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The first time Tharion sees Gwyneth Berdara feels a bit like the first time he ever breached the surface of the water. Ears ringing, breath caught in his chest. A sense that he needs to run - away, or towards, he’s not entirely sure.
He’s heard stories, of course. Of the way she had helped Bryce and Athalar and the Inter-Planetary Coalition during that final fight in Pangera. Of how she had sung and the walls of the Eternal City had crumbled down, of how the Nymphs had come when they heard her call.
Even after, when everything was done, the dust settled and the last of the bodies burned, Vanir all across Midgard talked about her - the danger of the mission, and how brave she’d been. How brave they’d all been.
Not Tharion, of course.
Tharion hadn’t even met her.
The River Queen had liked to remind him of that when he finally made it back. That when the fate of their world - of all worlds, really - had been decided, he had been in a cage, screaming and crying with no one to hear. Like a coward.
It might have been the last thing anyone in the Blue Court had ever told to him - how much of a coward he had been. He’s not entirely certain of that either. The world has been somewhat of a blur for a long time. Perhaps even before he had sworn himself to the Viper Queen.
Then he watches Gwyn move, and it’s like someone turned the volume all the way back up. Like being submerged in very cold water on a hot summer day.
It’s details that catch his eyes. The rich copper in her hair, glowing in the dim light. The pale skin of her wrists, the blue thrum of the veins there. The arch of her Cupid’s bow.
Tharion isn’t sure how long he spends staring, but by the time he returns to his task - making an inventory of all the potions in the Library’s newly converted apothecary wing, the room has cleared out almost entirely, leaving behind the two other faeries on his team, stacking boxes in a corner of the room, and Gwyn.
Who is walking towards him.
His grip on the wooden board he’s been writing on tightens, and he has to focus to not crack it in two.
“Tharion Ketos,” Gwyn sings, a warm smile on her face, arm stretched before her. “We finally meet.”
Tharion doesn’t take her hand. Instead, he stares at it, then looks behind him, stupidly, like he’s expecting to find another Tharion Ketos lurking behind, perhaps a long-dead version of himself who deserves to be addressed by beautiful females.
So stupid.
“Gwyneth Berdara,” he manages finally. He thinks he might be smiling as well, but he has no way of knowing for sure. His body feels like a separate entity. “What brings a hero like you down to the slums?” he continues, starting to scribble furiously on his board, right on top of the list he had already made. Fuck, he’s going to have to completely redo this part of the inventory.
“Be careful, Tharion, some people would take offense at you naming the greatest library in all of Prythian a slum.”
“Then I guess you can’t tell on me.”
When he looks up again, Gwyn’s eyes are on him, bright teal and sparkling.
It’s with a devious grin that she says “Barely met me, and already asking me to keep your secrets. I guess it’s true what they say about you.” Tharion feels a cold current starting to creep down his spine, pooling into his belly. His jaw tenses.
“Yeah? What do they say?”
“That you’re a very interesting person. Lots to discover.” It sounds easy, no darkness hiding under the surface of her words. No mockery in her eyes. When she takes a step closer, it feels like she wants to crack him open and look inside.
It’s no wonder to Tharion that it took a female like her to bring down an empire as old as time.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing for her to see here. Hasn’t been in a while.
“I fear I’m going to have to disappoint you, Freckles,” he says and steps away, looking at one of the shelves he’s already examined.
“I’m not easy to disappoint,” she replies, lips still curled beautifully over her teeth. It makes Tharion want to eat himself up, all the way to the bone, all the way back to a version of himself that’s not thoroughly fucked up. If that ever existed.
Here is a beautiful female with eyes like a stormy sea, and she is sweet, and good - he knows she is good, because she helped save the world mere months ago, and for some unknown reason she seems to want to be his friend, to talk to him like a normal person.
A normal person.
But Tharion knew a female with eyes like the sea before all of this. He had promised to love her, and instead, he hurt her, and he fucked up his life, and almost ruined everyone else’s too. He knows how this goes.
