Chapter 25 Elanie
Drumbeats vibrated the sand between my toes.
I was hot, sweaty, and sticky. But so was he.
Swaying behind me, Sem gathered my hair off my neck and blew a stream of air onto my sweat-soaked skin.
I shivered. I moaned. I moved my hips, grinding my ass into him.
And I wondered if Arlin had been right. Had shame been keeping me from this?
Had shame been keeping me separate from everyone around me? From him?
“You’re so beautiful. So fucking sexy.” His voice was as dark as the night spiraling above us. Gripping my hips, he kissed a hypersensitive spot behind my ear. “Your skin always tastes so sweet, like dessert.”
Dancing beside us, Gol moved into our space, his massive body blocking the glowlights like a cloud blocking the sun.
“Is that so?” He took one of my hands in his, his surprisingly soft lips pressing into my wrist. “Hmm.” His deep green eyes met mine. “Your mate is right. You are sweet.”
Sem tensed behind me, and I pulled my hand away, only for Gol to press his thumb into the center of my chin. Easing my mouth open with an insistent pressure, he ran the tip of a juicy, pale pink triangle of fruit over my lower lip, then my tongue. “Rola fruit,” he said. “Have some.”
The taste was intense. Sweet like candy, but also peppery. But the fruit was cool, and I was so hot. “More,” I heard myself say, the hairs on my neck stirring when Gol’s low laughter brushed over my cheeks.
Sem’s fingers had closed around my arms, but when Gol reached past me to cup Sem’s cheek with his enormous hand, I felt his grip loosen.
Presenting a fresh slice of fruit he’d grabbed from Mal’s tray, Gol asked, “Would you like a taste, Portisan?”
“What is it?” Sem asked while a million tiny lights seemed to dance over his face.
Painting the tip of the fruit over Sem’s lips until they glistened, Gol said, “It’s a mild aphrodisiac. Not mind-altering, but powerful.” He tilted Sem’s head back, squeezing the fruit just hard enough that a few drops of its juice dripped into his open mouth. “Would you like a bite?”
While Sem’s teeth pierced the fruit, thoughts spooled out of me, words, numbers, meaningless symbols tumbling uselessly across the sand.
As a stray drop of juice rolled down Sem’s chin, catching the light while it slipped over the ridges of his throat, I leaned forward and caught it with my tongue.
The flavor burst inside me, infecting me, infiltrating my cells with sweetness and heat as I begged for “more.”
Grabbing another fresh piece from the tray while Mal winced nervously and made some sort of err noise, Gol said, “You may have all you want.”
He brought the fruit to my lips, and I opened my mouth. Only for him to pull his hand back just as I was about to bite, teasing me.
“Please,” I begged, leaning back against Sem’s chest. As Gol finally relented, I grasped his hands and bit through the fibrous fruit. I moaned as the rola juice coated my lips, my throat, my entire body in sugary fire.
“Revel tonight,” he said as Arlin walked up behind him and slid her purple hands up his chest. “Revel in your youth, in your desire, in your freedom. Even you, Portisan.” He grasped Sem’s chin again, feeding him one more bite.
“For you have not been free. I see you. You have been living inside your own prison.”
Sem shuddered, and while Gol and Arlin left us, I turned into him. Wrapping my fingers around his neck, I touched my forehead to his and whispered, “Dance with me.”
When he grasped my hips, euphoria rolled through my veins in honey-thick waves. His hands seared my skin, the reach of his fingers, the stretch of the webbing between them, the swirls of his fingerprints melted into me, through me, altering my DNA so that it would always recognize his.
Mindlessly, I kissed his cheeks, the tip of his nose, the curve of his top lip, the swell of his bottom lip. I kissed his jaw, behind his ear, the dark-blue freckle under his eye.
With a deep, greedy moan, he slid his hand into my hair and eased my mouth to back his. And, oh, his mouth. Had anything ever felt so soft? Had anything ever tasted so good? I needed more. I needed to be closer.
