CHAPTER 31 #2
“A gilded cage,” I say, turning to face him.
He sucks in a breath, swallowing whatever retort he’d conjured, and I say, “Even if I choose to stay here, do you truly think she will let me live out my life? Silken pillows and a full belly until I die of old age?” I sigh. “I wouldn’t, not if I were her. Not if it had been…”
Too much. You give away too much. My heart falters a beat, my stomach turning inside out, and suddenly I’m back on that ship. You’re letting your guard down, Shivaria.
I break from his touch, intent on letting the male bathe in solitude. He stops me with a hand around my wrist, before my feet can take me from the water.
“One day, mi’ajna, you will trust me,” he says it so matter of fact. “It doesn’t have to be today. And in truth, it will only ever be the day that you decide I am worth the risk of whatever it is you fear from me.”
I can’t trust him. Just as he can’t trust me. I won’t debate him and remind him that there are still things he doesn’t tell me. Secrets that he is wise to keep.
A fine muscle ticks at the edge of his jaw.
“Ask me,” he pleads, “I will tell you anything you want to know.”
There it is. Every moment in A’kori has led me to this. I should seize it, take every speck of what he’s offering. This is the way I complete my mission. But haven’t I already given up every opportunity I’ve had to do just that?
Perhaps Vos will send me to the afterlife before I succumb to the insanity of my mind.
Maybe this is it. My last chance to have every question answered before the end.
But when I think about how my life might end, and how I’d like to spend my last days, hours, minutes, I find that it isn’t his answers I want.
It isn’t about trust when I lean in, brushing my lips against his. It’s not about my mission when I encourage the firm press of his body against my own. When he cups my jaw, his tongue delving deeply into my mouth, every fear I have of what could be is stripped from me.
“I want you.” I repeat the same words I spoke to the male before he left.
“You have me.” The heat of his breath tickles my lips, his hands cupping the globes of my ass as he picks me up, hooking my legs around his waist.
I think he might be taking me to the bed when he passes it altogether, laying me on the thick grey pelt splayed out in front of the fire.
His lips envelop my breast, and I suck in a breath. His teeth gently teasing before the soft caress of his tongue. His hands roam across my flesh, exploring my form. The cinch of my waist, the curve of my hips, the shape of my thighs.
When his mouth begins to travel down past my navel, my toes curl expectantly. The slow drag of his tongue as it slides across my core is everything.
“Yes,” I whisper, my fingers tangling in his thick black locks.
I feel him smile as his grip tightens on my thighs, holding me firmly against his face. The friction of his tongue between my legs arches my back off the plush fur as I moan into the night.
He is attentive to every sigh, every shift of my hips, every sharp intake of breath as he devours me greedily. Unwilling to relent until it’s all I can do not to scream out his name.
His tongue is a wicked thing. It swirls lazily over that sensitive bundle of nerves, coiling the tension as he sucks me in, before soothing me again with blissfully slow strokes and long, idle sweeps.
I writhe beneath him, his tongue keeping time with the pulse of ecstasy building inside me.
Every tremor of my body is met with the flick of his tongue between my legs.
I tense under his attention. It’s all too overwhelming. Every sensation brings me closer to the precipice and my body shakes as I rush toward my release.
“Not yet,” he purrs, as I ride the edge of ecstasy, and he slows to a wickedly teasing pace.
My breath is caught in my throat when his fangs leave exquisite trails of pleasurable pain across my torso as he rises to meet me. He catches the tender pink flesh at the center of my breast between his teeth, and I shudder out a gasp.
“Xeyvian.” His name slips off my lips in a plea and I nearly break when the male growls before capturing my mouth with his own again, the sweet taste of my passion still on his lips.
He grinds his thick length against that tender bud of nerves and nips my lip. I don’t think about it when I tip my hips until the head of his shaft is bumping up against the slick folds of my core. His body goes rigid, the hesitation he feels clearly written on his face.
So, I wait, as patient as he has always been with me. Smiling at him, a smile that tells him I want this. I brush my lips against his shoulder, his neck, his ear. I let my hands explore his body just as he had mine. Every muscular curve and hard line, a map I will myself to commit to memory.
The tension leaks from his jaw as he drags his thumb down the blade of my cheek.
His brow furrows further, then the hesitation pours out of the male, his lips falling to mine.
There is nothing insistent about the kiss, nothing pressing or demanding.
It’s soft, gentle, tender. Things I hadn’t known until I met him.
My arms fold around his neck and I think that, maybe, if I must die, I’d like it to be in his arms.
One hand at my jaw, the other hooks around my thigh and draws it up to his side, and he sinks himself into me.
A thrum of silent thunder pulses like an echo.
I gasp when a pain like nothing I’ve ever felt, blinding white and full of rapture, ignites my chest, searing across my torso and bicep.
It brings something I can’t place, like a foundation formed in the deepest part of my being.
Just as quickly as it came, the force begins to settle, snapping something taut inside me.