“Yeah, well, I do it better than the rest. What can I do for you, Gwyn?”
When he turns to face her again, jaw squared, it’s the first time he sees her hesitate.
“I—I wanted to ask you for your help.”
Oh. Well.
“What could I possibly do for you?”
Tharion sounds like an asshole, and he knows it, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s better not to give her any false hope. After all, he was even able to trick himself into thinking he was one of the good guys.
Gwyn hesitates again, only for a second. The sparkle in her eye doesn’t dim.
“Okay. There is a colony of River Nymphs. They lived in the Spring and Autumn Courts before, but, well. They’ve relocated to the Night Court for now, but it’s been—rough. On all of them. I don’t know how to help, Feyre’s tried too but—Anyway, we thought it’d be better to have one of their own to help. I know merpeople are different, but you know water faeries and—”
“No.”
“I—no?”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what it would entail. I didn’t even tell you what the problem is!”
“Sorry, Freckles. I don’t need to know. I can’t help you.”
There is a hint of red creeping up Gwyn’s cheeks, and on everyone else, it’d look like the blushing indignation of a young girl. Instead, Gwyn looks like a warrior, the air crackling around her, hair almost floating, glowing in the light of the sconces. If up until now she felt like water, now she’s all fire.
“Can’t, or won’t?” she asks, and this time it sounds like a knife.
“Does it matter?”
Gwyn looks him up and down, and it makes Tharion want to hide.
Coward.
“I guess it doesn’t.”
***
The next time Tharion sees Gwyn, he feels prepared to face her. After all, he knew about the dinner for days. Knew who’d be there. What they’d eat. Where they’d sit. The kind of details he needs to ask nowadays before showing up anywhere.
He quickly finds out he was wrong.
The dining room of the House of Wind, large and airy and thoughtfully decorated, fades away when she walks in, followed closely by Emerie and Morrigan. Tharion doesn’t look at them. Not because he’s trying to be an ignorant jerk, at least not this time, but because his eyes are glued to Gwyn’s mouth, the way it curls over her teeth as she says hello - or at least he thinks she does, he can’t hear anything over his thumping heartbeat.
Tharion hasn’t touched water more than he’s had to since losing his fins, but he imagines this is what it must feel like to be drowning, something battling and burning inside his chest, all his muscles tense.
Gwyn looks straight at him, and he suspects she’s able to read his thoughts, she has to be, there is no other reason why she would be walking the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip like that.
Of course, there’s also the fact that this evening, Gwyn looks like a mermaid.
She’s wearing a dress the color of sea foam, with crystals so fine beaded into the silky material that it looks just like water in the light. It hangs off her shoulders and falls down to her calves, cinched at the waist, and when she walks towards the dining table it seems to float around her, the many translucent layers of the skirt moving in the breeze, one freckled leg visible through the thigh-high slit.
It’s the most beautiful piece of clothing Tharion’s ever seen, and he wants to rip it to shreds with his teeth, to taste the skin it hides.
He thinks Cassian must be talking to him, and he should be listening, he should be a good guest, he should—
“Close your mouth, fish.” It’s Nesta’s piercing voice that breaks through the haze. She and Cassian are both watching him, her with something between pity and exasperation, Cassian closer to amusement.
When he tries to come up with some sort of retort, Tharion finds his mouth completely dry, his palms sweaty.
Nesta rolls her eyes, ignores the very unsubtle elbow to her side from Cassian, who is now struggling to swallow a laugh.
“Come on,” she says. “Dinner is ready, and I am famished.”
Tharion doesn’t miss the heated glance Nesta and Cassian share when they sit down, the way their fingers brush in passing. It makes the ever-present ache behind his ribs sharpen.
For all the loving welcome he’s received to the Night Court, it’s often just as hard to be here as it had been back in Lunathion. All it takes is one look at Rhysand and Feyre and Nyx, or Cassian and Nesta, or Azriel and Eris, all these people who fought for the ones they loved, to want to hide forever.
