Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
I burned.
The bark of my home tree scalded my palms and all around me my people fell in sheets of ash to the ground.
But I couldn’t stop climbing even as fire roared and my skin bubbled.
There, at the canopy, someone was waiting for me.
Someone had their hand outstretched. Someone screamed my name.
The fire raged on with no sign of rain, eating everything in its path. Everyone I had ever known was dead.
And the universe was screaming.
“Juniper.”
I reached out a hand, but they were too far.
“June, listen to me.”
My mouth opened and the flames slipped down my throat until I was another torch on the pyre of my home.
The flames burned brighter and my hands slipped from the trunk.
Long strings of glittering crystals bled from my palms and the tree.
I fell, arms flailing as I reached out for anything and everything to stop me.
A roar shook me. “WAKE UP!”
Darkness. A tangle of sheets around my legs, sweat rolling down my cheeks. I struggled, nails scraping against a wide chest, another scream slipping through my lips. The fire was coming. I needed—I needed—
“Shhh, you’re safe,” someone crooned. Cool hands slid over my cheeks, brushing away my tears.
My sweaty palms slipped against a wide chest, practically climbing it, running on instinct as I threw my arms around their neck. An all-too-familiar scent enveloped me and it should have sent me screaming, but instead I could only drink it in like it was the air I breathed.
Asher wrapped me tight against him, hand cupping the back of my head as I pressed my nose to his throat. He rocked me in the dark, murmuring in a soft musical language I couldn’t understand and yet soothed me all the same.
Slowly, I drew back to look at him, touching the exposed skin of his jaw, tracing the curve of his bottom lip.
No helmet. His chest was bare and I tracked the line of his tattoos where they stopped around his sternum, the silver—same color as his eyes—glinting faintly in the light from the star system we passed.
My hands fell away and heat burned across my cheeks.
But he only brushed hair from my face, one hand cupping the back of my neck while the other fell to my shoulder, thumb resting along my collarbone.
The touch was possessive, as if we were still on Louxuria playing a part. But there was no one here but us.
“I’m so tired,” I rasped, wincing at the crack in my voice.
He nodded, a hum rumbling in his throat. “Then let’s get you settled back to sleep.”
“No, Asher, I’m tired. I’m tired of running and fighting and weighing each word and each moment.
Of counting each cost and knowing this universe has nothing to offer me.
That I am nothing to it. And this weight”—I touched my fingertips to my chest—“is so heavy sometimes I can barely breathe. I am so fucking tired.”
A soft tug on the back of my head had me tipping my chin up. Asher’s eyes gleamed in the dark, my grief somehow splashed across his face. He leaned forward, pressing his brow to mine. “Then let me carry it for a while.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, forehead rocking back and forth against his in negation. In the morning, this moment of weakness would be another log in the pyre of my shame before I eventually climbed on top of it. Asher didn’t try to argue the point or comfort me with empty words.
He took a deep breath and brushed his lips against mine.
The kiss was soft, merely a whisper of connection before he groaned, using his grip on my hair to tilt my head back. All the softness wept from him until all that was left was something raw. His mouth pressed firmly against mine, tongue swiping against the seam of my lips until I opened for him.
A claiming. That was what this was. And unlike in that darkened alcove on Louxuria I thought I knew exactly what this meant.
Maybe this wasn’t another mask, not with the trembling of his hand as it slid to cup my throat, thumb pressing to the corner of my jaw.
Not with the press of his chest against mine, the rapid beating of his heart beneath my palms.
I wondered if this was how it felt to die—to be wrapped up in the embrace of the universe and know there would be no more pain.
But no, of course not, because I knew deep down on the other side of this moment would be agony.
In the cold dawn of space with no suns to rise, I would have to face this moment.
Right now, however, I couldn’t give a damn because his lips moved across my cheek to my jaw, pressing beneath my ear.
His tongue lapped at my skin before sucking a bruise I knew would be reflected on my heart.
“Mahsi,” he breathed. “Let me touch you.”
I could only nod as his hands began to rove, as his mouth lined the curve of my throat, teeth biting into the skin of my shoulder.
A whimper slipped through my defenses and I wished I could pull the sound back before it reached his ears.
But Asher groaned in response, wrapping his hands around my ribs and pushing me higher up the bed so he could settle between my thighs.
Suddenly, I remembered I could touch him too.
