46
Flare
I would burn this world to see crystal. One more time to see those eyes, to feel them piercing me like crushed ice.
Or no, I wouldn’t burn this world for that, because it would be selfish. But I would forsake every sunset and sunrise. I would dwell in darkness for another chance to savor his face, hear his voice, and wrap my body around his.
At least we’d made it real. At least, for a moment.
I should be afraid, yet relief washed away the fear. Before sinking into this void, I’d been shivering, a terrible sensation biting my flesh. So much cold was drowning me, pulling me down.
But now the deep held me fast, nestling me into its embrace. At some point, I must have broken the surface. I sighed, expecting to feel the afterlife, someplace lush and vibrant and warm. Heat soaked into my pores at last, and blades of grass tickled my toes. Yet it seemed so real.
The whoosh of tumbling water brushed my ears. The scents of blustering winds and needle forests coaxed my senses. Then a set of knuckles traced my neck. The place where I used to wear a collar but didn’t anymore.
My eyes tore open—and found what I’d been searching for.
Two flashing irises stared down at me, so dazzling it hurt to look at them, so clear I might have been peering into glass. Dark blue lined his lower lashes, which widened as I stirred, relief and something bottomless consuming those orbs.
My villain prince.
We lay on the ground, with his large frame cocooning mine. I’d been curling into him, a blanket covering my naked flesh and his body heat radiating into me. His free arm clasped my waist, holding me tightly. He fastened me to him as though I might disappear, as though he would keep me from vanishing or sinking or drowning by strength and force of will.
My fingers shook as they stole out to etch his jawline, unhinging it from its locked position. At the touch, a ragged breath tore from him. He seized my palm and suspended it against the side of his face.
“Flare,” he rasped.
My lips lifted into a contented smile. “Jeryn.”
But instead of replying, the prince’s head dropped forward, and he buckled. Tremors wracked the muscles of his bare torso, as if a thousand rocks were tumbling from his back.
Confusion and concern urged me to shift, to splay my fingers over his cheek. “Jeryn?”
But he shook his head, then flipped his gaze back to mine, at a loss for words.
A dawning sky swam overhead, a honey color filling the heavens as I rested on a green bank. Beyond, an oasis of waterfalls smashed into a turquoise pond and spritzed the air. We’d been here before, when I had sketched in the soil and danced in a sandstorm.
But the last thing I recalled, we had been making love in a wellspring, and then I dashed into a maze of vines, and then …
I remembered. The gripping vines. The tendrils shackling me. The vicious cold. I’d collapsed right before Jeryn’s face had swum above me.
And I knew. Death had tried to haul me down like quicksand, ripping me from this rainforest, from my purpose, from my friends.
From him.
Grief and gratitude clotted my lungs. My eyes stung, and a dry sob squeezed from my throat. “You saved me,” I choked out.
Jeryn seized my face. “No,” he hissed, pressing his forehead to mine. “You saved yourself. Then you saved me.”
I’d seen many expressions on this man’s face. Frigid brutality. Cold indifference. Callous superiority. Hate and lust. Remorse and shame and trauma and panic. Intrigue and fondness. Passion and desire.
But I’d never seen this look. Raw and petrified, unbridled and unconditional. His features spasmed, on the brink of collapse, an uncharted emotion smashing through that facade.
“You saved me,” he repeated, the next words tearing from the pit of his stomach. “But I almost lost you.”
Another sob dropped from my mouth as I kissed the crook of his mouth. “But you didn’t.”
“But I almost did.”
“But you didn’t.” My lips veered to his jaw. “I’m here.” Then to his cleft chin. “I’m here.” Then the ramp of one cheekbone. “I’m here, Jeryn.”
I sketched his mouth, the contact tremulous. His eyebrows pinched in agony, then relaxed as I planted kisses on every crease, every trench across his countenance. Angling my head, I sketched the underside of his jaw where it met his throat, tasting the low rumble of a groan.
The cords of his muscles unwound. His fingers dove into my hair and gripped my scalp for dear life.
