Chapter 29
CHAPTER
Varro placed a couple of heavy blankets at the center of the rowboat, then helped me down to my seat.
He placed himself opposite me, untying the rope that tethered it to the boat house.
Using the oar to shove us out of the dwelling and into the darkness of the bay, he made a shushing gesture at me and quietly paddled us out of the main docks.
Varro rowed in silence while I studied the various ships under construction.
I imagined how this area must be abuzz with workers and trade during the daylight, greatly contrasting the silence and solitude of these hours.
He rowed slower than I knew he was capable of, probably because he wanted to keep the noise to an absolute minimum—however, patience was not a strong suit of mine.
Something he knew well. So, I simply rested my hand over the edge of the small boat, letting it submerge into the cool seawater.
I focused my energy and generated a current below us, causing our little boat to quickly pick up speed; increasing our pace by at least double.
Even in the moonslight, I could make out his unimpressed smirk as he uttered the words, “Lazy. Some of us are in roles that do require actual physical labor.”
“Ungrateful,” I scoffed.
Varro rowed until we were so far from the docks that their lantern lights faded into the darkness completely.
It was just him and me, the creaking of the rowboat, the moonslight reflecting off the black water with no signs of land or life ahead.
I removed my hand from the water and patted it dry on my pant leg.
Leaning forward, he retrieved something from a small pack he had stowed between us. I could see the steel reflecting the moonslight as Varro raised a small knife to his palm and slid it across his flesh.
“What are you doing?” I asked, growing concerned.
“Shh, just wait and listen.”
Varro reached over the gunwale as I watched, placing his bleeding hand into the water and swishing the blood around, then proceeding to do the same on the other side of the boat. When he lifted his hand back up, he licked the blood away and healed the wound.
We sat there in silence for what seemed like ages.
Just when I was about to interrupt, all of a sudden, a haunting echo rose up from the depths of the sea.
A chorus of spine-chilling voices singing in perfect unison.
The words foreign, unlike any language I’d ever heard.
My eyes widened at Varro as we got pulled into the hypnotic arrangement.
He shifted his body closer to me so that we were sitting side by side.
“That is Siren Song,” he said, clasping my hand in his and lifting it to place it over his heart. “It is the sweet song of death, and it is my offering to you for our friend Nori. Your last memories of her should not be of her painful cries or his bitter pleas. Let it be this.”
Tears were streaming down my face when he removed my hand from his chest and cupped my cheek.
“The Gods will know the purity of her soul; I promise you they will welcome her.”
I plunged myself into his embrace, crashing my lips to his, letting the smattering of my tears paint his cheeks.
Whether my soul be tainted or damned, I wouldn’t go another day in this life or the next without binding myself to this male.
The music continued all around us, echoing up from the great depths of the Endless Tides.
I clawed at Varro’s shirt, removing it and tossing it into the boat before removing my own.
I ached for the touch of our bare skin against one another.
I kissed him passionately, over and over again, until I could swallow the aching of grief in my chest and cried no more.
Then my grief turned to a ravenous passion that consumed me.
I must have him. Our bond was fighting, screaming and gnawing to touch one another. Just once, it pleaded. Just once.
And so, with no fear or regret, I leaned over and offered myself to my mate with a ragged whisper.
“Take me, I am yours.”
I said the words with all the power and resolve of a hundred unconquerable armies.
There would be no stopping this; he was the light to my darkness.
The Gods had bestowed their ill fates, but this was a destiny of my choosing.
He did not need to question my will; our bond knew my heart spoke true.
He laid the blankets flat at the bottom of the boat, and I removed what remained of my clothing.
He followed suit. We both faced each other on our knees, naked as the day we entered this world.
All our scars, our histories, washed away till there was nothing but the two of us and the enchanting Siren Song.
“I wish to bind myself to you in the traditions of my people,” he began, while pulling the small blade out again and making a cut across his other hand before passing it to me. “You must devote yourself freely,” he continued, nodding at my hand.
I ran the blade across my palm without a moment of hesitation, feeling its sharp sting followed by the warmth of my blood pooling in its absence.
Varro then clasped our bloodied hands together, combining the essence of our life force.