Around them, everyone is rebuilding. Taking the broken pieces and trying to make a life out of it again. Sticking together in spite of everything they’ve lost. Because of everything they’ve lost.
Around them, fae and humans alike proving that, through love, all is possible.
He had thought he was in love, once - or maybe he hadn’t, and he had known he was lying from the very beginning. If only he hadn’t been so broken, so unable to love the River Queen’s daughter, he wouldn’t have ended up as a puppet to the Viper Queen, he wouldn’t have cost so many lives, he would’ve done something, he would’ve—
He hadn’t. He had fucked up again and again, like a child, like a coward, forced to live with the memory of everything he wasn’t and couldn’t do, and so he had to leave. He came to Prythian, only to discover there are some demons he can’t outrun.
It’s thoughts like these that continue to swirl around in his head and push on the back of his eyelids as they sit down, as they make it through the first and second and third course, that make the food feel like cotton in his mouth.
Tharion thinks Cassian and Nesta might be eyeing him, but he doesn’t bother making conversation. They’re the ones who asked him to dinner. They should’ve known better than to invite a ghost into their house. Known that rot spreads to every living thing.
They’re somewhere between the first and the second type of desert when someone addresses him directly for the first time.
“So, you’re going to be joining Gwyn for the council meeting with the River Nymphs, Tharion?” It’s Emerie’s voice that brings him back to the present moment, and he can feel the mood of the room shift almost instantaneously.
He had almost managed to forget, had purposefully tried not to give Gwyn’s request much thought after he had left the library that day almost a month ago. She is staring at the floral arrangement at the center of the table, and he can tell this is something she doesn’t want to discuss either.
Tharion tries to catch Cassian’s eye, but he is focused on Nesta. Who is watching him, eyes burning.
“Tharion finds himself too busy at the time. Right, Ketos?”
It’s not real malice behind her words, Tharion knows that. He knows Nesta, or at least he thinks he does. She’s the first person to have talked to him like a real person and not a total nut case when he arrived from Midgard. She knew what it meant to run away. She’d had memories of her own to untangle and bury.
What Nesta doesn’t get is that she and Tharion aren’t the same. Nesta’s a wolf, a fighter, which is maybe why she managed to pull herself out of that hole, why she’s waiting for Tharion to do the same.
Most people look at him with pity or resignation. Nesta is the only one who has expectations. And right now, not only does it baffle him, it pisses him off.
“I think I’m more useful at the refugee camp here,” Tharion answers, closed fists resting atop his thighs.
“I think that’s bullshit.”
No one looks at Nesta when she speaks. They’re all looking at Tharion, except Gwyn, who’s still staring straight ahead, like she doesn’t want to hear his explanation, and he wants to scream that he doesn’t want to offer one anyway.
He’s too tired of having to cut himself open for the world to see. He doesn’t have it in him to mend the gashes again.
“I don’t answer to you, Nesta Archeron. Rhysand and I have a deal, he knows what I do here, and how I help.”
“That’s what you tell yourself, that you’re helping?” She sounds almost hurt, and Tharion wishes she just let him be.
“I do my best.” Tharion thinks the others might be able to hear the crunch of his teeth.
“That’s bullshit, and you and I both know it.”
“You know nothing, Nesta.”
“Nes, let’s have this talk—” Cassian tries, but it’s too late to stop this.
“I know you’re acting like a fucking coward.”
A coward.
Well, well.
Look who’s made it back from whatever rat cage they were keeping you in.
I’d say what a triumph, but nothing about you crawling back here impresses me, Tharion Ketos.
Maybe if you weren’t so much of a coward, you’d be here in your true form.
Tell me, where are your fins, Tharion? Your gills?
Do the scars hurt?
They say they always do.
They say you’ll always feel the pull of the water.
Good.
I want them to remind you how much of a coward you were.