As the cascades tumbled down rocky brackets, our intakes shifted from unsteady to solid. Jeryn hovered, his hair falling around us. I laved his neck, then up to the ridge beneath his earlobe, to show him I was here, to assure us both.
I was here, breathing, and alive. And so was he.
With each taste of him, liquid heat poured to the center of my body, a delicate throb building. Whimpers dripped from my tongue. My ministrations quickened, desperation building, a celebratory rapture.
For an instant, Jeryn hesitated. The doctor in him thought we should slow down, that I needed rest. Any moment, he would insist upon it.
But I’d been sleeping for long enough, and since when had nature ever kept me down for long? More dreams wouldn’t soothe me. No, I wanted the verve of life and its untamed rapture.
The prince must have sensed this. At last, he hummed, his head lolling forward in supplication. He shared in this rejoicing, this wild need to revel in our survival.
What he felt, I felt.
What he realized, I realized.
I didn’t need him strictly to stay alive or satisfy a craving. I simply needed his presence, his arms, his mouth, his words.
My hands raced down his pecs and abs, the contours hitching under my fingertips as I lightly scraped down to the ramps of his hipbones, where a trickle of dark hair led to his waistband.
I sketched the rim, the motions gentle. The prince’s high cock shoved against his pants, and a rumbling noise grated from his chest. “Flare.”
Yes. Me. Only me.
“I never,” Jeryn husked. “I never fucking knew …”
Never knew it could be like this. Neither had I. He was the last person I’d imagined wanting and the last person I could let go of.
This villain was mine. And I was his.
I steepled one leg. The edge of the blanket slumped over my upper thigh, and the gap opened for him. Jeryn must have felt the heat brimming from my crease because he groaned once more and lowered himself closer, giving himself over to me.
I feasted on his shoulder, biting tenderly. I switched to the opposite side and skated my mouth up his collarbone.
A chain hung from around his neck, an empty vial dangling from the end. While I’d been dreaming and dying, the prince must have found it at last. The fang-shaped memento had lasted all this time, without a chink or scratch, except for the one I’d made long ago.
Plucking it between my digits, I rubbed my thumb over the crack. Then I raised the pendant to my lips and gave it a soft kiss.
Jeryn. Snapped.
With a growl, he clamped onto the back of my head and hauled my mouth to his. Our lips collided, tongues hurling into each other. I whined, scratching my fingers through his hair and heaving him into me.
He lunged, veering over me fully, his waist splitting my thighs apart. The magnificent weight of his body wrenched me backward and ground my spine into the grass. Snaring my wrists, Jeryn rammed them overhead, stamping my hands to the bank.
Bowing over me, he crushed our mouths together, splaying my lips wide and rocking into them. My head flaked into stardust, and my body blazed like starlight. I vaulted into the kiss, our tongues dashing.
His cock pulsed, thick and heavy against my aching cunt. My inner folds slickened, arousal pouring onto his pants.
Gritting out another noise, Jeryn drove the blanket down and flung it aside. I lay sprawled under him, naked and vibrating with need. My nipples hardened into points, and my body inflated with each anticipatory exhalation.
Jeryn drank in the sight. Irises like crystals, like glass, like ice. They engulfed me, then disappeared behind his swollen pupils.
From hate-lust beneath a lightning rainstorm, to a darkly sensuous night in his medical den, to the passionate surrender in the ocean, to our bittersweet union in the wellspring, every time had been unique. A dangerous but intimate path we’d needed to take, to arrive in this moment. For all the chasms we’d crossed, this was unlike anything that came before and anything that would come after.
The backs of my eyes burned, threatening to spill.
Jeryn kissed my lashes. “Do not,” he pleaded, sensing the tumult. “Please do not.”
“Then take them,” I implored. “Take them away.”
Until every teardrop had drained from my soul.
On a guttural rasp, the vanquished prince heaved me back to him and crushed his lips to mine again, driving his tongue with my own. I arched my breasts, my nipples abrading his torso, the traction stunning. Moaning into the kiss, I caught and sucked on the flat of his tongue, loosening a hiss from him.
