27. Chapter 27
27
Nelle
T he longer Graysen stared at me, the more my heart did stupid crazy things, like flip and swell with delight. But there was some small part of me screaming for self-preservation. “I don’t trust you.”
I don’t trust you’ll not hurt me.
He sighed deeply. “You shouldn’t.”
Suddenly, his ankle hooked mine, and I jolted, yelping, as he dragged me closer. I fell into him, my tiny form wedged against his. I spread my hands over his chest to keep my head above water and he wound an arm around my lower back to help steady my balance. His hard pecs flexed beneath my cool palms and I shuddered, gritting my teeth against the delicious sensation.
We didn’t speak. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.
My bare skin pressed against the friction of his jeans and his t-shirt. His heat warmed my chilled body, and that damned hyperawareness of him skimmed my flesh in pulsing waves.
His gaze lowered, coasting along my neck down to my breasts half-submerged. “I’ve often wondered what might be hidden beneath those dresses that swamp you.” The golden flecks in his eyes glittered with appreciation.
I slapped his chest. “Always your indecent mind.”
He grinned, cocking a mischievous eyebrow. “Ah-huh.”
His handsome features grew serious. “Let’s put aside that I’m a Crowther and you’re a Wychthorn.” And he sucked in a breath as something dark swept across his expression as if he warred with himself over a choice he had to make. As if this was imperative that we forget who we were to one another. “Why don’t we forget that I’m an asshole and you’re wicked mean?”
“Wicked mean?” I laughed .
He nuzzled my neck. The roughness of his jaw abraded my sensitive flesh. The sensation was a turbulent contradiction. I wanted to arch away. I wanted more. “Lovely wicked Wychthorn,” he purred.
Oh, hellsgate, I might be immersed in water, but even I could feel my panties dampening.
“I’ll be your friend for the day.” The words were whispered in a hot, swirling breath against the shell of my ear. A thrill ran through me. And I couldn’t help the tilt of my chin, how my lips parted with a soft sigh.
His hands glided down to cup my ass, drawing me closer, and as our legs tangled, I felt his erection pressing against my thigh. Stone hard, even in this cold water.
I cleared my throat noisily, practically squeaking, “That doesn’t feel particularly friendly.”
“Oh, but it does, little bird. It’s showing just how much I do like you.”
He suddenly flipped me around and over.
I squawked, spluttering, “ What the?! ”
His other hand spread under my back and pushed me up to float. His chuckle rasped through the air. “Relax.”
And I did. Though it took a while to loosen my limbs and tame my heartbeat. He treaded water and I floated, staring up at the sky. The heat of the morning sun had burned away the wisps of clouds. A pair of swallows darted overhead, swooping down to snatch insects buzzing over the water’s surface.
We were like that for a long time. Me floating beside him, the water lapping against my bare skin. And there was no way in all Nine Hells that I could forget he was there. Each and every one of my senses was focused on him. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. The rhythmic sound of his calm breath, the swirl of water as he slowly kicked to keep him afloat. His indelible scent.
Finally, one of us broke the silence, and it wasn’t me. His voice was low and seductive. “Does he know,”— and I knew who he was talking about—“that you can speak seven different languages…badly?”
I couldn’t help the smile this time. Because it was true. Who was there to practice on, anyway?
Suddenly, his hands were on me, pulling me closer. He dipped lower and then I found my head cradled in the crook of his shoulder. Still floating, I could breathe him in— intoxicating. I could feel his throat against my cheek— a little rough and prickly. The curling ends of his wet hair brushed against my temple— ticklish.
What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing ?
“Gods, that day you spent butchering the Balinese language,” he said. “I wanted to crush your larynx and render you speechless just for a moment of silence.”
My smile only grew wider.
“I looked up what you’d been practicing.”
“And?”
“Such filthy words, Wychthorn,” he purred. “You’d spent the entire day swearing at me in Balinese.”
I gave a wistful sigh, staring up at the blue, cerulean sky. “Fun times.”
“Fuck, Wychthorn, no one speaks to me as you do and gets away with it.”
This much I knew about Graysen. But I figured it had to do with my placement in the Houses. “You can talk. You say the most atrocious things to me.”
