Chapter 113 Myla
Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen: Myla
The last time my lips had met Aria’s had been because of survival.
I needed oxygen, and she knew how to give it to me.
That same drowning panic claws its way to the surface now, my body stiff beneath hers as all the reasons why I shouldn’t touch her cycle through my mind.
But even those protests are lost to the gentle way she coaxes our kiss to deepen, to the way her soft body arches into mine, warm and tender and sweet.
Her quick intake of breath when my tongue meets hers ignites the heat already spreading through me, desire pulling my muscles tight as my fingers curl around her hip.
My awareness narrows down to her taste on my tongue as I map out the shape of her, the space between us eaten up inch by inch as she draws my face even closer.
And because I can’t help myself, because it’s been so long since I’ve felt this way, my mind tortures me with memories of the past. Suddenly, it’s not Aria’s lush lips that move against my own but Daiya’s thinner ones.
It’s not Aria’s soft moan but Daiya’s deeper one as we hid in a palace corridor, hands questing and tongues exploring.
I tense, Daiya’s voice playing in my ear just like the day we were discovered.
She forced me to do it! I never wanted this—I never wanted her!
There had been a power imbalance between Daiya and I, just as there is with Aria.
Our kiss breaks when I jerk myself back, my gaze roaming over Aria’s expression as I search for proof of what my mind believes—she doesn’t want this.
Doesn’t want me. I take in her parted, swollen lips, her hazel eyes fogged by lust as she studies me through lowered lashes, and I think that she’s never looked so perfect.
That she’s never looked so open and unguarded and raw.
For as much as it makes me want to draw her back in, to claim her as mine in a way that makes my core ache and my stomach clench, it also terrifies me.
Because she may know that I’m the Shadow, but does she understand just exactly who, and what, I am?
“Myla,” she whispers, her thumbs gently brushing over my cheekbones.
I release my hold on her hips to wrap my hands around her wrists, pulling her touch from my face.
“You don’t want this,” I say, horrified by the uncertainty in my voice.
By the sympathetic expression it pulls from Aria.
I realize that is the thing I have feared most. Not giving in to this tension between us.
Not being vulnerable or even falling for a being whose kind was responsible for my brother’s death.
It’s that look—that pitying look—that screams, here is this broken thing, how can I fix her?
I drop her hands, about to silently command Sunis through the bond to burn this entire cavern down when Aria says my name again. Not with pity, but with desperation. It halts my movements enough to meet her gaze again, finding them alight with something like conviction.
“So rarely have I had the opportunity to look at someone and tell them that I want their touch. That I crave it. And so rarely have I ever gotten what I wanted.” She drags her bottom lip in between her teeth.
“But, if you’ll allow it, I’d like to see how you taste beneath your ire and malice.
I’d like to feel your heart race in your chest as it’s pressed against mine.
” The stupid organ hiding behind my ribs responds, skipping to a pace that makes my breath come faster.
“I’d like for you to touch me like I’m not something you hate, but—” Her inhale is stilted as she drops her gaze to her lap.
Fuck that. Wrapping an arm around her back, I pull her flush to me and roll, gently letting her back hit the ground before sliding my arm out and bracing my weight on it.
“Like what, then, Little Siren?” I ask, tracing her bottom lip with my thumb. Her knees press into either side of my hips, eyes flaring wide as her hands leave a scorching trail up my arms. “You don’t get to be shy now that you started this.”
“Like you think about me as much as I do you,” she whispers.
The admission halts my thumb as I stare down at her, something dangerously soft threatening to take root within me. “Do you want to know if I think about you?” I ask, dropping my hips lower but still not making contact with her bare skin.
“Yes.”
Tilting my head, my lips brush against the corner of her mouth, our breaths mingling in the tight space between us.
“I think about you when I’m angry,” I whisper, smirking when her brows lift.
“That’s how it always starts. I’m always angry when you first enter my mind, and then I picture you standing across from me on this fucking platform, your eyes glowing with newfound determination.
With bravery. And strength.” I graze my fingers down her neck and between her breasts, trailing them over her stomach.
