tijana

I.

The shadowsinger came home an hour before sunset, dropping out of a bruised autumn sky onto the river house lawn, and Elain Archeron watched him land from the kitchen window with flour on her hands and her heart lodged somewhere beneath her tongue.

Three weeks and four days. She had counted, though she would have denied it under torture. Twenty-five nights of reaching across cold sheets for a body that wasn't there, twenty-five mornings of arranging her face into pleasant vagueness when Feyre asked if she'd slept well. Somewhere in a locked drawer of her vanity sat a scrap of paper worn soft at the creases, delivered by shadow on his ninth day gone, bearing a single word in his sharp, slanted hand.

Soon.

Now he crossed the lawn toward Rhys, and Elain made herself look away and return to her dough. Whatever passed between High Lord and spymaster took ten minutes. She kneaded through all of it, punishing the bread, listening to Nuala hum beside her and hearing none of it.

The kitchen door opened. She knew it was him.

"Something smells good."

"It's rosemary bread," she said to the dough. Nuala had melted discreetly into the pantry, and Elain loved her for it.

"That isn't what I meant."

Her hands stilled in the flour. It should be illegal, she thought, for a male to say six words in that tone while standing a respectable arm's length away in his High Lord's kitchen. She turned. He looked terrible and wonderful, wind-burned along his cheekbones, shadows beneath his eyes to match the ones curling at his shoulders, a healing scrape across one knuckle she wanted to interrogate at length. His hair was a disaster. His siphons glowed faintly, cobalt and restless.

"You're back early," she said. "Rhys said tomorrow."

"I flew through the storm."

"Through it?“

"Around it seemed slow."

She wanted to touch him so badly her fingers ached with it. Instead she reached up and plucked a small twig from his hair, and held it out as evidence. 

The corner of his mouth moved. From Azriel it was a grin, a shout, a bouquet. "Dinner is tonight."

"Monthly dinner, yes. Everyone's coming. I'm cooking."

"I know," he said. "Why do you think I flew through the storm?"

He left before she could answer, because he always knew exactly when to leave, and Elain stood in the flour-dusted quiet with a twig in her hand and a smile she could not manage to put away, no matter how sternly she spoke to it.

II.

By seven the river house was full and loud.

Cassian arrived first, carrying wine in quantities. Nesta came with him. Mor swept in trailing perfume and a story from the Winter Court she swore up and down she could only tell after the second bottle. Amren appeared already seated, already bored. Feyre drifted between them all with Nyx on her hip until the nursemaid claimed him for bed, and Rhys held court by the fire in his shirtsleeves, wielding a wine glass like a scepter.

And Azriel leaned in the kitchen archway, scrubbed clean and dressed in black, watching Elain lose a war with a béchamel.

Not because the sauce was difficult. She could make it blindfolded. She was losing because he had done nothing since arriving except stand in doorways looking at her, and there was a quality to his stillness tonight that she recognized, a leashed, prowling patience that made the fine hairs rise along her arms.

"You could help," she said, not turning around.

"I could."

Footsteps, soundless, and then he was beside her at the counter, reaching past her for the grater and the wedge of hard cheese she'd set out. His arm brushed hers. It was not an accident. Nothing Azriel did with his body was ever an accident, and after five centuries of spycraft he could have grated cheese from across the room without touching her at all.

Elain kept whisking. In the dining room, Cassian's laugh boomed off the ceiling. Mor was midway through a reenactment that required both arms and, apparently, a chair. Feyre and Rhys murmured in that low married language no one else could parse.

A single open archway between them and her entire family.

"You're standing very close," Elain murmured.

"The kitchen is small."

"The kitchen is enormous. Feyre designed it that way on purpose."

He grated cheese in slow, unhurried strokes, and dipped his head until his mouth hovered at her ear. "Three weeks," he said, quiet enough that the words seemed to exist only in the half-inch between his lips and her skin. "Twenty-five days. I counted every one."

Her whisk faltered. She recovered, added the milk, stirred. "You'll make me ruin the sauce."

"I'll make you a new sauce."

"You cannot cook, Azriel."

"No," he agreed, and one scarred finger traced, feather-light, the line where her apron tied at the small of her back. "But I have other qualities."

Heat climbed her throat that owed nothing to the stove. She risked a glance. He was studying the cheese with a face of perfect monastic calm, and only the shadows betrayed him, coiled low and restless around his shoulders, drunk on being near her again. One slipped free and wound around her wrist like a bracelet, squeezed once, and slunk back to him looking, if a shadow could, embarrassed.

