71. Maren
Maren
We’d made it across the sky bridge, just inside the tower leading to our spiral stairs.
I glanced side-long at Kye as the door closed, disheveled curls falling into his eyes the moment the wind died, and desire flared through me like a lit torch.
His gaze darkened at the look I sent him.
His breath was already loud, rasping. He reached for me—
But I’d splayed my hand across his chest, pushing him into the wall.
My mouth crashed into his like fire seeking oxygen, breathless and wild.
He was hot under my tongue, desperate and commanding.
There were no more questions between us.
We’d set them to flame with flint and steel, and only answers remained.
Answers and vows and blood that called from one soul to the other.
His hand fisted in the black silk of my dress, pulling the sheath taut around my back, lifting me to deepen his kiss.
“I want this across the floor,” he panted against my lips.
“Then put it there,” I shot back, dizzy with the taste of him.
The silk was a single long bolt, wrapped and twisted into a bodice and skirt.
His hands delved into it, greedy, hungry.
Forced it aside, unspooling me like coiled, ravenous thread.
He freed one breast, then both, and my neck rolled backward as his mouth closed roughly over one of them, liquid heat dripping over my skin.
My shoulder grazed the corner of a painting, and I swung my arm lazily to catch it before it dropped from its hook, the clap of its wooden frame loud.
I left it crooked as Kye hiked my legs over his hips, whirling me into the opposite wall.
Sconce light flooded his hair like strands of gold, and I dug my fingers into it as his teeth nipped and dragged over the crook of my neck.
I was drunk, delirious at the touch of him. Kye pulled me from the wall, making for the stairs, not even bothering to watch the floor. Something cracked, a jolt through Kye’s hip and into mine. The bench that sat under the window thrusted onto its back feet and then slammed down again.
I laughed at our clumsiness, so absorbed in each other we’d probably return to find this hallway in shambles. He kicked the bench back against the wall, and I thought he’d head for the staircase again.
Instead, he sat me down on it.
“You’re joking,” I gasped, my air shallow and bruised with overuse. As late as it was in the day, it was unlikely a servant might wander through, though not impossible. And Kazimir still used this hall and staircase to reach his rooms.
“I’ve never been more fucking serious,” Kye rumbled against me, sinking to his knees to tease the last of the silk sheathe from my hips.
A memory flickered through my head. Kye kneeling between my thighs as he tied me to a chair on our wedding night, spreading my ankles wide to loop them to the chair’s legs.
He chuckled darkly at seeing it in my head. “The things I would do, Leihani,” he said, wrapping a hand around my calf, “just to worship you every night on my knees for eternity.” A shudder rocked up my spine at the rush of his breath against my thigh. “Throw your legs over my shoulders.”
Jaw slack, eyes half closed, I let him lift my legs, crossing my ankles behind his head before he leaned in.
Sweet, silky fire whipped at my center. He lashed me once with his tongue, twice—and gave a growl of impatience, wrapping his arms around my thighs to hike me closer.
“Don’t stop,” I said, already worn thin with impatience.
He sucked me into his mouth, making my back arch, just to let me go.
“They’d have to pry me off of you,” he replied, taking me in his mouth again.
I felt the hard press of his eyes, devouring me as I began to whimper and writhe.
He pulled me again, hauling me off the bench’s edge, widening the splay of my legs, drinking me deeper.
My lungs battled for air, my pulse rampant.
A hot tide washed through me, sending me tumbling below the waves as every muscle in my body wound tight.
One hand found the bench’s arm, the other curled tight over the back rest, my nails raking against wood at the decadent torture of his mouth.
His tongue circled, slow and smooth and reverent like he was drinking golden wine.
He leaned back to look at me, wide and bare, then groaned softly.
“Fuck, Leihani,” Kye said. “You’re so pretty with my spit all over you.
” His thumb took over, weaving a senseless pattern over my clit, finger stroking inside me.
My breath shuttered, flames crawling over my skin as he glided in and back out, adding a second finger.
He drew a careless circle, winding me with the rough slide of his thumb.
“Say my name,” he murmured, husky with want.
“Kye,” I gasped out. The ceiling was spinning, warping slowly, the clouds outside caught in the red haze of the setting sun like dripping smoke.
“Say that you’re my wife.”
