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He can't remember the last time he slept so soundly.
He can't recall not waking in fits through the night, skin sheening with sweat, sheets tangled at the foot of the bed or kicked to a heap on the floor. In all the nights he's spent in Basgiath, he's never not startled to with the sounds of screams consuming his senses, the ring of the war bells, the smell of so much burning flesh.
He realizes now that this night—this single, gods-blessed night—he hasn't dreamt at all.
Even before the war, before the unfathomable loss of—everything, Xaden Riorson did not know peace. He did not know it in the sense that one cannot truly know a thing without also having known its most opposing force, and until the war, peace was something he'd taken for granted. Something that was nothing to him, until it was gone.
But now, with the night having passed more peacefully or something like it than he's ever known, he wonders for the first time whether he can put the nightmares to rest. Whether he can allow himself this, if only in these small hours till dawn, reaching for a different kind of dream altogether.
Whether he can even deserve it.
Xaden wakes with a mouthful of moonlight, silver strands fragrant with some heady floral scent, and—oh. Moonlight. It is not yet morning after all.
Still—he hadn't intended to stay this long.
He feels terribly well-rested, something almost deceptively at ease in the looseness of his body, the way every muscle seems to sink and sink deeper into the bed.
Into her.
Violet is not a still sleeper, for all that she takes up so little space curled against him, nor is she particularly quiet. She shifts in his arms, lets out a soft sigh as he tightens them around her, out of some instinct he would rather not examine too closely.
She is vexing in that way, constantly testing him, pressing his limits, forcing out the unwanted truths. He was not wrong when he told her what a mistake they would be. She is every caution to the wind, throwing up its middle finger. She is the greatest thing he should not risk.
She is, quite possibly, everything to him.
He is so fucked.
And he is—fuck, he's fucking hard.
He becomes fully, almost painfully aware of this fact at the same time that her movements slow, then seem to gain a sense of purpose where there hadn't been before.
She arches her back, just enough to bring his arousal flush with her rear. The sound she lets out this time is one of pure satisfaction, as if there could be any lingering question that she's awake now too.
A battle lost before it's even begun.
He noses aside the smooth silk of her hair, lips ghosting over her shoulder. "Did I wake you?"
"Mm." Her voice is breathy, catching a little on what he knows must be the edge of a smile. Whenever she smiles, it's one step closer toward his ruin. She rolls her hips with aching slowness, and every inch of his cock seems to throb against her in response. "Kind of hard not to."
Gods. "Vi…" He lowers a hand to her waist, meaning—he thinks—to put some much-needed distance between them. Dawn is approaching, and he has meetings to attend. He has to not want this. He has…he…
His hand makes a traitor of him, rucking up the hem of her nightgown, pressing up her bare stomach as she shimmies the fabric over her head. He cups her breast as their hips move together, grinding his cock along her backside. His other hand fists into her hair, sweeping it out of the way before putting his mouth on all that soft skin.
She gasps out as he kisses her throat, her pulse thrumming under the heat of his tongue. Her head tilts back, and he kisses his way up to her jawline before closing his mouth over hers.
Their tongues meet and tangle, a desperate kind of heat in this kiss from the start. As though the threat of a new sun rising has made this time something fragile, for all that his staying might have been a mistake, and she can sense the tension in him, this wanting what he knows he shouldn't.
He breaks away and brings his forehead to the crook of her shoulder, drawing in a ragged breath. It is too dangerous to entertain the hope that she could possibly want him after she learns what he is, what he's done. The jagged shape of all his dark edges. All the things he's kept hidden from her when she has only given her trust.
This is a bad idea.
It is madness, how he wants her.
It is the only thing he has ever done that feels utterly, devastatingly right.
She does not press him, nor does she push him away. Her fingers find his, threading together, and then she lifts his hand to her mouth, brushing a single kiss to his knuckles.
If ever there was a thing to undo him.
He releases a shuddering breath and takes her chin into his hand, lowering his mouth back to hers.
The kiss is hard enough to leave them both gasping after a moment, lips hovering together as the air between them shallows and shallows. She's grinding against him in earnest now, and he moves his hand down, chasing the friction between their lower bodies as he dips a finger between her legs.
"Fuck, you're so wet." He groans into her skin as he finds her clit slick and swollen for him, and he's so goddamn aroused that he can barely see straight, let alone form his tongue around the words. "So fucking beautiful."
"Oh, I woke up like this," she hums in reply, her tone dancing a fine line between innocent and so very, very full of sin. "No thanks to—oh—Xaden—"
He presses a finger inside her, thumbing her clit before adding a second and curling them deeper. She arches back into him with a moan, and the sound goes straight to his cock, fuck does he want her, wants to be inside of her before he comes like a fucking schoolboy.
"Violet," he utters, from somewhere down low in his throat. "I need—fuck."
She's reaching blindly to tug his pants off—"Why did you even put these back on?" she grouses inside his head, and he breathes out a laugh that ends on a groan as she gets her hand on his cock and strokes.
He rubs his fingers over her clit as she maneuvers him between her thighs toward her entrance, until the head of his cock is slick with her, fuck, he—
Violet turns her head, lips grazing his cheek until they're just-touching the shell of his ear.
"I need you too," she whispers, and there's a clench of something too big to name that makes his whole chest ache with the wanting of her.
He leans down to kiss her, lips brushing, breath stuttering together as he enters her slowly, until he's sheathed fully inside of her. She keens with it as he pulls out and thrusts back in, feeling every inch as he fills her, all tightness and heat as she moans and clenches around his cock.
He savors those first, slower thrusts, that ache of luxuriant friction each time he fucks into her. The sounds that she's making, the feel of her back pressing up into his chest as he palms her breast and squeezes.
