“From home. It even has the fabric stuffed into the cracks in the wood beneath the window pane,” I said, the first hint of laughter coming into my voice. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed my freezing, half-decrepit bedroom. How much I wished to go back to those nights lying beside the fire to keep warm, the roof over my head doing nothing to protect me from the creatures that called to me in the night. “I used to sneak out through it at night and go wandering in the woods.”
Caldris chuckled, leaning downward to touch his forehead to mine. “Of course you did, min asteren,” he said. He ran his nose along the side of mine, the wintergreen of his breath tickling my cheek. “Open the window, Estrella. This time, I want you to let something in. I need you to open it and let me in.”
In the seam between the two window panes, the gold thread shimmered—pinched between the wood frame of each pane just below the latch. Opening it should have been a simple thing, but I couldn’t tear my fingers away from the crack that my father had complained about when he’d installed it in the house.
The very crack that was the reason we could afford the window at all; a castaway from one of the wealthier villagers who paid him for his labor with their discarded material.
Opening it to Caldris, letting him enter my private space where I laid my head at night without fear of judgment from the people around me, felt like opening myself to a new life.
To a new chapter.
“Open the window, Estrella,” Caldris said, his voice soft and coaxing. I shifted my fingers toward the latch at the center, and toward the golden thread that seemed to sway in the breeze outside the window, extending out into the dark of the night.
Calling to me. Summoning me to the darkest parts of myself.
The latch squeaked as I flicked it open, hanging on its hinges as it flipped to the other side. For a moment, nothing happened, and I stared at the still-closed window in surprise. Until the sudden gust of winter wind tore through, blowing the panes open in a sudden blast of frosted.
It struck me in the chest, sinking inside of me as visions of winter filled my head, of snow falling through the night sky. There was nothing but the bitter cold, nothing but the shock of damp wind upon my skin.
Something else filled me in the next breath, a shadowed figure making his way toward me in the vision. His silver hair gleamed in the moonlight, blue eyes glowing from within his shadowed face.
“Open your eyes, min asteren,” Caldris said, drawing me back from the imagery inside my head. I let my eyes open slowly, afraid of what I might find. When they settled on his stormy blue gaze, the breath tore from my lungs.
My back arched up from the bed as my consciousness filled with him so suddenly that I didn’t know what was me and what was him. He grasped my hands in his, pinning them gently to the bed beside my head as he lowered his mouth to my neck and ran his tongue over the mark of his possession.
My soul was full, his consciousness pressing against mine as he drew the pain from my body and absorbed it into his own. That hollow within me was nowhere to be found, so profoundly full that I had to wonder how I would ever return to the emptiness when the moment was over.
If I would ever want to.
For just a few moments, I was whole.
“Caelum,” I murmured, my voice coming out strangled as I fought my way through the waves of emotion pouring off of him: affection, pride and satisfaction.
Love.
Gods, the love felt endless, as if it would continue through an eternity and never bend, never break. He pulled his face out of my neck, brushing a strand of hair back from my cheek. His brow was furrowed with the pain he siphoned from me, taking and bearing as if it was his own, only to save me from suffering.
There was so much warmth in his gaze despite that pain, I would never be able to question whether or not he loved me. Never again. This was the kind of love stories were made of, the kind that poets wrote sonnets about. The kind little girls dreamed of finding when they lay in their beds at night and tried to imagine the man who would one day become their husband.
“There you are, my star,” he murmured, gently touching his lips to mine. I longed for more, longed to see inside his head, but I couldn’t do more than feel the emotions washing over me. There were no tangible thoughts or actions, only the emotions that drove him forward.
The motivation for his every action, every twisted truth, spilling out across the world for me to see.
I sank into his kiss, rising into his embrace and deepening it. He possessed my mouth just as he possessed my soul, angling me the exact way he wanted as he slanted his lips over mine and drank from my soul.
“I love you, Little One,” he murmured, pulling back just enough that the words were murmured against my mouth. The words crashed over me, the meaning behind them burrowing deeper into my soul and plucking the thread of our bond as if it were his to play with.
I couldn’t speak the words in return, couldn’t seem to voice what he could already feel coming from me, thanks to the access I’d given him to my mind. He smiled, his eyes knowing, even if I didn’t give him the words back.
He knew. Without a doubt, he knew exactly how I felt for him in the moments when I rolled my hips against his, seeking the heat I knew he would give me. “Tell me what you want, my mate. I’ll give you anything.” Grinding his hips against me, he notched himself against my entrance, gliding through my tender flesh until the head of his cock brushed against my clit and sent a shudder rolling through me.
“I want you,” I murmured, lost to the sensation as I dragged rough nails down the skin to either side of his spine. “Please,” I begged, reduced to only my need to feel connected to him. Opening my mind had only made me crave the rest of him and the connection that could deepen—both inside our minds and outside of them. I needed to explore one final entanglement of our bond while our minds and emotions danced. To take him inside me and see if he felt even more right than the moments when he’d joined his mind with mine.
“You’ll have to be more specific, otherwise I am likely to wander,” he whispered, a chuckle lightening his voice as he moved farther down the bed. The movement drew his length away from where I wanted it, and he only laughed when I whimpered in protest.
His mouth covered my nipple in the next moment, nipping at the flesh lightly as his free hand worked my other breast. He kneaded it in the way I had only minutes before in the bath. The first stroke of his tongue against my nipple sent a wave of heat flowing through me, then he curved it around tightened peak and sucked until my back arched.
I ground myself against him, seeking the friction he seemed determined to deprive me of as he kissed his way down my stomach. He paused as he spread my legs wide, placing his shoulders between them and staring down at me. “You need your rest,” he murmured, leaning forward to lick a clean line from my entrance to my clit. He wrapped his tongue around the bundle of nerves at the top of me, maintaining eye contact the entire time as he tormented me. “But I’m afraid there won’t be any sleep for you tonight, min asteren.”
He hooked his arms around my legs, pressing a firm hand into my lower belly and using that hold to pin me still. He worked my clit with soft, torturous strokes of his tongue as his eyes held mine. Just when I thought he might give me enough to bring me to that edge of an orgasm, he drifted lower and slid his tongue inside of me with gentle pressure. I groaned, plunging a hand into his hair and trying to guide him back to where I wanted him.