I could feel him, hard against the indescribable, driving need of my body.
We felt the breath of the other, the fire of the passion that swept through our bodies. I saw only the light in his eyes. Against my sex, his hardness pressed.
Just there. Right there. Again and again, I rubbed against him as he kissed my throat and pulled me to him. “Teach me,” I begged.
“Show m-”
His kisses cut off my shaking need.
Sweeping my knees apart, Benjamin groaned. A pain so sweet filled my aching sex. Pushing against his hardness, I felt the tip of his body rubbing my own in delicious, mesmerizing ways.
“Briar,” he called out to me, the way only Benjamin could.
“Woman, my woman, my Briar,” he whispered in between his kisses as he picked me up and slid my body down his chest. My toes curled and I shivered as he pushed me down, farther.
More.
I was crazy with need, ready to tear down the world to be his.
“Oh please, more. Oh please, oh moremoremoremoremoremoremore.” And… and then he was there at my center, sharp and piercing. His hard, huge desire merged into mine.
It hurt.
I screamed as he entered me, pushing his body inside of my own, pulling me down on him, joining me, lock and key. Inside my body, he moved, pulling and pushing me up and down along his thickness. The little bite of pain I felt turned into an exquisite pleasure.
“Just there. Right. There.” I begged as he kissed me and plunged his cock deeper inside of my shaking body with each rocking thrust.
Outside, the rain poured down. Thunder rolled. Lighting lit the sky. I might just catch the world on fire.
I didn’t care.
Nothing mattered.
Nothing except Benjamin, loving me. Taking me, kissing my skin, and wrapping his fingers in my hair, pulling me groaning to him.
Begging for more.
The hay around us caught fire.
With a thought, I extinguished the flames.
His cock rippled along inside of my body. His desire splitting me in half, parting my body, filling me.
“My Briarthorns, my queen,” he moaned into my hair. “Fire and flame, take everything I have. You are mine . Mine!” he cried out, his desire rubbing against my body, demanding every attention. There was only Benjamin.
All I could see.
All I could feel.
All I wanted.
His kisses blurred into desire as I rode on his lap. Hard and swift, his thrusts let me feel everything along his shaft. Each bit of his glorious body shone.
“Woman,” he cried out, flipping us over onto the straw.
Benjamin moved on top of me now.
With one hand he grabbed my back, pulling my body to him, raising my knee up, shaking as he plunged inside of me. Every bit of him straining, filling me, and yearning for something just at the edge of knowing.
I wanted that wild energy inside my body,
the ache where he split me into pieces,
the exact place where his cock hit me, where my body clenched, demanding his seed. Wanting his desire, underneath his weight, I felt free for the first time in my life. Pushing against his hips, I could only moan into his mouth as his breath hitched.
And then, mine did as well.
Right there, I cried out. “My love, Right. There.”
He pushed against me, sweats licked and harder than marble, Benjamin covered me and took me as his wife.
As he shuddered, his eyes stayed on my body, on my face, on the shining need that ran through both of us—the spinning arc of weather magic, the blood of angels, the blood of the cursed.
“Oh, Briarth-” he whispered as he exploded—pouring his lightning and fire inside of me. A storm gathered inside my body, the clouds outside were nothing next to this. The maelstrom of need and desire and fire and weather and truth—all of it coalesced into one, shining, pinpoint of light. His cock pushed against me, deep in my body.
Benjamin set me free.
Everything exploded as I came. Ripples of energy shivered through my body and into his.
Naked, he rode me, growling as a bear and a man.
Screaming in pleasure, I writhed underneath him, trapped exactly where I wanted to be, desperate for his cock, shaking with power.
The barn burned all around us.
I wiggled my hips against his thrusts as wood and hay turned to ash.
I needed more as the energy rippled across my body and shook me to my core. Benjamin took me home.
Benjamin loved the fire.
My prince loved a weather witch.
My lover loved me.
Epilogue
Quests
A part of the barn still stood in the morning.
The windward side, really just a bit of roof and two walls—enough to shelter us from the cold breezes, but not much more. I awoke, feeling like a girl sleeping in a box of glass. Light diffused and dispersed in every direction.
The sun had risen but I couldn’t see it.
Where we slept, the light shone around us. Most of the wooden building burnt to the ground in the night… but all around us rose a building of ice and glass. Weather magic protected us even as it destroyed everything but the room where we lay our heads.
Benjamin saw me as my eyelids fluttered.
His face suddenly took up most of my vision, concern in his eyes. A deep gentleness emanated from every single bit of him. He looked at me like I was the most precious fragile work of art he’d ever seen. Like I was a creature of spun glass, brilliantly-colored, destined to be destroyed, exposed to hammers, quickly broken, easily lost. He looked at me as we woke. The sadness in his gaze felt as if he had already lost me.
Maybe he knew more than I did.
I always was too quick to trust.
“We have to go,” he whispered as he kissed my temple and brushed my bangs away from my face. “There isn’t much time to save the Gilded Seat. Corruption rises in Gildingvale and my brothers… well, I must go and face them. As soon as you are awake, we will set out for their land and make our plans.” Benjamin looked at me, a man looking at a well after traveling through the hottest desert. He looked worried. But he didn’t let me see his fear. I only realized how much he protected me when he thought I wasn’t watching.
Happily ever after is really only a tiny moment in a rolling wave of living and dying.
“We have each other,” I said, stoically, “We have the magic. Taking back Gildingvale and the seat will be easy. As long as we do it together.
“First, we get my sister, Corinne,” I spoke quickly, already making plans in my head, seeing the joy on my little sister’s face, and organizing the return of the lost princes to a kingdom I barely remembered from my childhood. “And then, we take back your throne,” I spoke as if words completed adventures. Asi if it was all so easy as that. Just speak the words, and wishes came true. As if there was a fairy godmother who gave a shit about any of us.
Quite frankly, I don’t think I would ever trust a fairy even if one did show up. Oberon, Andry, the other stormlords—I wasn’t finished with them, that was obvious. And the lies, the tangled webs around their magic, it would take far more than wishes to set us truly free.
Corinne though, she couldn’t wait. There was only the very real need we had: to beg, borrow, or steal some horses and ride back to the Three Golden Balls Inn and establishment before that asshole Groton…. Before he…
“Yeah, we have to go, now,” I gulped swallowing my fear for my little sister. “Corinne’s safety is measured in days, if not hours. I must get back to her before…”
“I understand,” Benjamin nodded solemnly. “I would have never left a child behind if I had known… Let’s find a way back and go get your little sister,” he declared.
As he spoke, Benjamin grabbed the remains of our ruined clothes that still hung on the railing, tossing my inner skirt back to me. Then he helped me retie the intricate corset before assembling what remained of his armor and clothes.
Grabbing my hand, Benjamin swore, “We will save her, Briarthorns. I promise.”
Most of the ladder hadn’t burned. But as soon as we descended from the scorched barn, the whole structure creaked and collapsed.