Chapter 20 Nasrin #2
He shuddered into movement, like I’d cast a spell on his powerful body and forced him to take the steps with nothing but my voice. He collapsed onto his knees beside the bed, his arms snaking around my waist. His head he laid upon my lap.
I fought back tears, certain that crying would induce a monster migraine. In an attempt to distract myself from that rising tide of emotion, I smoothed my hands over Thaleo’s hair, diligently finger-combing any knots I found. He was so solid. So strong and warm.
And so strangely vulnerable, down on his knees like this with his head in my lap.
“It’s nice to see you when I’m actually awake,” I said, enjoying the simple, quiet act of running my fingers through his long strands. His arms tightened around me. “Sounds like you’ve been really busy with all the patrolling and hunting and everything. Taking care of everyone.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then, in a voice like breaking stone, he said, “I did not wish to impede your recovery. I did not feel as though I had the right to take up any of your waking time. But at night, when I was back, and you slept, I…I could not stay away.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” I whispered. “I’m glad you didn’t stay away.”
He raised his head from my lap, his tired sight stars searching my face.
“I am sorry, Nazreen.”
I’d never heard him utter the word before.
“You never should have been hurt,” he said bitterly, biting off each word. “It should have been me.”
I rejected that at once. Though I didn’t remember it, I’d pushed Zaria out of the way to save her. I sure as hell would have done the same for him.
“That’s not what I would have wanted-” I started to say, but he interrupted by rising to his feet rapidly and hissing, “But that is what I would have wanted!”
Agitated, he paced the room, his claws flexing, his tail thrashing. “That is what I want, Nazreen!” I want you never to have been there in the first place!”
“Well,” I said after a moment, “we can’t always get the things we want.”
He made a mirthless, miserable laughing sound, and I regretted my choice of words immediately. Thaleo knew that better than most.
He continued pacing for a minute, then suddenly stopped, as abruptly as if he were on a screen and somebody had pushed pause. A stiffness entered his frame, the composure I was used to seeing from him returning.
“Forgive me,” he uttered tonelessly. “For my outburst. For burdening you when you are not well.”
“Thaleo-”
“I will leave you now.” He turned towards the cave’s exit. “You need your rest.”
“So do you!”
He didn’t walk out of the cave. But he didn’t turn to look at me, either.
“Can’t you just…stay with me? For a while?” I asked in a choked, low voice. “We don’t have to talk. We could just sleep. But I…”
“But you?” he prompted when I paused to swallow back a fresh prickle of tears.
“But I just want you with me.”
God. How true those words were. Now that he was here, everything in me screamed not to let him go. I’d missed him so fucking much. Even more than I’d realized.
I just want you with me.
And here I thought I’d be ending things with him when I returned. Here I thought I would be strong enough. That I would even know how.
And maybe he didn’t know how to leave me, either. His breath guttered like a candle, his body twisting towards mine once more, half in resignation, half relief.
I knew I was smiling when he reached the side of the bed. “Come lie with me.”
He did so at once, removing his weapons before his huge body crowded into the bed with me. Instantly, his arms were around me once more, his calloused hands gathering me up like I was so many broken pieces, and drawing me gingerly against his chest.
We didn’t talk. Just like I’d told him, we didn’t have to. The silence wasn’t necessarily an easy one. There were unsaid words, and the quiet was fraught. But I still felt safe inside it.
Because he was there with me.
It didn’t take long for sleep to find me in the perfect circle of his arms. I wasn’t sure how long I slumbered there. When I woke some time later, it was still dark. And he was still there with me.
The joy that realization brought me was nearly frightening. That so much of my happiness now apparently hinged on whether he was with me or not. Sighing, I shifted closer.
Tension rammed his frame. Then, I felt it. The hot, swollen press of his cock beneath my ass. I pulled down my panties, then reached back and tugged away his loincloth. His hand fell to my hip, as if to caress it, but instead clamping down in warning.
“You need to sleep,” he growled, pure heat against my ear.
“I know.” The only problem was that desire was running through my veins like warm honey now, golden and sweet, congregating between my legs. His breath had picked up behind me, his chest rising and falling rapidly against my back.
I needed to sleep. He’d said so himself. He needed it, too.
But maybe we both needed this more.
Slowly, as if worried I would spook him, I rolled over in his arms until we lay on our sides facing each other.
Tenderly, I placed my hands on either side of his hard jaw and kissed him.
At the same moment, I slung my thigh over his hip, letting his cock encounter the wet warmth of my pussy.
He rocked against me as if helplessly, his tip already prodding my entrance.
And his tongues were in my mouth, now. His fingers in my hair. His groan sluicing down my own throat, like the finest wine.
“Nazreen,” he rasped against my mouth. “I need you.” His lips slid to my chin, my jaw, worshipping. “My beautiful one. Perfect creature. You don’t know how you haunt me.”
His hand fell between us, finding my clit and stealing my breath before I could form a reply. Wetness seeped from me, coating the fat head of his dick as he circled and stroked. Trembling with need, I begged him, “Please.”
“Tell me,” he said, a possessive growl that I felt roll like smoke down my spine. “Anything, Nazreen.”
