Chapter 765: On The Desk?* [Bonus - ]

Chapter 765: On The Desk?* [Bonus Chapter]

Her voice bounced off the stone walls and the glass of the bay windows, then hung in the air like a frozen thunderclap.

The whole office went silent.

Outside, the muffled beat of the forge hammers down in the valley carried on as if nothing had happened, but inside the study every other sound seemed to die.

Even the soft crackle of the hearth went quiet under the weight of what had just been screamed across the mahogany desk.

Silas sat frozen in his high-backed leather chair with his fingers still resting on the silver goblet of purple juice.

His dark blue eyes went wide, the faint gold ring around his pupils flashing with pure shock, and his mouth hung slightly open somewhere between a laugh and total disbelief.

’Did she just...?’ Silas thought, staring at the Elf princess trembling on his rug. ’Did Aeliana really just yell that at the top of her lungs at eight in the morning?’

In front of him, Aeliana stood as stiff as a statue carved from quartz.

Her long pointed ears were pinned flat against her blond hair, twitching in tiny frantic spasms.

Her hands were curled into fists against her white linen tunic, her knuckles pale, while a scorching crimson climbed from her collarbones up her slender throat and all the way to the tips of her ears until her pale skin looked almost feverish.

Her eyes were squeezed shut... For three full heartbeats, all she could hear was her own pulse pounding in her ears.

THUMP! THUMP!

The sheer terror of what she had blurted out threatened to pull the floor out from under her slippers.

...Still, the stubborn pride of a Royal Elf refused to let her curl into a ball and flee down the stairs.

’I need this...’

Slowly, Aeliana opened her silver-green eyes.

She forced her chin up, though her gaze stayed stubbornly fixed on a knot in the mahogany instead of his face, and her chest rose and fell in shallow shaky breaths.

"Y-you already did it with Lady Eluned," Aeliana stammered, rushing into her explanation before her courage could run away from her. "And with Lady Morwenna too! All night long... She told me! So of course... of course I want to experience it as well!"

Her right hand left her skirt, trembling as she raised it and jabbed one finger straight at his chest.

JAB!

"This is your fault, my Lord!" she declared, her eyes darting everywhere but his face, from the inkpot to the ledgers to the window. "You walk around the Keep without your armor, you talk to all of us so sweetly, and you leave your bedroom door unlatched at night! You have completely ruined my peaceful mind! And also..."

She swallowed hard.

Her left hand drifted behind her back on its own and clutched at the pocket where she kept her notebook of handwritten manuscripts.

"And also... I write smut," she admitted in a tiny voice, before her ears shot up and the words came tumbling out. "So I need some practice to back up my theory! I cannot write it properly if I have never felt it myself! It would be dishonest! So this is... this is a necessity!"

She stood there panting, her finger still quivering in the air, bracing herself for a scolding, a confused rejection or at least a long lecture about decorum.

Silas blinked once then twice.

"Oh..."

He looked at the trembling elf, looked at her furiously twitching ears, then glanced down at the silver cup on his desk. With a slow, unhurried hand, he pushed the goblet to the side.

CLINK!

"Sure." Silas said.

The word came out so relaxed and so completely free of hesitation that Aeliana’s breath caught in her throat.

GASP!

She froze mid-argument, her mouth still shaped around the next three reasons she’d prepared.

Her silver-green eyes snapped wide and finally met his dark blue ones in pure bewilderment.

’Wait...’ Her thoughts screeched to a halt. ’So easy...? Just "sure"?! No lecture? No scolding about being a princess? He didn’t even hesitate!’

Her pointed ears perked straight up, quivering with confusion.

’I expected him to be much stricter!’ she thought, her fingers curling back into her palms. ’The announcement is this very morning! All the girls are waiting to hear who is moving into the Keep! Should he not send me off to gather them and tell me to focus? Is our Lord... by any chance... a pushover?’

Before she could make sense of how fast he’d agreed, Silas stood up from his leather chair.

The loose black robes shifted around his broad frame, the dark gray fur at the shoulders swaying as he stepped away from the desk.

He didn’t reach for her right away... Instead, he walked around the corner of the desk, his steps soft on the thick wool rugs, and stopped in front of the tall bay windows.

Outside, the mountain sky had turned a pale heavy gray. Soft silent flakes of snow were drifting down from the peaks, settling along the battlements and dusting the pines in white.

The northern wind rattled gently against the glass, carrying the sharp chill of winter in the high mountains.

Silas leaned one shoulder against the window frame and looked out over the frosted roofs of the workshops.

His breath fogged faintly on the glass as he crossed his arms over his chest.

"It looks freezing out there," Silas murmured, his voice low and warm with an easy teasing edge. "The frost’s already climbing the terrace walls. Honestly, Aeli... this sounds like a really nice way to warm up this morning. Aren’t you feeling a little cold?"

Aeliana’s lips pursed into a tight flustered line.

With starlight running through her blood, she didn’t feel the cold at all.

The frost could never bite into her skin, and the mountain wind could never chill her... She could have walked through a blizzard in a thin silk chemise and been perfectly fine.

And yet, looking at the broad outline of his shoulders against the falling snow, a sweet tremor ran down her spine.

Her stomach fluttered with a needy ache that made her knees go weak.

So she swallowed the truth, lowered her lashes and let a small delicate shiver run through her shoulders.

"I... well..." Aeliana mumbled, hugging her own ribs and trying her very best to look cold. "The drafts up here are quite bad today, Lord Sy. Maybe... maybe I am feeling a little bit cold after all."