A tremor began in my core, rippling in all directions. My legs shook as his thumb ground into me, stringing me to nothing. “I’m your wife.”
“Say you belong to me.”
But I was beyond words, a moan escaping my unhinged jaw instead.
He pumped harder as I came, as every rope that had tightened enough to break released instead, leaving me a limp, trembling mess.
Still panting, I tilted my head to peer down at him.
His mouth crooked, pupils dark and full as he slid a violently drawn-out thumb across my apex, taunting me.
I swore as my limbs contracted, a puppet on his string. “I belong to you,” I breathed. “I’m yours. No one else’s.”
My legs slipped from his shoulders. Kye straightened to reach my mouth, fingers wrapping under my chin to capture me in a slow, commanding kiss, the taste of me potent on his tongue.
I matched his strokes, slow and firm as the use of my bones returned to my body, my fingers tracing the hard muscles of his back to find the hem of his shirt.
He let me drag it off him, lifting his arms as I tugged it loose.
His eyes closed as my hand skimmed the angles of his chest, chiseled like marble under my palm, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
I slid off the bench, into the slant of his thighs, my lips drifting over the firm knot in the center of his neck.
He glowed softly, but sunbursts crackled across his skin, vibrant as a strike of lightning against a night sky.
The silk sheath of my dress sat around us like a shining black sea, and I gathered a length of it in my hand.
Kye’s eyes opened, gold molten as I wound it loosely around his throat.
“Come with me,” I said, tugging him to his feet with the silk length hanging from my fingers.
He followed, silk streaming behind us as I led him up the winding stairs, sunset burning through the glass windows.
The door to the guest chambers was firmly closed, light seeping through the bottom.
We ignored it, slipping over the threshold of our own.
I didn’t bother lighting candles or sconces.
The final dregs of the day coaxed us to the west-facing bedroom, where the sea rolled against the sun.
I led Kye to the bed on a byssus leash, hooking the silk over the top slat of his headboard, feeding enough length through that he was forced to climb onto the mattress.
He waited, drinking me in with glittering eyes.
Mihauna, he was a work of art. Every inch of him was corded with muscle, his body long enough that even leaned against the headboard, his feet almost hung from the edge.
I climbed over the top of his pelvis, straddling him, and leaned in close enough to whisper in his ear, “Put your hands above your head.”
His heart raced, but his movement was slow, unhurried as he lifted his arms. I’d never given him enough credit for them, the swells and hollows of his sculpted shoulders, the way his Leihaniian tattoo inked into the tight roll of his bicep, the raised veins along his forearms. I coiled the sheath around his wrists, letting the ends glide through my fingers and land softly at my sides.
“Say my name,” I commanded, unbuttoning his pants.
His lashes were so thick, draped low over his eyes as he watched me. “Maren.”
Another button. “Say you’re my husband.”
He swallowed like his mouth had suddenly gone dry, throat bobbing against the shadows of our room. “I’m your husband.”
I reached below him, curling my fingers around the waist of his leather pants and tugging them off his hips. “Say you belong to me.”
He smiled. I pulled the silk taut, just enough to steal the looseness from his bound hands. The smile fell, mouth gently parted, intoxicated with the sight of me. My hips rolled like a whip over his hard length, and a vicious shiver lanced down his bones.
“I belong to you,” he rasped, his breath constricting as I wrapped my hand around him, guiding him to my entrance. My head dropped back as I sank down over the delicious, aching stretch between my thighs, my back arched over the top of his center.
Kye made a motion, flinched almost, like he’d reached to wind his arms around me and couldn’t. I rolled again, and he moaned, the tremor of his voice like a rattle in my bones. My back arched further, and I braced a hand against his chest, widening my legs to take him deeper.
He swore, thick and half-drugged by my weight as I rode him.
Sheathed to the hilt, I pulled my spine straight, reveling in the full feeling of him inside me.
The roiling, tumbling throb of pressure, the gravel in his fractured breaths as he finally let his head droop to the side, his muscles tensing to a hard line before he broke.
My name escaped his lungs with a ragged groan.
I came undone at the sound of it, desperate and frayed and stirring me with the hunger of possession.
I leaned across him, capturing it in my mouth like a sip of golden sunshine stolen from his lips.
