Chapter 44: Chapter 45: unrelenting force

Elara’s pov

It wasn’t a request. It was a command born of desperation. “Make me feel something real.”

Kaelen reacted instantly. His hands, rough and warm, grabbed my waist, pulling me flush against him. The contact was electric. His hips pressed into mine, hard and demanding.

“You don’t have to ask twice,” he growled against my lips before lifting me up. My legs wrapped around his waist, and he carried me to the bed, laying me down on the mattress. The silk sheets were cool against my overheated skin.

The mattress dipped under his weight as he followed me down, but there was no hesitation in him, no gentle testing of the waters. He covered my body with his own, a wall of heat and muscle that erased the chill of the room, the chill of Thorin’s words.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he rasped, but his hands were already moving, hooking under my knee to drag my leg higher around his waist. The position was possessive, opening me up to him completely. “If they find out–”

“Let them find out,” I cut him off, digging my nails into the hard planes of his shoulders through his shirt. I wanted to mark him. I wanted to ruin the perfect, polished exterior of a guard just as Thorin wanted to ruin the perfect, polished exterior of a queen. “I am done with ’shoulds.’ I am done with what is proper. I want you.”

My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was low, ragged, stripped of the courtly training that had been hammered into me since birth. It sounded like a weapon.

For a heartbeat, Kaelen froze above me. His eyes, dark and swirling with a conflict I didn’t care to resolve, bore into mine. He was searching for hesitation, for the queen he was sworn to protect rather than the woman begging to be ruined. He didn’t find her.

“Damn you,” he growled, the words vibrating against my lips.

His mouth crashed down on mine, erasing any space left between us. It wasn’t a kiss; it was an invasion. His tongue swept past my lips, claiming me with a ferocity that made my head spin. I tasted the hunger he’d been suppressing, the same wildness that was tearing me apart from the inside out.

I met him with equal force. My hands tore at the front of his tunic, needing to feel the skin beneath, to touch something alive and warm, not cold stone or stiff brocade. Buttons popped, skittering across the floor, but neither of us cared.

He groaned into my mouth, a low, guttural sound that vibrated through my chest. With a sharp tug, he pulled the fabric of my bodice down. The sound of ripping silk was loud in the quiet room, shocking and utterly right. The cool air hit my heated skin for a fraction of a second before his large, calloused hand covered my breast.

His palm was rough, scraping over the sensitive skin in a way that made me gasp into his mouth. The contrast, his roughness against my softness, the heat of his touch against the cool air of the room , was electric. He didn’t cup me gently; he possessed me, squeezing with a force that bordered on pain, his thumb dragging over my nipple until it tightened into a sharp, aching point.

I arched my back, pushing harder into his hand, silently begging for more. More friction, more pressure, more of him to erase the memory of Thorin’s polished, suffocating control.

“Look at you,” Kaelen rasped, breaking the kiss only to trail his lips down the column of my throat. He bit the sensitive cord of muscle where my neck met my shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin but enough to mark. To claim. “So desperate. So wild.”

“I’m desperate for you,” I gasped, my head falling back to give him better access. My fingers tangled in his hair, pulling the leather tie free so the dark strands fell around his face. It made him look less like a soldier, more like an untamed man. “Only you.” I didn’t know what gave me the courage to say all that, but I knew I was beginning to change.

He growled low in his throat, the sound vibrating against my skin. His hand abandoned my breast only to grab the hem of my skirt, shoving the heavy fabric up with rough, impatient hands. The air hit my legs, but his hands followed immediately, warm and calloused, skimming up my thighs and pushing them wider.

“Kaelen,” I breathed, my hips lifting off the bed instinctively. “Please. Don’t make me wait. I’ve waited all day. Weeks.”

He didn’t make me wait. His fingers hooked into the fabric of my underclothes, and with a sharp tearing sound, he ripped them away. The lace and silk gave way like wet paper, the sudden violence of it making me gasp. There was no gentle undressing, no careful reverence. This was a claim.

“Is this what you want?” he growled, his voice rough against my ear, his hand delving between my thighs without hesitation. His fingers found me wet, slick with the arousal that had been building since the council meeting, since the moment I decided I needed to break.

