She could only get out a garbled yesIdopleasemore. Hunt laughed, dark and rich, and thrust in—a little harder this time. “I love you undone like this,” he said, moving again. Setting the pace. “Utterly at my mercy.”
Yesyesyes, she hissed, and he laughed again. His balls slapped against her ass.
“You know how much I thought about doing this all those months ago?” he said, bending to press a kiss to her neck.
“Likewise,” she managed to say. “I wanted you to fuck me on my desk at the gallery.”
His thrusts turned a little uneven. “Oh yeah?”
She moved her hips back against him, angling him in deeper. He groaned now. She whispered, “I knew you’d feel like this. So fucking perfect.”
His fingers dug into her hips. “All yours, sweetheart. Every piece of me.” He thrust harder. Faster.
“Gods, I love you,” she breathed, and that was his undoing.
Hunt yanked her from the shelf, pulling her to the ground with him, positioning her on all fours. His knees spread her own even wider, and Bryce bit her hand to hold in her scream of pleasure as he rammed into her, over and over and over. “I fucking love you,” he said, and Bryce cracked.
Light exploded from her as she came, driving back onto his cock, so deep he touched her innermost wall. Hunt shouted, and his cock pulsed in her, following her into that blinding pleasure like he couldn’t stop, like he’d keep spilling into her forever.
But then he stilled, and they remained there, panting, Hunt buried in her.
“No teleporting this time, huh?” he said, bending to kiss her neck.
She leaned her forehead against her hands. “Must need your power to join mine or something,” she mumbled. “Good thing you didn’t do that, though—probably would have burned the building down. But I don’t care right now.” She wiggled her ass against him, and he hissed. “Let’s go home and have more makeup sex.”
Night.
Ruhn opened his eyes, finding himself on the couch on the bridge, with Daybright seated across from him.
“Hey,” he said. He’d passed out on the sectional while Declan and Ithan argued about sunball crap. Flynn had been busy fucking a nymph upstairs.
Ariadne and the sprites had claimed Declan’s bedroom, as the male had planned to spend the night at Marc’s, and gone to sleep soon after a painfully awkward evening meal. The dragon had picked at her dinner like she’d never seen food before. The sprites had drunk an entire bottle of wine between them and spent the meal burping up embers.
How any of them were sleeping with Flynn’s escapades down the hall was beyond Ruhn.
Day drummed a flaming hand on the rolled arm of the fainting couch. “I have information for you to pass along.”
Ruhn straightened. “Good or bad?”
“That’s for you to decide.”
She watched him intently. He wasn’t sure if he’d see her after that colossal bit of weirdness last night. But she said nothing of it as she declared, “I have it on good authority that Pippa Spetsos is planning something big in retaliation for losing so much ammunition and the imperial mech-suit prototype. Ophion is fully behind her. They believe the unit that sabotaged the shipment has gone rogue, and appointed Spetsos to send a clear message to both those rebels and the empire.”
Ruhn kept his face carefully blank. “What’s she up to? Where?”
“I’m not sure. But given that her last known location was Ydra, I thought you should pass it along to your cohorts in Crescent City, lest she attack there.”
“Do the Asteri know about her plans?”
“No. Only I do.”
“How’d you learn about them?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
Ruhn studied her. “So we’re back to the distance. No more bedtime stories?”
Again, she drummed her fingers. “Let’s chalk that up to a moment of insanity.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“But you wanted to.”
“I don’t need to. I don’t give a shit what you look like. I like talking to you.”
“Why?”
“Because I feel like I can be real with you, here.”
“Real.”
“Yeah. Honest. I’ve told you shit no one else knows.”
“I don’t see why.”
He rose from his couch and crossed to hers. He leaned against the arm of the sofa, peering down at her blazing face. “See, I think you like me, too.”
She shot to her feet, and he backed away a step. She came closer, though. Near enough for her chest to brush his. Flame and darkness twined, stars turning into embers between them. “This is not some game, where you can flirt and seduce your way through it,” she hissed. “This is war, and one that will claim many more lives before it is through.”
A growl worked its way up his throat. “Don’t patronize me. I know the cost.”
“You know nothing of cost, or of sacrifice.”
“Don’t I? I might not have been playing rebel all my life, but believe me, shit has never been easy.” Her words had found their mark, though.
“So your father doesn’t like you. You’re not the only one. So your father beat you, and burned you. So did mine.”
Ruhn snarled, getting in her face. “What the fuck is your point?”
She snarled right back. “My point is that if you are not careful, if you are not smart, you will find yourself giving up pieces of your soul before it’s too late. You will wind up dead.”
“And?”
She stilled. “How can you ask that so cavalierly?”
He shrugged. “I’m nobody,” he said. It was the truth. Everything he was, the worth by which the world defined him … it had all been given to him. By pure luck of being born into the “right” family. If he’d done anything of value, it had been through the Aux. But as a prince … he’d been running his entire life from that title. Knew it to be utterly hollow.
And Bryce had kept her power a secret so he might hold on to that scrap of specialness.
Ruhn turned away from Day, disgusted with himself.
Bryce loved him far more than she hated their father. Had given up privilege and power for him. What had he ever done for anyone on that scale? He’d die for his friends, this city—yeah. But … who the fuck was he, deep down?
Not a king. His father wasn’t a fucking king, either. Not in the way that mattered.
“Message received,” he said to Day.
“Night—”
Ruhn opened his eyes.
The living room was dark, the TV off, Ithan presumably long gone to sleep.
Ruhn turned over on the couch, tucking his arms behind his head and staring at the ceiling, watching beams of headlights drift across it from passing cars.
Who the fuck was he?
Prince of Nothing.
54
Sitting in her office at the archives, phone at her ear, Bryce drained the last sips of her third coffee of the day, and debated whether a fourth cup would have her crawling on the ceiling by lunchtime.
“So, um—Cooper’s good?” she asked her mother, setting her coffee cup atop the paper that held the sequence of numbers and letters from Sofie’s arm. Randall had now deemed it safe enough to discuss the boy on the phone. Bryce supposed it’d be weird not to, since her parents had just publicly adopted the kid.