Gleam (The Plated Prisoner Series Book 3)

by Raven Kennedy

  “I take it you and Lu had no trouble coming out here?” Slade asks me.

  Using the snow at my feet, I wipe my hands the best I can before I hold them up to the fire to thaw them out. “No. Nice trick she has, by the way.”

  “It is,” he replies simply before taking a drink from his cup and stretching out his legs in front of him.

  “Do all of your Wrath have tricks?”

  He gives me a mischievous look. “Guess you’ll have to find out.”

  One glance at Osrik still mauling his food and I’m not sure I want to know.

  Lowering my voice, I ask, “Do they...know?”

  Amusement dances in his eyes. “Do they know what exactly? That we...”

  “No,” I hiss, darting a look at the others. Luckily, they’re occupied with making fun of Judd about something.

  Slade grins, and I know the ass did it on purpose. The fact that Fake Rip might or might not have heard some things is embarrassing enough as it is. “Not that. Do they know that you change coats?” I ask pointedly.

  He snorts. “Yes, they know I change forms. They’re the only ones, apart from you.”

  Emotion swells in my chest like water soaked up into a sponge, until I’m saturated with a flattered sense of humbling pride that he let me into his small circle of people who he trusts with his secret.

  “Poor guy, huh?” Judd cuts in, proving that they are, in fact, eavesdropping. “Has to choose between spikes coming out of his ass, or magic lines down his...unmentionables.”

  My brows pull together in a frown. “He doesn’t have magic lines on his—” I cut myself off, but it’s too late. Lu chokes on her wine.

  Judd barks out a laugh. “Ha! Told you!” he exclaims, slapping his knee with delight. “Pay up, Os.”

  Mortified, I bury my face into my hands. “Oh goddess.”

  “Don’t feel too bad, Gildy,” Judd tells me. “We always know everything about everything. I even know how many times Os takes a shit every day.” Osrik shoots him a glare. “Four, in case you were wondering.”

  Gross.

  “I wasn’t,” I mumble against my hands, still keeping my face buried in them. It seems safer, considering the direction of the conversation.

  “Hey, Judd?” Slade calls, and I peek out from between my fingers.

  He perks up, looking pleased with himself. “Yeah, Commander?”

  “Shut up.”

  A quick nod precedes Judd’s cheerful reply. “Yep, will do.”

  I laugh against my palms until Slade’s firm fingers wrap around mine and tug them away from my face. “Don’t mind Judd. He can’t help but be an unendurable prick.”

  “It’s true,” Lu chirps. “He thrives on it.”

  “Yeah, but I keep you lot entertained,” Judd defends.

  Shaking my head, I turn back to Slade and look him over cautiously. “So...just to be clear, you don’t have a spike that comes out of your ass, right?”

  Lu, Judd, and Osrik all howl in laughter.

  Slade just sighs. “No ass spikes to speak of.”

  Bright side.

  “So, are you still glad you came out to camp?” Lu asks with a smirk on her face.

  “Apart from all the ass and shit talk? Definitely,” I reply, and the others grin at me, as if that was the right thing to say.

  The easygoing camaraderie between them all is visceral, filling me with a sense of comfortable friendship that I’ve never experienced before in my life. There’s no underlying bitterness or competitiveness in the way they joke with one another. There’s no sense of jealousy or resentment. Instead, there’s an intense certainty about them. As if they’re family, that they know each other inside and out, and even when they’re mocking or joking, I can feel the loyalty they have for one another.

  “So, you’re Rip tonight,” I note, looking over the spikes jutting up from Slade’s uniform.

  “I am.” He glances down as two of my ribbons start toying with the laces of his boot, and his lips quirk. “Little flirts.”

  I shrug, because I give up on trying to hold back the cheeky things. “Do you change forms a lot?” I ask curiously.

  “Sometimes it’s necessary. But other times, I do it when I don’t feel like being the king and dealing with everything that comes with it.”

  “It’s like an escape for you.”

