18. Soul Fusion
18
Soul Fusion
Ki’REMI
K i’Remi was a meta designed to withstand most challenges.
From battlefields to strategy, surgery, survival, and even pain.
He had never prepared for her and how much she drove him wild.
When he pleasured her, heck, claimed her, it was not with hesitation nor with careful restraint.
It was with the force of a man who had been waiting his whole life for this instant.
He glided his body over her, parted her knees, and with a groan, slid his scorching cock into the tight pull of her pussy.
‘ Foookkkkkkk ,’ he groaned, tightening his thighs to keep from bucking.
They stilled, with him groaning from the ecstasy of it, her giving slight gasps against his mouth.
When he trusted himself to move once more without imploding, he began with a gentle cant of his hips.
His movements were slow and drawn out in a battle of wills and wantonness.
She matched his pace, teasing and taunting him, her body liquid fire beneath his.
However, restraint was fragile, and it soon shattered.
She clutched his locs, forcing him to gaze into her celestial eyes.
‘Ride, Rider, as hard you can.’
Her husky entreaty was all he needed.
He thrust in with a grunt, pulling out to the brink of her lush wetness before plunging in again, going out of his mind with lust.
His hips worked, and with each heated gasp, whispered name, and desperate press of skin, they drew closer to shattering.
His hands moved to her freakin’ muscled ass as he grew impossibly more enormous, harder.
His balls throbbing, his groin shot with a ratcheting euphoria, high on his desire for her.
His cock was on fire as he pistoned in, pulled out, in again and again, one hand now on her derriere, the other working her clit.
Lips melded to hers in an unplumbed and almost barbaric suckling.
He cried out before he bucked up to gaze into her wild astral eyes, losing himself in such cosmic bliss.
Her knees locked into his sides, one hand sunk into his locs, pulling at him as he moved from her mouth back to worship her tit.
Her hips jolted to his, legs so far apart, heels in his back, so he’d no recourse but to drive his cock harder, faster.
Even as her stroking hands on his spinal column, his ass, back up to the skull, set forth a dance of wild feeling over him.
Her cunt clenched around him, heat wrapping him in a primal, impossible blaze.
It wasn’t just a small blaze. It was an inferno, a wildfire licking up his spine, an eruption of pure, unfiltered power.
That’s when he spotted flames burst from her skin.
Not metaphorical. Not imagined.
Real, golden-white fire licked up from her core, illuminating them, casting their sweat-slicked bodies in its unholy glow.
Ki’Remi gasped, his fingers digging into her hips, bracing for the burn.
But it didn’t just scorch his physical form. Instead, it seared his soul.
Fokk, it ripped him apart.
It devoured him from within, pulling him into a dimension transcending pleasure and reason.
Each stroke, thrust, and slide against hers flung him down a path he never thought existed.
Fokk.
Every encounter before this? Second-rate. Meaningless. A ghost of what intimacy should be.
What he experienced was not sex, twas a journey, a freakin’ ascension to the highest heights of sublimity.
With every movement, gasp that left her lips, each groan that tore from his, he was getting pulled beyond the physical.
He was being unraveled.
It was as if she was opening a door inside him that led to a vast complex of hundreds of treasure houses.
All bursting open with blinding knowledge, wisdom, and fire.
He roared, his head tipping back, his jaw clenched as if to withstand its overwhelming force.
As he came, his mind exploded.
Not just with pleasure, not just with the unbearable, maddening ecstasy of her body tightening around him.
Even as the whispers in his mind told him that he’d never be the same.
Without warning, a visible inferno erupted.
His vision burned white, his limbs locking against hers as she dragged him into her fire.
Her release shattering through her, her nails clawing down his back as she screamed his name.
They came slicked together, chasing a storm of lusty salvos, until they collapsed in tangled limbs, gasping breaths, and raw, undeniable truth, shaking, stunned.
The flames dimmed, curling into gilded embers across her skin.
His chest heaved, sweat dripping down his spine as he stared down at her, bewildered, panting, destroyed.
Yet at the same time, feeling the most exhilarated and alive he’d ever been.
She was gazing at him, too, golden light flickering in her eyes.
His voice was hoarse, ruined when he finally rasped, ‘What the fokk was that?’
Her lips, swollen and bruised, curved into a knowing, almost smug smile.
‘Sedevan lovemaking,’ she murmured.
