Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
LEINA
Ryot slides his hands down my exposed back, his fingers burning my skin as they race down my body and then back up, like he can’t decide where he wants to touch me the most, until he finally grabs my ass and yanks me up against him.
I swing my legs around his waist, locking my feet around his back.
My boots collide with the sword at his back.
I pull away, just far enough to unfasten the holster that belts at the shoulder, sending the sword crashing to the ground.
Then I push myself harder against him, pressing my feet into the small of his back for leverage.
Now I can reach him, eye-to-eye. I scoop my hands into his long hair, knocking strands from his neat ponytail. His moan as I pour myself into our kiss is an aphrodisiac.
He turns to press me against the door, and the feel of his body against mine is a thrill.
I slide my hands down his back until I can yank his tunic from his leather trousers, pulling it up in bunches until it’s caught around his neck.
He rips his lips from mine as I tug it over his head, and his mouth crashes back down again as the garment drifts to the floor.
I race my fingers over his chest and his shoulders, greedy for every little touch.
Every blaze of warmth. Every raised scar, every finely honed muscle. Greedy for him.
“Not against the door,” he mutters against my mouth. “Not against the door.” He says it like a litany, like he’s lecturing himself. “Not against the godsdamned door.”
He presses his face into my hair as he spins us around, staggering as he moves toward the bed that dominates the small room. I know it’s not because I’m too heavy—this is a man whom the gods gifted with supernatural strength—he’s drunk on this mad desire, on this frenzy to be close to one another.
Knowing that fills me like the first breath after drowning. And still—it’s more. So much more.
There’s a fire burning inside me, but for the first time it’s not the fury of rage or the rush of adrenaline.
This fire burns white-hot and makes me feel immensely powerful and free.
I chase each new sensation with wild abandon, pursuing each groan that escapes from his lips with growing determination.
I bite his ear lobe, then the crook of his neck. He stumbles again.
His mouth lands on my neck and he returns my small bites with nips of his own.
My back arches, pressing my sensitive breasts against his chest and the movement rips a cry from my own throat.
It’s a shocking sound—like it came from someone else.
And that, too, makes me feel powerful and strong.
Like I’m being transformed. Reborn, even.
“How do you always smell of lavender?” he mutters against my temple, pressing a tender kiss against my scar there, before we hit the bed and tumble down in a whisper of slippery silk and unyielding leathers.
He rises above me, pressing his hard body into mine, with the soft mattress at my back in the best kind of dichotomy.
“Soap,” I mumble, but it’s hard to focus as his hands slide down my arms, and then down my sides, cupping and tantalizing me through the silk of the dress.
“This fucking dress,” he says, and his eyes are a bit glazed before they go fierce. “Never again,” he says, ripping the silk down the middle. “Never again will they see you like this.”
“Oh, my gods!” I try to shout, to reprimand, but it comes out more like a moan. I try again. “This dress isn’t mine, Ryot!”
He gives a vicious tug, and the silk gives way, leaving me in emerald tatters and my combat boots.
“I don’t give a single fuck about this dress and who it belongs to,” he said. “Except that others saw you in it. That Roran felt the softness of it against your silky skin.” There’s murder in his eyes again, and I bring a hand to his cheek.
I smile up at him. “But only you ripped it off of me,” I tell him. I quirk an eyebrow in reprimand. “And only you will be replacing it.”
He grins, but it’s feral. The satisfied smile of a hunter who finally, at long last, snared his prey.
“Worth it,” he says, giving one last yank on the shreds of fabric, and then I’m completely exposed to him, from my breasts to my hot core.
He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat.
“Oh, sweet Serephelle, you’re not wearing a slip,” he groans out, staring down at me. “I can’t think about you not wearing any underwear downstairs, surrounded by all those vultures. I’ll have to go down and claw all their eyes out.”
“Let’s not do that,” I say on a breathless laugh. “I can think of much better things to do with your hands up here.”
His grin is wicked now.
“Besides, no one has ever seen me like this but you.”
His smile is viciously satisfied. “And they never will,” he says it like it’s a threat. He slides down the bed, pulling me with him, until he’s kneeling at the floor and pulling my legs up over his shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, breathlessly.
“Finding something to do with my hands down here,” he says, staring at me, his eyes burning with a hunger that feels both dangerous and desperate. He raises his gaze back to mine. His eyes are dilated. “And my tongue. If my dreams—well, our dreams—are accurate, you really enjoy my tongue.”
I flush, still embarrassed that I reached out to him through the Veil for sex .
Being with him then felt incredibly real, definitely more real than a mere dream.
But now, that memory feels strangely distant.
Like it didn’t quite happen to me. I watch, intensely curious as he uses his fingers to brush gently down my center.
“Sweet Serephelle,” he rasps. “Sweet. So Sweet.”
And then his finger, which had been slowly sliding and spreading the wetness at my core, finds my clit. The sensation has me falling against the bed, one hand coming up to tangle in my own hair, and the other coming up to cover the ragged moan that escapes from my mouth.
He reaches for my hand, pulling it away from my mouth, linking his fingers with mine.
“Don’t hide your pleasure from me,” he growls. “Don’t you ever hide from me.”
I moan again, louder. His shield wraps around the room. Protecting us.
His other hand continues to rub my clit.
He presses hard, almost to the point of pain, before he backs off and lightly circles.
And he does it again and again. The tension at my core is growing, impossibly tighter and higher.
I bite my lips to hold myself together, my free hand gripping and releasing the curls at my scalp in rhythm to his attention.
He draws his finger back, and I relax at the reprieve, until his mouth replaces it.
I shoot up from the bed, and I can’t help but cry out.
My breath is panting now as I watch him, first gently suckling and then licking.
I’m coming undone, and I don’t know whether I want it to unravel faster or stop so I can piece myself back together before he sees me come apart. My head falls back as he inserts a single finger inside. The tension winds tighter, and I grip my hands in his hair.
“Let go, Leina,” he says in that rough voice of his. “I’ve got you.”
I fight it, though I don’t know why. But somehow, letting go, going over this precipice with him, is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.
“Let it come,” he whispers. “I won’t let you fall.”
And then he covers my clit with his mouth and sucks hard while his finger works deeper to find a place inside that causes me to fall. And fall.
The sensation has me arching up from the bed, toward him, chasing the pleasure even as the fire rages. I shatter, losing pieces of myself. They scatter so far, I wonder if I’ll ever get them back.
But he stays with me, gently bringing me back down.
Every part of me is like molten lava, relaxed and flowing.
My quivering thighs, which had been tight with tension around his head, fall open.
My hand, which had clenched in his hair, drops to my side.
I open my eyes to find him watching me, beads of sweat on his brow, his gaze taking in my every tremor, my every breath, my every contented sigh.
He doesn’t miss any of it.
I sit up and reach for his trousers. “Your turn,” I tell him, starting to tug at his leather pants.
But he crawls up over me and then swoops down to catch me in a quick kiss. He wraps his arms around my back, and then flips us, so that I’m straddling his chest.
“Our turn, Leina” he says, his hand sliding down my body as he continues to explore. “It’s always ours.”