The fabric of his shirt rasped against my fingers, so I pulled it up and over his head, letting it drop into the sand at our feet.
“This is better,” I said, running my fingertips over his skin, slick and hot and smooth as silk. But it still wasn’t enough. I still needed to be closer.
Grasping the hem of my shirt, I started to raise it over my head.
“Elanie.” Sem’s hands landed on my wrists. “Wait.”
“Why?” Each note of the song pulsed through me, vibrating my cells, heating me up from the inside out. “I want to feel you.”
“I want to feel you too, but we’re both”—he blinked several times, like he was struggling to bring the world into focus—“extremely fucked up right now.”
I snorted, then I burst into laughter, barely able to breathe when Sem started laughing too. Our joy swelled, enveloping us until I couldn’t remember why I’d spent a single second of my life not laughing.
While he raised his eyes to the stars, lost in whatever he saw up there, I took a step back and looked at him.
He was so gorgeous. Long throat, broad chest, firm belly.
A statue in blue marble. But a statue had never been as soft as he was.
Soft and warm, the perfect place for my body to rest. The place I fit, when I’d never really fit anywhere.
Needing to fit against him now, I tried to take my shirt off again, but my arms were so heavy, my body too wide, stretching from one edge of Thura to the other.
And then someone was behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and found pearlescent eyes, long limbs, smiling lips.
A Ulaperian female helping me lift my shirt over my head.
And then a breeze caressed my skin. Her cool hands tracing up the sides of my naked torso.
Her long hair brushing over my bare shoulders. Full breasts pressed into my back.
Sem reached for me, pulling me into his arms. “Stay.” He kissed my shoulder, my neck. “Stay with me.”
When my skin met his, the sensation was perfect. More perfect than any efficient line of code or seamlessly integrated upgrade. More perfect than the border between snow and sky.
His mouth trailed across my collarbone as his hand skimmed over my ribs, drifting higher until he cupped my breast. I arched into his touch while his lips closed around my nipple. His mouth was hot, his tongue swirling, my eyes closing.
“I want you alone,” he said against my skin. “I need you.”
“Yes,” I gasped as his teeth closed gently over my other nipple, and then a little harder. I wanted him. Needed all of him. Around me, on top of me, inside me. More than I’d ever needed anything. Like I’d combust if I didn’t get it. Burst into flames and burn for a thousand years.
He hoisted me into his arms, and I wrapped my legs around his waist. The muscles of his back flexed and rippled under my fingertips, his heart beating in time with mine, with the drums, with the twinkling of the stars over our heads.
With the aching heat between my legs. With the hardness between his.
His hand dove down the back of my pants before we’d even left the boundary of the revel. My head lolled over his shoulder, a whimper slipping between my lips when his fingers found my clit. And when I looked up again, I spotted Gol across the commons, staring at me, grinning.
“He’s watching us,” I whispered before taking Sem’s earlobe between my teeth.
Sliding his hand out of my pants, he held me tightly and picked up his pace. “Of course he is. He’s fascinated with you.” He pushed the door to our hut open and said with a smirk, “I can’t say that I blame him.” Then he kicked the door closed behind us and kissed me.
Swallowing his words, I kissed him back, brushing my tongue over his, tasting the rola fruit still fresh in his mouth. I squealed when he tossed me onto our mattress. But then I was quiet, silent, my heart pounding as he prowled toward me. As he sank to his knees at the foot of the bed.
My breath caught when his hands closed around my ankles, just like they had in my dream, in my fantasies since. Only this time he didn’t slide his hands up my calves. He grasped me more tightly and pulled, sliding me down the bed in one fluid motion.
His lips burned their shape into the skin of my belly. His tongue blazed a path to the drawstring of my pants. His teeth clasped around the rope, tugging it loose.
“What are you doing?” I gasped when he yanked my pants down, spread my legs wide, and nibbled on my inner thigh.
“Tasting you.” He brushed his tongue over the spot he’d bitten.
He’d made me feel good before, given me pleasure I hadn’t known was possible.
