Chapter 30
SAY MY NAME…
LEELA
My arms and shoulders ached from pulling the bow, but the target practice had been worth it, bringing forth my natural ability for archery and allowing me to become comfortable with it.
I hit every target, and when the djinn began throwing stones into the air and asking me to knock them out of the sky, I hit those targets too.
I planned to go back to my room and soak in the bath, but C’ael suggested a visit to the steam baths instead.
“No one will enter if you’re inside,” he said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
I grabbed fresh clothes and a towel, then followed him through the mountain passages to a steamy chamber filled with a large pool of water.
C’ael waited outside as I ventured into the mist. I kicked off my boots, sighing as my soles met warm stone. I was so going to enjoy this. I stripped quickly and climbed in, keeping hold of the ledge until my toes touched the bottom. The water came up high enough to cover my breasts. Perfect.
Heat seeped into my skin, then deeper into my bones, unraveling and unknitting the tightness in my muscles and leaving me no option but to relax.
In a few hours I’d be bound to Iblees in the Aatala ceremony which would allow him and the devouring force to enter the Shahee Kshetra with me tomorrow. I’d take the bow with me when we returned to claim the throne. No one would get hurt, I’d make sure of it, but if the Asura attacked my people…
My people.
These djinn and ascended here, in this camp, were my people now. When had that shift happened?
I was responsible for them now, just as much as I was responsible for all the innocents in Aakash Sansaar.
Chandra would have some explaining to do.
What if he’d been lying to me? Playing me?
An emptiness opened in my chest—the beginnings of loss, the echo of pain to come.
I didn’t want to lose him, but I would not be used, and I would not allow myself to be surrounded by liars and manipulators.
If he wasn’t a true ally, then he had no place by my side. No power. No authority.
My scalp prickled, the sensation pulling me from my thoughts. Someone was in the chamber with me.
“Who’s there?”
Water swished. I tensed. C’ael had said he wouldn’t let anyone in, so who—
“It’s only me, Leela.” Iblees’s baritone drifted toward me.
I turned my head toward it as the mist parted to reveal his epic form.
His hair was loose, cascading over his shoulders, golden tendrils nestled like silken ribbons against the darker tones.
The water skimmed his hips as he glided from the shallows toward me.
I was suddenly back in the steam baths in Prashikshan, my back against stone as Araz advanced on me.
He’d been pissed at finding me there, accusatory even, but now, here, in this hot bath, the male who bridged the distance between us did so with a different intention in his smoldering eyes.
Breathe, Leela. Keep your eyes on his face. Don’t look down.
My traitorous gaze worked against me, dropping to his powerful chest, then to the cobbled abs and delicious Adonis belt that pointed to delights I knew only too well.
The water rose as he got closer, breaking the spell. I exhaled then steeled my spine as he came to a standstill a few feet from me.
I was naked.
He was naked.
It was fine.
The water and steam covered it all. Oh gods, he was so close, I could touch him if I wanted. Press myself to his skin and revel in the contact and breathe in his cranberry scent. My eyes heated with longing.
“How are you feeling after the training?” he asked.
“Sore, but the hot water helps.”
He moved a little closer, and I resisted the urge to step forward and meet him. “I heard you were formidable with the bow,” he said softly.
I shrugged. “Turns out I have an innate skill for archery.”
“Your arm must be tired…” His gaze dropped to my shoulder. “I can massage the muscles if you wish.”
I bit back a moan at the thought of a massage. But having him touch me…Yeah, bad idea.
I cleared my throat. “I’m good.”
His lips parted, nostrils flaring. “I know when you’re in discomfort, Leela. I can sense when you’re in pain or when you yearn…I can feel your desire…I feel it now.”
I sucked in a breath and fixed my attention on his bare chest, close enough to lick. His scent was an aphrodisiac seeping into my senses to weaken my resolve.
His chest rose and fell on a deep breath, and when he spoke, the vibration of his voice rippled through me.
“Look at me, Leela.” I lifted my chin to meet his gaze, breath stalling at the heat that waited there.
“Are you recalling the last time we were like this? Alone in a steam bath, back when I was doing everything in my power to warn you away from me. To hate you and to make you hate me.” He cupped my jaw gently with one hand, thumb teasing my lower lip.
“Have you any idea how hard it was for me not to take you fully that night? I was almost inside you, and I stopped because you asked me to. And now…Now I need you to ask me again.” He pressed down on my bottom lip.