With our fingertips intertwined, he dipped our hands into the water, letting the salty sea water cleanse the blood from our grip.
A moment later, more melancholy music rose from the depths, the somber melodies of a friend’s elegy slowly transitioning to a hymn of otherworldly devotion.
“This is our song,” he said, fighting back his own tears.
With our mental shields lowered, I knew his thoughts swirled with every emotion imaginable.
The fear of losing me. The fear of the Drift.
The pain of being apart. The loss of our friend.
The unwavering commitment to protect me.
The desire to know my body fully and satiate our bond once and for all.
His unerring, unimaginable love. But I imagined the act of listening to one another’s thoughts was a fraction of the fulfillment fideli c?ur offered.
We hadn’t even begun, and already I was trembling with excitement and nerves.
He healed my palm with a gentle kiss, and then ran the backside of his hand across my chest, gently grazing one of my nipples.
He turned his hand and squeezed my breast firmly, almost painfully, while pulling my face to his with the other.
Our kisses were frenetic, our hands roaming greedily.
The song somehow evolved with each of our zealous movements.
I ignored my already swollen and sensitive lips from our earlier engagements and continued to kiss him like it could be our last chance.
I inhaled the scent of him accented by the sea air, trying desperately to imprint it in my mind and on my heart forever.
He guided me gently down into the center of the boat and leaned over me with our bare legs intertwined. We were both breathless from the anticipation. Our bond hummed below the surface at the prospect of finally being tethered.
I smiled, letting out a small laugh. “Do you feel that?”
“Yes,” he said, followed by more impassioned kisses from my chest down to my stomach, before lowering his face between my legs.
Heat pulsed at my core and the sensation of his tongue dragging at a leisurely slow pace along my apex nearly caused me to come undone immediately.
His rough, calloused hands squeezed my thighs tightly, pulling me hard against his face as he worked to deliver me a climax.
I panted my words to the sky, to the stars, to every cruel God who was listening, “I lo-I love…you. I love you.”
My words were a cry, a whimper and a plea wrapped around the tangled web of pleasure he spun and spun, endlessly.
As if the Gods themselves answered me, Varro was suddenly above me, the tip of his cock placed at my entrance, patiently awaiting my final decision.
Still putting me and my wants and needs first. I spread myself wider for him and wrapped my legs behind him before pulling him forcefully into me in response.
Taking him. All of him. Varro hilted his cock in me, and my back arched with the divine pleasure of our bond reaching out to one another, two dissonant songs slowly harmonizing until they became one beautiful, haunting melody.
We both gasped; the sound of our heaving breaths muffled by the Siren Song all around us.
Every feeling, emotion, sensation he felt soared through me with lightning speed.
In that moment, we were truly one Fae. Our separate forms ceased to be, and there was only unity as the bond eviscerated the past and carved out a future with my mate.
Our bodies moved in concert, and with each stroke, I moaned louder, his sporadic kisses occasionally capturing them against his own breathless groans.
He slid back and forth into me with a desperation that engrossed me.
I stared at the twinkling stars above as my mate, my fated one, became lost in the sealing of our bond, a primal connecting of our souls, and thought to myself that a cruel fate has never tasted so sweet.
And so, I smiled at the Gods in spite of them.
I felt him beginning to reach his climax as I sought to hold on to mine as long as possible.
Suddenly, Varro’s wings unfurled, and he wrapped my legs tightly around his waist before ascending us into the air to hover above the boat.
With one last coda from the Sirens, he erupted with a final thrust, and I shattered into his arms as he held us in flight.
My legs quivered with echoes of our pleasure and the bond reverberating through us with deafening magnificence.
I do not know how I ever thought I knew lovemaking before a bond.
This was how fate intended lovers to feel and, knowing what I know now, I would have wandered Demir a hundred lifetimes in search of it.
If they all only knew, they would have never settled for anything less.
There could be nothing more than this. Nowhere beyond this.
Our naked bodies slowly descended from the sky back into the boat, and we lay there with only the sounds of our heavy breathing and hearts beating. I curled into his protective arms and spoke for the first time through the bond, mind to mind, “I have to tell you something.”