Chapter 19 #2
And then there was only her, and I was grasping her waist and hauling her closer, my tongue parting her lips, a growl echoing from my throat into hers.
She was my one light in an endlessly dark sky, my spear of hope which I clung to even now after her betrayal.
She was all I had and as I devoured her mouth with my own I found she was all I wanted.
Vesper gasped as I pushed up onto my knees, kissing her harder, tasting desperate tears which had tracked over her full lips.
I kissed her like she was the only tether which held me in place on this lonely planet and I knew that was the truth of it.
She had become my only reason to continue on.
All I’d ever known and loved was lost to me but this broken, grieving soul was a mirror of my own.
I was the reflection of her pain inside and out.
We were wrong for each other in every way but the fit of her lips against my own couldn’t have been more perfect.
Her kiss lit me up and cast the shadows away from my soul, her light burning through me and awakening the darkest desires of my heart.
I had been fighting it until that kiss. I didn’t want to need her the way I did; I didn’t want to hunger for her like a starving creature in her absence, but that kiss was all I needed to prove to me that I was already lost to the spell of her and there would be no breaking it.
I was hers.
In all the darkened corners of my being I had become so close to nothing at all, but she was summoning me forth and making a claim on all I was.
I wasn’t even certain she had meant to make it.
But clarity found me in the taste of her lips against mine and I gave up all efforts at resisting.
She had pulled me out of the dark. And I was her monster in servitude for that.
“You came back to me,” Vesper gasped against my mouth, her fingers knotted in my hair as she opened her grey eyes and took me captive within them.
“I would have let the dark have me,” I confessed, running my hand down the side of her face. “There was something monstrous waiting for me within it. But you hauled me free.”
Her eyes bounced between mine, her brow pinching in a frown.
“Ether isn’t sentient,” she said slowly. “What do you mean?”
My chest rose and fell as if I’d been fighting in battle for hours, my hold on her tight as if I feared she might escape me, though she made no attempt to retreat from my grasp.
“The magic drew me under as if tugging me through water. I felt like I might drown but couldn’t summon a single reason why I wouldn’t wish to do so.”
“Ether isn’t something you should toy with. You were a fool to dive into it for my sake.”
A growl vibrated through my chest at the way she dismissed her life so easily but she wouldn’t allow me to divert the conversation from its topic.
“Tell me all of it,” she demanded.
“Just as I thought I would be lost to the pull of that torrent of magic, something spied me in the darkness. It told me it saw me. Its rage dug into the depths of my bones as it peered at me.”
“And then?” she hissed, her face pale and fingers biting into my flesh.
“Then you pulled me free.”
Vesper cursed, pushing out of my arms and standing. “I don’t think our work here is secret any longer,” she said.
“And what does that mean?” I asked, standing too, missing the heat of her body against mine.
“Nothing good,” she muttered, her attention moving to the keystone. “But I managed to fix the flow of power in this place before it overwhelmed me.”
“I found you on the verge of death,” I growled, my focus moving to her temple but where I had bound her wound with earth magic I found only dirt and blood staining her hair. The wound was gone. The ether had healed her once more.
“Looks like my luck hasn’t run dry yet,” she said. “But yours almost did.”
“I was saving you,” I replied fiercely, her accusation rankling at me.
“I’ve never needed saving before.” Her walls were up once more, her anger over that kiss clear in her eyes. “Besides, I was the one who rescued you in the end.”
“You did,” I agreed, grazing my thumb over my bottom lip where the sting of her teeth still lingered in the best possible way. “Your methods were unorthodox.”
“Lust has long been a weapon at my disposal.”
I closed the distance between us, gripping her jaw tightly and forcing her gaze to meet with mine.
“That kiss was no petty lust, Vesper,” I uttered, daring her to deny it. “You will not dismiss it as such.”
She swallowed, her throat brushing against the side of my palm, her eyes falling to my mouth.
“No,” she breathed, her fingers curling around my wrist as though hoping to keep me exactly where I was. “It wasn’t lust.”
Her admission surprised me but before I could press her for more of the truth, she withdrew, pushing my hand from her skin and turning her back on me.
“We’ll be missed if we’re gone much longer,” she said, stalking away into the dark. “We should return to Stormfell before they link our absences.”
I frowned after her as she strode away but she offered me nothing further and I was left with no other choice but to succumb to her demand.
The secret which had passed between us remained in that cavern but I didn’t simply leave it there.
I took the brief taste of her heart with me as I licked it from my lips and I made certain to savour it as I followed her into the dark, knowing now that I would follow her endlessly.
No matter what twisted paths she might take.