32
Flare
Was it?
The transcendent way his mouth had made me feel shouldn’t have been a mistake. Yet as dawn spilled through the rainforest, remorse wrung me out like a cloth. That, and a strange loss.
Whereas my regret had everything to do with this man’s heinous past, Jeryn weathered my gaze with a repentant one of his own. Not because he’d touched a born soul—we had dismantled that barrier—but because of other reasons that stacked like bricks on his face.
He was a ruler. I was a fugitive.
He came from Winter. I came from Summer.
Nothing this prince did was spontaneous. He possessed a will of iron and a calculating mind. Every step he took was on purpose.
Panicking, seeking comfort in my arms, dragging his mouth across my neck. Like the night of the lightning rain, none that had been planned, yet he hadn’t stopped himself. Stalking me through these ruins, kneeling at my feet, and licking me into a frenzy had been deliberate.
But when Jeryn’s eyes dropped to my mouth, heat passed through them along with caution. I understood why, yet there seemed to be more he wasn’t telling me.
My limbs flanked his waist, the pome of his cock hot against my pussy, while the shredded nightgown hung off my shoulders. With our lips swollen and hair disheveled, we had made a mess of one another. And if we weren’t careful, it would happen again.
Crawling up his chest, I planted my hands on the wall, on either side of his head. “So we agree.”
A jagged breath pushed from his chest. “We agree.”
Then and there, the clamshell of my heart closed. The rainforest had embraced us, had led us to this point. I wanted this to mean something beyond a mere tryst, and I wanted to savor the beauty of last night. But I couldn’t.
The prince thought me resilient. The rainforest had granted me the vitality to face all threats. So why did this choice feel painful? Why did my chest clench as much as my conscience? Only last night, I’d been sure nothing he did would ever hurt.
I was wrong.
Our silence formed a new blockade, hardened into a new shield, rose like a new wall. Yet it took a long time for the villain prince to release his grip on me, and it took a long time for me to climb off his lap, and it took even longer for us to let go.
***
Days passed, then weeks followed. We kept ourselves busy, diving headfirst into tasks. Not that it often worked, the tension thickening like sap.
Only with the passage of time did we find ourselves arguing, bantering, and talking more comfortably. In between quarrels, we lapsed into conversations. In a series of moments, we discovered each other.
We mapped the rainforest. The underground ruin caves led to different parts of the island, though we couldn’t rely on them to reach every terrain. Over time, we recognized forks in the paths, danger zones, and fauna territories. Then came the day when we journeyed without having to follow our map.
Slowly, I befriended the wild’s fauna. Hummingbirds roosted on my shoulders. Seahorses swam with me in the grotto. Vipers slinked from the crevices, curious as I tiptoed nearer, too fascinated for Jeryn’s liking, who shoved himself between us until I hopped around him to greet the creatures. From a serpent with pearlescent skin to a horned viper, the animals slithered around me with animated hisses, then twined themselves along my arms like bangles while I laughed.
One afternoon, a boa with a barbed face approached. I recognized her as the one I’d battled and released from the tarantula webs. The female skated out of the shadows, her movements hesitant.
I recalled her bafflement when I’d freed her from the webs. Maybe she sensed a kindred spirit. The rainforest seemed to think we should meet, so I trusted its judgment. And what a pretty enchantress!
As we studied one another, a second figure prowled from a shrub. The red and black feline with saberteeth stalked forward, her shoulders revolving sinuously. When an intrigued purr rippled from the animal’s throat, I knelt and tentatively scratched behind her ear, which prompted the female to bump my leg, the motion bringing a smile to my lips.
Minutes later, I found myself galloping on the jaguar’s back with the boa draped over my shoulders. The feline unleashed a roar, the serpent vibrated its forked tongue, and I howled, celebrating what the rainforest had always known, that we were all creatures of nature.
They returned me to the ruins, the jaguar leaping over the bridge gap to the opposite side. Jeryn stalled his movements, gawking from the entrance steps where he’d been whetting one of his scalpel blades. As we trotted his way, the shocked prince rose to his feet. He took in my skimpy camisole, which was sewn to a pair of tiny shorts, the boa strung like a deadly necklace around my throat, and the jaguar balancing me like a steed.
Me and my fauna pack.
“Seasons forbid,” Jeryn uttered. “You fucking reckless woman.”
