Chapter 9 #3
“Why?” Elloven peeled his hands away from his neck. “Because of your oath? Don’t you know this is hard for me as well? But I don’t even question whether it’s right with you. I know it is. I’ve never been more certain of anything.”
“You don’t understand, but you will. Right now, the only thing that matters is getting you out of this place and away from all the madmen who put you here.”
“Not to me, it isn’t.” She squared herself and turned his head in her hand, forcing him to face her. “The only thing that matters to me is whether life is still worth living, and you’ve shown me it could be.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he whispered.
“Tell me truly what your heart feels, Jesstin, or go.”
As Jesstin’s gaze swept her face, his eyes softened. “I love you in ways I can’t even comprehend, Elloven, and I hope, I pray, unselfishly, but I can’t ever be sure of that.”
“What keeps you so hidden?” she whispered, climbing to her knees. “Jesstin Skylark, I see you, and I know you see me. How can there be anything selfish in that?”
“If only you knew.”
Elloven touched her lips to his. “I know everything I need to know. I love you, and you love me, and it’s more than enough.
” She laughed as relief spread through her.
How amazing it felt to say it and know it was safe.
“I love you, Jess. Let it mean nothing or let it mean everything, but don’t let the moment pass without deciding where it belongs. ”
Something transformed in Jesstin, like a match breathing light to a flame.
He seemed to draw back, not from her but from whatever he still kept in his heart that he refused to share.
It was the vulnerability flecked in his damp eyes that emphasized why it didn’t matter, why nothing he could say would change who he was to her.
It wasn’t that he’d saved her... or the bond they’d been forced into.
Even in his anger, he’d never looked at her and seen anything but Elloven Hawthorne, who was not the shattered parts of her terrible experiences but the ameliorated result.
The authority with which he clasped her hair in one hand at the nape, and gripped her neck with the other, was sealed with the kiss that eclipsed all the ones before it.
When their bodies angled innately toward the bed, she fell back so he could take his place above her, where he belonged.
He tore at the bodice of her dress, grunting through his evisceration of the fabric.
He moaned when he finally tore it free and sent it to the floor with a soft thud.
“You are so beautiful, Elloven. So cursed beautiful.” Jesstin’s hands, hot against her chilled flesh, moved across her body slowly, his eyes following his movements.
No one had ever wanted to know her as he did.
Like rapids on a river, they flowed in symbiosis, rolling intuitively toward the inevitable culmination of their fated connection.
Jesstin swore under his breath, his neck straining when she kneaded her hand between his legs. She fought her longing to reach for his buckle. He knew what she wanted. The choice was his.
His mouth consumed hers as his hands grappled with his trousers. He pushed the two of them farther up the bed, leaving his pants behind, until it was only his skin against hers.
He reared back and spread her hair across the pillow with a sigh. “You’re no one’s possession, Elloven, but if you were, you’d be mine.”
“If I wanted to be yours? What then?”
He laughed softly. “You already own me. Your presence obliterates the world. There is no one else, El. Not for me.”
“There never need be,” Elloven whispered. Her hand rolled over him in gentle, smooth strokes, his hips drawing closer. “Nothing terrible could ever come from us, Jess, no matter what others have left us to believe, no matter what they’ve done to hurt us. It’s our turn to be happy.”
The tears welling in his lower lids spilled when he nodded. When he pressed against her, she flipped him onto his back and climbed over him instead.
Elloven sidled over him, shifting her hips. The vulnerability behind his eyes belonged to her, and she would never take it for granted. She pulled him forward, folding herself into his arms, so she could listen to his heart beat. So she could kiss him again and properly, before everything changed.
“Say you do,” she whispered, running a hand through his soft hair. “I need to hear it.”
Jesstin’s strong hands traced her back, rubbing downward before clawing upward. “Yes.” They rested on her bottom and guided her into place. His jaw clenched. “I do, Elloven. More than anything. With you, I do.”
Elloven’s heart was already his. She relinquished the past and offered the rest of herself with the same passion.
There was a moment, a flash, when her old darkness tried again to return, but its influence over her had been supplanted by something with far more power.
Jesstin’s eyes rolled back when his desire took over. His fingers dug against her thighs as he moved in rhythm with her, each thrust a gradual, purposeful choice his eyes guided them through, traveling up with his moans, then back to her when he drew breath. “I was made for this. To be inside you.”
“Yes,” she said, lifting to nip his lip between her teeth, a move his body responded to, “you were.”
