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Chapter 11: King of my heart, body and soul✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
Oriana hadn't thought that it was going to feel like this.
She hadn't.
(But then, she had never been mated before, so what did she have to draw a comparison? Her wedding night at 19, when she had been filled with more trepidation than anything else?)
She only knew that her whole life narrowed to Azriel, onto that moment in the middle of their living room.
And then they met in a clash of lips and tongue, his knife clattering to the floor and she just hoped that the blueberries weren't going to stain anything important because…
That was the last thought she had.
The last thought as Azriel lifted her in his arms and somehow managed to get them into their bedroom without running into any walls.
Oriana wasn't a big help, she knew that.
Oriana's hands uselessly clawed at his shirt as he kissed her, his tongue pressing against the roof of her mind, arousal punching through her so harshly and suddenly that her knees grew weak.
She managed to pull her head back enough to gasp for breath before she fainted from lack of air. "You know I bought lingerie just for you," she managed to blurt out.
Pretty lingerie, too. In cobalt blue.
She had thought that he would like that.
And really, who was she to refuse him anything?
"Later," Azriel growled and that sound was enough to make her shiver. And then he had his mouth on her again and she didn't really think anymore.
Finally, he pulled back, a broad, scarred hand cupping her cheek, leaning his forehead against his. "How do you want me?" he asked her, his voice hoarse.
"I don't care," she breathed. "I don't care. I just want to have you." In whatever way she could get away with. Whatever he wanted.
His hands went to the back of her dress and she turned in his arms, letting him open the laces that kept it closed. She kicked off her shoes at the same time, as he bunched up the dress and pulled it over her head.
A pained noise escaped him, as he reached out to her back. She froze as she felt his fingers touch her right lower back, the exit wound of when the sword had pinned her to the floor.
It had entered her front lower belly at an angle, slicing through her near diagonally. Thankfully not severing her spinal cord, but gone straight through her womb and intestines.
If it hadn't been for Enya...
"I don't want to hurt you," he whispered, touching the scar, nearly painfully soft.
Her heart constricted at it. The way he touched her with so much care, always terrified that he did something that was going to make her run from him…
She wondered if he was ever going to believe in her love for him. If he was ever going to trust in her the way she trusted in him.
She didn't know when, but someday, his scarred hands had started to give Oriana more safety than anything else in her life. She had started to trust in him, in his unassuming presence, the steadfast calm of him.
So when she leant back against him, she did that with the full trust that he would take her weight.
"You won't," Oriana promised. He wouldn't hurt her. She didn't think he had that in him. And still, she wanted him to feel safe with her, safe in the knowledge that if he did something, something that was too much for her to take, that she would tell him.
"Give me a safe word," she said softly. "I say it and everything stops."
"Lake," his response was immediate.
"What's yours?" Oriana asked and she felt him hesitate. She wasn't sure if it was just the idea of having a safeword for himself or if it was something else.
"Cell."
Of course, Oriana would get a safeword with a myriad of beautiful memories connected to it. Of course, Azriel would pick one for himself that was everything but that.
She didn't comment on it.
She couldn't, not right now.
So instead, she turned in his arms, embracing him.
"You aren't going to hurt me," she promised. He pressed a kiss against her forehead, a hand gently smoothing down her hair.
"I don't want to ruin you, either," he admitted, something dark in his voice.
She couldn't help but snort.
"Sweetling, I am a lot of things, but a virgin is not one of those," she pointed out drily. Granted there had only ever been Wynstan but they had still been married for a good few decades. "I am your mate. I am pretty sure that means I am yours to ruin."
Somehow these words were what he had needed to hear. He kissed her again and she shuddered as she felt his shadows brush against her skin.
"Not today," he bit out, aloud. Normally she felt him dismiss the shadows worldlessly. Just a thought and off they went. But today, he said it aloud, glaring at the swirling darkness.
To her surprise though, they went without a discussion.
He ran a hand questioningly over her undergarments and she smiled, stepping back to strip out of them.
She made quick work out of it, crawling into their bed in their house, throwing back the blankets and relaxing, right there, watching him. Waiting.
He drank her in, every inch of her body, his eyes nearly as pitch black as her hair.
He nearly stumbled into bed in his hurry to join her, throwing off the shirt and pants he wore and then he was there, next to her. Azriel cupped her cheek again, warm kisses raining on her face. His thumb gently traced her brow.
"Don't hide your eyes," he requested, his voice soft.
It took her by surprise. She hadn't expected that. She just stared at him but pulled back the glamour she kept on them, letting them flare to life.
