A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Twenty-one

Twenty-one

Amber hearth light coated the room like molasses, banishing shadows as it illuminated the room’s occupant. Black button eyes looked at Ophir from a surprised face. Dwyn cocked her head to the side, curtain of hair falling over her shoulder. Her inky locks were the only thing obscuring her nakedness, as Dwyn reclined in her typical state of undress while paging through a leather-bound book from underneath the covers. A proper lady may have yanked the sheets up to cover her stomach and chest, but the princess had never known Dwyn to be proper.

Ophir shut the door quickly to ensure Tyr wouldn’t be slipping in behind her. A discomfort pulsed through her the moment the latch clicked. She hoped her urgency to block out the phantom and the guard wouldn’t come across as presumptuous. She leaned against the door as her face twisted in apology.

“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No, no.” Dwyn gestured tentatively for Ophir to join her on the bed. “Goddess, Firi, you look terrible. What happened?”

Rather than accept the bid to crawl onto the comfortable mattress, she found solace in the straight, sturdy wood. It was unlike her to be nervous, but then again, she hadn’t been herself in a long, long time. The temptation to let her eyes wander south, from the sculpt of Dwyn’s neck and collarbones to her soft arms, the pillows of her breasts, the curve of her waist, or the gentle tummy that should have been beneath the blankets was strong, but she was careful to keep her eyes trained on Dwyn’s face.

“Cat got your tongue?” Dwyn asked.

Ophir opened her mouth, then closed it again. Demonic serpent had her tongue, more like.

She was sure Harland was already repositioning himself outside of the room, cursing the princess for her obstinance. Truth be told, Ophir didn’t care if Dwyn was the goddess-damned devil herself. Maybe she had let a demon into the castle—so what? The siren was kind, and she’d saved her life in more ways than one. If Tyr was telling the truth, and Dwyn was after some grand power by setting someone else up to take the fall while she survived, then she’d had the chance to do it to Ophir a thousand times over. Yet Dwyn had rescued her from the depths of the black seas, the fires of night terrors, and the powerlessness that had consumed her following her sister’s death. Dwyn had shown her how strong she could be. If she had one ally in the castle, it was Dwyn.

If the siren truly was an evil bitch, perhaps they could be evil together. After all, Ophir had a long list of names and a bloodthirst that could not be quenched until every last one of them lay six feet under.

Perhaps it was her newfound respect for Dwyn’s power that gave her pause. She’d experienced a number of contradictory emotions surrounding Dwyn, but never before had she been nervous. She attempted to swallow, but it was as if cotton filled her throat. “I don’t really want to talk about it. I came to ask…”

Dwyn might have been an owl for how deeply she tilted her head as she waited in curious silence.

Goddess, why did she feel like a schoolboy who’d never spoken to a woman? Unique vulnerability prickled her spine as she struggled to ask for permission. Her lips twisted to the side as she fought to speak her mind. “Can I sleep in here tonight? …With you?” When Dwyn’s brows lifted, Ophir added, “My nightmares aren’t so bad when I’m next to you.”

The tension softened, though Dwyn’s eyes remained wide. She lifted the sheets to extend the invitation. Her voice was a soft lullaby as she answered. “Of course, you can.”

Ophir’s heart squeezed as she stared at the open space on the silken sheets. Her eyes flitted to the hand that lifted the duvet, then dragged her gaze slowly over her arm, her body, her face.

“Oh,” Dwyn said softly.

Ophir’s pulse skipped painfully as she shrugged out of her robe. It puddled at her feet to reveal that, aside from the bandages, she was similarly nude. She fought to swallow once more against nerves. She slipped beneath the sheets, holding her breath as she folded herself against Dwyn’s soft curves. She draped her arm over the fae, forearm settling against her sternum, luxuriating in the warmth between her soft breasts. The exhilarating, wintery rush of mint splashed over her as she inhaled Dwyn’s scent.

The urge to cry surprised her as a knot formed in her throat. She hadn’t realized just how touch starved she’d been until someone was in her arms. Yet, the answering emotion wasn’t sorrow. She’d survived the worst thing that could have befallen her. Her night terrors were steadily lessening. She was healing. And for the first time in a long time, she tasted the distant memory of what it had been like to feel powerful.

“Are you tired?” came Dwyn’s whisper.

Yes. No. She didn’t know.

She’d come to Dwyn’s room with a need to escape Harland’s oppressive shadow. She’d needed freedom from Tyr’s strange imposition. She’d wanted to be free and had only seen one path forward in taking control. Whether it had been sleep, or friendship, or something else entirely, Ophir didn’t care.

She inhaled deeply and smelled something beneath the mint. There was the warmth of body heat, yes. There was the honey and almond soaps and fresh silk sheets and small, homey smoke from the fireplace. But there was something more. Something deeper.

A curl in her stomach blossomed. Blood pumped through the bloom within. A distant, unanticipated throb began to speak to a deeply buried part of her.

They’d been naked together before.

Dwyn had held her in the sea, had gripped at her skin on the beach, and had intertwined with her in the sudsy waters of the bath. The siren had made no efforts to portray modesty under any circumstance. If anything, the Sulgrave fae had done everything to make nudity sexless as she’d desensitized the princess to its presence. She’d stepped out of her clothes and crawled under the covers on more than one occasion, pressing her body into the princess night after night before they’d been separated. She’d draped an arm around Ophir and her flames, holding her slim body, breathing in the gold-brown tufts of her hair, musing as to how the princess always smelled of sunlight.

Tonight was different.

Dwyn’s body stilled in her arms as if she’d stopped breathing altogether. Ophir’s heart quickened.

