Chapter Eight
Audiv
The only way to stop Michael’s words from replaying over and over in her mind was to run. So, she did. She ran and ran until she could barely breathe. Her chest ached, there was a stitch in her side and her legs felt like clumps of wood. Utterly exhausted, she found a soft spot beneath a willow and curled up at the roots. Her heart rate slowed, and her breathing became even, and without meaning to, she drifted off into a light doze, her mind blessedly blank.
When she opened her eyes again, she spied Antonio sitting on a bench a few yards away. A book was in his hand, but he was looking up at the sky.
Gratitude swept over her, along with a fair bit of embarrassment at her breakdown. She wasn’t entirely certain why Angstrom had affected her so strongly. Maybe it was that word, cleanse… Maybe it was the thought of family members dragging unwilling loved ones to that monster, thinking that it was for their own good when it would be so painful and traumatic…
Maybe it was some nagging doubt in the back of her mind, that maybe it would be best for some of them, to have their magic taken away from them.
Audiv grimaced as she stood. Her whole body was stiff as she hobbled over to Antonio and collapsed onto the bench beside him. He was silent for a moment before he turned to her, a pinch in his brow.
“Should I carry you back to the palace?”
The question was so unexpected that a startled laugh burst from her throat. Audiv tested her muscles and nodded sheepishly. She had overdone it big time. Even sitting was making her sore, it seemed.
Antonio scooped her into his arms and she briefly stiffened. She had thought that he was going to carry her piggy-back, rather than bridal style like he was holding her now. She looped an arm around his neck and tried to hold herself up by his shoulders, so all her weight wasn’t on his arms. The thought crossed her mind that, having a bounteous curvy figure, she was too heavy to carry, but she gently eased it away.
Even before he was a dragon, Antonio was a strong dude. She had seen pictures—he was ripped. His strength only increased after he became a dragon. Especially with how often she saw him at the gym. Though his muscle mass wasn’t the over-bulked look that lots of the thick-necked and small-headed men in magazines had, she knew he was more than strong enough to carry a person twice her weight.
And it was nice, to be carried like that.
Antonio took her back to her apartment and retrieved a lotion that she had made recently, to help with the stiff muscles she always seemed to wake up with. From tensing in her sleep, she guessed. He squirted some onto his hand, then glanced up at her.
“May I?”
What he was asking was obvious enough. Audiv’s breath caught in her lungs as she imagined it going further than a simple massage. Her mouth went dry as an unexpected heat flared in her core. As she stared up at him, she realized that she wanted nothing more to have his hands on her body. Slowly, she nodded, then stood and pulled her tank off. She still wore her bra, and she left her underwear on as she took off her pants.
“Shall we go to the bedroom?” she asked.
Antonio’s eyes darkened as they roamed over her body. A strange expression came over his face as he jerked his head to one side, as though tearing his gaze away from her. “Audiv, I don’t know if that’s a good idea. You wanted to wait.”
“Marriage is an outdated notion,” she replied. “I’ve imagined it often enough, anyway. It’s not like I’m some naive virgin, I know how it works and how it’s supposed to feel.”
“Imagining isn’t the same as doing.”
The heat in her core started to fade, and a different sort of heat rose in her cheeks. Her ears went pink. “I know that.”
Antonio put the lotion back into the jar, then gathered her clothes from the floor and nodded at the bedroom. “I can rub your back and legs, but I don’t think it should go any further than that. Not when you’re in the emotional state that you’re in right now… I don’t want this to be done just because you need to take your mind off things.”
Her mouth dropped open, about to say that wasn’t it at all, but she couldn’t say it. Not when she didn’t know if it was the truth or not. More heat scorched her cheeks as she silently nodded, turning to the bedroom. She limped to her bed and stretched out. She hid her face from Antonio as he started to massage her aching muscles.
The lotion and his hands helped the tight knots unwind. His hands were strong and smooth, not calloused like she had expected. They weren’t womanly in the least, though, and that heat flared back in her core as those big, strong fingers worked on her muscles. She bit her lip to keep from moaning as he worked down her back, then on her thighs. A shiver ran through her, and she could feel herself getting wetter at his touch, even though he wasn’t anywhere near her lady bits.
Antonio paused and let out a growl of desire that had everything tightening inside her. “God! You smell so good.”
Audiv turned her head, staring up at him. His expression was tense, his jaw clenched as his fingers began to trace lightly up her inner thigh.
