Chapter 58 Kidan
KIDAN
Kidan’s heart thundered against her rib cage. Susenyos set her down on her bed and the dusk light irritated her eyes, but his outline was taking shape, strong jaw and framing twists.
She observed him like a painting come to life. His eyes caught the sun, not startling like black shining olives but beautiful still, the color of earth, human. His hair had the frizz of a natural twist, no longer sleek and unmoving.
He grabbed the edge of his shirt, eyes fixed on her. Then pulled it off in one sweep. Kidan blinked from the hard naked stomach in front of her.
She scooted to the edge of the bed to examine him more closely. He was leaner than before, but what she didn’t expect were the bruises, black and purple, all over his dark skin. Gently, she ran her fingers over his taut stomach, along a particularly large discoloration, making him wince.
“I could kill him, you know,” she said, a surprising edge to her voice. “Do they hurt still?”
An amused smile played on Susenyos’s face. He grazed her cheek with the back of his fingers, making her tingle. “Yes.”
Kidan planted her next kiss right below his belly button making him jerk. “Maybe I can help.”
When she lifted her lashes up to him, he’d shut his eyes, a curve to his lips. “A little higher.”
Kidan got to her knees on the bed and delivered small kisses in the middle of his chest, his heart, his taut neck all with his instruction. He tasted like leather and citrus, different from that earthy smoky scent.
“Higher,” he instructed.
There were eye to eye now.
She hovered above his mouth. “Sore?”
“Very,” he breathed.
Then he was kissing her again. And whatever she was about to say didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except them. They melted into the act, switching their tempo like a ballad, fast and intense, slow and languid, swimming in one another, laughing and breaking off when their jaws and tongues and lips hurt.
Kidan had never been so attuned to every exchange and touch yet distant from it all at the same time.
She wrapped her leg over his long one, loving the heat of his body, and feeling the desperate urge to shed her own clothes.
Susenyos stopped suddenly and put his head on her chest, ear to the middle of her heart. Kidan went still, confused. But she could feel her heart pounding in every room of the house. His arm slid underneath and wrapped around, entirely enveloping her.
A contented sigh flitted out of him. “This is my favorite sound in the world.”
She stared down at his twists. “My heartbeat?”
“You, alive.”
Her fingers sifted through his coils tentatively, and he squeezed her in approval, so she did it again.
She drew circles along his scalp, trying to keep this swelling light in her body from exploding.
But circles couldn’t encompass this feeling, not with him, so she drew his unique symbol, an infinity loop with three cutting lines.
His hand slipped under her shirt, tracing the column of her spine tenderly and slipping her top free. He took a minute to study her bra. Kidan bit her lip, a little nervous.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, and brought his mouth to her bare shoulder. “Devastatingly so.”
She relaxed beneath him, remembering the last time his teeth grazed her shoulder.
“During Cossia Day, you bit my shoulder.” She arched into the feel of his lips. “What memories do they reveal?”
He paused. “Do you really want to know?”
She hadn’t been ready back then but now… she was.
His eyes colored dark, trailing her collarbone with a spine-tingling deliberate gaze. “The shoulders reveal obsession. Your object of total captivation in a person.”
Kidan recalled that wild night. “I saw me in your thoughts, on your lap, my dress quite low.”
He released a breath in mock defeat. “You owned me back then and you still do.”
Her eyes sparked. “What did you see in my mind?”
Susenyos’s lids lifted, a lopsided grin present. “I saw me, covered in blood and slaying every dranaic that dared touched you.”
She raked her gaze down his bare stomach. “Definitely tracks.”
He laughed, and her body jerked. She wanted to feel his mouth against her lips while he made that sound.
“I’d spent years in the Southern Sost Buildings, drank from hundreds, and they always thought about others, obsessed over their own lovers. Never once did they see me in that light. Until you. I almost kissed you.”
He shuddered.
“You should have.”
“It’s dangerous,” he said darkly, seriously. “I can’t control myself if I let your tongue anywhere near my fang. We saw what happened.”
Her lower abdomen liquefied and the words only made her want to try. Outside this house, maybe in Arowa under the golden lion faucets, she wanted to taste that paradise again.
So what if she died a little kissing him?
Kidan flipped them so she straddled his lap.
He smirked, putting his hands behind his head.
His arms were like the waves of a dark ocean, and she wanted to trace their grooves with her mouth.
Climb their arches and kiss their dips. Pooling her braids over one shoulder, Kidan kissed up his bruised torso.
Her attention was on his face, because human Yos couldn’t conceal how he felt under her touch.
A unique sound slipped out of him, a cross between her name and a moan when her tongue slipped out again and licked, salt and citrus on his stomach.
She knew he hadn’t meant to utter the sound when he shut his eyes, whispering, “What are you doing to me?”
Kidan wanted to hear it again. So she licked him again, savoring his sounds.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve imagined that tongue of yours on my fang,” he confessed again.
Kidan sat up, her fingers grazing the waistline of his pants. “Well, there are other places I can put it.”
Susenyos became alert, the widening of his pupils, the heat crowding it… God, she was in heaven.
Her smile grew. “If you’re into that kind of thing, I mean. I hear humans like it—”
He sat up at once, closing the space between them.
“I’m thankful I get to kiss you at all. Here and now.
Let’s not tempt fate,” he declared, and proved it with a dizzying kiss that made her forget where she was.
They were falling together, into one another, folding and adjusting to make space for the other.
It felt so natural, Kidan wondered how she’d existed all these years without this part of her soul, that was so good, created just for her.
He was for her.
Susenyos drew back and breathed roughly against her. His face tightened like he was trying to solve a problem.
He watched her with unbridled intensity. Like a star that’d split into two to reveal even more galaxies. And something else, something both had cast aside because it was more dangerous than the artifacts breaking the world.
“I almost love… being human with you.”
Her spine melted as he reached for her bra clasp. His fingers hesitated, waiting for her reaction. She nodded.
“I love it when you surrender to me,” he whispered.
She tasted the word in the space between them, afraid it’d make her sick. But it was sweet like nectar. Like the fragile beginning of something.
Kindness requires surrender, he’d told her. And so what he really meant was: I love it when you’re kind to me.
She wanted to see how much further they could go, how vulnerable they could become with one another.
Kidan. The sudden crinkle of bones echoed around her. GK. You’re in danger.
There was a prickle, a pinch along her hand. She ignored them both. But the feeling returned, like a thousand ants biting her.
She placed a hand on Susenyos’s chest. He stopped at once.
You’re in danger, GK’s voice insisted, stronger now.
“What is it?” Susenyos asked.
Kidan brought her left hand between them, her face contorted with pain. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was burning like ice.
She hissed. “What the hell? My hand is burning like—ah!”
Bile lurched to her throat as her brown skin began to change color, darkening to the black of ash. Her veins were shot with black threads, dipped in ink. They were the visions that haunted Susenyos. Only now they were physically affecting her.
Susenyos was frozen still, voice thick with fear. “God.”
The pain burned from the inside out. Kidan lifted it higher between them and tried not to scream.
She wasn’t sure what was happening.
Because her hand was rotting. Right before her eyes.
Terror stopped Susenyos’s breathing.
“Yos?” she called, tears welling up from the pain. “What is happening?”