In a world before this amalgamation of terrors, the princess had kissed boys and shared stolen kisses with girls, but she’d never fully been with a woman in the ways that clandestine diaries of so-called unsavory women enjoyed sharing. She’d locked lips in opium dens and traded flavors on tongues as wine had flowed freely. It had always been the sort of thing she could excuse to the drug or drink. Perhaps that’s what had prevented her from allowing her eyes to linger on Dwyn for too long.

“I’d like…” She tried a sentence and failed.

The siren arched her back ever so slightly. “What would you like?”

“Only if you would…”

Dwyn’s voice dropped a register. “I want to hear it.”

A vindictive thought rolled around on her tongue before she spoke. Harland hated Dwyn, and Tyr seemed to want to kill her, and Ophir felt a rather headstrong delight at the idea of pissing both of them off in one fell swoop. The men who’d forced their way into her life had no say in how she lived or what she did with her time. She was no child. The things she did and the company she kept were hers and her choices to make. This was truer than ever as her world turned to ash around her.

“I’d like…to feel good. For one night.”

Ophir pressed her body into Dwyn’s with intent. Her mouth hovered just above the back of the delicate neck in front of her, savoring the goose bumps that rippled down her in response to her breath.

“So would I,” Dwyn breathed.

“Dwyn?” The name was spoken on a hope. She dragged her hand where it rested, moving in slow lines up and down the vertical cut that separated Dwyn’s middle from her breasts to her navel. Each excruciatingly slow touch summoned more intrigue, more curiosity, more longing. She tantalized the woman’s inner thighs, brushing over her stomach, nearing her most sensitive places, growing closer with each daring pass. Dwyn’s hips responded to move against the princess’s fingers, grinding slightly against her. She allowed the strokes to continue, body rocking with the slow, delicious movements as desire swelled between them.

“Yes, Firi?” she gasped in return.

The hummingbird thrum of the siren’s heart mirrored her own.

“Tell me to stop.”

“No,” Dwyn was quick to respond, still facing away as her body stretched beneath the princess’s curves. “I don’t want you to stop.”

The gentle hand swept up, circling Dwyn’s breast before cupping it gently, moving it in a soft, massaging motion before encompassing the other in her the cool grasp of her palm. By the time the princess’s fingers moved to explore lower, Dwyn was as soaked as the water she summoned. She twisted beneath the sheets, lifting a knee and locking it over the princess’s hips. She pulled her in close. Their lips parted, mouths meeting in sweet pleas as they drank one another in.

“Just for tonight—”

“Shh,” the siren hushed, reaching behind herself and wrapping her fingers in the toffee mess of Ophir’s hair. Their eyes fluttered closed as their bodies moved, curves and flesh of two perfectly fitting spoons as Ophir continued her steady, pleasurable movements.

Dwyn gasped an honest, sharp inhalation as one finger, then another slipped within her.

Everything began with the gradual slowness of shy, new lovers, before building into the frenzied dance of fingers digging into flesh, mouths against soft, beautiful parts, the pull of hair, the taste of sunshine and honey. They were lost in the maze of tongues, teeth, flesh, throats, shoulders, fingers, breasts, navels, hips, thighs, and toes. Every inch was explored with inhalations, breaths, and the soft escape of involuntary moans. Every sensation dragged out to beautiful, sensual, gasping resolution. Each movement matched the gentle undulation of hips as pleasure flowed between them. Comfort, passion, heat, and release were one in the same as they held one another.

For a moment, Ophir nearly remembered what it meant to feel alive.

Dwyn’s back arched, her hips rocking rhythmically with each pump, each soaking, satisfying movement. Her fingers knotted in the cloud of toffee hair behind her as Ophir brought her closer and closer to the edge. It was the tide lapping against the seaside rocks, every intense wave coming in sharper and louder and higher as the ocean rose and rose and rose. Dwyn’s breathing hitched, each inhalation growing shallower and faster as she approached the precipice. Her entire body went rigid, back curved, hips locked, toes curled as she released a high, involuntary whimper in the seconds before she shuddered, entire body flexing and collapsing with her climax.

Dwyn let out a nearly feline purr as she rolled in true delight. Rather than being exhausted, she seemed invigorated in the moments following her orgasm. Ophir scarcely had the time to slip her fingers out of the siren before Dwyn flipped the princess onto her back.

“Do you taste like sunshine, too?” The red glow of embers in the dying hearth lit the room in shades of shadow and burgundy. She purred, tracing a scorching path of sensual kisses down Ophir’s middle. The wet evidence of her kisses and licks reflected against what remained of the dim, reddish light. She dragged her fingernails on a path from her chest, down her stomach, and clamped them onto her inner thigh.

“Don’t stop” was all Ophir needed to say.

The hour hand dropped two places on the grandfather clock between their earliest touches and the end of their exhausted pulls for air against the bed, holding each other, gripping their pillows, pools of pleasure soaking the sheets.

Hair mussed, mouths soaked, bodies tired, flesh tingling, smelling of sex and joy and forbidden desire, their needs for affection had been satiated. Their hearts passed for full, even if the bandages that held them together were a patchwork for whatever greater pain, whatever larger horror haunted them. Tonight was about escape within the four walls of a bedroom. For one night, Ophir was liberated without going anywhere. She was free.

She caught Dwyn’s satisfied smile in the afterglow just before the coals winked out into blackness. Just as the beautiful woman nestled into her arms and made the contented sound of someone truly happy, Ophir’s returning smile faltered. Sleep took Dwyn beneath its waves, leaving Ophir alone in the dark as the emptiness returned.