Prying his mouth from mine, Jeryn worshiped the rest of me. Stamping my hands into the grass, he sucked on my throat, nipped at my pulse point, and licked down the gulp between my breasts. Dragging his mouth over one swell, he gripped the crest between his teeth and drew on it while swabbing his tongue over the peak.
A shriek got stuck in my mouth, pleasure sizzling between my thighs. With every tug of his mouth, the noise rose closer to the surface until it catapulted into the trees. Jeryn hummed his approval around a mouthful, then swept to the opposite nipple, circling the bud and sucking it raw.
Every stunted noise in existence wrung from my lips. I needed him everywhere, filling me to the brim, as deeply as he could reach.
Jeryn raked his mouth down my stomach, then grabbed my knees and yanked them apart. My pussy splayed out for him, pink and soaked. Those eyes glinted, his angular features taut. His beauty had always been on the merciless side.
Lifting my legs and latching them over his shoulders, Jeryn plied my skin with kisses. His mouth traveled from the indentation of my foot, to my ankles, to my calves. He dabbed his tongue behind my knee and over the caps. This man wouldn’t stop until he’d left imprints of himself on every inch.
But there was more. The touches and kisses were attentive, healing. Winter gave more than he took, because this world had already stolen so much from me.
Curse him. If he wanted to stop me from crying, this wasn’t the way. Yet I couldn’t stop this man, wouldn’t stop him. My eyes clung to the sight, my chest constricting as he ran his mouth up my inner thighs. This vision of unbridled devotion wetted me anew.
At last, he released my legs and thumbed my folds, tracing the oval opening with concentrated urgency. My mouth fell open on a cry. Tilting his head, Jeryn watched the wetness seep from my cunt, liquid dousing his fingers. Helpless, I bent off of the grass as he traced me. Then I rolled my hips, coating his hand, the motion saying please, please, please.
“There we go,” he murmured. “Show me where you need me.”
“Inside me,” I chanted between gasps. “Get inside me.”
Crooning, Jeryn plunged his head between my thighs and stroked his tongue up the pleat. The cries kept coming, kept emptying. I snared fistfuls of his hair and rode his mouth, his tongue licking and probing my walls.
My hips vaulted as Jeryn strapped his mouth around my clit and sucked. Uttering a famished noise, he swerved his tongue over the crest, hardening the knob of flesh until my body shook.
But not enough. This wasn’t only about me. It was about us.
I made a plaintive noise and batted at his shoulders until Jeryn released my clit. My fingernails stabbed into his flesh, pulling on him.
Come here. Come to me. Come with me .
As he crawled up the center of my body, Jeryn’s hand lowered. Deftly, he picked open the closures of his pants, his gaze fusing with mine. I reached out to help, undoing the clasps, then kicking the material down his legs with my heels.
His cock jutted free, its girth ruddy and swollen, cum rising from the line at his crown. Staring at me, Jeryn shuffled the pants from his limbs. His naked body covered mine, my knees pitching high around his backside.
So much weight loomed above me, so much hardness. I’d never seen a glacier, but I imagined his complexion looked the same. Despite the sun, this trait hadn’t changed.
Hellfire. Jeryn.
He anchored himself upright, the better for us to witness each other’s undoing while waterfalls crashed into the neighboring pool. Muscle on muscle, bone on bone. My legs coiled around his waist, my fingers about to scar his back until it bled.
The prow of his cock braced against my pussy. We panted into one another’s mouths, wincing at the teasing pleasure. I bucked into Jeryn’s waist, imploring, pleading, demanding.
His eyes hooded. Deliberately, he nudged the inflated tip into the opening, accentuating the motion with a velvety request. “Tell me.”
“Fuck me,” I entreated, my words crackling like flames. “Let me fuck you back.”
“Seasons, Flare.” Falling victim to my plea, the prince grabbed my thigh and looped it higher, then swung his cock forward an inch. “What else?”
I mewled, “Lose control with me.”
Another groan. Another inch.
“What else?” he prompted. “Tell me what else.”