“Fuck you,” Tharion spits.
He doesn’t look back as he storms out, and by the time he makes it down the ten thousand steps, his ragged breathing is almost enough to drown out the voices.
***
Tharion is nothing if not surprised to be invited to the House of Wind again. After all, he cursed the lady of the house at her own dining table, stormed out, and failed to show up for his shifts for days.
People in Prythian are more forgiving than he deserves.
It also helps that it’s Starfall, the citizens of Velaris bleeding in and out of the many balconies carved into the rock.
He used to know a lot about this type of event. All kinds of official functions and celebrations, really. Tharion Ketos, Captain of Intelligence and Blue Court golden boy. Now he knows a lot about hiding in plain sight.
Tharion feels her pull minutes before he sees her, like an itch climbing up through his veins, all the way to his heart. A milky light leading him through the sea of people, up the stairs to the uppermost terrace, where the wind is louder, and the heat of the dying sun warmer.
She’s dressed in that same gods-damned dress that she wore to the dinner he ruined, and up here, so close to the sky, she looks like pure light, the expanse of her skin like a map. Tharion wants to follow it, see where it all leads.
Gwyn turns around like she feels it too, this tide threatening to undo all his balance, and then he’s there, in front of her, far enough not to cause an irreparable sequence of events, but close enough that he has to look down at her face, the glitter in her eyes reflected on her dress, on her skin.
It takes but a moment for reality to sweep in. For Tharion to remember where he is, who he isn’t, how far she went to save them all, that they’ve talked for all of two times, and that for all intents and purposes, the entirety of their acquaintance has been about him disappointing her.
He steps to her right, leaning back against the railing, hoping that not seeing her eyes will make this easier. The skin of her thigh, of her arm, is pressing warmly against his side.
“You came,” Gwyn offers instead of hello.
“Sure. I was surprised to be invited, but who am I to refuse a party?” He hopes it sounds light and fun and that maybe this time he’ll actually make a better impression.
Gwyn lets out a breathy laugh. “Of course you’re invited, Tharion. Everyone basically thinks of you as family. It’s you who doesn’t usually want to be here.”
When Tharion laughs it doesn’t feel funny. It feels sad, and a bit mean, and he doesn’t know why he can’t manage to just be normal around her.
“Come on, Freckles. You know that’s not true,” he says, a bit more miserably than he intended. “You, the High Lord, Cassian—everyone’s been more than gracious, and I remain forever grateful, but we all know they let me be here because they feel like they owe it. Not even to me, but to Bryce, and Athalar, and the rest.”
She steps away from the railing until she’s standing in front of him again, so close that Tharion can smell the light radiating off of her skin. There’s a lone freckle on her right temple, a crinkle by her eye when she smiles.
“Why do you do this?” Gwyn asks. Beneath pale lashes, her gaze looks determined, powerful, her delicate frame nothing but a ruse, an invitation to get too close. Tharion knows Gwyneth Berdara isn’t a lady in distress. She’s a weapon.
“Do what?”
“Talk about yourself like you’re no one. To your friends. To us.”
“What am I to you, Gwyneth? You don’t know me.” He wants the words to bite, and for her not to realize just how afraid he is.
There’s the faintest blush to her cheeks when she says “We fought a war together, Tharion.”
Something in him freezes, the oh-so-familiar humiliation icing its way down to his extremities, until he can no longer feel his fingers.
Coward.
“You fought a war. I was rotting in a cage.”
“It’s not your fault that—”
“Don’t! Don’t fucking start! I left my fins in there. My entire fucking life.” His hands start shaking as his voice grows louder, and it feels like something was let loose inside of his chest. “And I can't even mourn the loss, because it’s the least anyone has lost. I wasn’t—fucking—there.”
The weight of Gwyn’s stare is too much for him to bear, the sadness and that something else, too big to name. He turns around and hears the stone crack when he puts his hands on it. The ground looks so far away from up here, and Tharion wonders what it’d be like to let it swallow him up.
