Chapter Thirty-Four Aria #2
Calloused hands slid up under the enormous T-shirt I wore. He was careful not to touch my wound as he rushed his hands up my sides. Gliding over every rib until he was palming my breasts.
I arched into his touch.
Flames seared.
“I need you,” I begged. “I need your touch. Your love. Your belief.”
“And I need your everything,” he rumbled back, his lips devouring mine, his tongue delving deep.
That fire leaped.
Pax climbed onto his knees, too, and he angled back for a second to peel the shirt over my head.
The air was warm but still, and a shiver rolled through me. Chills that lifted in the wake of his ravenous gaze.
“Are you sure you’re not hurting?” The question was stone. Purified by his care.
“I’m not. I’m not,” I promised, and he had me around the waist and was laying me out in the middle of the bed. He remained on his knees, that gaze severe as he looked over me, attention tracking over every scar and blemish.
As if every marred inch was his perfection.
I knew it. Felt it in the weight of his gaze. In the weight of his love that sagged in the room.
“Everything, Aria,” he said again, and he reached out and hooked his fingers in the sides of my underwear.
I lifted my hips from the bed as he peeled them down.
“Look at you,” he groaned.
“It’s you,” I returned, reaching out, not quite close enough to drag my trembling fingers down the rugged terrain of his chest.
Because he hovered there, at my knees. Every inch of his beautifully brutal body raged with need.
Desire flooded us. A deluge that filled the room.
He slowly wound out of his underwear, pulling them down and freeing himself.
A gasp got free. A whimpered “Yes,” as he climbed down and wedged himself between my thighs.
And we were bare.
Whole.
One.
My entire being arched into him when he pushed inside me.
He wound a hand in my hair as he grunted in the opposite ear. “Did you know you fuckin’ glow when I fill you, Aria? Did you know you become pure fucking radiant light?”
“I feel it. Just like I feel you speeding through me. Through my veins and my spirit and reaching all the way down into my soul.”
That connection alive. Growing brighter and brighter.
Pax eased back, gazing down at me as he withdrew, then nudged himself even deeper. My fingers sank into his shoulders, holding on as he began to move.
Fervency rippled around us, a furor that sparked and danced, though he filled me in slow, measured strokes. One arm was banded around my back and the other had our fingers knitted together, our hands pressed between us.
Never once did he take those eyes from mine.
He held me as he loved me.
As he silently promised me so many things.
Everything.
Everything.
Bliss gathered. A rising, building storm.
He worked me into a writhing, panting puddle, my mouth parted and tiny gasps raking from my lungs.
He inhaled each one before he would turn around and breathe himself right back into me.
And it climbed. Climbed and climbed.
This pleasure that rode in on that storm.
Before it suddenly splintered. A thunderclap.
Rending through the middle of me with the force of a bomb.
It was a breaking.
A bonding.
A joining that could never be undone.
I stifled a cry as it rolled through to consume.
To race and touch and devastate.
Joy and ecstasy.
It was a rapture unlike anything I’d ever known.
He only pulled me closer when he came, his harsh brow twisted and his mouth parted on silent, jagged rasps. The tip of his nose just touched mine as his body went rigid.
Lean muscles flexing and bowing as he jerked and shook.
Sparks of pleasure billowed and broke. Shock waves rolled over us again and again.
And in it, we were endless.
Boundless.
Infinite.
And he kept me gathered that way as we struggled to catch our breaths. To come back down from the paradise where we’d been lifted.
Those eyes burned.
White flames that tethered me to him.
He tightened our fingers that were woven together, and he brought our joined hands to his chest.
The words that fell from his mouth were a rasp. As essential as the oxygen that’d grown dense, a desperate swelling in the room.
“I don’t want to spend one minute without you, Aria. Not here or in Tearsith or whatever other plane we may be taken to. You are mine for eternity. In every reality. In every life.”
I blinked, emotion riding thick on my chest.
Intensity radiated from him.
Potent and all consuming.
Though his face twisted in sincerity. In a plea.
In that thing that had come to life between us the first time I’d seen him standing in the doorway of the room of that facility. When the man had stood in front of me in the flesh, and I knew, in that second, that nothing would remain the same.
“Marry me,” he murmured, the words gruff.
I couldn’t get the gasp of surprise out before he continued. “Marry me here and marry me there, because I want to belong to you in every single way.”
Tears blurred my eyes, love overflowing—there was no way to contain it where it erupted inside me.
This man who’d been nothing more than a fantasy. My everything. The only one I’d ever wanted and the one I’d thought I could never have.
“Pax.” It was a whisper.
Adoration and awe.
“Marry me,” he begged.
“I’m yours, Pax. You have all of me. Every promise. Every minute. Every oath that I could make.”
“So, you want to make this one with me? This oath.” He brought my knuckles to his lips and kissed them.
My teeth raked over my bottom lip, and I whispered, “I do.”
His nod was soft.
Ardent.
Filled with a joy that neither of us had ever imagined we would find. Even if it was fleeting. Short-lived. If we only had this moment, it didn’t matter because it belonged to us.
“Don’t move,” he told me with a half grin tugging at his mouth, and he slowly peeled himself away before he moved to the edge of the bed.
His attention hunted through the room before it settled on whatever he’d been searching for. He stood, and I shook all over again when that glorious, fierce body was fully on display.
The man hewn and carved.
His skin a canvas of our lives.
His scars a covenant given to this mission.
He crossed the room to a floating shelf where there were a few things on display, including a candle encased in glass that had a black ribbon tied around it.
He tugged the ribbon free, and he turned around. A mix between an adoring smile and a smirk was tacked on his face as he sauntered back to me.
He climbed onto the bed on his knees and took my hand. His eyes flicked between me and my left ring finger as he started to carefully tie the ribbon around it.
No words were said between us when he did, but my heart was shouting.
Singing.
My heart. My love. My Nol. You are mine eternally.
Once he had it secure, he ran his thumb over the ribbon, staring at it for a moment before he lifted his gaze back to mine. “This ribbon is temporary, Aria, until we get through this mess, but the promise it represents is not.”
“We’re going to make it through this.” I sat up, and Pax leaned forward and fisted his hand in my hair, tipping my face up to his as he looked down at me.
“We will, Aria. We will get through this, and you’re forever going to be mine on the other side.”