“Inside,” I breathed, pushing against him, pressure building, pleasure licking all through me with tiny flames.
“You need me here? Right here?” He gave a shallow thrust, notching himself just slightly inside. A feverish tremor wracked me. My fingers spasmed on his jaw.
“God, yes.”
Together, we began a slow grind, a rocking rhythm that built and built until he was thrusting ruthlessly into me and I was coming with a shattered moan.
While I convulsed against him, all around him, he rolled us both, pinning me on my back and driving even deeper into the frantically coiling ecstasy of my insides.
At this angle his cock spears were trapped against my flesh, bracketing my swollen clit as he slammed home and exploded.
I cradled his face as he savagely worked through his pleasure in my body. I wanted him to feel good inside me. I wanted so much for him.
His forehead collapsed to mine, our ragged breathing intermingling, syncing up and then slowing. Already, sleep was tugging at me once again. I was fully prepared to succumb to it. To go to sleep, right here and now, with Thaleo still pulsing inside me.
But a sudden brightness had me opening my eyes and turning my head towards the balcony window. Dawn? Already?
It wasn’t dawn. The sky was still inky with night.
But there was something in the ink of it. Silvery bright, nearly translucent, and getting closer every second.
“Thaleo,” I gasped. “Is that…”
“The Vrika,” he answered flatly. Unlike me, he exhibited no surprise at the apparition. While I stared out the window, my eyes wide with wonder at the sight, he merely pulled out of me and sat on the edge of the bed, tying his loincloth with efficient, emotionless hands.
“What…What’s wrong?” I asked. “This is the Vrika!”
Why was he sitting there as if, instead of his people’s most holy and revered spirit, he was being faced with the hangman’s noose?
The Vrika stopped outside the window, the starlight ribbon of its body slipping back and forth on silent wings.
Thaleo’s gaze was glued to his fists upon his knees. He did not look at it.
“What is it?” I asked, sitting up and wrapping the bedding around myself.
“It has come for me.”
“Wh-What?”
“This is the third time,” he said. “It has already summoned me twice before. While you were recovering.”
“It…It summoned you? For a mate vision?”
“Yes,” he replied. “And I did not go.”
I realized I was panting again. I tried to stop, to breathe slowly through my nose.
He’d ignored the Vrika’s call. Thaleo. The man who’d once told me that exile would be a reasonable punishment for any other man who’d done the same.
“Why?”
He wrenched his eyes to mine then, his sight stars agonized.
His voice was taut with longing. “You know why, Nazreen.”
“I don’t!” I cried, shaking my head until I could feel a new headache growing. “You always said-”
“That was before I knew what it was to lose you!” he hissed, fangs flashing. “That was before I knew what it was to love you!”
His knuckles brushed my cheek, so softly. Such a contrast to the hard set of his features. To the bludgeoning reality of his words.
“You…You love me.”
“I do,” he said. A simple statement, but imbued with the deepest certainty.
“From the first moment I saw you, your very presence pinned me, as if you were an arrow. I tried to ignore it, tried to fight it. To not acknowledge just how deep my desire for you went. But when I saw you with the borog, beneath the falling rocks…” His hand curled into a fist and fell away.
“I knew in that moment I’d rather die than ever live without you. ”
Tremulous hope bloomed. But doubt wound through the roots.
“But…But what does this mean? For the Vrika?” It still floated in that eerie, arcing sway outside. “Shouldn’t you go with it?”
“I will not,” he replied firmly. “I will not risk being mated to anyone but you. I have made my choice. That choice is you.”
I closed my eyes, briefly basking in his words. In the sugar-sweet bliss of them. He was choosing me.
Because he loved me.
I’d told myself I could never fall in love with him while things were the way they were. But against my better judgment, against every wall I’d put up, I’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
I have to tell him.
Blinking tears away, I opened my mouth to do it. But he was speaking again. Words that winded me, left me reeling.
“Once the borog situation resolves,” he said, “I will renounce my title of Gahn and call a baklok to determine my people’s next leader.”
“What? No! Thaleo, you can’t!”
“I cannot remain Gahn while breaking the law my people hold most dear,” he said. There was a sombre calm in his words. Like he’d already decided this course of action days ago. He was set in his path and there was no going back.
“But…But that’s…That’s not what I wanted!
” I cried. “I want to be with you. But I don’t want to be responsible for taking you away from everything you’ve ever known!
” I let go of the bedding, gripping his shoulders as if I was going to try to shake some sense into him.
As if such a thing were even possible. “Your people need you!”
“My people do not need to be commanded by a hypocrite,” he said, “who now puts his own selfish desire above that which he has always defended.”
“So that’s what I am to you now,” I said, all the fight going out of me. My head pounded. My pussy ached. I was so fucking tired. “Your selfish desire.”
“What you are to me now?” he repeated softly. Almost bitterly. “You are everything to me, Nazreen.” He lifted his chin, finally gazing steadily upon the Vrika. “And that is precisely the problem.”
I clutched at the bedding once more, wrapping it around myself, like it could be a shield against this sudden grief.
Thaleo loved me.
And now, he was going to lose everything because of me.
Exhausted by the harrowing prospect, I curled into a ball and fled into sleep.