Chapter 10 Nyssa #2
Caelus groaned, his eyes devouring every inch of my face as ecstasy barrelled through me.
“I thought I loved hearing the sound of my name on your lips before, but nothing can compare now that I’ve tasted it on your tongue as you fall apart.”
I huffed a bliss-filled laugh. “That’s not all my tongue can do, Golden.” My lazy smirk taunted him, even if I was currently too jelly-limbed to follow through on the promise.
“As tempting as that is, I’m afraid I’m much too selfish to find out right now.” He kissed the skin below my ear, following the curve of my neck, eliciting another breathless moan.
“No,” I murmured, knowing he intended to continue kissing down my body.
He froze.
“Don’t,” I said, more resolutely — aware that he would have undoubtedly dragged me into another torrential orgasm with little more than a swipe of his tongue.
Hurt filled my chest like a fresh wound — his hurt — as he pulled back, intending to withdraw. Before he could, I captured his face between my palms.
“Caelus,” I said. “Caelus, look at me.”
I waited the excruciating few seconds until he complied.
“I didn’t mean for you to stop.”
His brows knitted together.
“I meant…” My gaze broke away as I grappled with the words.
I meant that I needed more. That I was battling a bone-deep emptiness and it could only be satiated by the storm-wielder above me.
“Yes?” he prompted with a small smile, undoubtedly sensing my stirring embarrassment.
“I meant that I need more,” I whispered.
The words sent a shiver down his spine even as his face split into a roguish grin. “Say it,” he urged. “I need to hear you say it, Nightshade.”
Despite the lingering anxiety and the fear of imminent loss, I said it. I threw my words into the air between us, letting him decide what to make of them. “Caelus, I need you. I need all of you.”
Rejection swelled in my gut as he withdrew anyway. He rolled off the bed, leaving me naked and alone. I closed my eyes to stem the flow of tears I could already feel prickling.
But then, the bed jostled again.
They snapped open to the devastatingly beautiful, but hauntingly sad smile of the man I had fallen in love with.
“Nyssa, I’d be an idiot to reject an offer like that.” He cupped my jaw, pressing a tender kiss to my cheek. “My cock would have to have been cut off to ever disregard you like that. You own every piece of me, Nightshade — body and soul. It’s all yours. It always has been.”
My reply was wordless. I pulled his face back down to mine, and tried to convey every ounce of love and every shred of desire I felt for him through our lips and down our bond.
He groaned again — an obscene sound that had my core clenching — and I gasped as he dragged the head of his cock — his bare, breeches-free cock — through my dripping centre, leaving it perched right at the entrance.
He held himself still, pressed no further, and pulled back only to ask a single question.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Say the word and I’ll stop. Though this first time might hurt,” he warned.
“I’m sure. I want this more than anything,” I pleaded breathily, desperate to fill that throbbing ache.
“Are you—”
“Caelus!” I laughed. “I might actually die if you don’t hurry up!”
He grinned devilishly, and pushed slowly in. So slowly, the ache was somehow both lesser and more intense.
My opening stretched to accommodate the thickness of him. He paused an inch deep, letting me adjust to the feeling — watching me intently the whole while.
I panted, completely unabashed, and lifted my head off the mattress to peer down at where we were joined.
A flicker of movement to Caelus’ right snagged my attention and I screamed; bloodcurdlingly loud.
“Fuck! Am I hurting you?” Caelus asked in clear distress, frozen in stark horror.
The lancing spear of ice that pierced my breastbone — his terror — was the only reason I was able to respond with a quick shake of my head.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” the ghostly figure of my best friend offered from where he hovered at the foot of the bed.
Caelus’ head snapped to the right as Charon spoke — brows furrowing and eyes darting wildly around. My own gaze flickered between Charon’s shade and Caelus’ evident confusion.
Charon’s semi-transparent face winced as he averted his eyes from our naked forms — Caelus still frozen an inch deep.
“I’d say I’ll come back at another time, but I’m not overly sure I can.”
“Charon?” Caelus asked, his eyes yet to locate him.
“You can’t see him?” I asked.
Caelus’ blinked back at me. “No.”
“But you can hear him?” The question came out as barely more than a whisper, terrified of his answer.
“I… yes. Nyssa, how can I hear him?”
“I don’t know,” I breathed, staring at the shade of my best friend that should be in the Elysian Fields right now, not here in the Underworld.
“I’m right here,” Charon moaned.
I’m not going crazy.
You thought you were going crazy? Caelus asked, something disgustingly like pity swirling in his dual-toned irises. He shifted his weight forward—
And it was at that precise moment that I realised I was completely naked, with my soul-bonded’s cock barely inside me, with the ghost of my best friend cringing at us from the foot of the bed.
A huff of a laugh clawed its way up my throat and out my mouth before I could stop it. Sharp and manic, it came out wrong. Pitched a little too high and paced a little too faced; too brittle to be joy, too sudden to be sane. As if my body had mistaken panic for humour.
The situation I’d found myself in was nothing short of ridiculous — and more giggles bubbled their way up. Every attempt to stop it only fed to the absurdity, and the laughter burst free anew.
“Maybe she has lost her mind,” Charon muttered.
I howled in response.
“Maybe we both have,” Caelus murmured back, his poor, golden face tilted on its side, completely and utterly bewildered. He pulled back to throw his breeches on, surreptitiously tucking his half-wilted cock inside them, before draping his tunic over my head as the tear-inducing laughter subsided.
I swung my legs off the bed, wiping tears from my eyes, and confronted the fact that I wasn’t mad — I really had been hearing my best friend all week.
“What happened, Char? Why are you here?”
It was disconcerting to see the open balcony and Velira’s piercing gaze through the face of my dead best friend, but here we were.
Charon sighed, running his hand through his now-flaxen hair and crouched before me. Though his eyes were insubstantial and troubled, they were still the same pale blue — still conveyed everything his words did not.
“What did you do to the arches, Nyss?” he asked softly.
I jolted, taken aback. “Nothing… at least not directly.”
He waited patiently for me to explain, so I allowed myself a steadying breath and launched into it. “That happened after I sent you through to the Elysian Fields. First, they fractured… then, they crumbled.”
He pursed his ghostly lips. “So,” he said, switching his gaze to Caelus. “Fate didn’t like the fact that she brought you back.”
“It seems not.”
“Nyssa, you have to come to the arches,” he implored. “I don’t know how else to say this, but… the dead aren’t staying dead.”
I quirked one ebony brow. “Given the fact that you’re here, I’m very much aware of that fact.”
“Er, right.” He blushed, as much as any shade could. “Hephaestus is doing his best to fix the gateways, but…”
“But what?” I asked, already dreading the answer.
“But you’ll have to see for yourself… and Nyss?”
“What is it?”
“It’s really nice to be able to talk to you again.” He smiled and that godsdamned dimple I’d missed so much it hurt, appeared in his left cheek. Right where it was supposed to be.