I learned the curved muscles of his shoulders, the planes of his chest, until he caught one of my wrists and sucked on the pulse point there beneath the thin skin.
Asher pushed up the simple shirt I slept in, callouses scraping against my skin, thumbs brushing the swell of my breasts.
“Perfect,” he murmured. “You’re perfect. Everything I—”
The rest of his words were lost as he dipped his mouth to trace the hollow between my hips, tongue dipping into my navel before he pressed a kiss to each of my ribs.
I threaded my fingers through his long hair, trying to commit the texture to memory along with the feel of his mouth closing over one breast while he pushed my shirt up higher.
He sucked, pulling from me a louder cry, my back arching as heat zinged down my spine to pool at the apex of my thighs.
“That’s it. I want to hear you, sweetheart—need to hear you.”
He moved to the other, rolling the abandoned peak between two fingers as he sucked.
My nails dug into his shoulders, head falling back until I stared unseeing up at the vent above my bed, hips writhing in an embarrassing rhythm against his stomach.
Each pull of his mouth and fingers was a spark of electricity in my veins, pooling between my thighs until I knew I was soaked through.
“Asher, please,” I breathed, unsure what it was I was asking for—rapture or release.
But he only chuckled darkly, sliding lower, one hand on my chest holding me in place before he buried his face between my thighs and inhaled deeply. “Sweet, so fucking sweet. Like junia berries.”
I’d never heard of them before, but the question disappeared as the heat of his breath fanned out across my center, over the soft fabric covering me.
His tongue lapped at the seam and I keened, bright pops of color and light bursting across my eyes.
My hands flew to his hair, holding him there as I ground against his face.
“Patience, j’ska mahsi, I’ll give you what you need,” he rumbled, drawing away to sit onto his heels. His hair was mussed around his face, lips swollen, and I almost growled in frustration before his fingers curled into the waistband of my shorts. “Lift your hips for me.”
For once, I obeyed without question, letting him slide the fabric down my legs and throw it to the side before he gave the same treatment to my shirt.
His pupils blew wide as he gazed down, hands sliding up and down my thighs as if he couldn’t bear to not touch me.
Questions bubbled and then died on my lips.
What does this mean? Who are you really? What will you do with the stone?
For now, none of it mattered, not when he slid off the bed and knelt on the floor.
Not when his hands wrapped around my waist and tugged me to the edge, spreading my thighs so wide they burned to accommodate his shoulders.
He pressed a wide palm against my belly below my navel, forcing my hips to cant while he took one long lick up my center.
“Fuck,” I cursed, fingers knotting into the tangled sheets around me.
The sentiment was echoed on his lips before he dove down for more, lapping and sucking until stars burst across my lids, until my mouth fell open on a silent scream. Never had I felt like this, never had I even believed my body could respond like this.
His tongue circled my clit before he sucked it between his lips, two fingers sliding up my seam and pressing inside.
There it was, the relief for the ache I’d felt since before we ever left the ship, and yet it wasn’t enough.
Even when he pumped his fingers inside of me, curling them in a rhythm echoed in the sucking of his mouth, it wasn’t enough.
But then his teeth grazed my clit and my silent scream turned into a sob as I shattered, pleasure rippling down my spine like flame.
His name fell from my lips as if it might be the one thing that could save me from the fiery fate and yet I welcomed the burn.
As my first release rolled into another, as he pressed down against my belly and lapped harder at my clit, I thought I finally understood just a tiny bit of what he’d meant when he spoke of the beauty of the universe and its song.
Even though I couldn’t hear it, it was as if I could feel the echo of its melody running through my bones, the vibration of a song only he knew the words to.
Asher’s movements slowed until he pressed one final kiss to my thigh and sat back to look up at me.
The lower half of his face shone with my release, yet he sucked his fingers into his mouth as if he loved the taste.
But when I reached for him, he only pressed a kiss to my palm, then my wrist, and rose to his feet, passing me my shirt.
He climbed slowly into my bed like he was waiting for me to object, but when I didn’t, he wrapped me up in his arms.
“How did you get in here?” I murmured against his throat.
He brushed back my hair from my temple, tucking me closer beneath his chin. “I have a universal key.”
A million more questions swirled through my mind, but for some reason my whole body seemed to sigh into sleep, and I slept, for once, without dreams.