Something more than alarm filled his tone. Deep and resonant, it sounded very much like esteem.
As more weeks floated by, I searched the ruins for my key, reciting the Summer song for clues, checking cracks in its walls, wading through shallow pools in sunken chambers, and breaking open dusty compartments. I also used my nets to catch fish, some of my excursions turning up treasures from our wreckage, including my parents’ machete lodged beneath a boulder. Elated, I jumped up and down, then gyrated in circles around Jeryn.
The prince might have dipped his head and grinned. A little.
And despite the memory of his mouth on my flesh, a routine developed, and a friendship kindled.
***
Jeryn spent time creating restoratives. One day, I watched him from around a corner. I’d been avoiding peeking into his medical chamber, the place where my legs had splayed around his head. Today though, the sound of him working lured me.
The prince stored plant samples into jars and pots. He itemized the collection, seemed satisfied by the assembly, and held a petal to the dim light.
I knew this sort of passion, felt it whenever I drew in the sand.
Then I recalled the mangoes I’d tried to harvest during our first hike together. Not only might it taste delicious, but Jeryn could have some medical use for it.
I crept away, leaving him to his work. Harnessing one of a dozen satchels I’d found in the textile cellar, I ventured from the ruins and located the thorn tree, my mouth watering at the ripe new crop of orbs hanging from the canopy.
Because the boa and I had developed a fellowship, I didn’t worry about an attack this time. Instead, I used the trunk spikes as footholds and eased myself around their tips. After collecting enough mangoes to fill my bag, I descended the trunk, nearly reaching the bottom when my foot slipped. A yelp lurched from my mouth as I smacked to the ground, most of the fruits scattering across the understory.
When I shifted to get up, sharp jolts tore through my side. I wailed while forcing myself to stand and toil back to the ruins via the cave tunnels, one of which ended at the main steps. It took I-don’t-know-how-long to climb them, and I kept hunching over, pausing to lean against the railing, with only a few mangoes left in my satchel because it had hurt too much to gather the rest. Once I got to the threshold, I buckled against the door frame, the rainforest spinning in my vision.
As if sensing a problem, the prince materialized at the threshold. Taking one look at my clammy features, he strode forward.
“Fuck,” Jeryn hissed, catching me before I fell. “Turbulent woman. Glutton for disaster. Reprehensible bane of my—”
“Okay,” I griped. “The rainforest and I are kindred. It would never scathe me for good unless I deserved it, dishonored it, or stopped trusting it. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“On the fucking ground, where it belongs.” Jeryn fingers roamed over my abdomen, his touch rousing a horrible and all- too-familiar vision of me arching toward him while my cunt drenched his tongue.
“You cracked a rib,” he gritted out.
Hellfire. That would make it hard to fish, hike, and complete a thousand other tasks.
I threw a fit to keep the prince from carrying me. Instead, I leaned my body into his as he took the bag from my shoulder and supported my weight inside.
Even with all the ingredients he’d amassed, Jeryn could do nothing for my rib. He tucked me into my bed, and I cursed life itself. Though, I didn’t mind the prince doctoring my injury and hovering over me, nor the blue slide of his hair across my mouth. If it weren’t for the nastiest hurt in the world, I would have paid more attention to the sensations.
“Don’t fucking do that again,” Jeryn warned, then caught the urgency in his tone and steeled his voice. “We don’t have enough supplies for mishaps.”
True. Regardless of what the ancients had left behind, we weren’t living like Royals. Still, that wasn’t the only reason his words had shook with worry, though we pretended not to hear it.
***
Each rain blessed me as I offered myself to the initiations. Vapor rain was safe, whereas lightning rain pierced flesh, and thunder rain produced a bruising shower that pounded its fists down on us. Meanwhile, celestial rain shimmered like falling stars, which didn’t last long and happened only at night. Lastly, storms at dawn scalded like acid—ember rain, according to the legend.
Turned out, breaking my rib wasn’t the last time Jeryn got upset when I threw myself into danger’s path. The prince applied an ointment to my ember rain blisters, though the pain lasted hours.
We concluded the droplets affected humans and the fauna, but not the landscape or inanimate objects. Ultimately, only creatures were at the sky’s mercy.
After experiencing my rites of passage, I avoided all but the celestial and vapor rains. Gradually, the prince and I learned when to trust the sky and when to escape it.
