Chapter 30
Everyone is backing away again. Except it’s not me this time; they’re backing away from the sight of Calais. Good, they should back away. She definitely won’t think twice about taking a bite.
I catch a wisping blur of mauve as Kissa runs towards me. She wraps her arms around me, snatching me up into a hug. After a squeeze, she releases me to look me up and down.
“You’re alive. And covered in fucking blood again. As well as dirt? Please tell me that’s not your blood.” She sniffs me. “It doesn’t smell much like your blood.” Kissa sighs in relief.
“It’s not my blood, mostly. I promise.”
I try to wipe off more blood and dirt with my hands, but it’s futile. Then the hairs on my neck sway. S?las is exceptionally close to me, closer than he’s been since two days ago. The tearing sound of his shirt snaps my spine rigid.
“Take this, and clean off your face, you little fucking savage. I can’t leave you alone for one second.” His smoky voice feels like a caress I want to fall into.
“Yep. And that’s my cue to leave. I can’t stand the scent of you two together,” Kissa scoffs as she walks away, waving her hand in the air in pure annoyance, her tail following suit, whipping rapidly behind her.
I swipe his shirt, quickly wiping my face and arms. Realizing too late I’m covering myself in the scent of him. My nostrils flare as hints of amber and spruce drown my lungs. My pulse skitters like cold water on a heated iron, my skin searing as he takes another step closer.
In his absence, the feelings he awakes in me have only grown more voracious. My knees plead to buckle, but I refuse to relent, ice clawing up my ribs in attempts to gain back my composure. But then my eyes meet his.
I adore being close enough to see the small crimson flecks dance against the icy blue. With the adrenaline of battle still fresh in my blood, it’s taking an entirely new level of restraint to hold myself back from him.
His irresistible lips dare to curl into a smirk, as if he can read my thoughts. He slowly wipes his tongue against his thumb, causing my icy walls to melt like they’re nothing.
His powers may be shadows, but all I see is vibrant light and warmth, drunk on his moonlit gaze.
“You missed a spot.” He cups my face in his hand, wiping a mark from my cheek.
I can’t help but lean into his touch. At that moment, I’m tempted to tell him I’m willing to try—and likely utterly fail, but try nonetheless. After being so free flying, maybe there’s more to life than simply surviving.
His other hand gently finds the small of my back, sliding up the gap under my armor. Always finding more ways to disarm me. A Shadowveil rises to shroud us as he leans in closer. His chaotic aura pressing in against me. To my lament, he’s careful this time, not letting his lips graze my ear.
“I saw what you did in the woods. The glory of you bathed in their blood with three men destroyed at your feet.” He pauses before a growl rumbles along my neck. “I almost lost control and took you right there.”
Fuck. I let out a dangerous, hushed moan.
His thumb traces over my bottom lip.
I slip, my tongue lazily sweeping out; the taste of metallic blood and soil stirs in my mouth.
His body melds against mine. He’s rock hard, making the space between my thighs throb in a slick, wet heat. He tilts his head against mine in a guttural groan. My arms wrap around his towering frame. I never want him to let go.
S?las lowers his face to mine, hovering above my lips in pure torture. I want him to kiss me, even though I know he won’t.
My eyes flutter shut. Velvet ribbons whip violently around me in my mind, making sure not to touch me.
I can tell he’s barely holding on to control.
There’s something about him that makes me want to lose exactly that when I’m with him.
To lose the precious control that I have clung to like it’s the very air I breathe.
To surrender to him.
Letting him ruin me.
Over and over again.
He barely brushes his satin lips against my cheek. Uncontrollably, my hips arch into his. The weight of him throbs against me. I whimper, crumbling under the sensation of it all. He growls in a gasp, as if I stole all the air from his lungs.
“I would worship you until you are high from screaming my name, until you moan with such pleasure, the very Fates bend to your every will. Until we rewrite the rules of physics, galaxies colliding in the wake of your pleasure as stardust seeps from your ribs. You’re the reason I no longer ask for heaven, because I’ve already been touched by a goddess.
The hesitation you feel isn’t a wall; it’s a love note, written in a language I’ll gladly spend the rest of my lifetime learning. ”
Fuck. He sets my soul on fucking fire.