Ki’Remi just blinked.
Still gasping. Still shattered.
‘That was -’
He exhaled, pressing a shaking hand to his chest, where he swore something inside him transformed.
‘ Fokk . That was something else. Savage, ferocious, feral.’
His entire world had just shifted.
Freakin’ ignited, and Issa Elaris had been the one to do it.
Ki’Remi had never given much heed to the supernatural.
He’d sought comfort in cold reason all his life, yet now, he was on the precipice of the mystic, transcendent, and arcane.
He lay on his back, rib cage rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm, Issa draped across him like a silken throw.
The room still pulsed with residual heat. Not just from their bodies but something otherworldly, something he couldn’t explain.
His muscles ached, but not from exhaustion.
Nada , twas deeper. An unfathomable thrumming that came from being lit from within.
She had been a wildfire. Untamed. Burning through him, consuming, leaving no part of him untouched.
He thought himself a man who understood control.
In one melding, Issa stripped him of this view and burned him down to raw sensation.
And he had never felt more alive.
He exhaled, his fingers tracing lazy circles over the small of her back. Her skin was damp, her breath warm against his chest, her hair a tousled crown on his throat.
He stared at the ceiling, his mind still trying to piece together what had just happened.
Because in the throes of their passion, he caught, fokk, flames?
Golden-white, licking at the air, wrapping around them, fusing with their innermost essence.
At first, he thought it was a trick of his vision, the dim glow of his metanoid tattoos reacting to the heightened sensory overload.
Then he perceived the heat, not just externally but inside him.
In his blood, in his bones.
He turned, raising himself on one elbow, staring down at her. ‘Seriously, woman, what the hell was that?’
His repeated utterance was rough, still hoarse from the sounds she wrung from him.
She stirred but didn’t lift her head.
He reached down, fingers curling under her chin, tilting her face up.
‘Issa.’
Her lashes fluttered, her gaze drowsy but knowing.
He held her stare unrelenting. ‘What was the fire?’
A slow, satisfied smile curled her lips.
‘You saw it?’ she murmured, her tone laced with exhaustion and amusement.
He arched a brow. ‘ Fokk , I got freakin’ scorched to my bones.’
She traced his chest, her nails just skimming the inked ridges of his skin.
‘Sedevans Ssigis make love with an inner inferno,’ she whispered, with a sultry huskiness, as she shared her secret. ‘It’s a part of us, the way we are made.’
Ki’Remi frowned. ‘Explain.’
She sighed, shifting to her side to face him.
‘When a Sedevan Ssigis gives herself to another, she doesn’t just share pleasure. She shares her energy.’
Her fingers ghosted over his heart. ‘If the bond is strong enough, that vitality fuses their souls.’
He stilled beneath her.
Soul fusion.
The concept was absurd. Unfathomable.
However, there was no doubt he witnessed the fire and experienced it lash his body, flame his sinews, and light up even his metanoids.
Still, his skepticism warred with what he had just gone through, even though the overload of sheer force through him was still shaking him.
She pressed her lips to his shoulder. ‘Also, you’re a meta. A man augmented beyond his mortal limitations. If you weren’t—.’
She exhaled through her nose.
Her pause caused him to lock eyes with her, arching his brow. ‘What would’ve happened if I were a mortal?’
‘Let’s just say a regular man wouldn’t have survived what we just did.’
He inhaled as his heart kicked against his ribs.
‘You real?’
She just laughed, a soft, sinful, tempting chuckle.
‘As it gets.’
She was challenging everything he had ever believed. Issa tilted her head, watching him with lazy fascination.
‘You might have incinerated,’ she added.
His jaw ticked. ‘That’s not funny, Elaris.’
She smirked. ‘I’m not joking, Sable.’
Her smile turned soft, almost teasing. ‘If you were pure human,’ she whispered, tracing a hand down his chest, over his racing heart, ‘I would have killed you.’
His breath stalled.
His grip tightened around her waist.
Killed him?
His noid-enhanced body handled it, but she’d wrecked him, no doubt.
Ki’Remi rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, at the traces of golden embers still glowing above them.
What. The. Fokk.
Still, he canted back to her, and his hand slid over her nape, cupping the back of her head, his fingers threading through her thick curls.
‘You’re a damn mystery, Issa.’
His voice was quiet, almost reverent.