Her hips bear down on his, bringing him deeper with each thrust. The angle must be good for her, better than good because his hand has drifted from her clit and the air around them is already crackling, letting loose small silver sparks. He tightens his grip on her waist, leveraging their movements, fingertips brushing her lower belly where he can feel the edge of his cock moving in and out of her.
"Xaden—" Her hands reach back, finding purchase in his hair, the flex of his shoulder, his back, his neck. He tongues an open-mouthed kiss to her throat, all soft and exposed to him while lightning flashes sharp and white-hot overhead. He throws up the shadows just in time, and they gather, cloud-like, the prelude to a coming storm. For a moment light and dark seem to hold onto the other, neither giving nor taking, only twining together as one.
And for a moment, there is only this, only them—the sounds of their bodies sliding together, her gasps, his, and the crack of the thunder made a low, soothing rumble by the dark.
She drags a hand from his shoulder, down her own collarbone and then lower. The sight of it—gods—of her cupping her breast, touching herself as he moves with the whole weight of his body into hers—sends heat down his spine and fuck he feels it all over, a pleasure so intense it almost borders on agony.
He brings his hand up, enveloping hers, fingers weaving as their hips surge together, bodies pressing skin to skin. His breath has gone harsh against her throat, faltering in time with his thrusts. He buries himself in her, again and again, the sound of it almost obscene for how it makes him want her harder.
"You feel so"—fuck—"so fucking incredible." He mouths a kiss to the soft underside of her jaw before bringing his lips to her ear. "Violet—" Her name comes out ragged, his chest full and tight. He feels near to mindless with his desire for her, and he won't think on how much trouble he'll be in for this, not here, not now when she's writhing and perfect, so perfect, against him. "Need you to come for me."
"I—" The words seem to fail her. "I'm close," she tells him instead, her voice filling everything but the air that surrounds them, and he can feel the words, the promise in them, with every goddamn nerve of his body. "I'm—mm—"
Her lips find his for one more kiss before her head is falling back, all that glorious hair the mark of his downfall, and gods she takes his breath away as she comes, and comes, around his cock.
His own ache is building and tightening to something exquisite, something near to unbearable. He fucks and fucks into her until he's reached that edge of release, coming hard with a shuddering groan.
She's trembling against him, fingers spasming in his hair as he drags his cock out then back in, shallower pulses of movement, slower, riding out those last few waves before spending himself fully inside of her.
The air smells of petrichor as they collapse into the bed, boneless and fuckstruck, both breathing heavily into the storm clouds receding above them. They contained each other well; no damage this time. Not the kind that can be seen.
Reason is slowing returning to him, reason that had failed him the first time he kissed her, reason that had warned him not to stay. The moonlight in her window is growing fainter, and somewhere, he hears the first traitorous sounds of birdsong. Still, his hands roam Violet's velvet-smooth skin for a moment longer, gliding down her side to her hip, giving the back of her thigh a squeeze before traveling back up her torso. Fuck, she is so fucking soft.
He doesn't know how to leave her like this. But then—he's always been a fast learner.
Xaden kisses her shoulder, and she makes a small, contented sound, already halfway back to sleep in his arms.
"Rest now," he murmurs into her hair.
She shifts deeper into the mattress. "That was nice," she murmurs to him, and he almost lets himself smile.
He almost lets himself stay, just this once more.
He takes the long way there.
He avoids the stairs to the third years' quarters, though he really ought to go up and change. He can smell her on him still, the scent of her hair, of her skin, of—other things, the evidence of their coming together, the catastrophic intimacy of it, and it makes his cock twinge even now at the thought. At the memory of her, of them, of—fuck. Fuck. Get it the fuck together, Riorson.
The hallways are blessedly deserted, the mage lights but a dim source of glow as he skirts past open doorways, keeping to the darker shadows. If he's seen, he's not certain that this terrible tenderness deep in his chest won't be written all over his face as well.
When the first courtyard looms, he takes a sharp right, fingers finding just the right groove in the stone before pressing and slipping through to the tunnels. There, his pulse slows to something more manageable before he moves on.
The northernmost passageway spits him out onto a narrow expanse of flat ground. He crosses it in three strides, where it rises slightly before the plummet, the steep mountain face that leads down to the river.
The climb down is something of a relief, the wind and rock welcome for the way they bite into his skin. He finds new clarity in the pain, letting it carry him down, down, out of reach of the walls that never let him breathe except her. Those few stolen moments when nothing else exists to him but the way they only breathe for each other.
Gods, he needs to get her out of his head. Now is not the time. He needs to focus. He—
He should not be surprised when Sgaeyl's voice sounds in his head, making him scowl as he heads for the copse of old oak by the river.
"You slept well," she remarks.
He ignores this. "You're up early."
"Yes. Well," she says, almost primly, "I am a light sleeper, and you could exercise some restraint."
He cuts a path through the dense overgrowth, stems of things snagging his sleeves. He passes the edge of a clearing, where the dawn light has caught on a gathering of small purple blooms. He's early to meet the others, so he decides to allow it, the break in his step as the violets draw his gaze downward.
"I am perfectly restrained," he says, almost to himself.
He stoops to finger the petals, tracing their contours down to their stems. They're delicate things, looking so fragile dwarfed in his palm, but when the light hits them just so they seem to emit their own glow from within.
He glances up, examines the clearing; there are enough here to fill a room full of vases, but he thinks just one should do.
There's an archness to the way Sgaeyl's paused before finally speaking again. "Now you're going to be late."
He bends fully now, lowering himself into the long grass. He reaches for a flowering sprig, pulling it closer, breathing it in. "I know."