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Zandik had been gone for twenty-three days.
Not that you were counting. (You were. Down to the hour.)
The door to your shared quarters in the House of Daena slammed open with enough force to rattle the brass wall sconces. You barely had time to look up from the scroll you weren’t really reading before he was there—cloak still dusted with Sumeru’s red clay, hair more chaotic than usual, eyes too bright, too hungry, pupils blown wide like he’d been starving for more than just food.
He didn’t speak.
He crossed the room in four long strides, grabbed you by the hips, and lifted you onto the edge of the heavy study table you’d been using as a desk. Papers, quills, half-finished rubbings of ancient inscriptions—everything scattered to the floor with an indifferent crash.
“Zandik—”
The rest of his name disappeared when his mouth found yours. Not gentle. Not careful. All teeth and desperation and the faint copper-salt taste of someone who’d been running on spite and caffeine substitutes for weeks.
He kissed like a man trying to crawl inside your skin.
Then he dropped to his knees.
No preamble. No teasing remarks. No smug little monologue about how much you must have missed him (though you could see the words burning behind his eyes).
He simply hooked his fingers into the waistband of your linen pants and yanked them down along with your underthings in one impatient motion, not even bothering to get them all the way off—they tangled around one ankle as he shoved your thighs apart.
“Been thinking about this,” he muttered, voice rough, frayed at the edges. “Every fucking night. Every time I should’ve been sleeping.”
You barely had time to draw breath before his mouth was on you.
Messy.
Gods, so messy.
He didn’t ease in. Didn’t trace delicate patterns with the tip of his tongue like he sometimes liked to do when he wanted to torture you slowly. No—this was ravenous. Sloppy. Unrestrained.
He licked a broad, greedy stripe from your entrance to your clit and groaned into you like a man tasting water after crossing a desert. His nose pressed hard against you, smearing slick across his cheekbones as he buried his face deeper. Both hands gripped the meat of your thighs, keeping you spread, keeping you exactly where he wanted while he devoured.
There was no rhythm at first—just desperate, hungry laps and sucks and the obscene wet sounds of him trying to consume you whole. He was loud about it. Shameless. Growling against your cunt when you twitched, when your fingers found his hair and pulled.
You felt more than heard the broken “fuck” he breathed into you when your hips jerked.
He pulled back just enough to look at you—chin glistening, lips swollen and red, strands of your arousal stretching between his mouth and your folds like obscene silver threads. His pupils were so dilated the iris was nothing but a thin violet ring.
“Missed the way you taste,” he rasped. “Missed the way you drip for me.”
Then he dove back in.
This time he focused—sucked your clit between his lips with bruising force, flicked the underside with quick, filthy little strokes of his tongue until your thighs started shaking around his ears. One of his hands left your leg only to slide two long fingers inside you without warning, curling hard against that spot that made your vision white out.
He moaned when he felt how wet you were. Actually moaned—vibrations rolling through your clit while he finger-fucked you in short, rough thrusts that matched the rhythm of his tongue.
It was too much and not enough and exactly what you’d been aching for during every silent night he was gone.
Your orgasm hit like a research grant revocation—sudden, brutal, and with zero mercy.
You came with a choked cry, hips bucking against his face while he refused to let up, licking you through it, drinking down every pulse, every shudder, smearing himself even more in the process.
When you finally went limp against the table, chest heaving, he stayed there.
Just… stayed.
Forehead pressed to your inner thigh, breathing hard against oversensitive skin, fingers still buried inside you, lazily stroking now, like he couldn’t bear to leave yet.
After a long minute he finally lifted his head.
Looked up at you with that dangerous, half-mad glint in his eye, face a complete wreck—chin, cheeks, even the tip of his nose shiny with you.
He licked his lips slowly. Deliberately.
Then, in a voice still hoarse from disuse and lust:
“I’m not done.
He dragged you closer by the hips until your ass was barely on the table anymore.
“Been twenty-three days,” he said, almost conversationally, as if he hadn’t just ruined you with his mouth. “Think I deserve at least twenty-three more minutes between your legs, don’t you?”
His smile was all teeth and then he lowered his head again.
After a long hour of his sweet torture, Zandik finally pulled back when your thighs were trembling too hard to stay open, when every pass of his tongue made you whimper from overstimulation rather than pleasure.
He stayed on his knees for a moment longer—breathing ragged, face still a complete disaster of you—watching the way your chest rose and fell, the faint sheen of sweat on your collarbones, the way your fingers had gone lax in his hair.
Then, slowly, he rose.
He didn’t speak at first. Just leaned over you, caging you against the table with both forearms braced on either side of your head. His hair fell forward, tickling your cheek. You could smell yourself on him—thick, unmistakable—and the thought made your stomach give another weak, exhausted flutter.
He kissed you then. Slow. Deep. Lazy. Letting you taste yourself on his tongue like it was a gift he was proud to give. When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours.
“Still with me?” he murmured, voice gravelly, almost tender in how wrecked it sounded.
You managed a small, shaky nod.
“Good.”
He straightened. Looked around the disaster of the room—scattered papers, overturned ink bottle slowly bleeding black across the floorboards, your pants still dangling from one ankle like a sad flag of surrender—and made a low, amused sound in his throat.
Then he simply gathered you up.
One arm under your knees, the other behind your back. He carried you to the bed like you weighed nothing, like he hadn’t just spent the last hour trying to drown himself between your legs.
He laid you down carefully—almost reverently—on the cool sheets. You hissed softly when your oversensitive skin met fabric, and he made a quiet, apologetic noise, brushing the backs of his knuckles down your thigh.
“Stay,” he said, and disappeared into the small adjoining washroom.
He returned with a damp cloth—warm, not cold, because he knew you hated the shock of it—and a small clay bowl of water scented faintly with lotus and honey.
He knelt between your legs again—this time gentle, clinical in the best way. He cleaned you with slow, careful strokes. Wiped away the mess he’d made, the slick that had dripped down your thighs, the faint traces he’d smeared across your inner folds. Every pass of the cloth was deliberate, soothing. When you twitched at a particularly tender spot, he paused, pressed a soft kiss to the inside of your knee instead.
“Sorry,” he muttered against your skin. Not quite looking at you. “Got… carried away.”
You reached down, threaded your fingers through his hair again—this time just to hold, not to pull. He leaned into it like a cat.
When he was satisfied you were clean, he set the cloth aside and reached for the little pot of salve he kept on the bedside table—something rich and cooling, made with aloe and calendula. He warmed a small amount between his fingers before smoothing it over you with the lightest touch. No teasing. No lingering. Just care.
Afterward he tugged the tangled sheet up over your hips, then crawled onto the bed beside you—still fully clothed, boots and all, because apparently removing them was beyond him right now.
He pulled you against his chest without asking. Wrapped both arms around you like he was afraid you’d vanish if he let go. His heartbeat was still too fast under your ear, but it was slowing.
You felt him press his lips to the crown of your head.
“I should’ve come to you sooner,” he said quietly. Almost to himself. “Shouldn’t have let it get this bad.”
You tilted your head up enough to see his face—still flushed, still a little wild around the eyes, but softer now.
“You’re here now,” you whispered.
He exhaled through his nose. A small, shaky sound.
“Yeah.”
His fingers started tracing idle patterns along your spine—long, slow loops. The kind of touch that said he wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
“Sleep,” he murmured eventually, when your eyelids had grown impossibly heavy. “I’ll stay.”
You felt his lips brush your temple one last time.
And for the first time in twenty-three days, the room felt quiet.
Not empty...Just… content.