He doesn’t realize how fast he’s breathing until he feels Gwyn’s hand on his back. He thinks she might be talking to him, can see her lips moving from the corner of his eye, but he can’t hear anything over his thundering heartbeat. Beneath them, the people and the lights have become a blur.
Tharion has no idea how long it is before he can blink away the tears. Little by little, the contours of the world sharpen. Gwyn’s hand is still on his back.
He feels like he should say something, do something to revive their casual party conversation, except this never was that, and he’s only good at breaking things, not mending.
“It happens to me too,” Gwyn says, her whisper audible above the music and the laughter. “The panic attacks.”
“This wasn’t a panic attack,” Tharion offers unconvincingly.
“Alright, big guy. Call it what you want,” she laughs sorrowfully. “Here’s a piece of advice, though: it all gets a bit easier once you manage to forgive yourself. Not easy, none of this shit is, ever. But you have enough to carry without the added burden of self-loathing.”
Tharion wonders if Gwyn can feel how small of a male he is. Her hand is still on his back, and this close, he can see the blue in her eyes move, like a spell, like a storm, like the sea.
He laughs, but it sounds more like something is breaking.
“I’m not a hero, Gwyn. I don’t get to decide I’m done being guilty of all I’ve done.”
“Who does, then?” She looks sad, the way one does when the pain is familiar, and still not fully healed, like these are all questions she still sleeps next to.
He doesn’t have any answers.
All around him, life goes on in spite of the wreckage, and he’s still in that damn cage.
Gwyn seems to read it in his eyes, and her hand moves away from his back for the first time, to his cheek. It’s warm and soft, and Tharion hates himself for the way he can’t help but lean into it. He wants, stupidly, for her to take him away, to shield him from the world, and he knows how selfish it makes him, he knows all that she’s been through and that he has no right to her. He wants her anyway.
“The kind of forgetting you came here looking for, you won’t find it. You have to create it for yourself. To fight for it. To think you’re worth it. The people who love you already do.”
The people who love you.
It’s through a haze that Tharion can see his past - his life in the Blue Court, and the River Queen’s daughter, and then the Frat House, and Bryce.
He’s not really sure what they think of him, especially not after all the shit he’s put them through, but they’re the ones he thinks of when he thinks about love.
“They’re all better off forgetting about me,” Tharion says, and it bring back the fire to Gwyn’s gaze.
“That’s what you think? That you’ve crossed the Rift and so now they’re living their lives without giving you any thought?”
Her hand travels lower, down his neck, to the center of his chest.
“Tharion, you might have chosen to hide, but I’ve worked with Nesta, Eris, and Rhysand on communication between the Inter-Planetary Coalition, especially with Midgard. Bryce, and Hunt, and Ithan, and Ruhn. All of them. There’s not a single letter they’ve sent where they don’t ask about you. Not a single one.”
The thing in Tharion’s chest lurches and then gives out a sob. Gwyn’s hand stays put.
“They’re waiting, Tharion. They love you. But you have to decide if you can let them.”
***
Tharion’s just finished paying for his almond scones when Gwyn walks into the Bluebird Cafe.
It’s the first time he’s come out to eat in Velaris, and there’s a part of his brain that tells him he should be punishing himself instead of spending thirty minutes choosing pastries. He’s trying to learn to ignore it.
Gwyn is laughing, the sound like a siren song, so tender Tharion would follow it straight to ruin. He says hello, and waves, and maybe some other thing that he’s not fully conscious of. When he leaves, he feels Gwyn’s eyes follow him all the way back onto the street.
Out in the sunlight, he opens the box, chucks an entire scone into his mouth, chews it with his eyes closed. As he goes to wipe the crumbs off his face, he’s surprised to feel the timid curl of a smile.
***
Gwyn seems to be glowing in the early evening light when Tharion meets her by the Sidra. Clad in her Illyrian leathers, a few strands of hair escaping her braid, she looks every bit the warrior she is. The Valkyrie. The Carynthian.