I heard the smile in his voice. “You give as good as you get.”
I chewed my bottom lip. Maybe Graysen would think it was because I was biting back a grin, but it was because his hand started stroking the ripple of my spine and my body tingled with electricity everywhere he touched. “Does your precious Danne know in a spring shower you’ll run outside and let yourself get soaked? That you go barefooted not so much as to feel the grass and earth, but to keep you grounded. To keep a connection to the earth.”
I blinked rapidly, feeling a groove deepen between my brows. He knew these things about me?
“You dream of breaking your cage. You’ve barely left your family’s estate, but that’s what you’d do—travel—if you were free to fly. And when you’d settle down, it wouldn’t be in a bustling city, but in a small town, burying yourself in everyday life. You’d be happiest at a diner, pouring coffee and talking to people.”
My pulse picked up and a delighted feeling warmed my chest and made it hard not to smile. And I thought he spent his time in my company, oblivious to my existence.
“Where was Danne going to take you?”
We were back to Danne again?
“Ascendria.”
“Let me guess, that jazz club he kept harping on about?”
“ Ah-huh. ” But the sound came out more like a strangled moan because his hand had splayed wide, stroking back and forth, reaching dangerously near my ass every time he stroked downward.
“And is that what you wanted to do?”
“I have a confession to make,” I whispered, turning my face into his neck, my breath and lips feathering his skin. He arched away, and I swore he made a rough, desperate noise in the back of his throat, his hand stilling in the trail he blazed down my spine with his touch.
“Let me guess…you don’t actually like jazz.”
“Nope.”
“What do you want, little bird?”
I closed my eyes. The words sighing from me. “Freedom. Just one day of freedom.”
“You can have a day out any time you like.”
My eyes flicked wide. He knew I couldn’t and he was making fun of me. I pushed away, flipping over to tread water. Except there wasn’t anything remotely like humor on his face. He looked puzzled. A little serious too. I don’t know why he should look confused. It was simple. “My father will never allow it.”
“Your father can’t stop you if you’re with me.”
Now it was my turn to look puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re nineteen now. And you, me, this is us getting to know one another. That’s why we’re doing these days together. If I want to take you out, I get to do it. And Byron can’t do a thing about it.”
“What?” Like, what? Like, seriously… Whaaat?
“It’s all in the Alverac.”
That stupid marriage contract. I’d read everything else I could get my hands on, but I never had the desire to read that thing. Probably because my father had locked it away in our treasure trove after I’d exploded in anger and desperation that night. Out of sight. Out of mind. However, right at this moment, my thoughts were resting on the fact the door to my cage was open. “So, you could take me to Ascendria?”
“New York if I wanted. Any-fucking-where.”
I could not believe it. But more importantly—“You waited all year to tell me this? All year?! ”—I could have been doing anything I wanted out there.
“What would you do—”
I lunged, grabbing him by the arms and squeezing hard. “Everything!” Everything. Every single thing I had coveted and tacked to my bedroom walls. But I’d want to act my age, rebel a little, go a little wild and crazy. “I want to go dancing. At a club. With pretty-colored cocktails. Thumping bass and sweaty people.”
He gave me a funny look. “You’re underage.”
“When did our life ever revolve around silly things like heeding to legalities?” I tugged on his arm. “Oh my gosh, Graysen. We gotta go. Like right now.” He wasn’t budging. I yanked harder. “Come on, come on,” I whined, bobbing up and down in the water in excitement. “Please. Like. Right. This. Minute!”
A sly smile curved his mouth. “I’ll give you a day out, little bird…in exchange…”
“For what? What will I have to give?” Because of course, he’d give nothing freely.
“I want a taste.”
The words meant nothing to me. I didn’t understand.
“I want to taste you…” He pressed a finger lightly onto my lower lip. “…right here.”
A kiss? Graysen wanted to kiss me? I pulled a face. “Gods, Crowther, you’re obsessing over a kiss.”
He barked a laugh. “Don’t I know it?” Then he grew deadly serious. “Give me a taste and I’ll free you for a day.”
“Why?” It was a question that had plagued me most of the morning, this change in our relationship. “Why me?”