“Break down with me. Fall with me.”
He pivoted deeper, the width of his crown spreading my pussy. Although we kept our attention linked, I glimpsed his broad flesh sinking into me. The crest had vanished, and the stem darkened, the sight robbing me of breath, the contact staggering.
My eyes lifted to his. I gripped his face and drew my tongue across his lower lip. “Make us come.”
His features tightened, but his eyes gleamed. With a hiss, Jeryn slung his hips between my thighs, his cock flexing halfway into me.
Unable to stand it, I met him the rest of the way. Grasping his waist, I raised my hips and gave a shove, using the momentum to flip him over. On a husky grunt, Jeryn hit the grass while I swung my leg over his hips and landed astride him. Sitting upright, I straddled his body, all that strength and sinew expanding beneath me. I lowered my pussy fully onto his cock, engulfing him to the sac.
A noise ruptured from Jeryn’s mouth. He bowed into me and cut his fingers into my hips. “Fuck,” he seethed.
That word, coupled with his voice, charged through me. Awe and adoration electrified my veins. That, and an arduous sort of power. Not because I dominated him but because we shared that domination, equally given and taken.
My cry mingled with his groan. I shook above him, and he shook underneath me, my cunt grabbing him to the hilt. Divine Seasons, this feeling never wilted, this desire never waned. Rather, it kept growing, unfurling across every edge of my being.
I dug my fingernails into Jeryn’s chest, threatening to break skin. I knew how he liked to mix pain with ecstasy, as he knew I loved to marry tenderness with ferocity, lightness with darkness. We knew each other by now.
“Look at me,” my prince uttered. “Keep looking at me.”
I did. “Keep looking back.”
“I’ll never stop. Wherever I look, you will be the only vision that consumes me.”
Because he saw me. And he heard me. And he knew me. Because he was different, and I was different, and we’d never be the same again.
Our bodies vibrated like wires. It took a while to recover.
Jeryn caressed my knees, my thighs, my waist, my breasts. Watching me, he thumbed my nipples and savored how my eyelashes fluttered.
Desire bloomed across my flesh. His body spanned the ground, the tide of his blue hair shored on the grass. I splayed over him, the muscles of his stomach clenching under my gaping thighs. My gaze riveted on the place where my pussy grabbed his cock, enchanted by the sight to the point where a low growl crawled up his throat.
My arousal oozed down the prince’s flesh. Another rumble scrolled from his chest as he felt my insides grasp him to the base.
Then I unraveled like the sea, like a tail of flame. Bracing my palms on his chest, I swayed my waist. This lodged him higher, deeper.
Jeryn’s mouth unhinged, baring his teeth. And that was how I rode him, jutting my hips, stroking his cock. Each teasing swat pulled a groan from his lungs and threw me into a stupor.
Never did our gazes waver. Jeryn’s sharp eyes locked with mine, the wells deep and dark but open. So wide open for me, my reflection filling his pupils the same way he filled mine. In this secluded realm, nothing else existed. If we stood on opposite ends of a crowded room, it would be the same. And if we lived oceans and mountains and forests apart, he would still encompass me. I would still feel him, hear him, see him. Just as he would feel me.
My throat was clogged with too many emotions to endure. I channeled them into my movements, the force enhancing every sinuous circle of my hips. Poised above him, my thighs spread wider, sealed his cock in the cleft of my body, rowing my pussy over him.
Jeryn’s pupils bloated, his pulse point drumming against his neck. The vision ignited sparks down my spine, my walls dripping down his length, the connection astounding, how we rubbed together. I was so wet, and he was so hard, and we worked in tandem.
Pressing firmer onto Jeryn’s chest, I swiped my waist and brushed my fingers over his nipples. Tremors tracked down his frame, black pupils eclipsed his irises, and a hiss slipped from his tongue. Those reactions incited a delighted frenzy, power and ardor fueling me to exaggerate the movements, my curves grinding.
His palms slid to my ass, encouraging my thrusts. He lay there as I took him, as I indulged myself, as I pushed us closer to the brink. Anchoring me to him, boosting me above him, Jeryn gave me dominion over this, for as long as I needed. I fucked him, and I fucked myself, and I made love to us.
