Chapter 11
Chapter eleven
Kelvar
Alyx slept in my arms through the night for the second time since I had stolen her away, and I prayed to the sands that it would not be the last. At first, I had hoped for this journey with her to be over quickly, but now I wished it to never end.
That way, I could keep pretending that there were no reasons for us to keep our distance.
As the sun crested the horizon, I reveled in the stillness of the moments before the desert fully awakened. The often violent and harsh landscape was painted soft and beautiful by the gentle light—everything bleached a silvery gray that seemed to perfectly reflect Alyx’s ethereal beauty.
I molded her back even more tightly to my front with the arm flung around her waist and breathed in the flowery scent of her hair. She was so achingly soft in my arms, and even as I reveled in the sleepy peacefulness, I couldn’t help the feral hunger it lit for her in my belly.
It was the same desire that had reared its head when Alyx had admitted to me yesterday that she was untouched.
It lit a dark possessiveness in me that I was not proud of.
I wanted to bind her to me and make her mine forever, even though her beauty and her power were more than anything I had ever even let myself dream of.
Just as I could tell Alyx would no longer be able to go back to her sheltered life in her clan, I knew I would never be able to go back to the simple, destructive existence I had convinced myself was enough.
She stirred in my arms, and I used one hand to gather her hair and push it to one side so I could kiss the curve of her long, elegant neck. She made a sleepy noise of approval, and I couldn’t help the way my cock twitched in my pants.
As she wiggled to get closer to me, it ground the curve of her ass against my hardening length, and I nearly swallowed my tongue. Now that I had let my desire off its leash once—let myself have a taste of the perfection that was intimacy with Alyx—I seemed unable to rein it in again.
I thrust against her as the hand over her waist now pressed flat against her belly. Her tunic had rucked up as she slept, and I traced the bare skin around her navel.
“Kelvar,” she murmured, letting me know she was awake and aware, even as her voice was still thick with sleep.
I shushed gently, kissing behind her jaw. “Let me take care of you,” I said.
She nodded in assent, before letting her head loll back against my shoulder.
Her eyes were only half open as she gazed up at me, but her slack face twitched with anticipation as I dipped my fingers below the waistband of her pants.
I did not rush their journey to her sex, letting them explore her folds gently and thoroughly, so her breath came in sharp pants by the time I circled her entrance.
Slowly, I slid one finger inside, already finding her wet and ready for my attention. The way she gripped that single digit, though, made my eyes roll back in my head at the memory of how her slick heat had felt around me.
It was good enough to drive me mad.
Carefully, I thrust my finger inside her, earning a high whimper as my palm ground against her most sensitive point.
She squirmed, as if seeking out more contact.
I obliged, bringing my other hand up to cup one of her breasts.
I massaged it before rolling her nipple between my fingers through her clothing.
She twitched in pleasure, and I reveled in how sensitive and responsive she was.
I continued my attentions for long moments, rubbing her heated flesh as I stretched her open with another finger. I drank in the hitches of her breath and the flush that traveled down her cheeks to her neck as if she were an oasis and I were dying of thirst.
Finally, her moans and whimpers shaped into words once more. “I want you inside me again,” she insisted.
“I am inside you, Flower,” I pointed out, thrusting my fingers for emphasis.
She squirmed in my hold and huffed indignantly. “Kelvar.”
There was nothing I wouldn’t give her when she asked so prettily. I removed my hand from her breast and used it to shove my pants down my hips until my already throbbing cock sprang free. She helped me, shimmying her own pants down her legs. They went easily, several sizes too big as they were.
Even as I ached to replace my fingers with my throbbing length, it took great effort to pull them free of her exquisite heat. I could touch her forever.
I managed it though, instead using that hand to part her thighs, holding her top leg up to give me access to her center. With a few circles of my hips, I slicked up my length in the nectar already coating her inner thighs.
She sighed in pleasure, and I let my free hand come to her neck, arching her back so I could kiss her as I slid inside.
Alyx whimpered into my mouth, and the sound set my skin aflame.
I had meant to be gentle as I worked inside her waiting heat, but my hips snapped forward involuntarily, stretching her around my length.
I nipped her lower lip and murmured an apology.
“I’ll be gentle,” I promised.
She shook her head, even as her chest heaved with shuddery breaths. “You promised next time you’d claim me so thoroughly that I would never belong to anybody else.”
The reminder of my words made my cock twitch. But still I hesitated. I had meant to bring her to soft, gasping pleasure in my arms this morning. To wake her gently with kisses and promises that I might not be able to keep.
She rolled her hips against mine, and those rational thoughts left my brain as a primal instinct screamed at me to bury myself as deep inside her as possible.
“Remember, I’m tougher than I look, and you have the bite mark to prove it,” she murmured, her voice already cracked with pleasure.
She was right. I had admired the mark in my reflection in the oasis pool the night before.
“If you’re sure,” I said, the bite on my neck throbbing happily as I parted her legs further, giving me more access to drive into her.
“Make me yours,” she insisted.