***
The echo of flowing water led us to an oasis where waterfalls cascaded down hilly brackets and splashed into a turquoise pond. After smelling and touching and tasting the water, we reckoned it swimmable.
On the bank, I sketched Papa’s lopsided grin, Mama’s peaceful stare, Poet’s wicked eyes, Briar’s freckled profile, and Jeryn’s cold stare. A melody played in my ears, my throat humming as I finished. When a breeze tossed sand from a distant area into the air, I danced inside the funnel, revolving my wrists, swaying my hips beneath a strappy dress, and kicking my legs—and stumbling.
Backdropped by the cascades, Jeryn watched me. His eyes kindled like timbers, the impact both a thrill and a threat.
It took forever for him to shatter the distance between us. His tall body sauntered forward with stealth and loomed before me, his open shirt flapping in the wind, almost but not quite caressing my bodice. It was the almost that probed the slit between my thighs, where his mouth had spread me open.
My tongue peeked out. I licked bits of salted gold from my lips, a wet trail that his gaze followed.
A teardrop of sweat glided down his temple. His mouth opened, primed to speak.
I braced myself, my pulse thudding and need coiling in the nexus of my thighs. No matter how much time passed, my urges only became more dire. Especially when I stashed myself in hidden parts of the ruins and fingered my pussy. While plying the tender walls, stroking my clit until it swelled, and pumping my fingers, I would imagine his face and body and lips until my walls contracted, and I came into my fist, with his name ripping from my lips.
The evidence must have shone on my face because Jeryn’s pupils darkened, seconds before he tore his gaze away and strode past me.
***
Every night as he slept in the connecting room, a mere twenty feet from me, I thought about filling his bed, how it might feel to slip under sheets that smelled of him, with his body heat wrapping like arms around me, my curves resting against his weight. To sleep beside a man who cared for me, wanted me. I imagined hearing the deep rumble of his chest, with my head tucked there, safe and sound and sated.
I pictured him fucking me in that bed, his hips snapping, his cock grinding me into the mattress. And every night, I muffled my whimpers. And whenever this happened, I heard his own bed creek as if he were changing position, or trying to stop himself from getting up, from getting closer to the sounds I made.
Then came the day when I stumbled upon him in a cave pool beneath the ruins, bathing with his back turned.
Oxygen leached from my chest. Jeryn stood knee-deep, the taut outline of his ass consuming my view. Wet and smooth and tight, with divots in the sides, those buttocks flexed while Jeryn scrubbed his fingers through his hair.
As every ridge contracted across his body, I gripped the wall to keep from slipping. Then I scuttled farther back into the corner, unable to peel my eyes away.
In Summer, citizens grew up exposing their bodies, the same way Spring did. Albeit, that sinful court treated nudity like a game. And in my kingdom, it was a matter of practicality.
Strip or suffer heat stroke. Plain and simple.
Not plain with this man. And definitely not simple.
Jeryn had the mind of a scientist and the body of a warrior. Toiling here made up for the lack of swordplay, this new life and its endless chores inflating his physique even more, from the trunk of his spine, to the taper of his waist, to the firm swell of that ass.
I’d never seen Jeryn fully naked. Even now, the sight of his cock remained a mystery. But I imagined its size and shape—the slit across his crown, the weight of his sac—just as I’d fantasized about every hot and ruddy inch whenever I stroked myself in private.
A heady groan of satisfaction rolled from Jeryn’s throat, similar to when he’d pitched his tongue inside me. The ripples lapped at his legs. His muscles flexed as he lathered his chest, and his mane brushed the ridges of his back.
If I peeled off my clothes and joined him, what would he do? If I seized his cock in my fist, would this Royal protest or let me pump him into a helpless growl, his climax drizzling down my fingers?
I yearned for the answers. And I dreaded them.
With a slight twist of Jeryn’s body, the faintest silhouette of his cock rose, the round head flushing wide and dark from between his hips. No more than a curve was visible, yet my body reacted like a hurricane, swift and destructive. Slickness warmed my pussy, and a whine got stuck in my throat.
Jeryn paused. One second. Only one second. Then he resumed bathing, his fingers carving a harsh path through his damp hair.
I expelled a breath, my cheeks on fire, my nipples pebbling, and my cunt on the brink of spilling. He could have caught me. Somehow, Jeryn could discern the noises I made, and I could only be thankful he hadn’t this time.
Surely, he had no idea I was there.