Rough words, rawly spoken. “I don’t fucking know.” And this was his truth. He searched my eyes as if seeking a reason, as if begging for me to explain. But I knew no more than he did what this thing was between us. “I want to kiss you, little bird. I want to so badly it hurts.” He made it sound like he was dying of thirst and I was the only drinking well left in the world.
“You’ve already kissed me.”
“No. That wasn’t a kiss—”
“A fucking mauling.” I finished for him, trying to make the comment light and carefree, and failing dismally. I sighed. It came out a little anguished. “I don’t…” Here it was, an exchange of truths, but mine shamefully embarrassing, so much so I could barely whisper it. I couldn’t even look at him. Instead, I stared at that hollow at his throat, at the coils of ink gracing his skin. “I don’t know how to kiss.”
I waited for his mocking, his derision, for him to push me off. For him to tell me he couldn’t be bothered with an inexperienced girl. That I’d be a turnoff with my wet, hesitant kisses.
Chancing a glance upward, I discovered he’d squeezed his eyes shut as if he were in pain.
Embarrassment twisted inside. Of course, this was too much for him. He’d want the Melas of the world who knew how to kiss and to do other things with their cupid’s bow lips—more experienced things I couldn’t offer.
“It’s fine,” I muttered, pushing myself away. Desperately grasping hold of my tattered pride, I blinked back the heat stinging behind my eyes. I couldn’t let him see me like this. It would be another weakness to mock me with .
I had barely twisted around when he grabbed my wrist and pulled me into his arms. “Gods, Wychthorn, you have no idea what you do to me.” His jaw clenched and he loosened a soft growl. “Never been kissed. Never even seen a cock. You think those things will turn me away?” And if his words couldn’t convince me, he took my hand and pushed it downward, allowing my touch to slide along his rippled abs, down, down, down, to coast over cold sharp metal and the slick leather of a belt buckle. Over an iron-hard length that throbbed against my palm. Felt hot, even through the denim.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes flaring wide. It felt enormous. It was one thing to be straddled across his hips, his erection pressing into my sex. But my fingers were splayed wide across his girth— holy fucking hellsgate —and it moved beneath my palm as he slid my hand up and down its length, growing stiffer and thicker, and punched against the wet fabric of his jeans.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his eyes gone heavy-lidded. “They only make it harder.”
Why would he want me? He could have any woman he wanted with his devastating beauty.
“You’ve been with—”
“Fuck-loads of women.”
“And I’m—”
“Mine.”
A virgin. Inexperienced. I was about to say. Naive. Awkward. And nothing like those beautiful, experienced women he’d been with.
Mine, he’d said instead. And the way he held my stare with a gaze glittering with dark promise, he meant it too. Solidified it a breath later as he leaned forward and nipped my bottom lip in a carnal warning.
“Holy hells,” I hissed, pressing a hand to my lower lip while I stared at him with big, wide eyes. But that pain… That pain was delicious.
What was a kiss for a day off the estate? I could do that. I think I could do that. He might laugh at me later and make a joke of my kiss, but I’d still make him take me to Ascendria.
“A kiss?” I asked, wetting my lips with the tip of my tongue to soothe the sting of his bite.
He nodded.
“One kiss?”
He made a gruff noise. “Gods Wychthorn, you’re killing me here. One kiss. And Ascendria will bow at your feet.”
“Promise? ”
“You have my word.”
I canted forward and paused. Wariness entered his gaze. I supposed he thought I’d changed my mind. But I hadn’t. “Kiss me how you want to kiss me—not how you think I want to be kissed.”
His brows twisted with confusion. “You don’t want sweet and gentle?”
I shook my head, winding my hands around the nape of his neck, his wet hair sliding through my fingers. He pressed back into my touch like a cat arching into a pet. “I want your truth. As messy and brutal as it is.”
Graysen beamed. And it was beautiful and special because those kinds of smiles from him were rarely given. I bathed in it, let it warm and comfort me, let it pluck that taut sensual string that vibrated right to my core.
I stilled an inch from his mouth, letting him travel the rest of the distance, and waited impatiently as anticipation razed across my skin with the quickness of wildfyre. But he didn’t move. He kept staring through heavily lidded eyes. And when his tongue flicked over his bottom lip before his teeth raked along the soft flesh, all my bones turned to liquid.
