Shattered (27 page)

In the same moment Robin dumped what must have been the majority of that wax reservoir down his center.  It burned all at once and pierced through to the pit of his stomach.  Nathan arched his back like he might be able to somehow crawl away from it.  He groaned into the bed, bit down on the sheets until his jaw was sore, until he was sure he wouldn’t scream, and as he pressed his eyes shut a few tears did fall free.  Spasms wracked his body as heat flow down his spine.

And that was when he noticed it didn’t hurt any more.  It still burned and his muscles still twitched, but he surrendered to the exhaustion and gave up trying to control it.  Pain couldn’t touch him here.  That sting along his back was sweetness and he only whimpered whenever new drops fell now.

Adara’s hand brushed his cheek, moved beneath his chin, and lifted his face upward.  He released his hold on the blanket to look at her.  Her eyes were so blue, her lips barely parted, and there was no pressure in her gaze.  She held him there effortlessly and he was content, even after she looked away.

Something passed between Adara and Robin before her eyes took his up again.  Robin’s hand r
an down the back of his neck as she leaned against his shoulders.  He couldn’t see her behind him and he didn’t have the strength to move, nor the desire to leave Adara’s hand, but he felt her breath on his ear.

“I need to go now Nathan,” Robin
said.  “The next time you see me you’ll have to pretend that you don’t remember.  But no matter what happens, no matter what I do, you must trust me.”

Nathan nodded and felt her slip away.  And then it was just him, and Adara, and silence
that held uncertainty now that Robin was gone.

“Adara…,
” Nathan whispered, seeking to offer some explanation that was somehow less strange than the truth, but she interrupted him.

“Be quiet Nathan
.”

Adara stroked his cheek, ran her hand through his hair, touched his face. 
Her eyes went back and forth across his.  He could see her thoughts progressing, though he couldn’t see what they contained.  Only that she was searching for words too.

“I
’m not sure if I can replace her for you,” Adara whispered and her apology was written all over her face.

Nathan let
the softest hint of a chuckle out with his breath.  He didn’t want her to apologize, and if that was the worse of her reaction to what she’d just seen he counted himself lucky.  He stood, felt the hardening wax crack against along his back, saw her eyes sweep over his body.  He crawled up on the bed and hugged her around her arms.  She was tense for only a moment before she relaxed against him.

“
I don’t want you to.  Oh Adara, I don’t want you to be any more than what you are. I’m sorry you had to see that.”

Adara struggled out of his embrace.  For a moment
dread replaced relief.  He had to suddenly worry that they’d both pushed her too far in this, but the grin on her face as she knelt up before him suggested otherwise.

“Touch me Nathan and then tell me
why you’re sorry.”

He looked at her face again and
saw how flushed her cheeks were. It wasn’t embarrassment at all, but arousal, and he needed no more prompting than that.  His hand slipped beneath her hem, up her naked skin, and before he even reached her center he felt moisture on her thigh.

“God you’re wet,” he whispered and Adara grinned again.

“I liked watching you,” she said, and she pushed his hand further up her thigh  “Kiss me Nathan.”

He heard the command in her voice and it banished the last of his doubt.  He
leaned in and kissed her, felt her rapid little breath against his mouth, how flush her lips were with heat.  She was just as aroused as he was, and that only made him want her more.  Her juices were all over his fingers and when he found her hot little opening he slid them in.

Her body
flexed around him and her eyes rolled back a little as she let out a moan.

Adara’s
hand went to his neck and her nails dug in as she yanked his mouth back over hers.  “I need you,” she growled, in a single breath, a breath she stole back a moment later.

When she fell onto her back she pulled him with her.  Nathan’s fingers slid out of her as easily as they’d gone in
and he ended up pressed between her thighs, his other hand beside her head to support himself up, his mouth still tantalizingly close to hers.  He rubbed his pussy-slick palm once over his shaft and shuddered against her lips.

“I don’t think I can last long…”

“Then stop talking and fuck me.”

Nathan nestled
the head of his cock against her slit and in one long, slow thrust he buried it inside her.  He felt her body clench around him, felt her legs shaking, her fingers digging into his shoulders.  The wax on his back stretched and cracked, and cool air caressed the stinging skin beneath.

Adara
moved beneath him, thrusting her hips up against his with such force he hardly needed to move at all.  He shut his eyes and fought against the overwhelming pressure in his groin.  Her fingers tangled in his hair, yanked down, and her heels pressed into the back of his thighs to pin him closer.  She whimpered and moaned as she ground herself against him, taking the pleasures she sought without inhibition.

H
er back arched against the bed and she thrust her shoulders into the mattress as she let out a shout beside his ear. Her thighs quivered around him, her body milked him with each tremor of climax, and knowing that she was coming beneath him was all it took to send him over as well.

Nathan’s
thrusts doubled in speed in an instant and every muscle in his body tensed.  He felt the orgasm he’d been denied quivering behind the paper-thin wall of his control and suddenly it burst free.  His voice joined hers as it ripped through him and all of his strength went with it.

“
God…,” Adara whispered, to the ceiling over his shoulder.  She panted beneath him, their bodies’ slick with sweat, and on every exhale cool air rushed between them.  Her hands slipped slowly from his shoulders, to his back, and when she encountered the first chunk of wax she flicked it free with her nail.

Nathan
’s whole body shook as a jolt ran down his spine.  Then another flick with her finger, another jolt, and each one became a stepping stone he followed down from his high.  He let them shake his body and, with no energy at all to fight, they rolled through him with their own sleepy pleasure.

