Chapter 24
“It’s yours,” Daerios says before I can panic. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“No.” I snap to look at him. “This is your cabin.”
“Exactly. You are my guest; you get the bed.”
“But the couch—”
“Is more than big enough for me. Go, Quinn. You should rest.”
I bite my lip, looking up the steps at the generous, pillow-covered bed at the top of the cabin. It does look delicious. It takes up nearly the entire width of the loft, a triangle of windows set behind it. It’s huge, really.
I inhale.
I’m going to regret this.
“We’re adults,” I say. “That bed is more than big enough for the both of us, and I’m sure we’re capable of keeping our hands to ourselves.”
Daerios raises an eyebrow. “You’re certain?”
No. “Yes.”
“I meant are you certain about sharing a bed?” A grin sparks at his lips. “Not about keeping our hands to ourselves.”
At this, my face heats to previously-unheard-of temperatures. “I know that. That’s what I meant.” I pause. “I meant, I’m certain about both parts. Obviously.” You sound like an idiot.
Daerios’s grin spreads. “Lead the way, Kallister.”
I do, stomping ahead of him up the steps built into the wall. The fuzzy socks dampen the intended effect of my stomping.
Upstairs, the loft is cramped but homey. The mattress sits right on the floor, covered in a fluffy white comforter and stacked with pillows. I busy myself with pulling a few of the pillows off, then bend down to peel off my socks. Daerios watches the whole thing with suppressed amusement.
“Just the socks?” he asks.
“Keep it in your pants, Ariar.”
I don’t have to look up to know he’s smiling.
I slide under the covers, sinking into the mattress. God, this feels good. About a hundred times more comfortable than the standard-issue twin XL mattress back in my dorm room. Maybe I just shouldn’t go back to campus. Maybe I should stay here, in this bed, and—
Daerios flips a switch that turns off every light in the cabin.
Oh, God.
The covers rustle as he slides into bed next to me. True to my earlier statement, this mattress is more than wide enough for both of us; at least a foot of empty space lies between Daerios and me.
“Are you cold?” he asks.
“No.”
“Mmm,” he murmurs. “Shame.”
“Pig,” I whisper, even as my stomach flutters at the idea of scooting closer to him. We settle into our respective places on the bed, but our breathing doesn’t. It picks up, on both sides. I can feel it.
I search frantically for something to say. Anything. Pressure is building between my legs, urging me toward Daerios. I need to distract myself before I do something stupid.
Mercifully, he speaks first.
“Do you believe in soulmates?”
This brings me up short. “What?”
“You know—the idea that there’s one person, and only one, out there in the world with whom you are a perfect match.”
I swallow. It’s just a question, Quinn. Get yourself together. “Of course, not. What an absurd idea. There are eight billion people on Earth; how could just one be your soulmate? What are the odds of you ever finding them?”
His pillow rustles as he nods. “That’s the logical answer, for sure.”
“What?” My voice comes out harsher than I intend. “You don’t agree? I thought elves were nothing but logical.”
“We are. In fact, it’s quite rare for elves to fall in love, or to marry. We live such long lives that, more often than not, we make many friends and take many lovers.”
My stomach lurches at the idea of him with many lovers, though I certainly don’t say as much. “So, elves don’t believe in soulmates either, then.”
“Quite the opposite.” I picture his thick lips moving as he speaks toward the ceiling. “We do fall in love, and we do marry—but only in rare cases. Only when we are absolutely certain that the person whom we’ve found is the one. When it feels as if we will die if we aren’t with them.”
I hear Daerios’s voice in the Ikarith: What if she’s the one?
“That sounds extreme.”
He shrugs, lifting the comforter. “Maybe it is. But it’s what I grew up with. It’s the standard to which I will always hold myself.”
“I see.”
We fall silent again. This time, I do not search for a way to break it. I let it sink over us, let it fill the room in that strange way that silences sometimes do.
There is nothing quite so potent as unspoken desire.
As two bodies side by side in a bed, arms never touching, legs never grazing, want spreading itself thick and greedy between them.
You might think that touch is what sets flame to desire.
But want is perfectly capable of building upon itself.
Of multiplying in the air, pressing in tight, so tight you can no longer breathe.
