Chapter 280: The Morning Breasts Worship

Hers, Draeven answered.

A long, thoughtful silence.

"Ours," the dragon said at last.

He smiled in the dark.

Through the triplet bond, faint and far away, he felt his brothers. Kaelen was asleep, snoring, drunk and happy, GLACIUS curled around him like a cat. Thorne was awake. Of course he was. He lay on his back in the dark, hands behind his head, NOCTYS coiled and quiet, and when Draeven brushed against him through the link, he felt a single warm, wry, unmistakable pulse.

"Well done," it said. Brother.

Draeven closed his eyes.

Go to sleep, Thorne.

I’m going.

You’re not.

No, Thorne admitted. But I’m trying.

He felt the faint curve of a smile through the bond, and then Thorne withdrew, leaving only a lingering warmth.

Two of three, Draeven thought, has become three of three.

Three dragons. Three bonds. One girl asleep in his arms who did not yet know what she was.

Bonded is not bound, Astraea had said.

He turned the words over in the dark, as he had all evening. The ritual was still ahead. The council was still splitting. Carrick still sat in the palace, writing his letters. A mask was cracking, and somewhere in the world a thing that had waited two thousand years was beginning to feel the light.

He did not know how long they had.

But he knew what he held.

He tightened his arm around her, gently, and felt her stir and settle against him, and sigh. Her hand found his and curled around his fingers in her sleep.

Choose, Astraea had said. It cannot be taken. Only offered.

She had come to his door in the dark in her slippers and her robe and asked to come in. She had knocked.

He lay awake and watched the first grey light creep across the window, silver on the glass, and the last thin traces of frost melting off the panes.

***

*THE NEXT MORNING*

She woke to heat.

It was the first thing she knew, before light or sound or thought. A slow, wet, burning heat closed around her nipple, and drew, and let go, and closed around it again. It rolled through her in lazy waves from her breast down to her belly, and she moaned in her sleep and arched toward it before she understood that she was awake.

Her eyes opened.

Grey light. A tall window, pale with dawn. The sky beyond it was the color of pearl, streaked at one edge with the faintest rose, and the glass was beaded with frost at the corners. She was warm. She was naked. She was sitting upright on something firm and hot, with her knees bent on either side of a pair of hard thighs and her hands resting limply on a pair of bare shoulders.

And Draeven’s mouth was on her breast.

He had not noticed she was awake. His eyes were closed. His head was bent, his dark hair falling across his forehead, and he was kissing her slowly, almost sleepily, the way a man kisses something he has been given and cannot believe is real. His lips moved over the curve of her breast, and his tongue traced a long slow circle around the nipple, and he sighed against her skin, a soft contented sound.

"Draeven," she said.

He froze.

His mouth lifted at once. His eyes snapped open, gold and startled, and he looked up at her with an expression so guilty that she almost laughed. His hands, which had been spread across her back, went still.

"You’re awake."

"I think I am." Her voice was thick with sleep. She blinked down at him. "Where are we?"

"The chair." He cleared his throat. "By the window. I woke an hour ago and couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake you, so I carried you here. I thought....the sunrise...." He stopped. His ears had gone red. "I was only going to hold you."

"That isn’t holding."

"No."

"You were...."

"I know what I was doing." He tried to look dignified, and failed. "I lost the argument with myself. I’m sorry. I stopped as soon as you moved. You can go back to sleep. I’ll put you back in the bed, and I won’t...."

Morgana put a hand on the back of his head and pulled his mouth down to her breast.

He made a muffled, startled sound.

For a moment he held rigid. Then she felt his whole body soften beneath her, and a deep shudder ran through him, and his arms came up around her waist. His mouth opened. His tongue found her nipple, and he sucked, slow and deep, and she sighed and let her head fall back.

"That," she murmured, "is what I want."

He lifted his head just enough to speak, his lips brushing her skin.

"Are you certain?"

"You asked me that last night."

"I’m asking again."

"Yes." She smiled sleepily. "I’m certain. I woke up and the first thing I felt was your mouth, and I thought, oh, good."

He laughed, low and broken, against her breast.

"You’ll be the death of me," he said.

"Possibly."

"Morgana...."

"Hush," she said. "Keep going."

He did.

It was the softest thing she had ever felt. There was no urgency in it, no hunger. The night had burned that out of both of them. This was something slower and sweeter, a languid kind of worship. His mouth moved over her breasts with an unhurried thoroughness. He licked a slow path from one nipple to the other. He kissed the underside of her breast, and the pale skin over her ribs, and the hollow of her throat, and came back to her nipple again, and drew it into his mouth with a deep wet pull that made her toes curl.

She sank her fingers into his hair.

The light crept slowly across the floor. Somewhere in the courtyard below, a bucket clanked, and a voice called, and was answered. The palace was waking. She did not care. She sat in his lap with her eyes half closed and let him love her, and the warmth of the morning moved through her like honey.

"You’re hard," she said, a little breathlessly.