She leaned in to kiss his jaw. ‘Ah, but you like mysteries.’
He growled. ‘I like solving them.’
She laughed, the sound husky, content.
However, Ki’Remi wasn’t laughing.
Because he was in deep, she was all up in him, consuming his soul.
Even his metanoids felt different, thrumming on a whole new level, injected and inflamed by an incomprehensible energy source.
He gazed into her addicting, nebula-bright eyes and realized that no matter how much his logic fought it, he was done for, and there was no turning back.
ISSA
They fell asleep, lulled by the languidness that followed an intense session of lovemaking.
When she next opened her eyes, the first thing Issa sensed was warmth.
Not the artificial heating of her quarters. Not the uncomfortable temperature of Eden II’s rising suns.
This mellowness was solid, steady, and alive.
Her tangled limbs lay under her lover’s. One of his arms was heavy and draped over her waist in sleep, his torso a furnace against her back.
She turned with care, shifting just enough to let her eyes fall on his features.
For a man who carried an air of perpetual tension, he was beautiful in repose, and she savored the moment, unused to seeing him so relaxed.
His breathing was even deep, at peace, unlike the restless commander she was familiar with.
However, even in slumber, he appeared unassailable, with honed cheekbones, a sculpted jaw, and a crease between his brows.
Her gaze flicked lower.
Down to the drifting, glowing ink that wound around his muscles, the shifting symbols that intrigued her.
Her fingers itched to trace them.
Instead, she studied him, committing this moment to memory.
Because whatever this was, all last night had been, it was momentous, far-reaching beyond her past, secrets, and the battles she sensed had yet come.
Ki’Remi shifted, his breath stirring the hairs on her temple, and then his arm tightened on her waist, pulling her flush to him.
‘You watching me snore, Elaris?’
His morning timbre was a rough rasp, still thick and gravelly, but it held a teasing lilt.
‘Maybe,’ she murmured.
He cracked an eye open, lazy and silver, settling on her, sending a jolt through her.
‘See something you like?’
Issa smirked, dragging her fingers through the locs, massaging his skull.
He purred, arching into her caress.
‘Might need a few more nights to be sure.’
Ki’Remi’s grip flexed on her waist. ‘Is that right?’
She hummed, pretending to think about it, before shifting closer, pressing her mouth to the corner of his jaw.
‘Perhaps.’
He exhaled, then turned, rolling her beneath him, caging her in his arms.
‘Good,’ he rasped like molten sin, ‘because we’re not done yet. Not even close.’
In moments, his lips and tongue were plumbing her mouth.
Her hand went to his nape, tugging at his locs as his cock bottomed inside her, stroking deep and hard, flinging her into the wilds of ecstasy.
Many long minutes later, Ki’Remi eased from her limbs with a final kiss on her shoulder before rising from the bed.
She let out a lazy, satisfied sound, rolling onto her stomach, eyes on him.
Fokk, she’d never tire of the glorious view.
His chest and tight abs rippled as he reached for a pair of drawstring pants, his meta ink shifting with every move.
‘Stay,’ he murmured, ‘I’m making breakfast.’
She arched a brow. ‘You cook?’
He shot her a dry look over his back. ‘Contrary to popular belief, I don’t survive solely on protein rations and sheer force of will.’
She grinned, stretching. ‘Color me intrigued.’
He stalked away, and she licked her lips, impossibly desiring him again.
Minutes later, she followed, ambling into his kitchen, wrapped in nothing but his sheet.
She found a burbling kahawa pot and Ki’Remi cracking eggs into a fragrant, bubbling tomato sauce spiced with cumin, paprika, and slow-roasted peppers.
The scent of simmering garlic and heat filled the space, mingling with the rich aroma of the fresh-brewed beverage, so dark and intense it could wake the dead.
She leaned against the counter, arching a brow as he plated the shakshuka, dropping thick-cut bread onto the side.
‘I could get used to this,’ she mused, sipping from the coffee he handed her.
‘Don’t get ideas, Elaris.’
She smirked. ‘Too late.’
They took their food to the patio, the twin suns of Eden II stretching over the skyline, casting golden streaks over the cityscape.
They ate in companionable silence until Ki’Remi finally spoke.
‘You’re one esoteric enigma, woman.’
She glanced at him, tearing at her buttered slice. ‘How so?’
He set his fork down, leaned back in his chair, and studied her.
