31. Naera #2
I scoff, but it’s weak. “You don’t know that.”
“I know a lot of things,” she says, eyes flicking over me like she’s cataloging every way I’ve come undone in the last few minutes. “Like how you never stop staring when you think I’m not looking. Like how you lean a little closer every time I sit beside you.”
Heat floods my face. “That’s not—”
“And I know,” she cuts in gently, drifting forward through the steam-veiled spring, “that you want to believe me just as much as I want you to.”
And now she’s moving closer.
Slow and sure, the water whispering around her. Every bit closer is deliberate. Measured. She’s a wolf in no rush, circling something she already knows she’ll catch.
Still, I ease backwards, away.
“I’m not trying to scare you, starlight,” she says, voice velvet and fire. “I just think it’s time we stopped pretending either of us are good at walking away.”
She’s close now. Closer than anyone should be in water and moonlight and this much quiet.
Each step she takes sends ripples across the surface, reaching me before she does.Until I’m suddenly backed against the slick stone edge of the spring, breath caught somewhere between my ribs and the rising heat. The rock is cool against my spine, but I don’t feel cold. Not with her this close.
“Selis…” I manage, voice barely a breath.
She leans in—close enough that the steam between us clings to her lashes, that I can feel her exhale on my cheek. Her eyes never leave mine.
“You know, for someone who glows,” she murmurs, “you’re awfully slow to notice when someone’s already burning for you.”
My lips part. I don’t know what I meant to say—something coy, maybe. Something safe. A way to hold the moment still without slipping further.
But I never get the chance.
She’s already leaning in. The heat of her so close, the steam clinging to our bare skin. I feel her breath first—shaky, hungry—and suddenly I remember just how little lies between us. Nothing but water. Nothing but want.
Panic flickers, low and sharp. I’ve never— not really —not like this. Not skin to skin, not with the air this thick and charged, not with someone who looks at me like she might devour me if I let her.
I hesitate. My heart’s too loud. My thoughts scatter. I think of pulling back.
But then her fingers graze my cheek—gentle, grounding.
And her lips catch mine like a flame to dry silk—sudden and searing.
It’s not careful this time. Not soft or testing.
It’s want , plain and wild. It’s the tremble in her breath and the low, near-growl at the back of her throat.
It’s her hands claiming me all at once—one at my jaw, the other sliding beneath the water to grip my waist, firm and sure.
And I melt.
The fear doesn’t vanish—it folds into the heat, into the ache curling low in my belly. I kiss her back with everything I’ve held in, everything I didn’t know I was allowed to want.
Because whatever this is—it’s real.
And I want it. I want her.
There’s no line left unblurred between us, no breath I wouldn’t give her. Our bodies meet—bare skin to bare skin—and the heat that sparks between us is immediate, searing. My chest presses to hers, and the soft fullness of her breasts sends a jolt through my core—hot and shameless and aching.
It feels indecent. Taboo. Like touching something sacred with unclean hands.
And gods, I love it.
My fingers lift, threading into her hair before trailing down the curve of her spine, over the smooth, damp warmth of her back. She’s so solid. So real. Every inch of her against me is a revelation—slick with steam, muscle and hunger and restraint just barely holding.
She kisses like she means it. Like this is the only truth either of us has left.
And as her mouth parts against mine again, it steals the rest of my breath. I whimper without meaning to. The sound makes her kiss me harder.
I should be embarrassed. I should be retreating behind modesty or fear or anything I used to know.
But I don’t.
I ache.
No, I burn for her too—not with the light, but with something deeper. Something that’s only for her.
She pulls back slowly, like it hurts to stop. And when she does, her forehead rests against mine. Her hand is still at my waist.
“You terrify me,” she whispers. Her voice is rough again. Bare.
I open my eyes. “Why?”
Her fingers twitch against my skin.
“What you’re turning me into.”
My breath catches. “And what’s that?”
She hesitates. Her voice is raw when it comes.
“Someone who gives a damn. Someone who’d bleed for you. Really burn for you, if it came to that.”
And for once—I don’t look away.
My heart hammers. The words settle in me like roots, deep and aching.
“I would burn for you too,” I whisper.
Selis lets out a half-laugh—soft and disbelieving, like it hurts to hear. “Starlight… you already did.”
I smile, just barely. “I’d do it again. ”
The moment the words leave me, I feel them settle inside me with a terrifying sort of certainty.
I mean it.
Selene, I mean it.
Even with everything I’ve seen. Even knowing what it costs. The pain. The terror. The part of me that broke open to let the light out.