But none of those sensations had come anywhere close to the soft, wet, glide of his tongue along the crease between my thigh and where I ached for him.
But then his nose brushed against my curls, and the heat of embarrassment pushed through the mist of euphoria surrounding me.
“Stop,” I breathed, little more than a whisper.
His head rose from between my legs.
I couldn’t look at him. He was too beautiful, with his glowing blue skin and silvery eyes, with his lips so full and wet. So I stared up through our skydome when I asked, “What if I don’t taste good?”
“Oh, but you do.” He lowered his head, sampling my inner thigh again with a long, slow lick.
Giving me a deep, appreciative moan. “Because I’ve already tasted you.
On my fingers. On yours. It was heaven. And once I taste you here.
” He swirled a fingertip over my clit, dragging it down through my center while I fisted the sheets.
“I know I’ll happily eat nothing else for the rest of my life.
Can I keep going? Please, sweetheart.” Fixing his hungry gaze between my legs, he licked his lips.
“You have no idea how much I need this.”
Music vibrated through our hut. Heat rose through our floorboards. Desire pulsed through me in bright surges of light. And I was no longer a part of a program. I was no longer held together by fibers and filaments and bones and skin. I was free.
Shame binds us.
Not me. Not anymore.
I gazed down at him, my heart so full it swelled inside my chest, pushed against my ribs, and said, “Yes.”
His eyes fell closed, a relieved sigh rushing out of him as his hands curled around my thighs.
Holding me still, he kissed my curls, his pressure lighter than the feathers that filled our bed.
Slowly, his thumbs spread me apart, and I could no longer hear the drums. Only my breath. Only my heart pounding in my ears.
He kissed me again, right above where I needed him, to the side, just below.
“Sem,” I begged, trying to be still for him. But it was so hard. “Please.”
Then it happened, his tongue flat and slow, hot and wet over my clit.
Soothing, calming, everything. When he did it again, when he hummed like it was good for him too, I surrendered.
Lifting my arms above my head, letting them rest on the pillow beside me, I gave in to sensation.
I gave in to him. I gave in, and it was so, so good.
“Are you still with me?” he asked before administering another slow lick that made my legs shake.
“Yes.”
“Can I?” His finger circled my entrance, a testing press between my legs, seeking permission.
We hadn’t done this yet either. Penetration. He’d tried, but I hadn’t been ready. Now? Now I wanted him there. I wanted him so deeply inside me he was all I felt, just his body filling mine. So I said, “yes,” again, whimpering when his pressure increased. “But…go slow.”
“I will.” The promise was barely out of his mouth when the tip of his finger slid inside me. It had hurt when Blake tried this. But with Sem, as his finger slipped in deeper, there was no pain. Just a fullness. Just a firm, exquisite glide. And then it was gone.
I raised my head. “Why did you stop?”
Delphi spun above our skydome, its blue light twinkling in Sem’s eyes as his finger circled me again. “Was it okay? Do you want more?”
“Yes.” I sank into the bed. “It feels good. Everything you do to me feels good.”
Sliding in again, a bit deeper, he groaned. “Fuck, you’re so warm, Elanie. So wet.” He licked my clit while sliding even more deeply inside me, then out, then back in again. “So tight.”
I sighed as he pushed in again, my back arching when his fingertip curled, brushing over some spot inside me where sensory fibers converged. Another nexus of pleasure that existed in my body without my knowledge. What else? What else didn’t I know?
So many things.
I didn’t know how fast a Portisan’s tongue could flick. I didn’t know how much better two fingers would feel compared to one. I didn’t know that when my belly tensed and my legs shook, when stars burst behind my eyes and light exploded through my core, that it still wouldn’t be enough.
As he licked me softly and sweetly through my orgasm, as the aftershocks faded and I came back to my body, I felt my need for him like an emptiness. Like there were a million hollow spaces inside me that only he could fill.
He rose above me and brushed my hair back off my forehead while I let my hands drift over his shoulders, up the sides of his neck. The moment was so still between us, so quiet, until I met his stare and said into the silence, “More.”