Chapter 7
Calloused hands swept up my thigh and over my hip where they then dipped into the curve of my waist. “Again?” I whispered over my shoulder.
Wait, I’d been here before.
I squinted over my shoulder to find a sleepy Carmine propped behind me. The part of him that wasn’t sleepy pressed against my ass.
“Always once more, enamai,” he said harshly. His hand cupped my breasts, then pushed upward to force my chin high and allow him access to my mouth.
The kiss left us breathless.
Some nights, I didn’t have the strength to wake myself up after this kiss. Other nights, I managed to tear myself to the land of waking after his first sweeping touch. Tonight was a weak night. I wanted to continue to the part where he slipped inside. The part where we moved together.
Even if I came in my sleep, though, I never felt satiated, and these dreams always left me doubting my willpower.
I had to be strong. Not one inch of Carmine was allowed inside me—no sexual innuendo intended—even in my sleep.
He hooked a hand under my thigh and set his length at my entrance.
No. I shoved the demon king away and bounded from the bed.
I turned to see his eyes fill with confusion and pain. “Enamai, why—"
I gripped both sides of my head and opened my eyes.
In the land of the awake, I stared at the stone ceiling. “Fuck.”
I threw off the black sheets.
This happened most nights. Not the dream always, but definitely tossing and turning from unsatiated lust. From here, I could try to bring myself relief from the pounding lust. Which three years of hopeful attempts had shown me wouldn’t work.
I could continue to toss and turn. Wouldn’t work.
Or I could exhaust myself with vigorous training and catch a few more hours sleep before dawn.
After dressing quickly, I grabbed my weapons and slipped into the hall.
I turned left to detour through the closest lounge.
I’d taken one step inside when the entrance opposite me burst open.
A panting Carmine stumbled through the entrance.
Naked. Entirely naked. A sheen of sweat covering every inch of his skin over the swirling designs of our mating.
He wrenched to a halt at the sight of me, and his growl filled the room.
The ring of red around his eyes blazed as he took a predatory step closer.
I’d stepped closer too. Shit. I froze my boots to the ground and squeezed my eyes shut against the sight of him. I wanted to sink to my knees and take every bit of that length in my body, and I didn’t care where.
“I’m heading to the training rooms,” I gasped.
I groaned as a fresh wave of lust crashed over me, then spun away. This wasn’t happening. Lust had me in its grip after the dream. Why the fuck was he here right now?
He dragged in an inhale, and I felt his gaze searing my back.
I breathed through barely parted lips to limit how much of his alluring scent could affect me. “I’m not sneaking around, Carmine. You can put the growl away.”
He snarled, then spat out, “I’m not angry. My balls are going to fucking explode.”
I could help it. I glanced back and immediately regretted the peek. I bent forward to place my hands on my knees, breathing hard. What I wouldn’t give to have that hard length inside me. I wanted to come again and again and a hundred times more. A shame his cock was attached to him.
His words finally penetrated my lust-hazed mind. Why were we both here at this exact moment?
My brow cleared. Oh. Ohhh. “Did you dream about me?” I blurted.
He tore his gaze away from me to rest his fists on the back of the couch. I was left with a glistening profile of his powerful body that was almost as bad as the full frontal.
He spoke low, “I get the same dream over and over.”
Kind of like mine. “What are we doing in the dream?” I had a terrible feeling about this.
Syera, just get to training. You don’t need to know this.
But I did. I really did. I needed to know how much to hate myself.
His breath was ragged. Carmine shot me a look, then surprised me by answering, “I awaken, and you’re facing away from me. I’m curled around you. I roll over and run my hand up your thigh. It goes from there.”
Like mine. But that didn’t mean we were sharing a dream. “When does it end?”
“Does it matter?”
I lifted a shoulder. “I guess not.”
Carmine shook his head. “The dream ends at different times. Sometimes immediately. Sometimes after the kiss. Sometimes I’m able to sink inside you. Sometimes I’m able to fuck you into the mattress for hours, though I’m never satisfied after.”
I laced my hands through my black hair. We were sharing a sex dream.
Which meant for three years Carmine had fucked me in my sleep, and I’d done it right back when I couldn’t hold myself together.
Dread swept through me in a wave as my mouth dried. How was this possible? Because what he’d described made it seem like we were definitely having the same dream that ended when I scraped my self-respect together.