It’s hot. Far too hot. There’s the heat of his body, the heat of mine, and the fever building between us, all churning together beneath the heavy comforter.
My heart is pounding, has been since the moment I laid down.
I can feel it in my legs, my arms, my entire body.
A steady metronome, like a clock ticking down to start.
I inch one leg to the left. I keep inching until my toe brushes his leg.
Daerios goes completely still.
He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t brush me back. He waits.
This time, I move my left hand, letting it slide under the covers until my fingertips touch his hip. I feel him twitch beneath me. My hand travels higher, slipping under his t-shirt, running over his ribcage. He shivers under the brush of my fingers.
“Do you like the way I touch you?” I whisper into the darkness.
His voice is a husk. “Yes.”
Pressure builds between my legs as my fingers travel the length of his chest, up and around his collarbone, back down the other side of his body. “And like this?”
“Yes.” The word is a plea.
“Mmm.” I toy with the V at the top of his pelvis, running two fingers along one side, then the other. I feel completely in control. I feel as if Daerios would do anything I ask, if I would just touch him. “And like this?”
I plunge my hand into his boxers.
He gasps at the same time I do. When my hand wraps around him, he’s already hard, as if he is ready for me. As if he has always been ready for me. And he’s—good God, I know I’m inexperienced, but it cannot be normal to be this size. Can it? It feels as if he could break me in two.
And I find, absurdly, that I want him to. The pressure between my legs, begging to be broken.
I rub up and down his length. I know that this is what I’m supposed to do; I’ve done it a handful of times before.
Always tipsy, but never enough to make me less conscious of my every movement, assuming that the men I was with weren’t really enjoying themselves.
That they were just tolerating me. Now, I don’t feel that way at all.
I feel confident, secure. I know that if Daerios didn’t like what I was doing, he would tell me.
But from the unsteady breaths leaping from his mouth, from the force of his hand as it wraps around my left wrist—I don’t think that’s the case here.
“Quinn,” he gasps. Then he rolls over beneath the covers until his body is a cage over mine. “Stop that right this instant,” he growls.
“Why?”
“Because the lady always comes first.”
And then he is on me—his body and his lips. His hard length grinds into the softest, pulsing part of my body, and I gasp a little, surprised at how good it feels. His mouth finds the curve of my collarbone, kissing down its length. When he reaches the flannel’s collar, he growls in frustration.
“Take it off.” My voice scratches like a matchbox.
His teeth flash. “Yes, ma’am.”
He reaches for the hem of my flannel at the same time I reach for the bottom of his shirt. We’re a tangle of limbs and skin as the clothes come off, and then he’s reaching around my back to unhook my bra. I arch upward to help him. It comes free, and he tosses it aside.
In the dim moonlight filtering in through the triangle window above us, I watch as Daerios pauses to take me in.
My pillow-tousled curls. My parted lips.
My breasts, bared to him for the first time.
I feel a spike of the same insecurity from before, a hyper-awareness of the soft folds of my skin, the parts of myself that, at times, I wish were smaller than they are.
“Beautiful,” he whispers, running a hand down the curve of my waist, up the center of my belly, and coming to squeeze one of my breasts.
I inhale as his thumb starts to circle, to pass back and forth.
My nipple hardens, coming to a stone peak.
I somehow feel his touch all the way down between my legs.
Insecurity flees my mind as a sort of drugged haze slips inside.
“Daerios,” I beg.
He bends over, one hand still playing with my breast, and presses a firm kiss to my mouth.
I lean into him, slipping my tongue between his lips.
His finger keeps circling and circling, and it’s becoming harder to think, to even remember where I am or how I got here, and I want more, God, I want all of him.
He tastes like smoke, like red wine, like cedar and sugar and fire. I’m dizzy with need.
Before I lose myself completely, I push Daerios over, rolling to the left until I’m straddling him. From this angle, I’m even more exposed, my stomach and sides curling into little rolls. Daerios pauses, head on the pillow. His eyes darken as they rake down my body.
I summon courage that isn’t even there. “Like what you see, Ariar?”
He groans. “You have no idea. You cannot fathom what your body does to me, Quinn.” He leans in and licks up my side, in the exact spot where my skin folds over itself twice, and I gasp.