She smiles and tells him about the new rounds of training they’re organizing as she passes him the stack of letters, about all the new members who showed up, and how much they’re enjoying it. It makes the weight of the parchment in his hand lighter, somehow. He doesn’t dare to look at them yet, but it feels like it’s at least a couple of months' worth of messages.
When her fingers lingers on his wrist, he lets his thumb brush over them. Then he goes home and reads, and bleeds, and mends.
***
It’s only a short carriage ride to get to the ocean from Velaris. Tharion knows he could’ve asked Feyre or Mor to winnow him, but it was important that he came by himself.
It’s so different from the Istros, from the beauty of the Blue Court, but when he gets close enough that his toes touch the calm expanse of the water, it hurts just the same.
Tharion breathes in the salt and sunshine, lets his ankles sink into the wet sand. When the familiar urge to walk in and become one with the waves rolls in, he lets it wash over him. Lets the tightness in his chest arrive, and linger. Lets the tears fall down his cheeks, into his mouth.
His hands are shaking when he touches the sides of his neck, beneath his ears, the place where his gills used to be.
The River Queen had been right, the phantom pain never really leaves him.
He breathes in. Waits until the sun is kissing the surface of the water and the wind has picked up. He thinks maybe there is some way to learn to live with it.
***
“She has got to be kidding me with that dress,” Tharion mutters to himself, flames licking up his back, his throat.
Summer is in full swing, and in spite of the cooling spells, the heat of hundreds of moving bodies make the inside of the club feel a bit like a sauna. Almost a year after first arriving to Velaris, he finally finds himself at Rita’s, the group’s favorite establishment. It doesn’t feel normal yet, but he hopes that, in time, it could.
Azriel and Eris are perched on bar stools next to him, and Tharion thinks they might be exchanging confused glances, but he can’t bring himself to look at them.
Not with Gwyn standing in the entrance, looking otherworldly in her sea foam dress, the strobe light dancing on her skin. He tries his best to quash, quash, quash the desire, the thirst, but he’s always been a weak male, and Gwyn looks like everything he’s ever wanted.
Then she smiles at him, and something unspools in his very core, a golden thread traveling through the sea of people, across the dance floor.
He doesn’t know if she moves first or he does, a vague Ketos, what are you doing, our shots are here and a Mor and Cassian are waiting at the booth barely audible behind him, but then he’s in front of her, in the middle of the crowd, and there are all the reasons for which he should step away, and somehow he can’t remember why they matter.
For the first time in years, maybe ever, he’s just a guy in a bar.
Not the asshole who’s taken advantage of the River Queen’s daughter, not the defecting Captain of Intelligence, not the war prisoner.
Just a guy and a girl, and the music all around them, and the storm under their skin.
“Hi, Freckles.”
She laughs, and Tharion decides he wouldn’t mind spending eternity chasing the sound.
“Hi yourself.”
“You know, this thing is only going to work if you stop stalking me. I’m sure the great Gwyneth Berdara can do better,” he says, hoping it’s not obvious he’s looking at her mouth, the freckle on her chin.
“This thing?” she asks, one eyebrow raised.
“You know, you and I helping the River Nymphs, and the Wraiths, and all the other water creatures you’re interested in.”
There’s no hint of surprise on Gwyn’s face, only the softest smile. “Is that so?” she whispers, getting closer. The tops of her cheeks are red, her lips wet. She smells like sunshine and forget-me-nots, and underneath it all, like desire.
“Well, I can’t continue calling myself a gentleman if I don’t help a lady in need.” She chuckles , and elbows him in the ribs, and the pain reminds him that she’s a Valkyrie and he hasn’t trained in months.
“So that’s all this is, then?” Her words are quiet, but they travel all the way behind Tharion’s ribs, make a home there.