Blood poured into my cheeks. “Right. Okay.”
He regarded me. “You’re embarrassed.”
Just what every embarrassed person wanted—to have their embarrassment announced. “I need to train. You standing there naked isn’t helping matters.”
Carmine straightened off the couch and walked closer, his cock bouncing with each step. “You could let me fuck you for hours and hours, sweet Syera. When you fall asleep, I could drag you back with my tongue. You used to come before you’d even registered I was there.”
I hissed at the painful ache between my legs and across my breasts—hell, everywhere. My back arched of its own accord, and my tongue darted out to moisten my lips.
I squeezed my eyes shut and curled my hands into fists. “Stop.”
“Why deny yourself when you’re in so much pain?” he snarled.
And part of him truly didn’t like that I was in pain, whereas he would give no real thought to his own pain. Mating rituals sure were a bitch.
“Because I know the difference between loving you and being told to love you.” I breathed thinly, walking back a few steps.
Carmine didn’t draw any nearer. I wondered if he was unable to trust himself too.
Mother be, I hadn’t expected his proximity would affect me so much.
The sight of him. The smell of him. His expressions.
Every piece of me wanted to take Carmine up on his offer.
Hours of sex. Days of it. Satisfaction after three long, aching years.
Carmine had been incredible in bed. Otherworldly. At least, I’d thought so at eighteen with no experience to compare him to.
Carmine tilted his head, and his nostrils flared. “Do you dream of me, enamai?”
“Yes.”
“What are we doing in the dream?”
The exact same as in yours, because the dreams are fucking real. All this time we’d still been in each other’s arms. If I’d known… If I’d known, would I have done anything differently? I couldn’t tell while in this shaking state. “Similar to yours,” I said. “Different in ways.”
Carmine exhaled. “The mating ritual would not progress further if we shared a bed, enamai. But sharing a bed would help us feel a lot better.”
Understatement.
I blinked, and cold doused my insides as the situation slapped me across the face.
I knew where this led. To his bed. Or the floor right here.
We would destroy this fortress with our reunion, but if I went there, even once, I would never, never find my way back to this version of myself.
I couldn’t say how I’d done it before, but twice?
Twice was impossible.
“It wouldn’t help me feel better,” I hissed, looking up at him so he understood my meaning.
“How do you do it?” he asked. The shutters fell away, and I glimpsed his pain beneath. The pain I usually saw in the dream after pulling away from him. “I can barely take it, and I spent a century in a dungeon. How can you stand the torture?”
In the middle of the night, flustered as we both were, I answered, “You were forged through pain in the dungeons, and I was forged through love with my family. Love is the stronger force.”
He nodded after a beat. “Love is the stronger force. Love has nearly broken me where hate never did.”
You have broken me. I tore my gaze from his. He’d broken me first.
Carmine continued. “You didn’t possess this inner strength three years ago. Just the potential. Experiencing this unsatiated lust has made you formidable.”
Formidable. I let myself feel flattered by that. Just for a second. “Perhaps.”
And other experiences had pushed me to grow into myself too.
He drew closer. “Perhaps. Maybe. There are no straight answers from you, Syera. That is another chance.”
I’d always been forthright and not always on the nice end of that spectrum.
The quality had been in line with my Queen Bee status at human high school.
But honesty was a quality for people with nothing to lose.
Until sixteen, I hadn’t considered that everything could be taken away. More than I’d ever expected.
I’d learned fear.
And I’d learned that honesty should be saved for a select few. At the end of the day, I didn’t owe anyone shit—not even an answer to their questions.
“Guess not. How does it feel?” I asked. Some of the lust was siphoning away at last, but it was going to take the rest of the night to get my body in check.
“You imply that I never gave you honesty?”
“You can answer that for yourself,” I said.
He frowned. “You underestimate the force of my culture in matters, Syera. Was I meant to immediately perceive how you viewed betrayal and truth? These were foreign notions to me. You underestimate my fear when I finally understood how you would view the deaths of your family by my hand. I had never been a coward before, but I had dared to love you, and so suddenly there was everything to lose.”
Heartfelt words, or so I might have thought if not for the ice lurking in his eyes. These were calculated words to get me into his bed and to work into my good graces.