Episode 70 Always Yours
Always Yours
When Cerian’s flame goes out, the darkness falls like a blanket, and Arisanna forces herself not to grab at him. He’s still there. His heart still beats within her chest.
The thought calms her.
As the damp mist settles around her, coating her hair and her leather dress, she takes a steadying breath.
Now what?
“Are you all right?” he asks softly, and she nods.
Which is ridiculous because he can’t see her.
“Arisanna?”
“Y-yes,” she whispers as she tentatively reaches toward him. Her hand lands on his chest over his leathers, and he takes it in his own. His touch is comforting, like an anchor tethering her to this place.
To this moment.
Butterflies fill her stomach at the thought of where this is leading. If only she were wearing something else.
Not that he can see her.
The sensation of feathery chiffon and lace grazes her skin, and she bites back a gasp.
The heartlanding clearly has one thing in mind for them tonight.
This all seemed so simple on the train when her emotions were high and their surroundings were bright and familiar. Even moments ago, as she gazed into his eyes, fire pooled in her belly.
Now, though...
Cerian draws her hand to his lips and presses a kiss to the sensitive skin of her inner wrist as a shiver races down her arm, and Mother’s words from before their wedding fill her head.
Follow his lead.
“What are you thinking?” he asks softly.
She opens her mouth, but no words come.
“Arisanna?”
“Sorry. I...”
Why is this so hard? It’s Cerian. She can tell him anything.
He squeezes her hand. “It’s all right to change your mind. We don’t have to—”
“I want to. I’m just...not sure what to do. I mean, I know what to do. Of course I know what to do. Not that I’ve ever done it. But I know.”
Stars above. Did she really say all of that? Out loud?
She did decide to tell him everything.
Still. She could have skipped the rambling.
Taking another deep breath, she tries again. “My mother told me to...to follow your lead.”
“Is that what you want?”
She nods before squeezing her eyes shut. He still can’t see her. “Yes. I’m thinking too much about...everything, and I just need to—”
“Just be mine,” he whispers. “Nothing else matters.”
Her breath escapes in a shudder at his words.
Then his hand is in her hair as he slides it along her jaw. “Just be mine.”
“Yours.” Her terror at the darkness tempers at his touch.
A moment later, his lips graze hers. They’re warm but not hot, and her flesh tingles at his barely there kiss as the faintest hints of smoke and sparks tickle her senses.
A tentative hand reaches for her waist in the darkness, and he stills as his fingertips graze the sheer fabric of her gown.
His heart races alongside hers when he runs the material between his fingers. At least that’s what it feels like he’s doing. With every passing moment, the chiffon clings to her flesh more.
He says nothing as his warm hand slides along her waist over the thin gown, and soon, his lips find hers again. His hand presses into her lower back, drawing her closer as he kisses her, and she doesn’t resist.
His chest is warm but not blazing. It’s a comfortable heat that seeps through his leather shirt as she rests her hands against him.
Then the leather is gone, and she gasps.
“Forgive me,” he whispers. “The heartlanding...is very accommodating when it wants to be. I...I was thinking about...”
He doesn’t finish, and she trails a finger along the muscles of his chest. “That’s how I ended up in this gown,” she whispers. “Be careful what you wish for tonight.”
His breath hitches, though whether he’s affected by her words or her touch or both is impossible to say, and she doesn’t ask him.
Every sensation against her flesh feels magnified in the darkness, giving her something other than her fear on which to focus. The gentle mist. His smooth, muscled chest beneath her fingers. His breath against her lips and his hand on her back.
When he kisses her again, his lips are more eager. More demanding. And the heat deep within her grows.
Especially when he nudges her toward the bed she wished for. Stars above. They’re really doing this.
When her legs hit the raised platform, she loses her balance, and he catches her against him.
“Forgive me,” he says. “This is difficult in the dark. Are you all right?”
Rather than responding with words, she finds his lips again, and he returns her kiss with a passion that leaves her breathless.
His arms are strong and steady as he helps her onto the bed, not letting go of their kiss.