  He nods. “It’s not always easy being King Rot,” he replies sardonically, but I can see the edge of bitter truth to that, and my heart aches for him. I can’t imagine what he carries on his back as not only a monarch, but a feared one. Sometimes even a despised one.

  “I can understand that. I actually envy it,” I admit quietly, watching my ribbons continue to twirl around his shoes and ankles playfully. “If I could stop being the gold girl even just for a night, I’d jump at the chance to not be me.”

  Slade’s finger and thumb suddenly come up to grip my chin, and he pulls my face to look at him, his intense eyes boring into me. “Never say that,” he rumbles, the timbre of his voice pitched in firm demand. “The world would be a dreary place without your light.”

  My chest constricts, something warm scattering over me with the brush of his thumb.

  “Shit,” Judd says in a groan. “Rip is being fucking cute, and it’s making me want to vomit.”

  Another sigh passes through Slade’s lips as he drops his hold from my chin. “Hey, Lu?”

  “Yeah, Commander?”

  “Smack Judd for me.”

  Quicker than Judd can dodge, she smacks him on the back of the head, making him grunt. “Ow! Why are you so violent?”

  Lu flashes him a grin that’s all teeth. “Because it makes me happy.”

  I can’t stifle the laugh that bubbles out of me.

  “Come on, Mustard,” Osrik grunts as he gets to his feet, yanking up Judd by his sleeve. “Let’s go find some more wine for Lu. She’s always much nicer after she has a few pints.”

  “That’s true,” she agrees.

  The three of them wander off, and then it’s just Spikey Slade and me alone in the company of a wisping fire with fingers that taper up toward the icy sky.

  “So...Goldfinch.” His voice has gone gravelly and decadent, his dark aura coiling around me. The look he gives me is both indulgent and sensual, and it makes my stomach spark with embers of heat. “Now that we’re alone, what should we do?”

  The words may be a question, but his voice already has the answer, and it matches mine.

  A coy smile appears on my face. “I have a few ideas.”

  Chapter 36

  AUREN

  I don’t know who kisses who first, but our lips come together in a clash of craving. It’s both cold from the winter air and hot from the heat of the campfire, the temperatures warring as much as our drive to fulfill the lust pumping in our veins.

  Slade cradles the back of my head, fingers digging into the strands of my hair like he wants to dig deeper into me, keeping me against his mouth so that he can have his way with mine.

  And he does.

  His dominant hold tilts my head right where he wants me so his tongue can sweep in further, as if he’s drinking me in.

  When I pull away to take in a breath, he growls, like a predator being taken from his catch. “Don’t turn away from me,” he rumbles.

  Laughing, I say, “You have to let a girl breathe.”

  “I want to breathe you in,” he counters. “Your every exhale, your aura, your very essence. I don’t want to miss a single part of you.”

  My stomach leaps right up to my chest, his words elevating me like the climb of a mountain and taking me right to the peak. My ribbons lift up and wrap around him as much as he’s curling his arms around me, and once again, the rest of the world just fades away until it’s just us. Just here.

  Bringing up a hand, I let my fingertips graze against the ashen scales along his cheekbones, marveling at the smooth texture of them. They reflect the firelig
ht, making the fae in him stand out.

  “Did your parents have scales?” I ask curiously.

  “My father.”

  I try to decipher the tone of his answer, but I get distracted by the light puffs of snowfall that land in his black hair. Slade looks up and glowers at the sky. “This place is always snowing.”

  “It’s Fifth Kingdom, what did you expect?” I tease. “At least here it isn’t constantly blizzarding. The snowstorms have been pretty mild.”

  “I can’t wait to be back in my own kingdom where I’m able to see the sun.”

  Nostalgia floats over me like a warm summer breeze. “Goddess, I can’t even remember when I spent a day in the sun. It’s always overcast and cold in this part of Orea. In Highbell, it was always snowing, and even if the sun did come out, which was very rare, I wasn’t outside to see it.”