Xeyvian’s brow dips, and as if summoned by his sharp inhale of breath, a dark mark of ancient script wraps his bicep to trail across his chest, ending beneath his heart. The male rests his forehead against mine, a deep sigh emanating from his lips as he begins to rock his hips back and forth.
He is slow and gentle at first. Nothing like what I’d been taught to expect when I’d been told stories by other Fea Dien. He takes his time exploring the boundaries of our union, encouraged when I begin to move my body in time with his own.
His hands are at my waist, exploring my breasts, tenderly stroking the soft skin of my arms. His lips explore the curve of my throat, my jaw. Every bare scrap of flesh he can find he adorns with his touch.
I moan into the night, overcome with the glorious feeling of my body stretching around him.
His mouth catches the sound, his tongue playing along my lips as he pushes himself in, only to retreat tauntingly.
When he presses in again, I answer the slow thrust of his length by tipping my hips to drive him deeper.
This time I swallow the male’s moan, his own throaty response to the pleas of my body as I usher him inside.
He takes his time, filling me inch by inch, each gradual stroke deeper than the last, letting me become accustomed to his girth, his length, his presence inside me.
My core clenches greedily, tightening around him when he finally thrusts hard, seating himself to the hilt.
The achingly perfect stretch of my body as I take the male fully is rapture itself.
“Fates,” he groans as he pulls back and thrusts in again, seating himself in my core. “You’re perfect,” he sighs. “This is—”
“Perfect,” I gasp, echoing the sentiment as he slams himself into me.
With every stroke, he slides against that tiny bundle of nerves, building a tension I cannot suppress. I want this to last. I want to spend hours milking him of his passion until we are both truly and utterly spent.
But there is no denying the torrent of bliss that crashes through my body.
I gasp, when I shatter like fractured starlight, from the likes of which new galaxies are born. Each wave of my release casts me further into oblivion until I’m completely lost to myself, skating along the precipice of life, light, and utter darkness.
I’m gone, dancing along the farthest expanses of the universe when a deep murmur flits across my ears.
A familiar voice pulls at a tether in my chest, and I have no choice but to follow.
It’s a sweet sound, followed by the tender brush of his lips against my cheek.
The male purrs in my ear, breathy feyn whispers, and I loose a deep sigh of utter contentment.
More. I want more. Because what will ever be enough?
I hook my leg over his back and pitch my weight, rolling on top of him.
I never expected to use the move outside of a fight, but I find that I greatly prefer it for this function.
He looks surprised before he smiles and grips my hips, encouraging me, showing me how to move.
I brace my hands against his chest, sinking down on his length, moaning.
I’m pleased to find that this position grants him deeper entry inside of me.
His thumb sweeps across my nub as I ride him, strumming me like a chord he’s settling into perfect tune. My core tightens with every sweep of his finger, with every deep stroke of his length. A muscle bounces along the edge of his jaw as his eyes drop to the swell of my chest.
My head kicks back when he rises to capture the tender pink flesh of my breast in his mouth. With every flick of his tongue, I feel the build of a new breaking and his moan vibrates my chest with warning.
“I know,” I breathe.
His hips thrust up to meet me when I slide down on him, and I come completely undone, unraveled by the male, into thousands of tiny threads that will never be knit back together. Riding out the waves of my passion, he shudders beneath me, moaning as he spills himself deep within my pulsating core.
His body goes slack against the fur beneath him, and I collapse, brushing my lips along his chest as his heart tries to break free from beneath his sternum. My hair is splayed out in front of the fire. His fingers trace idle lines down the length of my spine as we catch our breath.
This is dangerous. Because I would give the male anything in this moment.
The second he shifts his hips, unsheathing himself from me, I realize just how vacant I’ve always been. More than the physical loss of him pits my stomach, and I push away every thought that would take me from this moment.
Maybe I should, but I don’t want to stop and ask about the feyn mysteries I was never taught. About the mark that bloomed on his body at our coupling, about what I myself felt when he entered me. Not tonight.
The pop of the fire lulls me, my skin still prickling with every rapturous release the male has driven from my body. I’m dozing off to the sound of his heartbeat, my ear resting on his chest, when his voice comes from the comfortable stillness of the night.
“Tell me that you will remain in A’kori with me.” Before I’ve fully understood his request he adds, “Permanently.”
I’m not sure if the flutter of my heart or the wrenching twist of my gut is more severe when his request finally falls into place within my mind. Why would he want such a thing? If I were the lady I claim to be, I would have plenty of reasons to stay at his request, but what does he gain by it?
At a loss for words, I simply nod, and he runs his fingers through my hair.
I expect to struggle to find sleep, with the looming threat of the war and thoughts of Vos and her vengeance still at the forefront of my mind.
But it isn’t those thoughts that weave into a hazy tangle as I drift off.
It’s thoughts of Xeyvian, and an impossible life I could have lived with the male if I were another woman.
A life I find I desperately want but will never have.