CHAPTER FOURTEEN
One of us moves.
I can’t be sure who, but I slam into his chest. We collide in the center of the pathway, between a set of arches and he finds my hair with his hands and claims my mouth. My arms wind around his neck. My legs around his hips.
Everything calms.
All the noises in my head. The world. Everything ceases to exist as my soul is put back together. The tempo of his heart wraps around mine, lulling it to match. To beat in sync.
“My love,” he breathes into my mouth. “You’re home.”
I have no words outside the need to cry. To weep and hold him and never let go. I have no sense beyond the familiar feel of him.
When he claws away my damp blanket and runs his hands across my naked skin, I tighten my hold. I kiss him harder.
Fuck breathing.
He groans a long, delicious purr that I greedily swallow. That I lap with my tongue.
Love you, I want so badly to tell him, but that would require space, and I’ve already been without him for so long. But he understands. He doesn’t need me to tell him when he’s pinned me to a pillar. The head of his cock nudges my opening. Prodding. Testing.
“Yes,” I breathe against his tongue.
He pulls me down on him. Fills me on his heavy girth. He tastes my weak whine with the invasion of his tongue. His cock stretches my walls with such sweet agony I unleash a guttural groan.
I hit his knot.
My eyes fly open and I find myself caught in the ebony vacuums of endless darkness. The space between trees during nightfall.
“Do it,” I choke out, nibbling on his bottom lip.
Triumph, twisted pleasure lights his eyes a split second before he gives a hard thrust of his hips.
He lets me wail into the heavens, head back towards the yawning expanse of night encompassing us as my body greedily pulls him in. Opens to take him like I was always meant to. My channel hugs him with a vengeance that bares his sharp, jagged teeth.
“Back where you belong,” he breathes into the corner of my lips. “Never letting you go again.”
Love you.
Love you.
I love you!
The words repeat in an endless loop that drowns everything the harder he moves inside me. It cyclones in my chest with every hungry kiss. We move together without an inch of space between us. We move like we’ve done this a million times. He kisses me with a reverence and love that leaves me choked.
When I cum, it’s not frenzied and wild, but a crash of souls that pangs so deep I burst into tears.
“I have you,” he soothes lovingly into my shoulder. “You’re mine. Mine, Rina. Always.”
I tighten my arms and keep my face buried in the curve between his neck and shoulder as he continues to move inside me.
His cum hits my walls. Scorching hot. Endless. A flood of such bliss I squeeze my eyes shut as he fills me.
“Are you hurt?” he asks gently, long fingers gliding along the arch of my back.
I shake my head. “I missed you,” my heart blurts.
He squeezes me closer. “It will never happen again.”
“No,” I squeak when he tries to slide himself from my body. I grip him tighter and clench my channel like a fist to keep him in place.
He chuckles into my shoulder. “As you wish.”
With us locked together, he moves. Following the pathway deeper through the jungle. I lay my cheek against the hard, twining roots across his shoulder and watch the familiar scenery drift past.
The room he takes me to is a bedroom settled amongst a serene canopy of forest. Even the bed is an elaborate artwork of tangled roots and twisted branches built straight from the forest floor. Despite the open sky above, it’s warm. Secluded.
But he doesn’t go to the bed. He takes us further, deeper through the dark forest with the filmy, green hue and stops when it all opens in a beautiful cliffside overlooking a vast landscape of indigo blue and infinite night.
“Welcome back, my love,” he says, leaning back into the winding roots binding together beneath him to create a hammock chair that creaks with the weight of us settling into its curve.
It’s all beautiful without question, but my only focus is the creature beneath me. Inside me.
He is no longer cloaked beneath the shadows, the cloud of darkness that kept him hidden. Every rugged line, every sharp dip of his features is finally mine to enjoy.
Where the boys wear the faintest memory of humanity, he does not, nor does he care to when he is the oldest thing here. When he has watched every tree, shrub and blade of grass sprout into existence.
He’s a demiurge.
A being of untold power, and he’s watching me with the awe of someone witnessing the doors of paradise open before him.
“Hi,” I whisper stupidly, not sure what you’re supposed to say to a demiurge.
The corner of his mouth quirks. “Hello, little one.”