I would do it again if it meant saving her.
Selis doesn’t speak right away. Her eyes search mine like she’s trying to find the lie—but there isn’t one.
I press my forehead to hers and close my eyes.
“I’ve never felt this way before,” I admit. My voice is barely a breath, but it doesn’t tremble. “Not for anyone.”
She’s quiet. Her fingers slide up to cradle my face, calloused thumb brushing just under my eye.
“I just don’t want you to… regret this. Regret me.” The words leave me before I can dress them in anything braver. But I need her to hear them, raw as they are.
It quiets her.
Her arms don’t tighten. Her mouth doesn’t move. But something in her goes still.
I think of her mouth on mine. Her blood in my throat. Her blade at Veyra’s neck and the way she screamed when that man pinned me down. I think of her calling me starlight , not like a joke, but like a promise. Like she meant it.
“If I were smarter,” she says finally, voice low and sharp as broken glass, “maybe I would regret it.”
I don’t move. I wait.
She exhales through her nose. The smallest sound.
“But I don’t,” she says. “You might be the only thing I don’t. ”
The heat behind my eyes is sudden. I swallow it down, my voice thinner than I mean for it to be.
“I think we could survive,” I whisper, almost afraid of the words. “You and me.”
Her eyes flick open. Sharp. Unreadable.
“We can find a place that doesn’t care who we were.”
She watches me. Long enough that the silence grows teeth, begins to ache behind my ribs.
Then she says, “Places like that don’t exist.”
“They do,” I say softly. “I just don’t think either of us ever believed we were allowed to find them.”
Her gaze falters.
We’re still chest to chest, skin pressed to skin beneath the steam. Her arms are around me, mine looped loosely behind her back. I feel her heartbeat like a second pulse. Strong. Unrelenting.
I shift slightly, just enough to brush my fingers along her wrist under the surface. A soft touch. An invitation.
She doesn’t pull away.
But she doesn’t move closer either.
Then—
“A village in the north,” I say quietly. “One of the ones where no one believes in gods anymore. Where the old temples have fallen and people just… live and trade stories and sleep without fear.”
Selis hums, skeptical but silent.
“Or there’s a salt lake,” I add, “where the light never touches the water. In the south. People say it’s cursed, but I think it’s just lonely.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I’ve had enough of cursed things. ”
A laugh slips out of me, soft and real. “That's understandable.”
I tilt my head so our foreheads rest together, her braid wet against my shoulder.
“We could find a place no one knows. Something at the edge of the world.” I pause. “I could change my name. You could too. We’d be no one. Just women trying to survive.”
Selis doesn’t speak.
“Say something,” I whisper.
I hold onto the ideas like they’re a rope across a chasm. I need her to reach back.
And when she doesn’t, I try to believe in it enough for both of us. I imagine us somewhere soft and safe, where no one bleeds and Selis smiles more.
I believe in it.
And Selis doesn’t say a word to stop me.
So this time—I move. I lean in. Our noses brush. Her breath hitches.
And beneath the water, her hand finds mine. Fingers lacing slow.
It’s not a vow.
Not yet.
But it could be.
She murmurs, low against my ear, “I’ve had enough of serious things.”
Then she grins. Just a sliver at first, and then it spreads, sharp and wicked. A glint in her eyes that turns molten in the steam. Hungry.
Her arms slip around me, pulling me tight against her with a groan that vibrates through her chest and into mine. Skin to skin. Heat and heat and the soft slide of limbs in water. I gasp, half-laughing, my breath tangling with hers.
“Selis—”
She grins wider now. Slow. Dangerous.
And then she kisses me again.
This time it’s softer at first. A coaxing thing. But her hands are insistent—trailing up my ribs, my back, anchoring me to her as our bodies press together beneath the heat.
Her mouth is hungry. Teasing. She’s murmuring something against my lips I can’t quite hear, but I feel it—her breath, her touch, the way my body arches into hers like I’ve been waiting for this exact moment.
And I want to keep going.
Gods, I want .
But—
“I haven’t…” I whisper, pulling back just enough to breathe. “I’ve never—anything more than kissing, I mean—”
Her hands still instantly. She doesn’t let me go, but her grip softens.
“Hey,” she says, quiet now. All the teasing gone. “That’s okay.”
I nod, heart thudding in my throat. “It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just—I don’t know what I’m doing..”
Selis brushes a strand of hair from my cheek. “Then we don’t do anything you’re not ready for. We take it slow. At your pace. You don’t have to rush with me… I’m not going anywhere, starlight.”