"They missed you too," he said.

"Azriel."

"Hm."

"Someone will notice."

"No one has noticed in eight months." His hand settled at her hip, brief and warm, thumb pressing once through the fabric, an entire sentence in a single touch. "Your sister paints in this house every day and has never once painted what's in front of her."

"That's unkind."

"It's convenient." His mouth grazed, barely, the crown of her head. "Do you know what I thought about, in a freezing tent in the Steppes, while two of Briallyn's leftover loyalists discussed my death on the other side of a hill?"

"I can't imagine."

"This kitchen," he said. "You, in this kitchen. That apron. I have given that apron a great deal of thought."

"It has flour on it."

"I'm aware."

"It has a soup stain on it."

"Elain." Her name in his mouth, low, frayed at its edges, and the whisk stopped entirely. "If you think a soup stain signifies anything at all against three weeks of wanting you, you have not been paying attention."

She turned her head. His eyes were not calm. Whatever else his face was doing, his eyes had given up the pretense entirely, hazel gone dark and fixed on her mouth, and for one reckless, spiraling heartbeat she nearly kissed him. Family in the next room. Sauce on the stove. Eight months of careful, delicious secrecy, and she nearly threw it onto the fire because he had opinions about her apron.

Boots in the hall saved her. He was on the far side of the counter with the cheese bowl before Nesta filled the archway to demand whether dinner intended to arrive this century.

"Two minutes," Elain said brightly.

Nesta looked at her. Looked at Azriel, arranging grated cheese with the focus he usually reserved for interrogations. Looked back at Elain, at the whisk, at the general atmosphere.

"Fine," Nesta said, and left.

Elain exhaled at the béchamel. Behind her, soft as a shadow's footstep, Azriel laughed.

III.

Dinner was exquisite torment.

They sat across from each other, because side by side would have been unbearable, and across proved worse. Every time she lifted her eyes he was already looking, and every time he looked away it was half a second too slow. He passed her the wine before she asked. She served him the crisped end of the roast, his favorite, without thinking, and had to invent a passable reason when Feyre's brow rose.

"He's been eating field rations for a month," Elain said. "Look at him."

"I'm looking," Feyre said, in a tone Elain elected not to examine.

The courses came and went. Mor told her Winter Court story, which was obscene and involved a diplomat, a wig, and a decorative fountain, and Elain laughed until her eyes watered while under the table a shadow found her ankle and stayed, curled warm above the strap of her shoe, through the entire second course. She sipped her wine and did not look at its owner. She crossed her legs, and the shadow simply moved with her, patient, proprietary, and she heard, or felt, a low hum of amusement from across the table.

Two could play. When the cakes came out she took her time with hers, licked a drop of whipped cream from her thumb with what she told herself was perfect innocence, and watched Azriel's knife pause against his plate for one full second before resuming.

Wicked, said the shadow at her ankle, somehow, in the flex of it.

You started it, she told her wine glass.

"You're quiet tonight, Az," Rhys said over the dessert wine, violet eyes gleaming. "Long mission?"

"Long mission."

"Tonight I want my dinner and my bed," Cassian translated, toasting him. "A male after my own heart."

"Leave him be," Mor said. "He flew through that storm. I saw it from the house, it was all lightning. You flew through that?"

Azriel turned his glass by its stem. His gaze crossed the candlelight and rested on Elain, one heartbeat, two, an eternity conducted in complete silence, before returning to the wine.

"I was ready to be home," he said.

Elain stood so quickly she nearly upset her chair. "I'll get the tea."

IV.

She did not get the tea.

She made it four steps down the darkened hallway before a scarred hand closed around hers and drew her, silent as a held breath, around the corner and into the dark. Shadow swallowed the lamplight whole. Her back met the wall, his hands framed her face, and then his mouth was on hers and twenty-five days collapsed into nothing.

He kissed her the way a starving male sits down to a feast, without grace, without apology, one hand sliding into her hair and ruining twenty minutes of pins, the other splayed against her spine and pulling her into him as though the remaining inch between their bodies were a personal insult. She gripped the front of his jacket and gave as good as she got, and the small sound he made against her mouth, low, wrecked, entirely un-monastic, was one she resolved to remember on her deathbed.

"Upstairs," she breathed when they broke. "My room."

"Too far."

"It's close."