Adara wiggled out from beneath him and Nathan collapsed
to his stomach in the space she vacated.  He heard her pad off to the washroom and he supposed he dozed a bit, for in no time at all she was back in bed, seated beside him, her legs curled beneath her and her knees pressed against his side.  She traced an outline against the wax still on his back and, once she was back where she started, she set about removing it.

“It explains a lot,” Adara
said quietly.  She pried the little hardened droplets from his skin and soothed the sting with her fingertips.

“Oh?”

“Mmhmm,” she hummed.  “Usually I get in trouble for overstepping my position.  But you were constantly encouraging it.  You’re very… submissive,” she said, and then burst into laughter.  “Oh hell, you licked yourself off my fingers, in public, simply because I asked you to.”

Nathan laughed too and rolled
away from her, onto his back, pulling her with him.  She tumbled across his front and ended up straddled over his thighs, her chest to his, her hair draped down across his face.  She pushed it back and met his eyes, so near that he couldn’t see her smile except there, in the depths of her blue irises.

“I want to know what happened to you
while you were gone,” Adara whispered.  It wasn’t a question, not quite a command, mostly just a thought spoken aloud.  He heard it in her tone, she was leaving him room to refuse, should he want to.

“All of it?”

She nodded and Nathan relaxed back against the bed.  One hand cradled the small of her back, the other wrapped up in her hair.  And for first time he felt able to put the whole of his ordeal into words.

***

For the first time in a month Na
than slept through the night.  It was strange to see the morning’s light through the window and not feel the weight of another day.  He was still a prisoner, yet he felt more free this morning than he ever had before.

Adara breathed softly
into his arm as she slept beside him, her smooth body warming his side, all curled up so that her knees pressed into his thigh and her forehead rested against his shoulder.  Jeremy’s little spy.  She looked so peaceful there.

Nathan rolled
onto his side to face her and propped himself up on his elbow.  He ran his hand down the silky length of her hair, pushed it back from her face and off the top of her naked shoulder.  She smelled like she had that first day, like spice, like cinnamon, something so warm and alive.  His hand made a second pass down her hair and her eyes came open, a blue sunrise, and her soft and sleepy smile made him smile too.

“Good morning,” he whispered and she mouthed the words back at him, without voice, just a warm breath on his arm.

A sudden yawn collapsed her smile and she buried her face into the bed until it passed.  When she peeked back up it was through a series of rapid blinks and the slightest hint of a frown, like sleep’s desperate hold on her was cause for irritation.  Nathan chuckled and her eyes came back up to his.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do Adara,” he said, a
nd his smile trailed off.  “I think I love you both.”

She
gave him a lazy shrug against the bed.  “I don’t mind Nathan.”

He
knew she didn’t.  Adara was perfectly uncomplicated now that Robin had torn down the barriers he’d built up between them.  He leaned forward, kissed her forehead, and sat up.

“Where are you going?”
She asked.  It was strange for him to be up so early, even stranger for him to leave bed unprompted.

“To read over my ledger.  I have so much to catch up on.  There’s so little I know about the territories I rule.”

Adara followed him up, though she didn’t stand.  She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, legs dangling over.  “What about your brother?”

“There’s nothing I can do ab
out him.  Jeremy has me trapped and he knows it.  I can only wait, let him play his hand, but I’m not going waste this time.  Something will give, sooner or later.”

Adara
just shook her head to banish her disbelief and, as her head stilled, another soft smile crept onto her face. “You’re like a different person overnight.”

“I feel different too
,” Nathan answer.  “I was drowning before.  If you and Robin hadn’t been here… I don’t know what I would have done.”

Adara
bit down on her lip and frowned, like it wasn’t a thought she wanted to entertain.  “Go read your books Nathan.  I’ll get us some breakfast.”

She slipped off
and Nathan lost himself to his study.  He read up on his territories, Perena, Twin Rivers, Inoscus, Tyr, and others, Verill, Miro, Kingswood.  It made him a little sad that he had to reference a map to find some of them, like Miro, but it didn’t deter his momentum.  It was all so fascinating, so complicated.  He had no idea how near the boundary Miro was, nor how recent an acquisition.

H
e couldn’t imagine Adara having suffered any of what Robin had though.  They were too different.  Maybe one day he’d ask her about her past, ask her what made her face every day with a smile, but right now he was content not knowing.  If she wanted him to know she’d tell him.  It wasn’t his to worry about.

Morning bled into afternoon and soon Jeremy’s guard was at his door, ready to escort him to dinner.  It was the same two men that
had dragged him to and from the funeral, though today Nathan swore they gripped him a little tighter.  Perhaps they noticed the change in him too.

**

“I’m glad you were able to join us Nathan,” Jeremy said, though he didn’t rise from the table.  Robin sat at the table too, to Jeremy’s right, and an empty place had been set for Nathan across from her.  He knew he’d see her again, he just didn’t think it’d be here.

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t have a choice,” Nathan replied.  He kept his eyes off Robin by focusing on Jeremy instead.  “Your men were kind enough to hold my arm the entire way here.”

“Precautions brother.  I
feel better knowing you’re safe, that’s all.”

“
Of course.”  Nathan took his seat and reached for his cup.

“
Oh, how rude of me,” Jeremy said.  “I want you to meet your future Queen, my betrothed, Lady Robin A’rin, heir to the southern territory of Verill.”

Nathan felt the sip he’d just taken burn on its way down, and a moment later he w
as coughing it back up.  From beyond his napkin he saw both of them stare at him.  Robin glared across the table and Jeremy looked on with equal interest.

“Is something the matter, brother?”