We breathed against each other, spent and drowsy. His sunbursts flickered under my cheek, fading back into his skin.
“I suppose I should take this off you,” I murmured, my words muffled against his chest. A soft dusting of hair lingered there, and my fingertips toyed with it.
His exhale caught in the strands of my hair. “I was waiting to see how tight you’d pull.”
My mouth curved. I wriggled deeper into him, the drum of his heart soft against my ear. “I wasn’t going to choke you.”
Kye shrugged as though I may as well have. I huffed a laugh, climbing further up his torso to reach for the silk around his wrists. “We could try it, sometime.”
“Choking you?”
He smiled, rubbing the feeling back into his freed wrists before gathering me in with his arms. I waited, an eyebrow raised, until he laughed.
“Aalto is the god of the present. He rules over the now, rather than the future or the past.”
“And?”
His fingers drifted under the curtain of my hair, tracing the valley between my shoulder blades. “I laid in bed last night, after you’d fallen asleep, watching you. At some point I realized I wasn’t breathing, that I couldn’t remember when I’d last taken a breath.”
My brows twinged. I pulled away enough to prop my forearm against his chest, meeting his eyes.
“So, I waited to see how long I could hold it. After an hour I decided I should probably breathe again.”
“You can hold your breath longer than me?” I asked flatly.
He turned his head to the side, hiding a guilty laugh under his palm as he pretended to scratch his cheek.
“I think as long as there’s oxygen in my blood now, I can go on living without fresh air.
” I snorted, unamused. He suffocated another laugh, winding his fingers through the waves at the back of my head.
“Of all the things to get competitive over—”
“Does that mean you’re safe to see my tail?” I interrupted. My chest tightened painfully, the pull of my lungs raw as I watched the soft shadows across his face. “If you’re descended from the god of the present?”
“Leihani,” he said, smiling softly. “I’ve tried to tell you since we returned from Perpetuum. Seeing a Naiad tail can’t kill me.”
“It did, though.”
“Kazimir did. With a sword.”
“Kye—”
“I’ve always had Sola blood in my veins. The Naiad’s curse only targets humans. I’m not a human.”
I stared at him, my mouth slowly stretching into a smile, though heat tested the boundaries of my eyes. “I could turn now, and you’d be fine,” I said, questioning. “You’d live.”
He shrugged again. “Go ahead.”
A flare of light through the windows, the sun blazing as it flirted with the sea. Pink and apricot hues billowed through, painting the sky like a dream. I rolled onto my back, leaning against his solid abdomen, hesitating.
Then my tail curled, arching over the top of us both.
The last few sunrays caught the thin edges of my flukes, shifting through the transparent skin like stained glass.
For a moment, refracted light sprung in every direction like crystal prism.
Rose and gold and caramelized orange. Then the sun sank under the horizon, stealing into the night with its rays.
Neither of us spoke, but Kye wove his hand in mine.
I found myself sifting through the undercurrent of my blood, exploring deeper within.
Finding the cord, invisible and secure against my navel, tugging it gently.
Soaking in the strength of that tug, the resistance that promised it could not break again.
“Why did you ask how bright I could glow?” Kye murmured against my ear.
I glanced at him from over my shoulder. “Because I have an idea.”
He waited, but my interest was piqued once again. I waited as well. Finally, he clicked his tongue, nudging me off him so he could sit up and concentrate. Legs crossed, he set his hand against his thigh, gazing at it.
Warmth oozed from his skin, a streaky line glinting over the faint flush across his palm. The first beam of a sunburst. Kye’s fingers flexed, as if testing whether it would disappear when he moved.
“Do you remember when we climbed the Sylus Mountain pass?” I asked, capturing his attention.
He tilted his head, curious where I was going.
“I told you I could talk to water, and you said you didn’t care if I could talk to the sun-damned solstice faery?
” I grinned, unable to help myself. “You’re a Sola.
You are the sun-damned solstice faery, Kye. ”
He shook his head, letting out a soft bark of laughter, though his smile remained as he focused on his hand again, the glow slowly building in radiance.
“What are you thinking of, to summon that light?” I asked, propping my head in my hand.
His smile fluttered. He sent the answer through our thoughts, the passage of his mind to mine.
The soft sound of my laughter.