‘You live outside logic,’ he said. ‘Beyond everything I’ve ever perceived to be real. It irks me. Yet,’ he trailed off.
She arched a brow. ‘Yet?’
His lips curved, eyes soft. ‘I can’t help but adore you.’
The words caught her off guard.
Her fingers tightened around her mug.
Ki’Remi never spoke out of turn nor made statements unless he meant them.
He was also taciturn, direct, and sometimes boorish most of the time, rarely sentimental.
Unused to this side of him, her soul jolted as she locked gazes with him.
She swallowed, playing it off with a smirk.
‘That right, Sable?’
His gaze didn’t waver.
‘That’s true.’
She exhaled and pushed a hand through her curls.
Damn.
She could get high on this man, and just maybe his brand of addiction was what she needed.
Ki’REMI
A sound, nada , a muffled sob, drew Ki’Remi from sleep.
He shifted, his instincts waking him before his mind caught up. His meta-ink flickered with noid flashes as his body adjusted to consciousness.
The space beside him was empty, the sheets still warm.
His jaw ticked as he rose on one elbow, tilting his head and adjusting his neural hearing.
He heard her voice.
Soft, strained, not speaking to him.
He knifed up and out of the bed, feet hitting the cool floor, and moved toward the source of the sound.
His vast patio stretched over the night-cloaked city, the lights of Eden II shimmering below.
Issa stood at the edge, wrapped in nothing but one of his dress shirts, which was far too oversized for her. The sleeves were rolled up, and inside them, her arms hugged her torso.
A see-through lucid shield cocooned her, glowing.
He crossed his hands, staying in the shadows, watching.
He switched off his meta-hearing, refusing to listen in, cognizant of the need to give her privacy, yet he stayed, needing to understand why she was so upset.
A group of figures flickered on the projection, curved in a semi-circle around her.
Their expressions were tight with worry, and Issa tried hard to hold it together.
She sniffed, wiping at her eyes, nodding at something they said, her voice just above a whisper.
Ki’Remi was inundated with profound emotion, not pity or sympathy, just compassionate discernment because he understood what it was like to stand alone in the dark, shouldering burdens too heavy for one person.
The call ended, the holo winking out and vanishing.
She stood, her shoulders tense, arms wrapped around her middle, her gaze unfocused over the city.
Ki’Remi moved.
She jerked, startled when his heated clasp encircled her from behind, but she didn’t resist.
Instead, she sighed, leaning back into his solid presence.
He rested his chin on her head, his grip firm, steadying.
‘Your family?’
‘ Naam . My father’s condition is worsening, and he is losing more shards of his essence every day to the soul stone.’
‘What will you do?’ he murmured into her hair.
She swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know yet. Father suggested I return the jar of souls and let come what may. It might stop the Ssigis venators coming after me, but will it further his demise? Sulfiqar is a vengeful god, and I fear it might only drive him to kill father regardless.’
A pause and a long, heavy silence fell.
‘There’s one thing, though,’ she admitted.
Ki’Remi tilted his head, listening.
Her fingers traced the ridges of his forearm, the glowing ink of his metanoids shifting under her touch.
‘Since I’ve been with you, my Ssignakht power hasn’t even come near to imploding.’
His brows furrowed. ‘What now?’
She turned in his arms, her eyes still red-rimmed but tinged with amusement, a ghost of a smirk touching her lips.
‘Having so many orgasms,’ she said, deadpan, ‘I’ve been draining enough energy that I’m not even close to my counter.’
Ki’Remi stared at her and exhaled, shaking his head.
Her face was grave.
She wasn’t mocking him. She was freakin’ for real.
Fokk.
A timbred, grumbling huff of disbelief rumbled from his chest.
He cupped her chin, tilting her face to his, his gaze flickering with something unreadable.
‘Then it’s time,’ he rasped, in a rough, dark promise, ‘to drain you again.’
The smirk faded from her lips, her breath hitching as his eyes darkened, heavy with intent.
His hand slid down, gripping the back of her thigh, lifting her with ease to him.
She wrapped herself around him without hesitation.
‘Make me forget,’ she whispered into his ear, holding on tight.
As he carried her back inside, the city lights glowing behind them, he hid his concern, which was the only way he understood.
By worshiping her body, taking her apart, piece by piece, until nothing remained between them but scorching heat and flames.