His mouth, which had been hovering over mine, glided away. Silky damp hair brushed against my cheek as he nuzzled into the space between my neck and shoulder. He dragged in a deep breath through his nose. Exhaling. “Gods, that floral scent of yours. Sweetly spicy and full of fire.”
My brow furrowed. “I don’t wear perfume.” I only washed with my favorite strawberry soap.
His mouth brushed my skin, drawing a shiver from me as he spoke. “It’s the scent of you, and it gets heavier when you’re aroused. Much like you are right now. I can’t get away from it—from you.” A desperate groan. “I’m fucking choking on it.”
What the?
Arousal?
Oh, my gods!
Heat like a bonfire licked up my chest, over my throat and cheeks. I pushed away, horribly embarrassed, but he wouldn’t let me go.
My Kindle!
Oh my gods, my Kindle!
I shot him a horrified look. He’d known all that time… He’d scented it on me. “B-but—”
He laughed. “Yeah, I know what you’re reading on your Kindle.”
That was where I stored all my steamy romance books. Pretty much porn in the form of written words.
Shit, shit, shit—
“Danne sure as hells wouldn’t know your head’s normally stuck in a book. But when you read from your Kindle, you’re reading something smutty.” He cocked a smug brow at me. “And when you’re reading something especially hot on your Kindle, you wiggle down on your back, thighs pressed together, and you worry the inside of your cheek with your teeth.”
I hid my blazing face behind my hands, my mind churning through all my memories as I tried to remember how many days we’d spent in each other’s company like that. How often I’d read from the damn Kindle and gotten all kinds of turned-on.
Oh gods, this is humiliating.
He pulled my hands from my face, but I couldn’t look at him.
“I’d hear your pulse picking up.” His warm fingers stroked down my neck and back up again. “The spike of heat flushing your cheeks, and that little breathy sigh you make and think I don’t notice.” His knuckles brushed across my cheek before he encircled the nape of my neck with a hand to pull me closer. His mouth ghosted mine. Not a kiss, but teasing me with his words. “Why the hells do you think I got so quiet, broody, and sullen? I had to hide my godsdamn hard-on from you the entire time.”
But there were plenty of other times I’d been aroused without my Kindle.
As if reading my mind, he said, “And yeah, even all those times you sexually harassed my ass with your eyes.”
I groaned, wincing. “You knew?”
He brushed tiny kisses down my throat and along the crook of my neck. “Besides the spike of your scent, I could feel your hungry gaze. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.” His teeth grazed, lightly, carefully tasting my skin. Then he bit.
Something hot ignited. I bowed my back, gasping. He pinned me in that spot with his teeth and his mouth, like an animal with its prey. But gods, what it did to me. I should have been fighting him off, but all I wanted to do was draw him closer.
My breath came in heavy pants.
My body wasn’t my own. It had become something else. Every single inch of me sparked and hummed. Even places on my body I’d never thought to be sensitive or sensual. An urgency for him strummed through my veins.
He gave a lick to soothe the burn.
But for some reason that eluded me, gods, it made the flames burning inside roar higher like the wind had fanned them.
His nose grazed my throat. A lick. A kiss on my jawline. His lips were so close.
I was strung tight and I couldn’t wait any longer. “Kiss m—”
His mouth captured mine, swallowing my demand.
I didn’t know if it was those filaments from the Alverac binding us together or that intense awareness we’d always had for one another, or perhaps I would have felt this way about him without either of them. But I simply fell apart underneath his lips. Rendered into nothing but sensation.
His mouth glided over mine before he swept his tongue along my bottom lip, nudging my lips to part. “Kiss me back,” he breathed into my mouth.
I moved my lips, brushing over his as he’d done. His tongue slid in—
Electric.
Exquisite.
And when my tongue curled around his—
Lightning cracked between us. Literally. Lightning.
I jolted. An intense charge of pure energy passed between us. Sparking within my mouth, against my lips, chattering my teeth. It coursed right through me, awakening every single cell in my body with singing force. The creature yowled in delight and a pulse of power rushed outwards to ripple through the water.
Holy hellsgate!
