The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(98)

I was panting, and so was he.

“You could walk over me, Sybil Delling. Throw me down until I am dust. I don’t know what to call it, but I want it. I want you.”

I ran my bareness over him. Watched him lose his sight for desire. “So have me.”

He did not prolong my pleasure a second longer. Rory let go of my bottom. Reached between our trembling bodies. Pressed his middle finger against my sex.

I gasped, and he swallowed the sound like it fed him.

I looked down at his glistening hand between my legs. Watched, felt, as he slid one, two fingers into me. He let out a base noise when he saw just how eager I was and looked up to my eyes, waiting as he always did. I nodded, and he trailed his fingers up over sensitive skin. Circled it. Gave me a sharp jolt, then dragged an arduously slow path back to their home within me.

I was a chime, and he was sounding me. Again, again, again.

There were no more gods to call out to. But. Oh. My. Gods. The room was fracturing. The bed, the window—the moon through it. All of them, fracturing.

I cried out. Grasped Rory’s face. “Come with me.”

He shifted his hips from beneath me. And suddenly, after spinning me like a slow-burning wax, he was in a hurry. He shoved his pants down and I clawed them off his thighs, pleased beyond measure to run my fingers through his leg hair, over his hips, his length.

Rory hissed out a breath. Lifted me over his lap. Nudged my entrance.

His pupils were blown wide. “Tell me yes. Right now.”

No litany, no profanity, was better than hearing him this desperate. “Yes.”

He drew me down, down—down. I let out a reckless sound, and his grip at the nape of my neck tightened. We collided. Flesh to flesh. Pulse against pulse. Eye to eye.

And I forgot everything.

I forgot looming tors and scholarly cities. Jagged mountains, outlandish woods, and everyone within them. All I really knew was fullness, painful pleasure—the look in Rory’s eyes as he moved in me. The tender insistence of his fingers between us, circling, stroking—

Something was building. Taking wing. Every time Rory pressed into me, I felt it stir. We were going slow. So lavishly slow.

But I was losing my breath.

And suddenly I was unsure. “If I can’t—if I don’t finish—”

“You don’t have to do anything.” Rory’s eyes were hazy. He pulled his hand out from between us. Put his thumb over my bottom lip, over the edges of my teeth—over my tongue, like he had once at Aisling. Like I had to him in the Wood. There was no blood this time. Just sweat, and the faint hint of our desires.

“This isn’t a spectacle or a ceremony,” he said. “It’s just you and me, Sybil.” He didn’t like being away from my mouth. Every word was punctuated with a kiss. “I just want you to feel good.”

I bloomed, light and heavy at once. Lips parting, breasts heaving, heart swelling, body clenching, my blood twisted, then became mightily scattered. It was like a dream. I was falling. Falling. “Rory.” Whatever flesh was there—his shoulder, his mouth—I bit into it. Anchored myself to it. “Rory.”

I unraveled. I unraveled until I was the barest spool of thread, spinning in the wake of the little death.

“Fuck.” Rory thrust harder. Faster. He moaned, stealing the air from the room, from me.

He was undone. Holding even harder to my backside. Saying my name, moving in and out of me, unbridled.

He pulled out of me just in time. Pressed me down over his mattress. Spilled himself over my stomach. My breasts.

Rory panted, and I, like a cathedral, echoed him. Our eyes caught, and he smiled, then fell to my side. He cleaned me off with his fallen shirt and pulled me against him. Put one hand in my hair and lazed the other over my backside.

And I thought, blood slowing, eyelids growing heavy, breath idling…

Maybe contentedness isn’t just a story.





When I woke, heavy as lead, the moon was still a lanky presence in the sky. I hadn’t remembering drifting off—only the heat of Rory’s body, pressed against mine. The feel of his chest, rising, falling. The smell of his skin.

I sat up.

The bed, the mattress, just like when One had vanished, was bereft of warmth. Rory was gone. The only heartbeat in the room was mine.

“Rory?”

No answer.

I suddenly felt cold. I reached for the edge of the bed. Found my shroud. It felt rougher than I remembered. I held it out and examined it.

Strange that something so light, so thin, might hold dominion over me.

I hadn’t yet taken in the breadth of Rory’s room; my eyes hadn’t strayed once from him. But now that he was gone, I cast my eyes over the space. It was little wonder he’d lost his mind when I’d told him back at Aisling that I didn’t have any possessions to bring along—the room was brimming with effects.

Were Rory’s bedroom a ship, it would sink for the weight of its cargo. The shelves were laden. I could smell leather and idleweed. Wool. Parchment. There were books—clay vases full of rolled leaflets and quills with broken nibs. Clothes that looked to be from each of the five hamlets. Crates of yarn, then smaller ones filled with gold and brass trinkets.

I couldn’t discern rhyme or reason, only abundance.

Something on a corner table caught my eye. A looking glass—a fine one, set in silver. I went to it, fingers tightening over the cold handle.