And I couldn’t deny her anything. My hips snapped forward. A sharp gasp of pleasure escaped her as I kept her in place with my hand at her throat. I didn’t squeeze, but my fingers around her neck kept her face tipped back where I could devour her mouth as I drove into her.
Her pale lashes fluttered as I thrust again and again, gaining speed. She clenched and shuddered around me, but I wanted more. I wanted everything.
Even my magic tried to burrow in her even more deeply.
My storm twisted with the tendrils of light that spilled from her until they seemed to meld together.
They had never fully untangled since our joining last night, but now they melded until I did not know where my power ended and hers began.
Perhaps they weren’t even different at all.
I hooked her top leg around my hip, leaving her thighs spread obscenely wide and freeing my hand to explore her as I pleased. It drifted to where I entered her, tracing the way her folds stretched around my length as I drove into her with increasing force.
As my fingers slid to her sensitive bud once more, she tightened around me, and I grunted through the frisson of pleasure it sent up my spine.
“Sands Alyx,” I growled. “I can’t wait to feel you come apart.”
She whimpered in response. I thrust harder and faster, trying to draw even more noises from her as I timed the circles of my fingers over her flesh with my movements. She obliged, louder and more desperate sounds ripping from her as I pounded into her exquisite heat.
She began to tremble, and I tightened my hand around her throat, not enough to restrict her air flow, but enough to pin her in place as I made her come apart.
Alyx shattered with a sharp cry, and her vice grip on my cock tightened so far that my vision whited out.
Still, I did not relent, burying myself in her again and again and continuing to stroke her sensitized flesh.
As her pleasure faded, she squirmed and whimpered, both trying to get closer and escape the onslaught of sensations.
“Be good and come for me one more time,” I insisted. My voice barely sounded like my own, coming out in an otherworldly growl, unintentionally laced with magic and rumbling like storm clouds on the horizon.
Alyx gasped, and her eyes, which had been screwed shut in pleasure, snapped open.
Her head craned back so she could meet my gaze, and it transfixed me.
I was helpless to do anything but bury myself in her welcoming flesh, desperate to drag her pleasure from her again.
It was as if I could feel her ecstasy barreling down on her, or maybe that was just my own.
The fire crackling in my veins roared to life with the strength of an inferno, rushing up my spine and out my mouth as I roared my own release. Alyx matched me with a scream of her own, coming apart around me, and I could barely separate my pleasure from hers as we shook and shuddered.
As my breath slowed, and the trembling in my limbs slowly abated, I lowered my head to nuzzle in the junction between her neck and shoulder. My hand at her neck drifted down to her chest, pressing flat over her breastbone. Her heart hammered under my fingers, synchronized with my own.
Her breath hitched, and I felt it too. Even as my cock slipped from inside her, as I repositioned to hold her to me more comfortably, our magic did not pull apart.
It was now knotted together so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure I could disentangle it without hurting one or both of us—I wasn’t sure I even desired to tease it apart.
If the way Alyx turned in my arms to burrow herself into my chest was any indication, she was not inclined to either. As she nuzzled into my sternum, I had the fleeting thought that she hadn’t just stolen my heart… she was my heart.
Alyx stood by Dileas, the unsure way she stroked the mare’s flank echoing my own hesitance. With all of us healed, there was no reason to forestall our journey, but the destination that had been so clear before now seemed clouded.
The simple transaction I had once imagined when arriving back at Clan Katal’s encampment now made bile rise in my throat. Alyx was not a simple prisoner I would allow Lord Deryn to ransom back to her father where she would live under his suffocating shelter.
An uncomfortable twisting in the strange magical tether that now existed between us told me that Alyx feared this eventuality as well. I strode over to her, covering her hand with mine where it wound in Dileas’s mane.
“I will not hand you over to Lord Deryn,” I promised without preamble.
She looked up at me, her expression equal parts hopeful and sad. “And what will you do instead? Defying your Lord could cost you everything.”
I swallowed around the feeling of glass in my throat. I had come from nothing to be the most powerful Warlord in the Ballan Desert, and I had always avoided wanting more for fear of losing what I had. But Alyx—she was worth risking all of it. I would gamble existence itself for her.
“I have served my Lord loyally and without question for many years,” I insisted. “He will allow me this one thing.”
“And if he does not?”
“I am more powerful than he, and he will learn,” I promised darkly.
Alyx nodded, but I did not miss the flicker of apprehension in her eyes before she looked away.
Even when the riders of Clan Tibel had attacked, and I would have had no issue killing them all and skinning them for her pleasure in punishment for daring to touch her, she had chosen a different path.
She had kept them alive, finding an alternative to spilling blood while still protecting herself.
The violence that came so easily to me was not in her nature, and I could not bring myself to want to change that. I tried to distract her from thoughts of bloodshed.
“When Lord Deryn does agree to let you stay at my side, I’ll move into a larger tent where we will be comfortable together. I’ll show you how well I can actually cook when I don’t just have my meager traveling supplies. And the Clan will welcome a healer of your skill,” I declared.
At this, she did smile. “I look forward to it.”