We were blown apart like two magnets facing the same side.
Drifting away, we stared at one another in disbelief.
Graysen’s hair stood on end with static electricity. His eyes flared wide and his voice boomed, “WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. WAS THAT?!”
Blinking dazedly, I slid my hand along my scorched lips. “Are all kisses like that?”
He shook his head slowly as his brow furrowed. “Your eyes—”
“What about my eyes?”
“The pupils are blown. They’re entirely black.”
I cut through the water, swimming back to him, and squinted. “Yours too.”
“My eyes are black,” he said dismissively, scrunching his nose at me.
“The flecks of gold, they’re gone, eaten up by your pupils.”
I checked inside. The creature was twisting around and around. It wasn’t agitated. It was bathing in the energy that had passed between Graysen and me— What was that?
It answered with a contented, rumbling purr and gave a delighted chuckle, its power swirling outward to coil around Graysen. It brushed against him in featherlight strokes, petting him.
Graysen’s gaze sharpened on me. “What are you doing?”
I gave him my best innocent face. “Nothing.”
“I can feel that… Whatever you’re doing, I can feel it.”
Inwardly hissing at the creature, I reeled the power back in and shook my head as if I did not know whatsoever what he was talking about.
Shit, what happened between us?
What does this even mean?
Can he now detect what I am?
Graysen rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck. “Fuck, it felt like I’d been struck by lightning. What the fuck was that?”
I fluttered my eyelashes. “Are they back to normal?”
He inspected my eyes and gave a hummed— Yes.
“Should we…you know…” I asked, waving a hand between us.
“Try again?”
I nodded, smoothing my hair down. Like Graysen, most of it was stuck up in a static mop. I twisted it into a rope and looped it into a knot on top of my head.
It was the most chaste, tentative kiss I imagined someone like Graysen Crowther had ever given. A mere press of his lips, a quick peck, before he warily backed off.
Nothing.
My lips still tingled, but nothing blew up in our faces. Namely, us.
“Technically,” I teased, “that’s the one kiss I owed.”
The disappointment scoring across his face was laughable.
But he needn’t have worried. I wanted more. I practically pounced on him with a low growl that knocked him under the water and made him splutter and laugh when he surfaced. “Fuck, Wychthorn, easy.”
I wound my legs around his waist and his hands cupped my ass. His stone-hard cock jutting right there, against the place between my thighs, had me swallowing back a moan.
And I kissed him. I think. Maybe I just crushed my lips to his. I don’t know.
But he took over. And it was better he did.
This was a kiss.
And it was so different from that brutal first kiss full of rage—him wanting to paint my mouth with pain, to infuse the residue of chili as payback. This kiss was still demanding and possessive and greedy, but with his tongue sliding against mine, his mouth moving against my lips—a claiming. That’s what it felt like. That I was his. He owned me.
I was unskilled and clumsy, but he liked it. The helpless groan gave him away, along with how his fingers flexed against my ass. He liked the hesitant way my tongue slipped into his mouth, the tentative exploring swirls as I tasted him; a flick with the tip against the roof of his mouth and a gentle glide across his teeth.
He tasted of midnight. Velvety darkness. A promise of wickedness.
He moaned, sucking on my tongue.
Gods, my core erupted in heat. My breasts grew heavy and my nipples so hard they felt like they’d cut through my thin bra. And my confidence grew. My tongue slid along his. He groaned again, and his hands skimmed to my hips to squeeze harder, so hard I might bruise. Pain braided with pleasure, and I’d own those bruises, just like how right this moment, I owned him.
“Fuck, little bird…” And the way he moaned those words— Did he feel the same way I did? “Sunshine…you taste like sunshine.” One of his hands slid up my back and cupped the nape of my neck to angle my head so the kiss could deepen.
I laughed. “What does sunshine taste like?” Who the hells knew?
“Like you can save my black soul,” he breathed.
And those words, the desperation behind them. I wanted to do that for him.
I could feel everything he’d been denying himself in our kiss. Want, longing, a desire to please. And I matched him. My hands wound through his hair and I fisted the thick locks, wanting to taste him as he’d done with me. I angled his head sideways, and he hissed through his teeth when I went to nip his throat. “The fuck?”