Nobody had ever asked that of her.
"I want you. All of you," Azriel said softly. "Your eyes are you. Every time they are just pitch black I feel like something is missing."
She smiled at that, leaning into his touch, turning her head to press a kiss to the inside of his hands to one of the worst scars.
"Anything else?" she asked softly.
"Your hair."
She pulled out the two pins that kept it up during the day, letting the dark curls fall around her waist, shaking her head so they settled.
"Tell me I can touch you," he whispered.
"Everywhere you want," she whispered right back, twining her arms around his neck.
That was all he needed. One hand slid down over her neck, his mouth finding hers again as fingertips softly trailed over her clavicle and her arm to her fingertips…up again, down her torso, in between the valley of her breast…and then over her ribs, up again, until callouses and mottled skin rasped against a sensitive peak and she gasped.
He swallowed her sound, pulling back slightly to repeat the touch, circling her breast, even as they tightened to a near-painful point, her arousal racketing up.
She wanted to reach out to touch him, to be the one to make him come but all she could was moan at his ministrations until he caught her nipple between his fingertips and she whimpered.
"Will you give me two?" he asked her, nearly conversationally and she stared at him. He may acted like nothing bothered him but she could still smell his desire.
It was filling the room, intermixing for both of them.
His cedar mist and her jasmine fire. She wasn't even sure what the result would be. Nor did she care.
"Two?" she repeated hollowly.
Just…now? How…
"Yes," Azriel said evenly. "Will you give me two peaks? Drench my fingers?"
"I…Then we'll be here in three days," she exclaimed. "It was hit or miss when I used to…" She didn't get to answer the rest of the way. Probably better.
He caught her mouth in another bruising kiss.
It had been hit or miss the last time she had sex. Granted, Wynstan and her marriage had been a fucking mess at this point and so their sex had been…questionable if anything. And it had never been a desire-filled clash of wills anyway.
It had just been…something they had done because people expected that of them. Sometimes she had gotten something out of it. Especially when she had taken matters into her own hands.
It was better when it was just herself, but then she had the problem of shutting up her brain that ran a million miles an hour and…there had only really been a few occasions since when she had even wanted to even touch herself.
Azriel growled against her mouth, the sound somehow resulting in a rush of wetness between her thighs.
He pulled back, only to go back to attacking her neck with kisses, lips and teeth against her sensitive skin.
"It…takes a long time. I have been the one in charge of my own orgasms since I was 18," she managed to get out, her voice wrecked. He pulled back, staring at her. She couldn't help but catch her lip between her teeth and then he caught it with his thumb.
"That's unacceptable," Azriel told her, his voice low. "You are going to come and you are going to say my name while you do it."
She swallowed.
There was not one fucking way where she was going to be in charge, was there?
She couldn't find it in herself to care, nor could she stop the squeak that escaped her as his hand reached the apex of her thigh and dipped one thick finger between her lower lips.
"You are drenched," he bit out these words before he caught her mouth in another bruising kiss…and then, really it was just a question of hanging on to him.
While Azriel made it his mission to take her apart.
Every noise she made was catalogued by him. Every twitch of her body that felt so overstimulated by him and being surrounded by him…all of it made a roadmap for him, made it possible for him to push her higher and higher.
One single finger pressed inside her, a faint burning stretch that made her gasp, his thumb finding the bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs and she shook, fingernails biting against Azriel's shoulder.
He wasn't going to do this, was he?
He was.
The rhythm he set was just at the edge of too much.
A thick finger that stretched her, a thumb circling that nub…her back arched on her own account.
He took that as an invitation, catching one breast in his mouth, a warm, wet tongue rasping around a hard nipple.
And then somehow it was just the faint bite of his teeth against her breast, thumb still circling her knot as she shook apart, clenching against his hand, surrounded by him, owned by him.
She tumbled headfirst into her first peak, his name a gasp leaving her mouth. "Azriel!"
"Cauldron, you are beautiful," he breathed, letting go of her breast.
"Azriel," she whispered, her breathing coming in rapid gasps.
"That's one," he said evenly.
One?
…By the cauldron.
"There is no way you can…" she tried to protest. That was how far she came.
He moved faster than she thought he even could. One moment she had been on her side, his hand still buried between her legs… the next she was on her back and he loomed over her.
"What did you just say, love?" he said softly, hazel eyes near black with his desire. She swallowed. "No way I can make you come again for me?" Azriel offered, his voice gentle. She managed a nod.