“It’s not sex if you just touch me, right?” Her voice came out husky. “And I could touch you, too.”
Antonio let out a strangled moan. She could see how much he wanted to take her up on her offer from the bulge in his jeans. Her mouth went dry again as she thought about what he would look like. She’d seen plenty of nude men from the guards flying back and shifting to human form in the courtyard, but she hadn’t seen any of them hard and erect. Her gaze moved up his white button-up shirt to focus on his eyes.
His nostrils flared. “I can touch you,” he grunted. “But if you started touching me, I’m not sure I could hold back.”
That sounded so wonderful that it was Audiv’s turn to moan. She quickly flipped to her back, sore muscles forgotten with the magic of her lotion and the heat of desire. She spread her legs, her breathing a little shallower than it ought to be. Antonio let his hands run up her legs a few times, his eyes on her face, before he smirked, such a wicked little smirk that made everything inside of her tighten up even further.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
She didn’t even have a voice to reply with, and so only nodded. Antonio gripped her thighs, moving them apart slightly, and bent over her. His breath was hot on her skin as he kissed up her thigh, then the top of her underwear as his hands slowly pulled them down. He tossed them to the floor as the chill air brushed against Audiv’s wet core. She chewed her lip as he kissed her thigh again. But he didn’t move his mouth to her center. Instead, he crawled onto the bed, caging her with his big body and pressed a searing kiss to her mouth.
Audiv tangled her fingers into his hair, desire growing so strong inside of her that she was almost growling with want. Antonio’s hands still roamed her, feeling every inch of her. He abruptly pulled back, panting. A furrow on his brow.
“Before we go further… how far have you gone, Audiv? What experience do you have?”
Her mind flashed back to her fiancé, and the things they did with each other. She struggled for a moment to find the modern terms. “Uh… Third base. Well… I mean, I’ve given oral sex before. And I’ve touched myself.”
“Has anybody touched you?”
Her cheeks went red as she shook her head. Her fiancé had told her that there was no point and that the only thing he could give her that she couldn’t give herself was all-out sex. But even though she would use her mouth on him every day, even if she wasn’t feeling well, he still labeled her a prude when she caught him cheating on her.
Antonio’s eyes darkened. “By choice?”
“Um… not really…”
He closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath. After a moment, he let it out and shook his head. “We’ll have to fix that. I want you to lay on your side so I can grind into your ass while I make you come.”
Her whole body felt like it was on fire, buzzing almost as strongly as when she had used magic for the first time. She turned to her side as ordered, and when Antonio lifted her leg, she reached down to grasp her knee and help him keep it out of the way. He rubbed himself against her through his clothing as he reached around and began to gently stroke her.
Audiv’s head fell into her pillow. Her back arched, pressing her body more firmly against Antonio. She writhed under his touch as the heat inside of her built tighter and tighter. He leaned half over her, one arm around her waist to hold her in place as he kissed her mouth deeply. Audiv groaned into his mouth as his tongue swept over her lips.
Her fingers curled into his hair with one hand, the blankets with the other. His fingers slid around her, then inside of her. She let out a sharp cry, the pressure building to a point where she couldn’t stand it. Her legs trembled, her heart pounded and suddenly everything released all at once. Her body jerked, her muscles unwinding like a broken elastic band. She dropped her leg, squeezing his hand between her thighs. He continued to stroke her as her face and chest turned red and her body twitched this way and that.
When he pulled his hand away, the heat faded a little. Audiv panted, loving the feeling of his arms around her. She understood what he meant when he said if she touched him, he might not be able to control himself. That had been…
“Is it always that good?” she asked him, surprised to find her voice hoarse.
Antonio chuckled. “That was good? I’m glad… but it can be a lot better, Audiv.”
“No! Really?”
He grinned at her. “Yes. But that’ll have to wait for your wedding night.”
He winked at her so she knew he was teasing, but her mouth went dry once more. She had the sudden image of her and him, kneeling before the altar of marriage. And her heart swelled with warmth. It had to be the aftereffects of him touching her… they’d known each other for a while, but they hadn’t been dating… it was far too early to have those sorts of thoughts.
And so, she was going to think about something else. She took his hand and moved it back to brush her sex. “Do it again,” she whispered huskily. “And this time, put them inside of me.”
Antonio chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”