His voice rumbles with the infinity of sand. Of endless time and shifting space. It’s ancient. The kind of rumble not designed to be heard by mortal ears.
In all the times I’ve been brought before him in my dreams, I never gave thought to where the vines came from.
We’re surrounded by trees. The answer seemed obvious, but they are him.
He is the vines, the sticks and branches.
Not exactly a tree, but beneath the dark cloak, he’s tightly interlocked roots that band over a broad chest, hug a tapered waist and long, strong legs.
Upon his head, he wears a crown of ivory.
Broad arcs of bone that extend from the sides of his skull, a vivid contrast to the flawless midnight of his complexion.
The hard curves of his cheekbones. The firm set of his lips.
His eyes have no color, but glint like the darkest parts of the ocean.
They sit like twin pools beneath a heavy brow and thick, dark locks that fall in inky waves to his shoulders.
And still, he is the most breathtaking man I have ever laid eyes on, and I am straddling his hips while we rock gently in the night.
“I shouldn’t have come,” I whisper, chest tight with the realization that I royally fucked up.
His big, rough hands drift along my waist, frame my ribs. His thumbs arch along the underside of my breasts. “You belong here.”
My hands drop to his chest. My fingers curl around the braided roots as I arch my spine. Offer him my chest. The hard points aching for his touch.
“I can’t stay,” I tell him, and expect an argument.
But his head cocks like he’s listening to something in the distance. Eyes, polished pits of black glass, fix me to my spot without judgment. Without anger or impatience. He simply and quietly processes my confession.
“Tell me why,” he says at last.
His thumbs sweep over my nipples. His cock thickens against my walls. Growing all over again. This definitely isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. I’m not supposed to want to snuggle into him and let him stay inside me forever.
But he smells so good.
So familiar and safe.
It’s such a powerful musk of earth and man, and that warmth of a lazy Sunday in bed. It’s making it impossible to think straight.
“I have to return to my parents.”
The undertones of orchards fill my senses. My head. I’m dizzy with the faint kiss of grapes, warm under the sun, and baked earth.
“Rina.” He straightens and winds his arms across my back. I’m drawn to him. “Tell me why, my love.”
This close, our every breath tangles together. Our noses bump. His eyes are infinite and so deep, I’m drowning.
“I can’t leave them.” I rock my hips up and over him. The knot keeps him locked in place, but the pull and friction is enough to make me catch my breath. “They need me.”
He lets me ride him. Lets me close my eyes and feel him fill all the places he belongs. His face drops to the hollow of my throat and his lips graze the vein pattering to his heartbeat.
“Let them go, my love,” he says gently at long last. “They are in a place you can no longer be.” His teeth scratch the skin and I shiver.
“Your place is here. You know it is.” It’s true and I know it’s true, but desperation has me peering into his eyes with tears in mine and heartbreak in his sigh.
“You are already gone for them, Rina. By morning, they will be mourning their loss. Returning will do nothing but cause you both more grief.”
“Is there no more time?” I ask, remembering Ciaran’s comment about time working differently between the worlds. “Am I too late?”
He cradles my face. “You are not, but please reconsider. I cannot go with you and if you don’t return in time, you will be gone forever.”
“I need to say goodbye.” My voice cracks. “Please, just let me say goodbye. I promise I’ll come back.”
It’s as if my heartbreak is his, the way he watches me. His answer is all the seconds he doesn’t answer.
“I would give you anything—”
“Then give me this. Please! Please don’t keep me here without letting me see them one last time.
” Tears well and spill hot down my cheeks.
They burn with grief and the pain lodged in my chest. “My dad is sick. If I don’t come home, he’ll.
..” I can’t even bring myself to say it.
“I’m begging you. Please. Just let me explain—”
“You can’t, my heart.”
A sob cuts through my chest and I shove him. I hadn’t meant to. But he accepts the attack silently.
He takes every ounce of my agony without a word. And when I can’t anymore through the heaving wails, he gathers me up in his arms and bundles me to him. He pulls me tight to his chest and smooths his hands down my spine. Through my hair.
“Please,” I keep begging in between hiccups. “For just a second. I promise. I swear, I’ll give you anything you want.”
“I can’t.”
I lift my head and search the mournful lines of his face.
“Why? Tell me why.”
“Because you’re already dead, Rina.”