"Too far," he repeated, grave as a vow, and walked her backward through the nearest door.

The latch clicked. Faelight bloomed low and gold, and Elain took in the bookshelves, Feyre's paintings, the tall windows over the black ribbon of the Sidra, the wide obsidian desk stacked with treaties and correspondence, and pressed a hand over her mouth.

"Azriel. This is Rhysand's office."

"Is it."

"You know precisely what it is. You steered us here on purpose."

He prowled toward her, and nothing remained of the patient, courteous shadowsinger. This was the other Azriel, the one only she was given, wicked and certain and entirely without shame, shadows streaming off his wings like smoke off a banked fire. "The door locks," he said. "The walls are warded. He soundproofed the room himself."

"He soundproofed it for meetings."

"Then tonight it exceeds its purpose."

"There is a perfectly good bed one floor up."

"Elain." He stopped in front of her, and lifted her chin with two fingers, and the look on his face emptied her head of stairs, beds, and most common nouns. "I have spent three weeks being patient. I sat through four courses tonight being patient. I watched you laugh at Mor's story and lick cream off your thumb, which you did on purpose, and I said nothing and did nothing, like a gentleman." He bent until his mouth brushed her ear. "I am finished being a gentleman."

"Clearly," she managed, "since your solution is defiling the High Lord's furniture."

"His own fault for hosting a dinner party."

She laughed, and he caught the sound with his mouth, and he lifted her by the waist, effortless, and set her on the edge of the desk between the inkwell and a stack of documents bearing the Night Court seal. Papers sighed to the floor. Neither of them glanced down.

"This is a terrible idea," she informed him, fingers already working at the buckles of his jacket, knees parting to let him stand between them, every part of her body enthusiastically overruling the statement as it was made.

"The worst," he agreed against her throat.

"He'll know. He knows everything."

"He knows what I let him know." His teeth grazed the place beneath her ear that dismantled her, and his voice dropped to that register that lived in her sternum. "Now stop talking about your brother-in-law while I'm kissing you. It's damaging my confidence."

"Nothing has damaged your confidence in five hundred years."

"One thing," he said, drawing back just far enough to look at her, and the wickedness in his face flickered, for a breath, into something bare and unguarded and hers. "One thing damages it every day. That I get this at all."

Oh, she thought helplessly. Oh. And she pulled him down by the collar and put her answer where words could not reach.

His hands were slow as they worked. Azriel leaned her back across the wide obsidian surface, unhurried, treaties crumpling beneath her shoulders, his hazel eyes fixed on hers with a reverent, unyielding quiet. He gathered the silk of her skirts in scarred hands, slowly gathering the fabric upward until cold air met the bare skin of her thighs and her delicate lace undergarments were bared to the gold faelight. An inkwell tipped; a dark tide crept across a grain tariff agreement, but neither of them paid it any mind.

He paused, taking in the sight of her lace, already dark and visibly soaked through with her arousal.

"Oh," he murmured, a slow, low purr in his chest. "Already wet for me?"

Elain’s cheeks flushed a bright, beautiful rose. "Already?" she scoffed softly, meeting his gaze. "You well know since when."

A wicked, slow grin spread across his face, his eyes glinting with dark humor. "Since when, Elain?"

"Since you sent your shadows under the table to me," she admitted, her voice dropping to an embarrassed whisper. "During dinner."

Azriel chuckled, a low, dark smirk settling on his lips. "So you're wet for my shadows."

"Pervert," she huffed, turning her face away, though her thighs parted just a fraction wider for him.

He leaned down, pressing a breathy, chuckling kiss against the sensitive skin of her throat. "Me or you?" he whispered against her skin, feeling the quiet shiver that ran through her at his words.

Azriel sank to his knees between her parted legs. He rested his hands on the edge of the desk on either side of her hips, his gaze lifting to meet hers.

"May I, Elain?" he asked, his voice a low, gravelly whisper that thrummed right through her chest.

"Yes," she chokes out, her head rolling back against the parchment. "Please, Azriel."

Only then did he move. His scarred thumbs hooked into the thin lace at her hips, sliding the silk down her thighs with agonizing slowness. When he bared her fully to his view, a soft, ragged sigh left him, his shadows curling around her ankles like warm silk.

"You are beautiful," he murmured into her inner thigh, pressing a soft kiss to the soft skin there, then trailing heat up to her center.

