Chapter 16 #3
His eyes, dark and intense, locked with mine. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "I want this to last."
"It will," I promised, lifting my hips to meet his next thrust, taking him even deeper. The new angle sent a jolt of pure electricity through me, and we both gasped. "We have forever."
That was all the permission he needed. The careful control he'd been exerting shattered.
His rhythm quickened, his thrusts becoming harder, deeper, more demanding.
The bed began to rock with the force of his movements, the sound of our bodies meeting—slap, slap, slap—a percussive counterpoint to our ragged breaths and moans.
The gentle waves of pleasure were no longer gentle.
They were building, cresting higher and higher with each powerful stroke.
The silver lightning beneath our skin was no longer just pulsing; it was arcing between us, a visible, crackling energy that filled the room with its ozone scent and the scent of our combined arousal.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, locking my ankles behind his back, opening myself completely to his possession. "More," I demanded, my nails digging into his shoulders. "Harder."
He responded with a growl, a sound of pure, unadulterated masculinity that vibrated through his chest and into mine.
He rose up on his arms, changing the angle again, and began to drive into me with long, punishing strokes that hit the deepest part of me with every thrust. The pressure was immense, almost unbearable, but it was exactly what I needed, what we both needed.
Through the haze of pleasure, I could feel his own climax approaching, a tightening, a coiling of pure energy at the base of his spine.
It fed my own, pulling me closer to the edge.
The bond between us was a roaring inferno now, our thoughts, our feelings, our very essences merging until I couldn't tell where he ended and I began.
"Sloane," he gasped, his rhythm faltering for a split second. "I can't..."
"Don't hold back," I cried out, my own release barreling down on me like a runaway train. "Come with me. Now."
His eyes widened, and then he threw his head back with a primal roar as he slammed into me one last time.
I felt the hot flood of his release deep inside me, and it triggered my own.
The orgasm that ripped through me was nothing like the gentle wave from before.
It was a cataclysm, a seismic event that shattered my world into a million pieces of light and color and pure, unadulterated bliss.
Silver lightning erupted from us, bathing the room in a blinding white light as our bodies convulsed together, locked in the most intimate embrace possible.
For a long, timeless moment, we were the only two beings in the universe, floating together in a sea of ecstasy and love. Slowly, gently, the waves receded, the light faded, and our frantic heartbeats began to slow.
He collapsed against me, his weight a welcome, grounding pressure, his face buried in the crook of my neck. We were both slick with sweat, our bodies trembling in the aftermath. I could feel his heart hammering against my ribs, a steady, reassuring rhythm that matched my own.
I threaded my fingers through his thick hair, my body boneless, sated, and filled with a peace I'd never known. "Wow," I murmured, the word completely inadequate but the only one I could manage.
He lifted his head, his eyes soft, sated, and filled with an emotion so deep and profound it made my breath catch. He leaned in and kissed me, a slow, tender kiss that was a promise of a future I never could have imagined.
Light moved under my skin, caught my attention. I looked at my arm.
The marks had moved.
Not just at my collarbone. The branching lines were running down both arms — the fractal geometry I had first seen on my collarbones tracing itself along my inner arms toward my wrists, following the paths of my veins in the blue-white of the valley's electromagnetic signature.
The patterns were deeper now, more defined, the ghost-marks of the last two days becoming something permanent and present and blazing.
I looked at him. The marks on his chest had changed too — the pale lightning scars he had carried for years blazing now with new light. The new patterns in his skin activated in response to mine, the Skybond writing itself into both of us simultaneously in the same language, the same hand.
"You’re mine." His voice was barely sound.
His eyes were blazing silver-white — fully lit, more brilliant than I had ever seen them.
His pupils narrowed to fine dark lines in a sea of living light.
The nodes on his body hummed with a frequency I felt in my own nervous system.
We were the same. Totally. Completely. The frequency of him was now the frequency of me.
We matched.
We were one. The planet had taken two different nervous systems and tuned them to the same frequency, had built a resonance between us that went below conscious experience into something fundamental and permanent.
The stormglass panels were blazing white, carrying our mixed current. The marks were blazing on both of us.
He pulled me against his chest and held me as his nodes blazed against my skin.
Our marks discharged in soft warm arcs everywhere our bodies touched.
Outside, the storm moved through the valley in its full, terrible, extraordinary expression and I felt it like it was a living, breathing entity. Awake. Aware.
Watching us.
Part of us.
As if the storm read my thoughts, a massive lightning pulse crashed through the valley.
Power ran through the settlement's node network, the ground, the rocks and trees, and through the floor of Sorik’s home.
The blast of heat rushed through his spine and through mine, the same current, the same frequency, the same enormous electric breath as if the planet itself was staking a claim on us. Demanded to be part of our joining.
Not that we had a choice. Not anymore. It was too late for that.
I pressed my face against his chest, wrapped my arms around him and let him hold me while the planet breathed around us. Through us. Part of us. Part of me.
I was the storm. I was part of Sorik and he was part of me.
I was home.