My heart lurched, gaze whipping up to meet his as the memory of that night all those weeks ago filled my mind.
I’d licked him then. Taken his thumb and sucked it into my mouth.
“Ask me to stop.” His voice was strained.
I wanted to taste him. Oh gods, I needed to.
“Tell me to leave.”
I licked him, and he went as still as stone, our gazes locked, and in the next moment, he’d lifted me up, one hand bracing my ass as the other arm wrapped around me, his thick length sliding against my core.
“Ask me to leave.” He nipped at my earlobe and gripped my ass tighter, positioning me against him so that the thick head of his cock pushed at my entrance.
My hips tilted toward him, the motion instinctive and needy. I bit back a cry.
“Leela.” His voice was a ragged, broken thing. “Please, tell me to stop. Tell me you don’t want this.”
But I couldn’t. The words refused to come, buried beneath the heat that coursed through my body. The yearning, twisting, tightening, need carried only one word.
The name he needed me to give him, and the one that I’d been withholding.
He rolled his hips, inching into me, and my head fell back, my gaze meeting his as a soft moan spilled from my lips.
“I will claim you, Leela. I will enter you now and make you mine unless you ask me not to.” His jaw flexed, the timbre of his voice changing to something that was almost a plea. “Tell me to stop.”
He throbbed against me, and my lungs emptied on a gasp. I wanted him. I needed him. All of him, and I was done fighting what my soul already knew. This was my drohi. And he was now a god.
He was mine, and I wanted to be claimed.
“Don’t stop…” I cupped his jaw. “I want you. I need you…Araz. My Araz.”
His eyes flared like flame. “Yes.” He buried himself inside me in a single thrust, swallowing my cry and devouring my mouth with tongue and teeth, his body a cage, hips retreating only to snap back and meet mine again.
He broke the kiss, still deep inside me. “I want to watch you come undone. I want to hear you call my name.”
He carried me into the shallow water and set me on the ledge, still deep inside me. “Look at us, Leela. Look how well you take me.”
I looked down between us to where we joined, biting my lip and swallowing a moan as he dragged himself almost all the way out of me. My hips jerked toward him, begging him to stay.
He gripped my jaw, forcing me to look him in the eye. His gaze was feverish. “Tell me to stop,” he bit out. “Before I’m too far gone.”
I raked my fingers through his silken locks. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.” I shifted my hips forward, desperate to bring him home. The fever in his eyes dimmed to something ancient and molten.
“Fuck…” He thrust hard, burying himself deep in me once more.
“Oh!” I gripped his shoulders, nails biting into his taut flesh.
“Yes.” He scraped his teeth along my jaw, sending a shiver through me. “Like that.” He fisted my hair, thrusting slow and deep, chest vibrating in a growl that mingled with my moans. “Unravel for me, Leela. Let go.”
His large hands gripped and anchored, and his hungry mouth tasted my skin, my neck, my jaw, my mouth, his tongue thrusting in a mimicry of his cock which thickened inside me with each stroke, testing my body, my capacity to take him whole and deep.
He opened me wider, relentless in his need to consume me in my surrender.
I unknit and unraveled, opening for him.
Giving him everything. My heart, my soul, my every gasp and cry until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
Until the only sound I could make was his name, over and over.
A cold fire flared behind my sternum, tightening then shooting down to the apex of my thighs in a pulse of release so strong I was momentarily breathless. Suspended in nothingness and yet cocooned in him.
My love. My Araz.
I clung to Araz, my body trembling with emotion, overtaken by sensation and the connection to this new version of us.
I felt the bond stronger now, a heat low in my belly that reached into my chest in a pulse.
It was flame. His flame and something else…
something more, like a sliver of ice nestled within. Pulsing and powerful.
“Did I hurt you?” Araz asked, his gaze almost reverent as it searched mine.
“No, it was wonderful and…different.”
He relaxed, chuckling softly. “I may have been a little…exuberant in my attentions tonight, but Leela, I have missed you so very much.”
“And I missed you. But we can be together now. No need for war. No need to be on opposite sides of a battlefield.”
“You were right. There was never any need for war. But we had to be apart for me to learn that. For me to become whole again. And you…” He stroked my cheek lightly with his fingertips. “You see me. You accept me as I am now.”