“Bewitching,” he urged. “You look so fucking glorious when you ride me. So gorgeous when you pleasure yourself. So stunning when you take my cock inside you. It’s excruciating. It’s paradise.”
Actions rather than endearments or comely words had always been his nature. Yet at his speech, blood rushed up my thighs. I sped up, galloping on him, sucking his girth into me. Exquisite tension swirled in the spot where our bodies clamped together. Moans poured from me, my body undulating like a wave, building and heightening. But not yet reaching.
Mist beaded across the sculpted plank of his torso, mingling with sweat gliding down the side of his throat. Cravings parched my tongue, so that my head dove, my mouth catching his neck like a prize in my net. He tensed and then slumped, his head flinging backward as my lips devoured his skin, my tongue tracing a vein and drawing in its thudding pulse. At the peak of his throat, the round part that bobbed whenever he swallowed, I latched on. And under his jaw, I licked while a rough sound tore out of him.
His grip tightened on my backside, burning me to the core. I marveled and ached for more of the forbidden, more of this felicity.
How could this feel primal and precious all at once? How could anything feel this elemental, like we’d been fated for this?
I chased my hips, chased his cock, chased the answers. Pleasure splintered from my mouth, one after the other, each noise falling into a collision with his sharp grunts. I relished the erotic sight of this future monarch, with sunburns and scars on his flesh, dewdrops on his temples, and his mouth unhinged.
He may have given himself over, offered his body so that I might find euphoria in the aftermath of terror. But I wasn’t the only one who’d survived this rainforest. We had done that together, and we would do this together as well.
I bent farther over Jeryn. My fingers sought his own, our digits threading and balling into fists on either side of his head, like a knot of our own making. Using this leverage, I lurched backward and forward with abandon, yanking shouts from the prince, which tangled with my sobs.
Skin slapped against skin. Hands squeezed together atop the grass.
How Jeryn managed to remain stable, merely watching and gripping and encouraging, I couldn’t fathom. Whereas I thrashed and writhed, he now recognized my torment, answered my call, and broke into motion.
Strength and stamina detonated beneath me. Releasing my fingers and bracing my buttocks once again, his hips launched upward, the head of his cock striking deeper, higher. It pitched to a narrow place that jolted me upward, moans scattering from my lips.
At the rhythmic friction, his cock thickened, and my pussy melted. Our eyes narrowed as we hauled ourselves into one another, the brimming ledge of his erection pumping and retreating, each pitch of our waists accompanied by unrelenting growls and plaintive cries. His ass propelled off the grass, the pace flinging my thighs apart. Like this, I took every concentrated snap of his hips, welcoming the profusion of heat unspooling inside me.
The dawning sun beat down on us. We worked for this, worked for each other. Like the times before, this would be earned and would be remembered long after we howled into the sky.
Elation gripped my heart, need poured from my cunt, and I climbed higher. Moans skittered from my lungs. Jeryn felt that ripple inside me, his muscles shuddering in response.
On a rasp, he seized my ass harder and heaved me into him, tugging my pussy over and over on his lap. For a moment, I went limp and let him steer me, enjoying the force of his hands, the magnitude of it. My body arched, my head flinging backward, my hair falling across my face.
“Oh!” I wailed. “Oh, Seasons!”
“Give me noise,” he gritted out. “Give me every noise.”
Yes. I transformed into the cascades, racing freely and wildly, coursing at full speed to a precipice, about to plunge headfirst over the promontory and split into a million glittering pieces. My voice followed suit, unleashing into this jungle, delivering sounds only this prince and the rainforest could hear, because only they understood. I made noise by movement, with my mind and my heart.
Bolstering himself on the bracket of one arm, the prince raised his upper body and sloped his cock higher still. The position changed the angle of our fucking, the head striking just so. I shouted with this man, my breasts bouncing into the air and my hips dashing into his.