“Yes,” I hissed, bucking my hips against his hand. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”

He didn’t need further encouragement. His fingers slid through my slick folds, finding the bundle of nerves that throbbed with a desperate rhythm. He circled it once, twice, harsh and fast, before driving two fingers deep inside me.

I cried out, my back bowing off the mattress. The invasion was sudden and shocking, but my body welcomed it, clamping around his fingers like a vice. It felt so good to be filled, to be stretched, to have something real and solid inside me instead of the hollow, echoing words of the council chamber.

“You’re tight,” he gritted out, his voice strained. He pumped his fingers in and out, the wet sounds filling the quiet room. “So wet for me, Elara. Did he make you this wet? Did sitting there listening to him make you ache like this?”

“Gods, no,” I snarled, the denial tearing from my throat, raw and ragged. The thought alone made my skin crawl, like a bucket of ice water trying to douse the fire he had lit. “He makes me feel sick. He makes me feel like I’m drowning in dust. Only you, Kaelen. Only this makes me feel alive.”

He groaned, a sound of pure, possessive triumph, and captured my mouth again to swallow the scream that tore from me as he curled his fingers inside, finding that spot that made my vision blur. He didn’t just touch me; he used me, his hand moving with a rough, demanding rhythm that matched the pounding of my heart.

The friction was exquisite, the stretch burning in the best possible way. My hips moved to meet his thrusts, riding his hand with a desperate, shameless need I had never allowed myself to feel before. Every stroke erased something. Every thrust wiped away a piece of Thorin’s careful plans, his polite suggestions, his silk chains.

His weight shifted, the mattress groaning under us as he withdrew his hand. The sudden emptiness felt like a loss that made me whimper, a pathetic sound I would have been ashamed of in any other context. But here, in the dim light of my chambers with the scent of our arousal heavy in the air, there was no room for shame. Only need.

I watched, breath caught in my throat, as he rose to his knees.

He reached for the laces of his trousers, his movements jerky, lacking the usual precision of a man who handled a sword. He didn’t pull them down gently; he shoved the fabric aside just enough to free himself, desperate for skin against skin just as I was.

When he sprang free, thick and heavy and flushed dark with need, my body clenched in anticipation. He was bigger than I had imagined in my darkest, most forbidden fantasies , bigger than I remembered from the first night we met. We had been drunk then, but now we weren’t, and the sight of him jutting from his rough breeches was enough to make my mouth water.

He didn’t give me time to admire him or prepare for his size. He fell back over me, his weight a crushing, delicious anchor that pinned me to the bed. The blunt head of him nudged against my entrance, hot and insistent.

“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice a low growl that vibrated in my chest. “Don’t you dare look away.”

I forced my eyes open, locking my gaze with his. They were burning, wild, stripped of all the distance he usually kept. There was only raw hunger there, a reflection of the storm tearing me apart.

“This will hurt,” he warned, his voice rough.

“I don’t care,” I gasped, my nails digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders, pulling him down. “Break me if you have to. Just make me feel it.” I didn’t say, you said that the first time, when you took my virginity. We left that night in the past, buried forever.

He didn’t wait. He didn’t ease into it. He drove forward with a powerful, unrelenting thrust that buried him inside me to the hilt.

The sound that tore from my throat wasn’t a word; it was a broken gasp. My back arched off the bed like a bowstring pulled tight as he split me open. It was a sharp, burning stretch, a sudden, violent intrusion that destroyed every clear thought in my mind. The pain was bright and blinding, but it was real. It was physical. It was alive.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t give me time to adjust to the overwhelming fullness. He pulled back, the friction dragging a cry from my lips, then slammed into me again, deeper this time, harder.

“Kaelen!” I screamed, my head falling back against the pillows, my eyes squeezing shut as the intensity washed over me.

“I don’t think you want anyone outside to hear your moans. I don’t mind, though,” Kaelen hissed in my ear, his voice dark and rough.

I clamped my mouth shut, trapping the scream behind my teeth and turning it into a muffled whimper against his shoulder. The need to be loud, to scream his name and shatter the silence of the palace, fought with the cold reality of where we were. If someone heard, if the wrong person heard , everything would end.

But why did it feel like I didn’t care?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep