by Zara Stark
It was like all air left his body as he stared down at me in wonder. Love in his dark eyes, so in contrast to his savage face.
One of his hands went up and lovingly stroked my face with more gentleness than I thought Cobalt was capable of.
I leaned my face into his touch and rose up onto my tippy toes. I was above average height for a woman but I still couldn't reach his lips on my tippy toes so I pressed my lips to his jaw, leaving a trail of kisses in my wake.
Cobalt hummed a low sound of pleasure.
His hands went to the junction between my shoulders and neck massaging the skin there.
"I'm so glad you're safe," Cobalt groaned, leaning down to return my kiss.
Cobalt's hands went down to my hips, he lifted me up as if I weighed nothing and set me down on the table near the forge. He leaned in and kissed me hard, almost knocking me back onto the table.
I wrapped my arms around his neck to steady myself and pull him closer. I was lost in his kiss, in the soft emotions that he revealed only to me and no one else.
Cobalt was mine, I would never part from him again. Not after I almost lost him a second time.
"You know you're mine right, you belong to me?" I crooned to Cobalt.
I felt a chill pass through his body as I ran my hands down his chest.
"Yes, wholeheartedly and forever," Cobalt growled, a smirk on his lips. He grabbed my hips and slid me closer to him along the tabletop, not stopping until he was nestled between my thighs. Cobalt roughly grabbed my thighs pulling them around his waist.
A purring sound escaped my throat, making Cobalt's smirk stretch wider across his face. "Like that do you?"
"Yes," I told him as I wrapped my arms around his neck.
"The feeling of you close to me, it's unlike anything I've ever felt before," Cobalt admitted, raising his hands to brush my loose hair back from shoulders. I looked up at him and pulled him down into a kiss.
Cobalt crashed his lips down on mine. Cobalt kissed like he fought, he put his all into it, with a violent edge.
Sleeping with Azar had been like coming home after being gone for years. Sleeping with Nevada had been startling passions and desperate need. Sleeping with Cobalt was like a battle for dominance.
Cobalt kissed me hard, teeth gnashing into mine as my hands scratched down his muscled chest.
His large, rough blacksmith's right hand went to cradle the back of my head as he slammed me down on the table, careful not to hit my head. He didn't break out kiss as he retracted his hand used both of them to pull my silk dress open.
The soft fabric tore like tissue paper in his strong hands as Cobalt bared my breast.
His hands cupped them and I marveled at the look of his tan, rough skin against my pale freckled breasts. He kneaded them with his hands a few times before moving on to my nipples, tweaking the sensitive nubs between his fingers. I moaned, arching my back so I could lean into his touch all the more.
"Fuck, you're perfect," Cobalt growled to me. His hands left my breasts and I almost cried out from missing the contact. His mouth replaced his fingers, hot tongue darting out to circle before drawing the sensitive bud into his mouth. One hand went to massage my other breasts as he sucked greedily, working his teeth gently over the delicate skin.
"I love the sounds you make for me, so needy," Cobalt spoke softly against my breasts.
I quivered as his hot breath hit the saliva he left behind.
"Please," I moaned, losing my mind over the pleasure.
"Please what?" Cobalt smirked up at me as his hands pulled my ruined dress open even more, baring me from top to bottom.
"Please, I need you," I moaned again as his hands traveled down my abdomen to my most sensitive place. His thick fingers began to trail lightly between my legs. "Stop being a tease."
"Oh, I'm a tease am I?" Cobalt grinned. He slid off of me and kneeled in front of me. He grabbed my ankles and bent my knees until I was completely spread open in front of him.
His mouth descended on to me, licking my inner thigh. I nearly jumped out of my skin. My body felt like it was on pins and needles, I was so desperate for his touch. I wanted more, I wanted him inside of me. His tongue licked my other inner thigh.
"You're so mean!" I cried out, thrashing my hips up at him.
"Not exactly breaking news," Cobalt let out a devious chuckle. "How bad do you want me, Octavia?"
"So very badly, please!" I cried out and Cobalt finally complied. His tongue twirling circles around my most needy place. It was like a bomb went off in my head, my body quaked as a violent orgasm tore through my body and I let out a loud wailing moan. I thrashed against Cobalt, trying to get as close as I could to him. His arms hooked under my thighs, rough hands clamping on to my hips as he pulled me closer to his greedy mouth.
"Look at me Octavia," Cobalt ordered in a stern voice and I looked down at him with half-lidded eyes. His crimson gaze was intense. He groaned as he continued to lick me.
His pace was relentless, again and again until another mind shattering orgasm crashed through me again and I was left a whimpering, panting mess.
Cobalt flipped me over on the table, pressing my stomach and sensitive raw breasts onto the tabletop. I heard a rustling sound from Cobalt as he freed himself from his armor and I felt the head of his cock line up with my core. Without warning, Cobalt grabbed my hip bones in a punishing grip and he slammed into me.
I cried out as he slid inside of me with ease, I was so very ready for him.
Cobalt kept the same fast and hard pace that his tongue had just moments before, slamming into me relentlessly as the table legs screeched against the stone flooring. I couldn't help the loud moans and screams he wrung from my body as he continued to thrust in and out of my body.
One of his hands left my hip and twisted into my wild hair, tugging my head back and making my back arch. Cobalt groaned loudly as the angle changed at which he hit inside of me.
"Your body was made for me," Cobalt growled as his cock hit the perfect spot inside of me as a third orgasm washed over me. Cobalt had made me come more than anyone else had in my entire life.
Cobalt pulled out of me just as my spasms started to slow and roared as he came, releasing himself on my lower back. He panted as he leaned over me, putting his weight on the table.
I grabbed his face and pulled him into a long, languid kiss. I didn’t know how long we stayed like that but when we came up for air, his eyes met mine.
"Sorry I interrupted your work and worried you," I whispered to him, not breaking our eye contact. Trying to impress upon him just how serious I was about how I felt.
Cobalt's serious expression broke and he snorted. "It's all on you for interrupting, I'm still working on your cards."
I must have fallen asleep in his arms at the forge because I woke up on the bed surrounded by my four guys the next morning. What a sight it must have been! Anyone else would have probably carried me bridal style, safe and snug in his arms back to the castelli. Cobalt was not just anyone else, he probably tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and marched proudly back to the castelli.
Our final week before the tournament passed in a blur. Azar’s cast came off and Raiden worked him all day every day to get that leg back to fighting strength. Nevada spent most of his time trying to translate the books, it had been slow going without a reference for him to work off of and he worked late into every night. I fell asleep most nights watching him scratch into a scroll with a reed quill by candlelight.
I could tell that Nevada was getting frustrated, the scrolls were dense and the style of language was completely different than what we were used to. Part of the first scroll was damaged and had what looked like large droplets of old, dried blood blotting out large sections of it. Nevada had to make a series of educated guesses based off of what he could read and it had been frustrating him to no end. Every so often he was sighing and grunting in anger. With Nevada busy, Raiden and Azar training together, that left Cobalt and me
to work together. We had fallen back into the habit of weapons training with my Spear cards. While he was impressed with my progress, he was a merciless instructor, just as rough as a sparring partner as he was a lover. He admitted that I was actually doing well with the sword, praising Nevada's tutelage before the last tournament. I noticed Cobalt was still struggling with his metallic transformations. When Cobalt had his soul was sucked out by a banshee and then forcefully shoving that soul back into their body, it had created a sort of bone-deep exhaustion that a good night's sleep couldn't hope to fix. Cobalt had slept for seven days straight after the feast of our last tournament, I could tell his movements were a bit slower and his transformations were sluggish and clunkier. I wondered if his regeneration was off too. I worked more and more with my first two dice.
As for Raiden and I, I tried to be the bigger person and talk to him. He might be an entitled jerk but I couldn't stand not speaking to him. I was polite but curt, not my usual joking around with him. He got skipped for his turn of nightly cuddles. Part of me wanted to demand an apology but I knew it wouldn't mean as much if it didn't come from him freely. I wondered why it was so much harder to get along with Raiden than it was with everyone else. Our feelings were undeniable, I had loved him for as long as I could remember but that didn't mean I had to like him all the time. It seemed like our attraction, our connection should have been the easiest. He was the first Aurelius I had kissed after all.
The night before our first battle, after Cobalt and Azar had fallen asleep and Nevada was absorbed in working on his translations, I was left alone with Raiden in our tub. The silence was more than awkward. We both sat in the water for a moment, not speaking but Raiden finally broke the silence.
"Tavia," Raiden grunted.
I snapped my neck to face him, meeting his eyes.
"Look, what I said came out wrong," Raiden started. "I'm sorry. I take what is between us seriously, I know that I'm not entitled to your body and that you don't belong to us. You are your own person and I'm sorry if I made you feel like you weren't."
I nodded, letting his words sink in. "I know I drive you crazy, I know that our relationship is strange, to say the least. I'm sorry that my personality doesn't make it any easier. I'm sorry I told yelled at you. You may have been in the wrong but so was I. I really need to get my temper under control, I shouldn't go around screaming at you, that wasn't okay. Forgive me?"
"Obviously," Raiden sighed.
I scooted closer to him, moving through the hot water until I was right beside him. I leaned my head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close to him.
“Can we really survive this? Can we really do this again?” I asked him softly.
“I’ve been surviving at this for ten years, what’s one more week of it in comparison? We’ll be fine,” Raiden replied a little too gruffly.
“Are you sure? In the immortal words of Han Solo, I got a bad feeling about this,” I whispered into his shoulder.
“Which one is that from?” Raiden asked.
“A New Hope, remember? The trash compactor,” I explained. “You really need to see the new ones when we get home, you’ll love them.”
“Oh God, new ones? Not like the prequels right? Those were terrible.”
I pulled on his earlobe with my thumb and forefinger. “I happen to like the prequels.”
“Of course you do,” Raiden batted my hand away from his ear and I started to laugh.
“You’re such a jerk,” I slapped at his hand with my own.
“If you guys are done flirting, we really need to get some sleep for tomorrow,” Nevada grumbled from across the room, putting out the candles in his reading area with a wave of cold air.
“Someone’s grouchy,” Raiden snapped.
I stepped out of the hot water, grabbing my robe from the edge of the tub and wrapped it around myself. “Still no luck, Vada?”
“I’m figuring it out, it’s just slow going. All three aren’t only in languages I barely understand but they are also written in code, all three of them! I think I’ve cracked the ancient Vedic Sanskrit's code but it will take me a while to decode the entire scroll,” Nevada explained as walked over to the bed and got in on the other side of Cobalt.
I towel dried my hair and hopped into bed next to Nevada. Raiden scooted in on my other side and clutched me tightly to his chest. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit his chest.
I shook the chains attached to my wrist. Clink, clink, clink. The metal links knocking together sounded like the falling of gold coins. I laughed, feeling deliriously giddy. I stared down at myself. Chains attached to my wrists but I wore a beautiful gown of red, gold and black in the Roman style I had become accustomed too. Strange. I wasn’t wearing the dark blue and pale champagne-pale gold of Team Bumblebee but a darker, richer gold.
I looked around, taking in my surroundings. My eyes were met with a dreary and dark cell. No more than a hollowed-out cave with stone walls and a floor and makeshift bars in front of me of ancient construction. Cobalt could easily crush the rusted, corroded trappings of my cell but when I looked around I was alone.
In the back of my mind, I vaguely wondered where my cards and dice were but instead, I laughed again. I clapped my shackled hands together and a coin appeared between them. I turned it between my shaking fingers. One side had a happy face and the other a sad face. Unable to resist, I flipped it with my thumb and caught it on my other hand.
I pulled my hand away, it had landed on the happy face. I heard a click and looked up. The door to my cell had swung open. I tried to stand and walk toward the open cell door but my chains yanked me back. What an idiot. I focused around the cell's entrance, there was no one nearby that could have opened my cell.
Curious, I flipped the coin in the air again and onto my other hand. I looked at the coin. Smiley face again. The shackles around my wrists popped open and dropped to the ground. I stood up fully and brushed the wrinkles out of my overly extravagant gown and marched out of my cell.
My cell was off of a large narrow tunnel of a cave. It was too dark to see much of anything except a glowing red light far, far away. I could hear dripping water and it made me realize how dry my throat was. It was like everything that was wrong with me came crashing into me all at once. I had a dehydration headache, my back ached and my wrists were bruised from my chains. I shuffled down the dark hall past empty cells, trying to ignore my pain. I peered into each cell only to see empty chains in each one.
I finally came to a cell with a haggard man in it. A hood covered his face so that only his scruffy chin showed. He laid on the dirty floor of his cell. He noticed me watching him and his covered face rose in my direction.
“There’s no escape. The prison lives,” The man whimpered before bursting into tears.
If I was awake and me, I would have stopped to help him, try to break him out of his cell and comfort the strange man. Instead, dream me bowed and kept walking. I passed another group of empty cells, walking slower and slower as the pain in my upper back became too much to ignore.
I came to another cell with a man in it. His face was uncovered and gaunt. His cheeks were hollowed out and his eyes sunken like he hadn’t eaten in a long time. His eyes were the pale blue of a noontime sky. He pointed at me and laughed. I paused and grabbed the bars outside of his cells, staring at him. He continued to point and cackle at me. His laughs shook the cave-like prison, the walls, the bars, and the stone, everything rattled from his laugh.
After a few moments of staring at the laughing, starving man, he collected himself. His laughs subsided to slow, harsh gulps of air. He wiped the tears from his eyes and shook his head at me.
He jabbed his thin, bony finger at me, his eyes accusatory. “What’s the point of those? How can you spread your wings and fly when you can’t even reach the heavens?”
“What? Wings?” I asked.
The man jabbed his finger at my back and I looked over his shoulder. Sure enough, coming out of my bare ba
ck was a large pair of golden brown wings being dragged limply across the dirty floors. A trail of blood and feathers marked where the path I had taken to this particular cell. The weather shined like copper coins against the dirt and blood. Little glowing puffs of softness marking my path like Hansel and Gretel's trail of breadcrumbs in the fairy tale. Hopefully, my path wouldn't lead to a bloodthirsty wish.
To asleep me, that thought was hilarious and I burst into a hysterical laughter. I clutched my abdomen as laugher wracked through my body. The man in the cell's face darkened enraged.
"You dare laugh when you've only gotten this far from dumb luck?!" The man screamed.
The world around us shook. Stone rumbling and metal creaking. The soft red light down the hall blurred as bright as a supernova, burning our eyes. My wings fluttered against my back, or tried to, they were still limp and nearly lifeless.