“I live for these curves. I die for these curves. I worship every square inch of space that this body takes up.” He kisses down my side and along my stomach, while one hand reaches behind me to cup my ass, the other massaging my breast. “I would build a thousand altars with statues in your exact image, just so I could bow before them.”
“Daerios,” I gasp.
He brings his face up to mine, catching my lips in a bruising kiss.
I push him back onto his pillow and start to rock, to ride the arousal I feel beneath his sweatpants.
It feels so good. The pressure at the base of my stomach is begging me to take it all off, for there to be nothing between us at all.
I straighten up and reach down, pulling off the boxers I’m wearing one leg at a time.
I keep my eyes on his. “What do you want, Daerios?”
He can only whimper.
Then I hook both hands around his sweatpants. Wiggle them down his pants, along with his underwear. “I said, what do you want?” I toss them aside.
To my surprise, Daerios sits up. He’s naked now, and no longer putty beneath me. He is no longer whimpers and sighs. He is all jagged angles and hard muscle. His arms wrap around my back, pulling me in until we’re almost nose to nose.
“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, Quinn.” He lifts me as if I am nothing, as if I am air, and positions the soft opening to my body over his hard length. “I want to bury myself so deeply inside you that you forget the existence of every male but me.”
“Do it,” I beg. “Do it. I’m on the pill.”
I am. I started taking birth control many years ago, to treat my always-irregular cycles, made worse by my fluctuating diet. It’s a boring, clinical part of my life—and I’ve never been as grateful for something as I am right now.
“Are you begging me, Quinn?”
“Yes,” I rasp. “Daerios, please.”
His eyes flash. “Good girl.”
Then he pushes into me, and I gasp at his size, at how it squeezes the very walls of my body. There is a heartbeat of pain, just a moment, and I cry out.
Daerios freezes. He pulls back. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes. Please, don’t stop what you’re doing.”
He smiles. Tucks a stray curl behind my ear. Then he lifts me up—slowly, gently—and brings me back down.
There is no pain, this time. There is only a wonderful ache, the filling of an emptiness I never knew existed. I start to move on my own, forward and back, up and down. With every movement, the ache grows tighter, harder, coiling through every limb of my body.
“Quinn,” he sighs. “You feel so fucking good, baby.”
I’m riding him, now. I cling to his neck as I slide up and down, forward and back, whichever way hits that spot deep inside me, the one that sends bolts of lightning up my spine.
His arms are tight around me. Sweat beads our panting bodies.
The pressure coils higher and higher within me, and I feel so good, I cannot believe I have lived so long without this feeling.
“Yes,” I moan. “God, Daerios, yes. Don’t stop.”
It’s as if a star is burning within me, growing, swelling.
The pleasure is so deep, so all-consuming, that I soon lose the ability to speak.
I make wild noises as Daerios murmurs praise in my ear, telling me how good I’m doing, how incredible I feel.
And the star—it keeps growing, burning until it will surely combust—
And then it does.
Lights twinkle in every corner of my vision as I tilt my head back and come undone around him.
My nails dig into his back, or maybe his into mine, I don’t know.
Our names come loose in a tangle of sweat and sound, and then I’m falling, falling, and our heads hit the pillows together, his arms never releasing me.
We lie beside each other, panting into the darkness. The pressure has left my body, and in its place settles a heavy warmth, as if he’s draped an extra blanket over me. Every muscle loosens. My limbs sink into the soft mattress. I curl my head inward, nuzzling it into his chest.
“Quinn,” he sighs.
I settle into him, breathing in his smoky, homey scent. His fingers graze the curve of my body. It feels perfectly right to be in his arms like this. Natural. As if it’s the only place I’m supposed to be.
Certainty washes over me, then. And relief. I don’t have to lose this feeling. I don’t have to lose him. We can be partners in our search for the Shadow Elves. He can help me save Michael, and I can help him save Elaerion.
All this fantasizing—I know. It’s completely unlike me.
But I can’t help it. With the taste of Daerios still on my lips, his smell on every inch of the bed, I can’t help it.
And as I drift off to sleep, my naked body tangled up in the limbs of another for the first time in my life, I’m no longer afraid.