Tharion catches her wrist, feels the thrumming pulse beneath. When she looks up through her lashes, more sincere than ever, he feels a growl gathering in his throat.
“What do you want it to be?”
She’s so close he can feel her breathing.
Then her hand is in his hair, and her lips are on his, soft and wet, and the music’s stopped. Maybe the whole world has. There is only her touch, warm like fire, and the moan she pours into his mouth when he pulls her even closer, and the buttery silk of the dress under her fingers. In his ears, a joint heartbeat.
Gwyn steps away first, lips red and swollen. She’s glowing. Behind them, Tharion thinks he can hear their friends cheering, or laughing, or saying something like fucking finally or get a room.
“What do you want it to be?” he asks again, and hopes she understands that the choice is hers, always hers, that Tharion is honestly done for. He’ll give her anything she asks.
She doesn’t answer him. Instead, she grabs his hand and pulls him through the crowd, down the stairs, all the way to the club’s bathroom. Her hand shakes when she locks the door behind them, and Tharion closes his own over it. Turns her around slowly, cups her cheek.
Down here, the light is dimmer and the music farther away, but the bass is pulsing through the walls, through his veins.
“What do you want?” he whispers again, and she’s already pulled him to the sink, already bit his lip when she breathes out “You.”
Her hands are still shaking as she clings to him, but when Tharion pulls back, there is nothing but determination on her face.
Tharion claims her mouth, hands roaming down her arms, her back. He’s already unbelievably hard, but he wants—he needs this to be about what she wants. He needs to make her feel good.
When his fingers brush the underside of her breast through the thin material of her dress, she arches into him. He pulls her hair, just enough to expose her throat, and he kisses her with teeth, licks the bead of sweat that runs down the side of her neck, drinks in the moans that grow louder the harder he bites.
You’re beautiful, he whispers in the dip of her collarbone.
You’re so brave, he kisses down her chest.
You’re perfect, as he pushes down the strap of her dress and pulls it down.
Gwyn’s grip grows ferociously tight when he takes a nipple into his mouth and bites it lightly.
“Tharion,” she whispers, followed by “more.”
Beneath the silk and glittery chiffon, his fingers find her hot and wet for him, and Tharion stops, looks for permission in her eyes before swallowing her assent and sinking two fingers into her, thumb working her clit.
Around them, their pants echo off the bathroom walls, mix with the sound of the bass. The mirrors already fogged up, Gwyn like live fire under his hands.
You’re perfect, he kisses between her breasts, fingers still tangled in her hair.
When she reaches down and cups him through his pants, he thinks he might just come on the spot, like a fucking teenager. The movement of his thumb grows faster, his fingers curling inside her.
Perfect, perfect, perfect, he’s not sure if he says the words or thinks them, his every nerve ending on fire, overwhelmed by Gwyn’s scent, and her mouth, and the way she clenches around him.
Then she’s coming on his fingers, back arching, her pulse under his teeth, and he’s working her through it, his hand soaking wet, until she grabs his hand, stills it inside her.
“Perfect.” He doesn’t even think about his own arousal, leaking in his pants.
The kiss she gives him then is slower, filled with something different. When she rests her forehead against his, their noses brushing, the intensity of their shared breath, ragged and loud, wraps around him.
“Is this all this is then?” he echoes Gwyn’s question from earlier, but their faces are both stretched into equally dumb smiles, and he already knows. His fingers are still inside her, her walls fluttering from the pleasure.
“Of course not,” she whispers, and her voice is rough. “We have Nymphs, and wraiths, and a plethora of other water creatures to help.” She smiles into a soft kiss.
“And then?”
She brushes her fingers over Tharion’s cheeks, then lower, over the scars beneath his ears. Like this, he finds they hurt a bit less. “Then, we can do whatever you want.”
It’s not a promise, but it sounds like the beginning of one, and for the first time in a while, Tharion finds himself looking forward to discover where it leads.
“Good,” he says. “We need to start by getting you out of this dress.”