“How could I have ever thought...” He exhaled. “I want to feel...” The dominance in his tone was intoxicating. She squeaked when his fingers slipped between her legs. “I need to make you come. I need to feel it.” He clenched. “I won’t last. I won’t last much longer.”
Elloven could have held back her pleasure, but she let go, to offer him the same gift he’d given her. His parted mouth pressed to her temple, and Jesstin let go as well, cementing the bond that had never required magic to be real.
He rolled them sideways and nestled her against his chest. That, too, felt right.
Everything felt right when he was near, even when it hurt.
“That was so fast. Bloody hell, I’m so sorry.
” He sounded embarrassed but also a little puzzled, like he’d been expecting better self-control. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Don’t be,” she said lightly, despite that every cell in her body craved more. It was astonishing to her that she was looking forward to sex, and how she’d been fully present in the act, even if it hadn’t lasted long. “You flatter me.”
“It won’t be like this next time.”
She kissed his neck, bathing in the bliss of next time. “I look forward to it.”
“I really didn’t intend for this to happen, Elloven.”
A whisper of her tension returned, but she held still and trusted him to finish his thought.
“I would never want you to feel taken advantage of by me,” he said. His eyes closed in frustration. “What I’m trying to say is I didn’t come here to seduce you.”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “I think I’m the one who seduced you, Jesstin.”
Jesstin grinned down at her. Her heart skipped several beats at the sight of him, flushed and sated in the afterglow. “Yeah? Yeah, I think you did.”
“I did ask first.”
“You did.” He laughed and squeezed her. “But my code, whatever I believed I was doing... What was I doing?”
“No one expects half of what you expect of yourself.” She reached up to caress his face.
“No, it’s not like that. It wasn’t some noble sacrifice. I just couldn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to participate in an act that only reminded me of the men I come from.”
It broke her heart to think of him carrying such a heavy burden, when those actually responsible walked around as light as a feather. “And now?”
“Now I know nothing is so simple.” He exhaled and drew another, deeper breath, then released it slowly.
“Tomorrow isn’t ours. All we have is right now, holding each other in the right here. We don’t know if you can save me, or—”
“Not ‘if.’ When.” He nudged her even closer. “I’m very serious, Elloven. I’ll bring the entire world down around us if I have to.”
Elloven smiled against his neck. Her heart was so full. Their circumstances could not be more dire, but her heart was so beautifully full. So whole. “Which one?”
“Every.” Jesstin nibbled her ear. “Fucking. Last.”
“You really don’t have any regrets?”
“Mountains of them,” he answered with a short laugh. “Loving you was never a choice though. How could I regret that which comes so natural?”
Elloven rode the rise and fall of his chest and let his words become her truth.
She watched as the sharp brightness of lightrise become the warm bath of illumina.
A new day had arrived out there, and inside their little room in the inn.
“Don’t hold onto what my mother showed you.
I don’t need any more answers. All they do is add to a past I’d rather let rest.”
“That seems best. For you.” Jesstin kissed her and shifted until he was on top of her. He dragged his teeth against his bottom lip. “Again.”
“Don’t you need to rest... in between?” Elloven asked, but she was already wrapping her legs around his, still on fire from the first time.
He reached down and guided himself in slowly, drinking her in. “I’ll show you what I need.”
Jesstin would never be the man to whisper romance in her ear, but she didn’t need or want that. She wanted him exactly as he was, messy and imperfect, a man who expressed himself through action. Words had never mattered half as much.
It was nearly an hour later when he slowly sat up with a reluctant sigh. “We have to go.”
He was right, sad as it made her. “Do you know where?”
“I just know we have to find the spiral.” He started dressing.
“The spiral?”
“If you’re looking for anything resembling sense, don’t look to me.” Jesstin buckled his belt.
She drank in the sheen of sweat on his bare chest as he searched for his shirt, and she almost wished she’d had the fore-sense to hide it. “We need to ask around then.”
“We need to be careful. Daire was supposed to reach out, but he hasn’t. I don’t know who else to trust.” He slid one arm into his shirt but hesitated at her disappointed look and grinned before continuing. “You don’t happen to know where the nearest sepulchral market is?”
“Don’t you think you’ve played close enough to the fire already?”
Jesstin sat beside her and helped unravel what few tatters remained of her dress at the waist. “That fire is all we have, and I’ll play with it, walk through it, even dance with it, until we come out the other side.
” He leaned in for a quick kiss but let it linger.
“Let’s make use of whatever light the gods please to give us today. Tonight, though...”
Elloven kneaded her forehead against his. “Tonight.”