"We'll see about that," he told her, a grin widening over his features. He pressed a kiss against her unresisting lips and she curled a hand against his ribcage…and then he left her mouth and worked himself down her body, dropping kisses wherever he went, feather-light and gentle. Somehow a harsh contrast to how intense he was being, to how he had thought that she…
Well. He parted her legs and she slid them open for him to settle between them, swallowing once again as her brain finally caught up with what was happening.
She opened her mouth to protest, but then he licked her from her hole to that bundle of nerves and there was nothing left anymore, just a whimper leaving her mouth.
She had thought that his fingers were clever. Shee had thought that he had been…quick to make her come, quick to let her find her peak like that. That he had somehow figured out a way to read her moans and give her exactly what she needed…and not…
Her hands gripped the bedsheets in a white-knuckled grip as her body started to shake, the arousal in her belly tightening to a fever pitch, her breathing coming in pants.
He buried his finger into her once again, his tongue concentrating on the apex of her thighs, stretching her open.
"I…I…so good. So good." She was reduced to babbling, her eyes closed, fireworks already exploding behind them as he prodded and pushed her towards her release, his finger slowly sinking inside her and then withdrawing again.
More.
"Can you take another one?" Azriel asked, lifting his head from between her legs and she managed a whimper, maybe an affirmative.
She wasn't even sure.
She just knew that his mouth went back to making her lose her cauldron-forsaken brain and then she was stretched seemingly impossibly wide with another thick, ridged finger slipped inside her.
"There we go," he whispered against her, his breath cool against her drenched and overheated flesh.
There we go.
Her body shuddered, her legs tightening against his arms that kept her stretched open, pinned to the bed, unable to escape.
She had thought two fingers were all she could take. Azriel had broad hands and…
And then he somehow pressed a third finger inside her.
He actually did it.
What she had thought was nothing but male mating posturing…yeah, he had every fucking reason to be as arrogant as he liked about it, because she shattered.
There was no other word for it. No other word that could possibly describe the feeling as she seemingly reached a cliff's edge and hurled down over it, a high-pitched noise leaving her throat as she shook through it.
He pulled his fingers from her, absolutely drenched in her slick, and by the time she once again felt able to open her eyes, he had already pressed kisses to her quivering form, over her stomach and breast.
"I think I proved my point," Azriel whispered against her pulse point and she managed a weak laugh, loosening the death grip she had on the sheets to lay her hands on his shoulder.
"You did, Sweetling," she promised him, lightly pulling at his hair, until he slipped upstairs to kiss her properly, and she moaned at the taste of herself in his mouth.
She let her hands wander, down his shoulders to his side, then between them, reaching to take him in hand to return the favour….he shuddered at her hand wrapped around him, a hiss escaping him.
She swallowed.
Suddenly his insistence on making her come at least twice made perfect sense because he was massive.
Titania had been right to talk about proportionality.
Still, there was absolutely no hesitance in her anywhere. Nothing, but the need within her firing up again, or maybe it had never even left her, as she swirled her thumb over the head of his cock, catching that bead of moisture...it made him hiss once again.
"I want you," she whispered and he growled against her neck.
"If it's too much…" he warned her. It wouldn't be. She was sure about that.
Oriana was also sure that she had never been more ready for the taking than she was at that particular moment.
So letting go of him and wrapping her legs around his waist was clearly the reasonable thing to do.
Very reasonable.
He made a noise low in his throat, moving impossibly closer to her and she could finally feel him throb against her, hard and massive and big.
"It won't be too much," she promised him, as he leant his forehead against her.
It wasn't.
It was heat and pressure and her body giving way and the sight of Azriel above her, wings stretching out and her reaching out for him.
It was her body stretching to take him and a burning sensation, of the fire welling up inside her as she forced herself to take a deep breath even when it seemed impossible.
She met his eyes, curling a hand against the nape of his neck, kissing him.
And then finally, he hit the end of her, coming to rest against her.
He didn't move.
"It's alright. I can take it, sweetling," she cooed.
She could. For him, she would take everything.
The first snap of his hips made her see stars. The second made the bond in her chest bloom brightly, the golden bond coming into stark focus.
It was right there, thrumming with their love and pleasure, with every passing second growing stronger and more solid.
She couldn't describe it any differently.
Oriana had thought when the bond snapped for the first time that it had already been a solid string tying her to Azriel. She had thought it was strong.
It was nothing against what it turned into at that moment.
It had been nothing but the thinnest of threads, nothing but a wisp of connection, a quiet echo of feelings.