Silas chuckled, a deep sound that seemed to fill the quiet study.

He turned away from the frosted glass and crossed the rug in two slow strides, closing the distance between them without the slightest hurry.

Aeliana’s eyes widened as his shadow fell over her.

"U... um."

Before she could step back or stammer out another excuse, Silas reached out with both hands.

His broad calloused palms settled around the narrow curve of her waist with his long fingers pressing through the soft linen of her tunic just above her hips.

GRASP!

A sharp breathless squeak escaped her lips.

"Ah...!"

Her breath hitched and her whole body went stiff as heat burst through every place his hands touched her.

The solid weight of his grip made her pulse hammer in her ears.

Her silver-green eyes locked onto his face, and her pupils grew so wide they nearly swallowed the green.

Up close, the gold ring in his dark blue eyes seemed to glow and it made her feel small and helpless in a way she didn’t hate at all.

She could feel the heat pouring off his chest, see the line of his collarbones peeking out of his open robes and sense the heavy vitality of his Mythic Gold Core pulsing in time with her racing heart.

Her body reacted before her mind could catch up... A slow warm wetness gathered between her thighs, and she pressed her knees together in pure panic.

’T-too close...’ Aeliana thought frantically, her toes curling inside her slippers. ’He is far too close! His hands are so big... they cover my whole waist! I can feel every rough ridge of his palms through my tunic! My heart is going to burst out of my chest! If he keeps looking at me like that, my knees are going to give out!’

Silas tilted his head slightly. His grip tightened just enough to draw her half an inch closer to his chest.

"Well, if you’re cold," Silas murmured, his thumb tracing a slow circle on the side of her hip, "let’s go to your room. It’ll be a lot more comfortable on a real bed, and we can lock the door..."

Aeliana’s cheeks flared a brighter red than dragon fire.

"N-no!" she gasped, her hands flying up to his chest to keep herself from falling into him.

Her palms landed on hard muscle beneath the fur-lined robes.

Silas blinked with his eyebrows rising. "No?"

"I don’t want to go to my room, Lord Sy!" Aeliana stammered, her ears twitching wildly. "For my... for my first time... I want to do it right here! On... on the desk!"

Silas stared at her, caught completely off guard.

His dark blue eyes drifted toward the big mahogany desk covered in ledgers, manifests and maps, then back to the blushing elf clutching the front of his robes.

"On the desk?" Silas repeated, an amused smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "Aeli, that’s solid mahogany, and half the territory’s accounts are spread across it... You sure you want your first time to be on top of a pile of paper?"

"Yes! Right there!" Aeliana insisted with a frantic nod, nibbling her lower lip while her fingers trembled against his chest.

The closet pervert who had spent a lot of time writing scandalous stories late at night rose straight to the surface and trampled her prim modesty flat... Just imagining it sent a wild thrill racing through her veins.

"Since this is my first time," Aeliana whispered, her voice dropping into a breathless tremble as she finally made herself look up at him, "I don’t want it soft or ordinary... I want to feel every single thing you do to me... I want the hard desk under my back and nothing to distract me, so I can remember every single feeling."

She took a quick ragged breath and added one more condition before her nerve could fail her.

"But only one round!" Aeliana declared, holding a single trembling finger up between their faces even as her knees knocked together under her skirt. "Only one! We have so much work to do today! The announcement has to happen within the hour, and we still need to check on Solenne and the rest, We can’t waste the whole morning!"

Silas let out a laugh.

His hands slid a little higher along her ribs until his thumbs rested just beneath the soft swell of her chest. "One round, huh? You think you’ll still be able to walk down to the barracks after?"

"I am your Archon, my Lord," Aeliana shot back with a flustered sniff, though her voice wobbled badly. "I am not as fragile as you think!"

Under the haughty act, though, her whole body was singing with anticipation.

Ever since that night, she’d been like this.

She had been in that closet... Through that gap she had seen her Lord and the rowdy pirate going at it all night long, until the first gray light of dawn crept over the skies of Central City.

She had seen every rough movement, heard every gasp and every creak of the bed, and she hadn’t been able to make herself walk away.

Aeli had spent a while tossing and turning in her own bed afterward, her skin burning under the sheets while her mind replayed it over and over... his strong hands, his gold-ringed eyes, the raw passion he gave the women under his banner.

She had been simmering ever since like a covered kettle over an open flame, and now, standing inside the warm circle of his arms in his own office, it had become a storm she couldn’t hold back.

She wanted this... She wanted his marks on her skin, his hands on her waist and the certainty that she belonged to him just as much as Eluned and Morwenna did...

Then a sudden terrifying thought cut through the warm haze in her head.

The office door behind them wasn’t locked.

The brass latch was resting in its groove, but Silas had never turned the key.

Any moment now the corridor outside would start to stir. Talira was probably still pacing around the second floor, looking for an excuse to see him.

Kaelia might send someone up with fresh breakfast rolls... Reina might come running up the stairs with news or something.

’What if we get caught...?’

The thought flashed through her like lightning and sent panic straight into her bones.

Her slender legs trembled even harder under her linen skirt with her knees knocking together so badly she had to grab Silas’s robes with both hands just to stay upright.

And yet, as the horror of being discovered in her Lord’s office washed over her, a deep wicked heat bloomed right at her core.

The forbidden thrill of it made her breath catch, her skin prickle with goosebumps and her chest heave with a wild longing.

Her body knew.

It knew with shameful certainty that if the door rattled... if someone knocked while Silas had her pinned across that desk... she would like it.

The danger of it would drive her beautifully mad.