Goosebumps flare over her skin, her breath catching when I force my touch to linger in the space between her hips, higher than we both want.
“Myla,” she rasps, her throat working with a swallow as her hands move from my arms to brace my hips.
“Look at you,” I murmur, my lips finding her jaw and then lower, taking advantage when she arches her neck to taste her with my teeth and tongue.
“If I were to slide my fingers between your legs, would I find you wet for me, Aria?” She whimpers, the sound skating over me like a soft wind.
The threads of my tightly woven control begin to fray as I toy with her, my fingers just barely brushing right above her clit, each taunting swipe making her writhe and buck her hips towards me.
“I want you to touch me,” she moans, eyes glazed in the heat of that want, and maybe I’m no better than the males who act on their base level desires because my fingers inch lower, the anticipation of sinking them deep inside of her—of watching her come around them—snaps those tethers that restrain me.
She reaches up to capture my mouth with hers and I let my hips sink lower, let the tips of my fingers brush over the swell of her clit as my throat constricts with the ache of wanting to drag my tongue over every inch of her.
My own body hums at the way she feels beneath me, the slickness of her desire coating my fingers as I press them at her entrance, rewarded when it makes her moan softly in response.
I grit my teeth together at the sound, something dark stirring within the heat of what should be pleasure as forbidden to me as she is when the word mine stabs into my mind.
I latch onto it, so lost in working her higher, in drawing my fingers in and out at a pace that is torturous for us both, that I almost miss the single thought that bursts through the fog of my own yearning. Leave.
Fucking dragon. No, I send back, nipping at Aria’s lip. But before I can go any further, Sunis’s intention is sent again down our bond, forcing me to rip my mouth away from Aria’s to send a withering look to my dragon.
“What is it?” she asks from beneath me, chest rising quickly as her hands draw up my sides.
“My damn dragon—”
Leave, it interrupts, and my eyes close my forehead coming to rest over hers.
The interruption seems to remind us both of where we are, though covered by rock, we’re still exposed to anyone who might come by and get past Sunis.
As much as I want to watch her unravel, I’d prefer not to do it with the threat of being caught.
When my gaze meets hers again, she seems to have the same thought as a small smile curls her lips.
For a moment, neither of us says anything, only the sound of her breathing and my steady heartbeat filling in the gaps in the silence.
It’s in that quiet I remember the last time I felt this way.
The last time I let myself get lost in another to the point that I didn’t want there to be an ending to me and a beginning of them.
I just wanted there to be a joining of us.
Maybe Aria somehow knows that there is an old wound threatening to split, and that’s why she reaches up to kiss me softly and without urgency, as if the only goal is to remind us what it feels like. Or maybe I’m rationalizing with myself like an idiot.
Pulling away with a groan, I help Aria to stand and look her over, something new stretched thin and raw between us.
“I will be here next week,” Aria finally says, tucking her curls behind her ears.
Her round eyes hold mine as she looks up at me, and a feeling I can’t explain constricts my throat.
“You are free from our bargain and free to choose whether you will be here too.” After letting herself linger a moment, Aria grabs her bag from the ground and climbs down to the sandy beach, returning to the sea and leaving me wondering if, when it comes to her, there had ever really been a choice to begin with.
I linger in the cavern for longer than necessary, staring at the ocean as I work to remind myself just how fucking dangerous that entire interaction was.
For my own safety, I’ve always made it a point to keep myself in control of my emotions and urges until I’m in the safety of my warehouse, a male hanging before me.
But Aria had expertly chipped away at that control with each flick of her tongue and soft press of her body against mine.
It leaves me feeling exposed, a nerve left open to the world when I need to be hidden behind shadows instead.
Breathing in the salty air, I wait until it has replaced the warm and sultry scent of her in my lungs before returning to Sunis, climbing her front leg and settling on her back. Leave, she sends again down the bond, and I lean down over her as I prepare for her to take off.
Go, I send back, and then we are launching into the air, Sunis’s wings beating powerfully as we begin our ascent towards the mist-covered sky.