  Agitation snaps in his gaze like impatient fingers. “You will see the sun again, Auren. You will see everything and anything you want.”

  My heart swells at the determination in his voice, at the way his fingers tighten on my waist. “I will,” I agree.

  He nods, as if we just made the same vow. “Let’s get you inside where it’s warm.” I expect him to step away and just grab my hand, but instead, he sweeps me up in his arms, making me let out a noise of surprise.

  Striding through the snow, he carries me toward the tent, and when we’re closer, I send some of my ribbons out to hold up the tent flaps to make it easier for us to duck in.

  As soon as we’re inside, I’m wrapped in warmth from the coals simmering in the center. Slade sets me down on the furs, and I look around, noting that everything is exactly the same, except...

  “Got rid of my pallet?” I wander over as I note the metal armor stacked in the corner where I used to sleep.

  “Not exactly,” he replies, nodding toward where his own pallet is. “I just shoved yours against mine since our sleeping arrangements are a bit different now.”

  I send him a sly smile. “Awful presumptuous to think I’ll be sleeping with you, Commander Rip.”

  “Call it presumptuous all you like,” he replies smoothly. “We both know I’m going to be buried inside of you soon.”

  “Is that so?” I peel off my coat, but the fae book that I’d forgotten about drops from its pocket and lands on the ground.

  “What’s that?”

  I lift it up, checking to make sure the pages are still intact. “A book I found in the library,” I explain, and I see Slade’s eyes light with interest. “But...we’ll talk about that later.” I place the book and coat carefully on top of his armor before I sit down on his—our—pallet. I cross my legs, lips lifting up in a seductive smile. “For now, I’d like to do something else.”

  He stalks forward and then braces his hands on either side of me, leaning down until our faces are right in front of each other. “All I could think about today is what you felt like last night,” he murmurs before he leans in to run his nose against my neck, skimming over the sensitive parts ever so slightly with his hot breath. “All I could smell was your skin, and all I could hear was the noises you made while I was deep inside of you.”

  I shiver, my head tipping back and my eyes fluttering closed as he begins to press his wicked mouth against my skin. He crouches down in front of me, dragging the sleeve of my dress with him to bare my shoulder. “You’ve bewitched my senses, taken over my thoughts. Every time I blink, all I see is you, like you’ve seared yourself into my eyes and I’ll never close them again without envisioning you. And you know what?”

  My voice is as breathless as my thoughts. “What?”

  He leans away to look me in the eye again. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  This time, it’s definitely me who presses forward to claim him for a kiss. To claim him for so much more.

  He is everything I never thought I could have. Every sip I never thought I’d taste.

  As if I’m worried he’ll be ripped away from me, I hold him a little bit tighter, let my ribbons wrap around him just a little bit more.

  When I get too overenthusiastic with my kiss, I bite down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. But he doesn’t pull back. If anything, it just seems to spur him on even more, and I swallow up an appreciative growl right from his tongue.

  “Hungry?” he teases against my lips.

  “I’ve been starving for a long time,” I whisper. As soon as I say that out loud, I realize how true it is, how undernourished my soul has been. I thought it was only freedom that I craved, but it was this too.

  My life was a flat, barren plain. My horizon was stale and endless, with the constraints of others’ control. There was nothing but a bland, lackluster existence with no growth, no change. Just an arid land that held no rise.

  The world taught me that things could always be worse. I learned to always look up, to take what I could get, to settle.

  I became too blinded by my bright sides to see the truth.

  Sometimes, you look at the silver lining so much that you drift into denial about the clouds.

  Slade’s black brows pull together, and he sweeps his finger beneath my eye, making me feel the wetness there. “What’s this?” he asks, rough voice carrying his worry like rainfall in buckets.

  I shake my head through the bouts of breath I pull in, taking in his scent with it. Freshly turned soil, wood chips wet by the rain, bittersweet chocolate left on my tongue. “I’m just...happy.”

