Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
CYAN
Elaina didn’t answer right away. Her attention remained fixed on some point in the darkness. The faint glow of streetlamps pooling through the window illuminated the curves of her delicate face. The way she leaned her warm cheek into his palm was a comforting distraction from the chaos in his head.
Cyan fully expected her to refuse. A journey to Gaia from Earendel would take a Gaian century. In that time, she would lose everything, as he had when he traveled to Earendel. Everyone on this planet would have passed by the time they came out on the other side of the wormhole.
Would Elaina be willing to make that sacrifice? Gaia would be completely alien to her. Where Earendel was a sparsely populated frontier planet, Gaia was a sparsely populated origin world, stuck stubbornly in old ways. That was part of why he loved it. But for someone like Elaina… How would she fit in there? Would she want to?
And how could she ever trust him enough to follow him to the other edge of the universe, after what he’d done?
“I made a mistake,” he breathed. The words felt so small compared to the load of his regret, but they were all he had. “ My sword meant nothing—it was always just me. Just running from those I need the most. I’m sorry.”
“I know you are.” She pushed herself up from his thigh. Her breath was warm in the narrow space between them as she turned to face him. “But sorry isn’t enough.”
“It’s not.” This was it. She was going to refuse him, and he was going to have to find some other way to keep her safe.
“You already hurt me once. A lot. Please don’t ever hurt me like that again. I cannot do it again. Do you understand?”
Her directness masked a bare fragility he realized he’d been ignoring until now, because it had been easier. This willingness to bare herself didn’t come naturally for her, yet still she did it.
“Yes,” he exhaled, and he would do anything to make her see how much he meant it. “I understand.”
The shielded wariness softened in her eyes as they searched his own, and he couldn’t fight it anymore. His first kiss was tentative. But as the charge between them ignited and her fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt, the mask of hesitation slipped. Cyan took her chin in his hand, their tongues connecting as they grasped for each other like lifelines. Everything they had held back—every ounce of pain, desire, fear—came pouring out in a breathless confession.
Cyan drew her against him. Her heart pounded through her thin tunic, responding to the erratic rhythm of his own. Having her so close was a drug. He didn’t deserve her. Nobody did. But right now, he needed her more than anything.
Elaina tugged at his shirt, and Cyan broke the kiss just long enough to pull it over his head. The cool air tightened his skin, but her touch chased away the chill. He kissed her again, hard this time, a groan escaping into her mouth as she dragged her nails down his back, grounding him in her presence.
He leaned back against the wall and guided Elaina into his lap. She moved slowly to straddle him, her knees pressing into the floor beside his hips. Cyan searched her eyes for any sign of hesitation. They were still rimmed red from earlier tears but she was there, with him, and alongside the remnants of that sadness there was unfiltered need, along with something else. Something he’d felt in fearful silence for longer than he’d dared to admit.
Elaina arched into his touch as his fingers slipped beneath her tunic. Slowly, he unwrapped it from her chest. Once she was bare atop him, he pressed his forehead to hers.
“I missed you,” he whispered.
“I missed you too.”
He roamed her bare skin, tracing every line, every dimple, committing each inch of her to memory. He didn’t want to forget. Not now and not ever. He wanted to hold on to this—to her—until fate itself consumed them.
Clothes were discarded until there was nothing left between them but heat. Her body molded perfectly against his, and for a moment, all he could do was breathe her in.
When he finally entered her, it was like coming home. His body immediately recognized her tight warmth and the way she relaxed around him as though slotting into place.
“Gods,” Cyan exhaled. It was too much and not enough, and when she rolled her hips with him inside her, he gripped her flesh hard, relishing in the softness under his touch and around his cock. They moved together in the darkness, their bodies finding a rhythm that was entirely new yet astonishingly familiar. Every thrust, every touch felt like a reclamation of something he’d known for eons, perhaps in another life .
Elaina arched above him, her breath catching as her body clenched his. Cyan buried his face in her neck, her scent filling his senses. A building intensity surged through him, raw and overwhelming. She was a tide that threatened to swallow him whole.
“Look at me,” he said, searching for her eyes in the darkness. He sucked in a breath when the green glint of them flashed for him, immediate in her compliance.
She squeezed around him, her breath hitching in her throat. She grabbed his face with both hands and pitched forward, claiming his mouth as she moved atop him, her moans a prayer in his ear. She was coming apart on him, for him. Only him.
His own orgasm crashed over him then, the blinding release so fast yet never-ending, leaving him breathless with aftershocks. He clung to her with hands and teeth as the last shudders echoed through his body.
They stayed like that, their bodies slick with sweat, hearts pounding in unison. He pressed his forehead to hers again, their labored breaths mingling in the dark.
“I need you at my side,” he said, a confession suspended between them. “Will you come to Gaia with me?”
When she spoke, it was as though she was processing a realization in real time. “Cyan, I think I’d follow you to the end of this world.”