That barely controlled touch was all the permission he needed. His mouth smashed into mine, hungry, as if everything depended on this kiss because it would be the last, and it was sweet death. It was none of that.
His tongue found my lower lip, asking for admission. I allowed him to enter without a second thought, growing as he intensified the pressure. Whiskey and mint and something feral on his tongue that I couldn’t identify. When we eventually brought our lips apart, both of us panting, his eyes had become red. The wolf within him was rising to the surface. Attempting to take control. Eudora, he rasped, sending a coil of warmth snaking through my abdomen. Trees growing weak in the autumn’s first frost. His lips located my neck, pecking at the tender skin there and nipping every other time. Each brush swept a current of electricity through my frame. My stomach contracted, and I bent myself into him, moaning eternally, moaning in a voice I had never made before and hadn’t realized was dormant within me.. He replied with a happy growl.
“Do you have no clue,” he growled in return, “how long I’ve wanted to make you generate this noise? How many hours I’ve gazed at the ceiling, fantasizing of the various ways I might make you recite poetry for me until you pass out.” His hands slid down to my thighs and squeezed. In a fraction of a second, he was raising me as if I weighed nothing. Without contemplating, I wrapped my legs around his midsection, pressing myself even tighter to him. His urge was raging, hard and relentless and impossible to ignore, and I could feel it with my clothes. I groaned in his mouth at the sense of him when he carried me toward the bed in the far corner. It dawned on me, far away, that it was my mother’s bed. But I couldn’t have cared less.
“Oberon,” I gasped. “We need to —”
“Should what?” he chal-lenged, easing me down on the soft mattress and covering my body with his. His weight pinned me to the bed, and it made me feel tiny and safe, and like I was exactly where I was supposed to be. “Should I keep pretending that this was not bound to happen? Should you keep ignoring that we both want this? Should I be noble and restrain-ed while being this close to you drives me mad?” His hand kept drawing my leg up and pushing the skirt of my dress, the cool surface of a room made warmer by the fire, and of his heated gaze.
“Should we keep pretending this is not womanly and juvenile?” I opened my mouth to speak, and the words would not form—whatever I said was lost in the needy sound he made as his hand caressed my thigh and skin. His touch was fire, was electric, ev-ery nerve of my body put on high alert where his fingers drew patterns on sensitive flesh. And we both stilled the same moment the door opened. Voices. Several of them. Shuffling up the tower stairs, the thump of boots on stone louder than I could have ever imagined. And one of them was Esmeralda.
“Oberon” she called sweetly. “I know you are in there I brought friends who are dying to meet your princess. Let us talk like men and ladies, sweet Antanasia”.