“Fucking. Kiss. Me,” I growl with a raspy gasp between each heated word. I’m so lost in him, it takes all of me to even speak those words.
He pulls me tight. “I would love nothing more.” His lips tracing the words along my neck as my head dips back in a craving that quakes me to my core. The energy of his Sangre magic hums along the slit on my neck, healing, as his tattooed fingers trace over the line of crimson.
He pauses, taking me in with his perusal. Raven locks tumble as his head falls back, gaze cast to the sky. Every muscle in his body tenses, like he’s praying to Celestials for strength in making an impossible decision.
And then lets me go.
Catching me in his shadows as my heart stills, quivering to beat. I gasp for air I can’t find with the loss of him.
No one has ever consumed me like this, made me feel like this. No person has even come close to what he can do to me without even touching me. What is he doing to me?
“Are you truly so na?ve? Even I know what you feel for him.” Calais’ voice shocks me back to life.
“You can feel what I’m feeling?”
“Unfortunately.”
“I guess we’re both lucky Calais came swooping in.
So I wasn’t tempted into doing something you couldn’t take back.
” His smoky voice is addicting. His hands weave through his hair, doing little to soothe his pacing steps.
He’s teetering on the edge of control while my request twists that phantom ice-pick dagger just a little deeper.
Deeper still in my inability to give him all the vulnerable bits of me he desires.
I worry even trying would leave him a bloody, shredded mess.
I’m too fractured. Too sharp. Not enough blunted pieces to safely hold.
I roll my shoulder, attempting to cast the emotions aside, indulging a more practical puzzle to pick at.
“How do you know my dragon's name?”
“Whatever pulls us together appears bigger than you and I.” His jaw flexes with dismay, as though thinking of something that can never be.
The weight of it all crushing like boulders on my chest, jagged edges scraping across my flinting heart.
“The Shadowmancer is not wrong.” Calais snickers with a slight curve to her lips, dangling another secret she hoards in her trove. Confusion pinches my brows.
S?las is suddenly behind me, tilting my world off axis.
He guides my windswept, iridescent hair over my shoulder and whispers, “I have never seen anything more beautiful than you, Luxsula, reaping your vengeance like those males were mere mortals in your presence.” He pauses deeply, letting out a breathy sigh of control before continuing, “But if I ever see a male touch you like that again, I will shred their very soul from existence. From this universe and the next.”
His raspy threat brims with chaos, and I have no doubt in the truth of his warning.
How can I be mad at him when this surely isn’t about protecting me?
He clearly could have intervened at any point while watching.
The depth of how much he cares for me percolates between each of his words spoken and unsaid.
The strength it took for him to let me have my vengeance instead of taking it for himself, which he clearly wanted to do. Normally, I would protest at a male threatening to protect me, but his threat is something raw and feral. It isn’t about protecting me; it’s evident to him I can do that myself.
It’s about protecting his own heart, tortured in his feelings for me. Feelings muddling my head. Sprouting firelights to flutter about in my chest. A concept too foreign for me to comprehend, while a deeper part of me yearns to understand everything between us.
Yet fear rears its ugly head, fangs sinking in deep. Unleashing its venom, feeding me poison on its obsidian spoon of destruction.
Too afraid those distorted words from the illusion will prove to be right. Too afraid to see if they’re wrong. Too afraid to try, too afraid to hope. Too afraid to dream.
Too afraid to fail.
I straighten my shoulders, attempting to let the torment slick off; instead, it seeps into my wounds, new and old.
Too late.
Too fucking late.
It’s already festering.
A chasm rips open in my chest as S?las steps away from me, trailing off through the crowd.
He peers over his shoulder, heaviness weighing in his eyes as he holds back the torrent of turmoil shredding his soul.
At my apprehension, he attempts to muster a smile, but it does little to hide the weeping heart behind his stormy features.
Waves of darkness radiate off of him, devouring the light around him.
In his melancholy, it’s hard to see where the shadows end and he begins.
A sane person would fear him and the ominous aura unfurling in his wake. Yet to me, his shadows are the least terrifying part about him.
I saunter the way his head nods, letting my darkness wrap around his fracturing pieces, holding him together, despite the needling mess threaded between us threatening to rip, cleaving the world in two.