  His face softens, and then he pushes me gently until my back hits the furs, and he props himself over me. He has snowfall in his cold hair and adoration in his warm touch, and if I could, I’d melt into him forever.

  Slade looks at me like he cherishes me, the sweep of his thumb against my cheek like a kiss of touch.

  “I’m happy too, Goldfinch.”

  “There’s so much we have to talk about,” I say, letting my hands run over the supple leather on his shoulders. “But for now, I want you to be the commander and me to be the goldfinch, and not have anything to do with cages or crowns.”

  Understanding dips into his expression. “I’ll stay in whatever form you like. I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  “You,” I answer honestly. “I just need you.”

  Slade stands up, eyes never leaving me, while he systematically begins to undress. His coat, shirt, boots, pants, everything comes off, until he’s standing naked in front of me, pale skin and dark spikes on full display.

  Along his shoulders is another brush of scales I hadn’t noticed before, the gray of them swept from the blades, nearly up to the sides of his neck.

  My eyes trace over every part of him, counting the six spikes up his spine, following the slight arc of them, as if they’re talons from a predator’s feet. The four spikes along his forearms jut out proudly too, but not as much as his thick cock.

  Impatient to feel his body against mine, I sit up and lift my arms, and Slade grasps my dress and pulls it off. Just like the night before, he carefully removes my boots, dragging my stockings down right after. “Like unwrapping a present,” he murmurs.

  His gaze rolls over me like thread on a spindle, taut against my body. I can practically feel him weaving scandalous thoughts to twine around my skin until I’m wrapped in attentive want, and it makes my whole body flush.

  He kneels down on the ground in front of me, his rough fingers skimming up my thigh. “I couldn’t take it slow last night, but right now, I intend to lick your clit until you come all over my tongue.”

  My eyes flare, but I click my knees together, trapping his hand. “I, umm, I’ve never…I mean...I don’t know if I’d like it...”

  Slade goes still, but his aura seems to stretch out around him, a shadow converging. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve never had someone pleasure you with their mouth?”

  I shake my head, my cheeks heating in uncomfortable vulnerability.

  Slade reaches up and grasps both of my cheeks,
drawing me into his gaze. “Then I’m the luckiest bastard in the realm, because I get to be the first one to taste you.”

  Before I can try to talk him out of it or voice my worries, he leans in and hooks the lace of my undergarments with his teeth and then slowly begins to tug them down. The sight is erotic, his movements smooth and confident.

  Once they’re to my knees, he pulls them the rest of the way off and then tosses them away. “Have I told you how sexy you are?” he asks, black eyes moving up to my face.

  He leans in and blows lightly on the inside of my thighs, making me jolt from the barest of sensations. “I don’t remember,” I answer distractedly.

  “Hmm,” he hums. “Then I’ll have to make sure you remember it now. Trust me, alright?”

  The second I nod, he swoops in, and his tongue licks over my clit. My hips buck upward in surprise and sensation, but Slade pushes me back down, his strong hand grounding me in place against the furs. His dark aura writhes in the air around him, easing in closer like it wants a taste of me too.

  I’m wound tight, my body stiff with tension, and he looks up at me from between my legs. “Relax. Trust me to give you what you want.”

  What I don’t want is to ruin this because I’m feeling so exposed. So with a hard swallow, I nod my head and let my fidgety hands fist in the furs beneath me as I lie back down. “I trust you.”

  He lifts my leg, his spikes curved from his forearms like the glint of predatory fangs. When he sees me watching them warily, he gives me a wink. “They won’t hurt you, but for now...” In the next blink, his spikes sink back into his skin until his arms and his back are just smooth skin again. All that’s left are the tiny ones above his eyebrows, stubs of black that somehow make him look even sexier.

  Slade drapes my right leg over his shoulder, securing me while also ensuring I’m spread before him. The scruff of his jaw scrapes lightly against my inner thighs as he kisses his way up again before a slow drag of his tongue licks up my slit.