I pulled back to see him better, both of us lust-drunk. “But y-you…” He’d done the same to me.
“I’ve ruined you already.” But he was laughing. I tugged his hair harder, which only made him curse and laugh harder. I raked my teeth along his throat before kissing his jawline and sliding my mouth upwards to bite his earlobe. His hips thrust wickedly in response. “Little bird, you’re as wild as I am.” And my laughter chased his.
He swam us nearer to shore, our mouths never leaving each other. We became more reckless, our teeth clashing and tongues tangling. We reached a depth where he could stand and then his hands were everywhere. His calloused fingers scraped along my bare flesh, up and down my sides, cupping a breast, before sliding down to my hips to pull me closer to his erection. His mouth hungrily chased mine. “We should have been doing this from the start,” I breathlessly shared .
A year. An entire year without kisses. Nor us leaving the estate when both things were in my grasp. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Distantly, I heard water slapping against the rock that formed the natural walls of the well.
The pulsing wasn’t only the strangeness between us, it was my power seeping into the pool, roiling the water, sending waves crashing into the shore. But I was too far gone, burning up for him and those kisses to care.
I moaned his name into his mouth and the sound broke him. His kisses become dirtier, more filthy with every slide of his mouth and tongue. His teeth tugged on my lower lip to suck and the air filled with wet sounds and our moans. Nips and kisses and bites and licks.
And how I loved it.
Utterly adored it.
Wanted more. Needed more.
My heartbeat thundered in my chest. Loud, so loud, louder than normal. And then I realized his matched mine and the noise of our two hearts pulsing as one was almost deafening.
I was so drunk on kisses, my body aching for something more, I was writhing against him like a cat in heat.
Who the hells am I?
“Gods, you’re dirty,” he grinned, fisting my hair to arch my neck back for a wet kiss. Oh gods, he was right. And I flushed deeply, trying to extinguish the flames that burned inside and stop myself from gyrating against him.
Calloused fingers cupped my chin, and he tilted my face slightly to meet his lust-blazed eyes. “You don’t get to be embarrassed about that, little bird. It’s fucking hot.” His mouth moved back to claim mine with a dirty kiss.
And while his hands wandered, mine did too. I couldn’t stop myself if I tried. I marveled at how my gliding touch had his muscles twitching as I ran my hands down his chest to slide over the ripple of his abs and up again.
Graysen suddenly made a noise, as if in anguish.
Shit, had I hurt him?
He broke the kiss. Both of us panted ragged breaths. “We need to stop,” he groaned, tipping his head back into the water.
I tugged on his head, trying to draw him back. I didn’t want to stop. “More,” I whined, while clinging to him like a barnacle. I wanted more!
“If we don’t, we’ll never leave the estate,” he warned.
It took a moment for that to sink in. I’d completely forgotten about our deal .
“Isn’t that what you want, little bird, a day of freedom? A day where the door to your cage is open and you’re free to fly.”
It was. Gods, it was. But I still chased his lips, wanting more kisses.
He pushed me away, breathing hard. “We have to stop. Right now. Because I’m one kiss away from coming in my pants like a horny teenager.”
We floated apart, but everything inside of me desperately wanted to sink back into him. Half-twisting around, he braced his hands on his hips and curved his spine to tilt his head to the sky. He looked a little in pain. Shit, I think I was too. “ Fuuuck, ” he hissed between clenched teeth, one hand squeezing his junk hard.
I drifted further into the shallows and my ass sank into the muddy bottom. Sediment bloomed lazily and curled between my aching thighs.
Graysen’s gaze was still clouded with lust when they met mine. “So what will it be? The clubs don’t open for…let me see…” he pretended to count his fingers, “maybe another eleven hours. Anything else you’d like to do in Ascendria?”
It was like falling through thin ice into freezing water.
Ascendria.
There was one thing I promised myself if I ever got to go to Ascendria alone, it’d be the first. If I had gone with Danne, I would never have been given the chance. But maybe… maybe with Graysen, he wouldn’t realize until too late.
I nodded, licking my kiss-swollen lips, wishing his mouth was back on mine. Kissing would have to wait because I was about to get what I’d always wanted. A day to spread my wings and fly.