Jeryn fought to keep his head up, determined not to let go, to keep himself from buckling. His cock expanded, thicker and hotter. It siphoned into me, fucked with such vigor that I strapped my fingers around his shoulders, the better to take it. My pussy constricted, small tremors cresting.
My villain prince hissed, “You have slayed me.”
And I could not stay away from those lips any longer. Not after that.
Down into his arms, I landed. My knees pitched around his tireless hips, my nipples rushed against his pecs, and my fingers hooked over his shoulders. Our mouths crashed together, rocking and panting.
I curled into him, and he palmed my ass and jerked me forward, and forward, and forward. His tongue whisked my own, the echoes of lovemaking trapped between our lips. And like this, we discovered a momentum and a deep, sacred spot.
This meant more than kinship. It meant something beyond desire. I cared for him, and I trusted him. I liked his eyes on me, his arms around me, his breath in my hair. I had felt this bond only once before, with my mother and father. Yet this boosted my heart to another level, the epiphany claiming my soul.
“Do you feel it?” I whispered, slinging my hips faster.
“Fuck, yes,” he groaned, pumping deeper. “I feel it.”
I could have hollered. Hate had separated kingdoms. But this enduring feeling could unite them.
I bounded on his cock, and he opened my cunt, our waists in sync. Jeryn veered his swollen lips from mine, then mashed his face against my own. I relished the sharpness of his groans, and I replied with heated gasps that fell against his mouth.
My flesh seared. My pussy tensed around his cock, the crescendo so near, driving us ahead.
Seeing my eyebrows crimp, Jeryn put everything into the motions of his hips, fucking into me with his entire frame. Glazed in sweat, I strung my arms around his shoulders and leaped into him, my walls squeezing to the hilt.
Three words floated across my tongue, so often used by lovers. But Jeryn got there first with a declaration of his own.
“You own me,” he said against my mouth. “You rule me.”
The world exploded. Flames burst inside me like an inferno, my pussy seizing up and then erupting, hot pleasure spilling down my limbs. Oblivion rushed from my core, to my knees, to my lips. My mouth unhinged, and I bellowed into his lips, and he stalled at the same time before shattering.
A roar barreled from his chest, his muscles quaking. Warm liquid streamed from his cock while I convulsed around him. As one, we came hard and long. I clawed through his hair, and he bowed his head into my neck, both of us clasping, riding out this wave. Unending battle cries wrenched from my being, and Jeryn emptied his lungs against my throat, his pulse ramming into mine.
We fixed in place and crested to the hard root of our pleasure. It coursed from the center of us, sluicing through my limbs, glowing in my blood, from that place where his cock pulsed inside me.
Slowly, patiently, we rocked our hips, soaking up every last ripple of pleasure. My breasts heaved into his torso, my inner walls drenched and clutching him. Wheezes tumbled from my tongue, and Jeryn swallowed for air while keeping his hold on me.
Finally, we floated back down to earth. Jeryn rolled on top, his body burrowed within mine and my limbs flanking his waist, refusing to let him go. The hairs along my legs tickled his, my feet resting on the backs of his knees. I sighed up to the sky, my fingers swimming in his hair.
Jeryn balanced himself on his forearms, wary of crushing me. He swept the hair from my face, the better to see my expression. Our eyes fastened as he descended to claim my mouth. He sketched my lips with his own, and I slanted my head, our mouths folding languidly. And it happened again, and again, and again.
Our lips layered and tugged. With each pass, each new tilt, we kept our eyes open and watched one another. Exhausted and sated, we panted into the next kiss, and the next, and the next.
I could keep him inside me for eternity. Maybe that was possible if we got ambitious enough.
Jeryn’s lips crooked against mine. That scant inch told me he knew my thoughts.
Soberly, he framed my face in his palms and continued flicking his tongue between my lips, matching the restless tempo of our hips, which still lolled together. The taste of salt and frost made my head spin.
The waterfalls misted us. The ferns trembled. While coming, I’d forgotten where we were, and I continued to forget, and I made sure Jeryn forgot with me.
We kissed the past away. And as we did, the sun rose.