Now…now it was a rope. Strong and supple and flexible. A rope that tied her to Azriel, that connected their feelings.
Everything he felt poured over her. All his adoration, his pleasure and his love. A maelstrom that took her and she could do nothing to fight against it.
Not that she wanted to. She never would want to.
This was Azriel. The male she loved.
Her mate.
Her everything.
And as her nails bit into his shoulders, she fell apart.
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The moment the mating bond had first snapped in Azriel's mind, would always count as one of the most shocking moments in his long, immortal life.
But the moment they finally accepted the mating bond and it solidified in place…that would always be one of the most beautiful things he had ever felt.
It solidified and Oriana's mind collided with his, bursting open with feelings. She drenched him. Drenched him in her love, the feeling so strongly that it made his very heart shudder.
She loved him.
He had doubted many things in 540 years of life.
But he would never be able to doubt the depth of her love for him.
Not when he dwelled in it, when she poured it over him, pushing it into the bond, warming and nurturing him.
Her love. The very essence of her, of bright and brilliant Oriana, who loved him.
For some cauldron-forsaken reason, she loved him like that.
It all culminated in that.
He splintered apart at the seams, there was no other explanation for it.
He splintered apart, as mind-numbing pleasure took over his body, and all he could concentrate on was Oriana. Oriana underneath him, Oriana's love, Oriana, surrounding him, her warm body so welcoming to him, wrapped around him to the best of their ability.
He came back to himself slowly, still shuddering with the strength of the bond between them, but he wasn't the only one.
She clutched him to him, holding him so tightly, her chest still rising and falling rapidly.
He pushed up on shaky arms, not wanting to hurt her with his weight.
"No, don't go, Sweetling," she protested, her voice hoarse, eyes blinking open, protest seemingly pouring over their bond.
"Shhh, I don't want to hurt you," he shushed her softly, managing somehow to pull out of her and collapse next to her…pulling her as tightly against his side as she could.
"I thought this would be different," he finally whispered, breathing in the scent of her and him, intermixing into something beautiful. The smell of blood hit his nostrils.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked, desperation bleeding into his eyes, immediately taking in her still form and Oriana's eyes blinked open
"What?" she asked him.
"I smell blood," he explained, eyes still tracking over her body. He couldn't see blood, but that didn't mean anything.
What had he done? Where had he hurt her? He knew that he had been rough with her but he hadn't...
But then Oriana was reaching out for him, her hand touching his side, where she had clung onto him and came away wet.
"It's yours," she said, eyes widening. "I…My fingernails."
Oh.
Relief poured out of him all over her as she blinked at him. But then he could feel Oriana's regret, tinged with sadness and apology, pushing against him.
"I am so sorry," she whispered, sitting up, carefully reaching out to see the already-closing wounds.
"I didn't even feel it," he admitted. "Don't be sorry." He didn't want her to be sad. Not because of this. Not when he had enjoyed every fucking moment of it.
She fixed him with a glare. "I made you bleed."
"I have bled for a lot less than our pleasure," he shot back.
"Azriel," she said quietly, seemingly searching for words. Finally, she sighed. "At least let me clean it up," she bargained, reaching over to her bedside table that she had bought in some kind of antique shop a few weeks ago. He had gotten one as well, though they definitely weren't matching.
"Did you stock your bedside table with potions?" he asked her, as she pulled out one.
"Yes, because I am paranoid and if I accidentally burned you I wanted to be prepared," Oriana admitted. "I had my sister send them to me."
"Did you think that was going to happen?" he asked her curiously, shifting slightly as she poured said potion onto a rag and pressed it to his side.
"No," Oriana said quietly. "But I wanted to be prepared if something did happen. I was counting on the mating bond stopping my magic from hurting you, if I am being honest."
"You weren't scared that I was going to hurt you?" he asked her and she just looked at him.
"No, Azriel. I didn't think that for one moment," she said softly. "If my emotions are high, my magic tends to lash out. All I have come to know about you, makes me think that if your emotions go high…you would rather shut down. Unless your temper gets the better of you."
She was right. She was so fucking right.
Sometimes it scared him about how much Orianaa seemed to get him.
His exact opposite in so many ways, a complimentary half in others…his equal in all.
"At least you didn't put us both on fire," he finally said drily, figuring that that was the safest thing to say. Her hand came away from where she had wiped the blood from his skin.
"That's not funny," she said, though he could feel her amusement bleed over the bond.
"It's a bit funny. You need to admit that," he gave back, reaching back out to touch her as she put away the rag and the whatever tonic she had put on his skin.