When his mouth finally touched her, it was excruciatingly gentle. He parted her slick folds with his thumbs and pressed a slow, flat-tongued stroke up her seam, gathering her wetness, tasting her like a male savoring every second. Elain arched off the desk with a sharp gasp, her fingers clutching blindly at the papers beneath her head.

He took his time, torture disguised as worship. His tongue moved over her clitoris in long, languid swirls, setting a rhythm that was steady, deep, and maddeningly unhurried. Whenever she tried to lift her hips to chase a harder pressure, his strong hands held her firmly in place, forcing her to endure every slow, exquisite stroke of his mouth.

"Azriel, please," she whimpered, her body taut as a bowstring, writhing under the relentless, agonizing pleasure of his tongue.

"Tell me what you need," he murmured, swirling his tongue right over her throbbing peak.

"Harder—I need—more, please—"

He slid two long, scarred fingers deep inside her wet core, stretching her slowly while his thumb circled her clit in agonizingly precise movements. He drank down every gasp, every desperate sob she made, feeding on her pleasure until she shattered beneath his mouth. Her climax hit her like a slow-burning fire, a long, trembling wave that had her arching off the desk, crying his name into the silent, soundproofed room.

Azriel stayed right there through every shudder, licking her gently until her shivering subsided into shallow, heavy breaths.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, his hazel eyes dark and heavy with desire. He leaned down, pressing his forehead to hers. "Are you alright?" he asked softly. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Don't you dare stop," she whispered.

"Turn over for me."

She obeyed, rolling onto her stomach against the smooth obsidian. Azriel gathered her skirts up over her lower back, bending her over the edge of the desk so her hips were elevated, bare and glistening in the faint faelight.

As he stepped up behind her, his large, scarred hands settled over her rear, palming the soft curve of her butt with possessive, unhurried appreciation. He squeezed gently, a quiet, reverent groan escaping his throat as he admired her.

"Gods," he breathed, his thumbs tracing the line where her thighs met her seat. "I love this part of you. My absolute favorite."

Elain’s face buried into the sleeves of her dress, her voice muffled against the desk. "That's rude, Azriel."

"It's not rude," he countered smoothly, leaning down so his mouth grazed her ear while his hands stroked her hips. "It's my favorite part. And don't act so scandalized. I know you have your preferences when it comes to me, too."

Elain stayed silent, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an answer, but Azriel only chuckled softly against her neck. His scarred, long-fingered hands slid deliberately up her waist, then down her back, spreading wide against the desk in front of her face so she couldn't miss the sight of them; the very hands that had spent the last twenty minutes making her lose her mind. He flexed them slowly against the black stone, letting his point linger in the air without needing another word.

Azriel unbuckled his pants, freeing his thick, throbbing shaft. He guided his head to her wet, swollen entrance, rubbing his tip against her slick core, soaking himself in her arousal but he didn't push in. He simply hovered there, teasing her opening.

"Azriel," she gasped, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the desk. "Please."

"Please what, sweetling?" he murmured against the nape of her neck. "Tell me."

"Put it in. Please. I'm begging you."

"My pleasure," he rasped, and pushed forward.

He slid into her slowly, inch by excruciating inch, allowing her to feel every ridge of him stretching her open, filling her completely until he was buried to the hilt against her bottom. Elain let out a long, shuddering moan, her spine bowing as she felt the sheer, heavy fullness of him inside her.

He set a rhythm that was pure torture—deep, rhythmic, and utterly devouring. Every time her body tightened around him, he paused just enough to keep her on the precipice, driving her out of her mind until she was shaking, crying out his name, completely helpless under his touch.

"Azriel, please—I can't take it—" she begged, her head falling forward against the wood. "Please let me come—"

"Come for me, Elain," he commanded softly, his voice thick and dark. "I'm right here."

With one final, deep, agonizingly slow thrust, his thumb pressed hard against her peak, and Elain shattered. Her climax tore through her in a violent, unending wave, her inner muscles gripping him with frantic tightness.

Hearing her beg, feeling her core clamp down around him in tight, rhythmic pulses, Azriel finally lost his own control. He groaned, a low, primal sound, and thrust deep, burying himself as far as he could go as his own release tore through him, pouring his hot seed deep inside her while he held her tight against his chest.

For several minutes, neither of them moved.

Azriel stayed buried within her, his wings flared wide to wrap them both in a dark, warm cocoon, his breath hot against her shoulder as he kissed her skin over and over with tender, quiet devotion.