He rolled his shoulder, not even feeling a twinge at his skin moving.
She curled back up with him, though he could still feel her apology thrumming through the bond.
He batted it away with a wave of his adoration for her and she huffed, stretching out in their bed, unapologetically naked.
Cauldron, she was gorgeous like that, all lush curves, not a single angle anywhere in side. Long limbs, well muscles by her work, near black skin that seemed to swallow all sunlight stretching over her body, and there in her face, these eyes that he adored so much.
"I thought it would be…worse," he admitted as he turned so that he could bed his head on her stomach, stretching his wings over both of them.
"You thought you would feel less than yourself? Less in control?" Oriana guessed, burying a hand in his hair, scratching her nails over his scalp delicately and he moaned softly at the sensation.
"Yes," he whispered. "I thought it would be more…feral."
"I think we were plenty feral," Oriana admitted drily. "I got my claws in you after all."
He couldn't help but snort. "I thought sex was all we were going to think about. Unable to have an actual conversation," he said thoughtfully.
"Or maybe, once we sated the first…wave of…desire, it's banked until it comes back," Oriana suggested.
He could see that. At least then it would make sense why it took other faes weeks to finally be fit for companionship again.
He traced his fingers over her stomach thoughtfully, tripping over the puckered scar tissue and she shivered underneath him in response.
"Do you feel that?" he asked her curiously. "I don't always have feelings in my hands." Sometimes it prickled like needles under his gnarled skin…sometimes they were overly sensitive. And sometimes they were numb.
"I do," Oriana said softly. "If the weather changes especially."
It was the same for him.
"It went straight through you," he said softly, still tracing the long line. Whoever had healed it for her, had done a phenomenal job at at least trying to make the slice less jagged than it had been. Still, it was long and brutal. "I could have lost you before I ever met you," he whispered against her skin as he pressed a kiss against her skin, against the scar that could have claimed her life.
It could have killed her, easily. And if it had…he would have never met her. Never got what he now got from her. Never gotten this, this mating bond, this moment right there in their bed, where the bond between them thrummed with love and sweetness and could imagine a future for the two of them.
He hadn't expected as she lifted one of his hands to her mouth, raining a myriad of kisses over his scarred skin. "I could have lost you too," Oriana said softly. "But I haven't. We haven't."
He shuddered as the bond flared back to life between them, as the banked desire flared back to life.
"I think I was right," Oriana breathed, her eyes glowing with fire.
She was right. She always was right.
He nary brought out a noise as he crawled back up her body, as she stretched out underneath him, seemingly revelling in the presence of him on top of her.
He wanted to remember every single second of this, even when he knew that it would all be lost in another wave of desire.
He wanted her and she wanted him, the scent of her want thick in the air as he kissed her again, her body easily opening up underneath him, a soft gasp from her as he slid back into her like he had never left in the first place.
He promised himself to go slow this time, to savour every moment, as the bond between them flexed and her desire was reflected onto him, flickering like warm, painless flames all over him.
She was careful this time, no nails biting in his skin, flat hands rubbing over his sides and then hands carefully reaching out to touch the delicate skin of his wings.
He shuddered above her, wings spreading out for her touch on her own accord as Oriana looked at him, the flames in her eyes flickering.
Illyirans were taught from a very young age to be careful with their wings. And especially Azriel who hadn't even learnt to fly until he had been far older than any other Illyrian…he had always been…careful with them.
They were seen as an Illyiran's pride, their greatest joy, their biggest strength… their biggest weakness they had.
Not even Cassian and Rhys reached out to touch his wings because they knew how weird he could be about them.
But Oriana…she reached out and she touched and he loved every fucking moment of it.
He arched into her touch, revelled into it, as her arms stretched out so that she could grip the talon at their tip, his wings shuddering against her grasp, strong hands that were being so carefully with him, that touched him with so much care and love and when they left marks, then it were marks of love.
All she left behind her were marks of love.
She shuddered against him and he kissed her, tasting her, drinking her in, everything that she was offering to him for the taking.
She has said that she was his to ruin.
And he was sure he was doing a brilliant job at it, but he couldn't help himself.
Couldn't help but chase after even more pleasure, of losing himself in the warm embrace of her body and mind and loving every minute of it.
Azriel didn't know what he had done in his life to somehow deserve Oriana.
He didn't know, nor did he care. Not right now.
Not when he could lose himself in her, when she held him close to her, embracing him, her love cocooning him and keeping the world at bay.
His sanctuary.
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