His weight hovering over her as he guides her to her back makes it hard to remember how to breathe.
If the heartlanding wakes them anytime soon, she may never forgive it.
“Are you warm enough?” he whispers near her ear as his lips graze her sensitive flesh.
With the heat coursing through her at the press of his body against hers, it’s hard to imagine ever feeling cold again. The air is warm, and even the misty drizzle doesn’t leave her chilled.
But the most comfortable heat radiates from his skin, warming her through her flimsy gown as if there’s nothing between his flesh and hers.
“It’s perfect,” she whispers. “You’re letting off the most delightful heat.”
“The dampness isn’t chilling you?” He nuzzles her ear, his breath sending shivers racing along her neck and down her arm as she gasps.
At her response to his touch, he does it again, and she doesn’t even try to answer his question.
He trails more kisses along her neck until his lips hit the edge of her sheer gown. Does it even serve a purpose here in the dark? It’s damp, sticking to her like a second skin.
A moment later, he stills, and she gasps as his body presses against hers with nothing between them but the leather trousers he still wears.
Did she do that? Or did he?
“Cerian,” she whispers.
“Just be mine, Arisanna. Don’t think. Just...just feel. Let me be your safe place the way you’re mine.”
She nods against his shoulder. She longs for that, too.
“I love you,” he whispers. “Until my end of days.” His lips connect with hers again with the same passion he kissed her with in his treehouse. Smoky sparks flare against her flesh, but the mist grows heavier around them, dampening his fire once more.
As his muscled chest presses against her, her own fire blazes, and she searches for his ears in the dark, sliding her hands along his jaw until her fingers connect with their pointed tips. His kiss slows, and his breath grows heavy as he rests his forehead against hers.
“Whistling wind,” he murmurs.
Then he wraps his hands around her waist and rolls to his back, pulling her with him, and in a crash of tangled limbs, she lands on top of him on the ground beside the bed.
“That...was not what I intended,” Cerian says.
Before she can stop herself, she bursts into laughter, leaning into his chest as her shoulders shake. “Maybe you should have gone the other way.”
“I can’t see anything in this darkness,” he says, his laughter joining hers. His hands are gloriously warm as they span her back, and she relaxes against him. That was just what she needed to unknot some of her tension.
When their laughter fades, his fingers trace a line from her neck to her lower back, and her breath catches as her heart races.
His hands are free now, no longer supporting his weight above her.
Free to touch her. To slide along her skin.
“Are we...are we lying in the dirt?” she barely manages.
“I think it’s moss. It feels like the bed did.”
He makes no effort to climb back on the bed, and it’s probably just as well. There’s nothing to roll off of down here.
And the last thing she feels like doing now is moving.
The press of his hand on her back is gentle. Feathery. Sending chills all the way to her toes. And rather than terrifying her as it did earlier, the darkness is a comforting cloak, blanketing her bare skin.
This feels right, being here with him, flesh touching flesh. It’s new and unfamiliar but right in every way.
“Do you...do you still wish to follow my lead?” he asks quietly, and the vulnerable timbre of his voice makes her want him even more. Her safe place, where there are no expectations. No judgment. Just him and his touch. His warm breath against her skin. His comforting heat.
And words to tell him how she feels escape her. Instead, she uses her hand to guide her in the dark, sliding it from his chest to his jaw and cheek before pressing her forehead gently to his.
For a moment, neither of them moves, neither of them speaks, lost in this gesture of devotion and acceptance.
Of love.
Then he softly kisses her, all the urgency gone. There’s no rush. It’s just the two of them, their hearts pounding in sync as she gets lost in him. In his heat and the press of his hands and lips against her flesh.
His touch is tentative. Clumsy at times. But always gentle. Always sensitive to every hitch of her breath. Every breathless whimper of his name. And her body responds to him in ways she never imagined. Does he have any idea what he’s doing to her?
One moment builds into another and another as he leads her in this lovers’ dance where she can’t remember where she ends and he begins.
She doesn’t want to remember. His heart beats strongly within her chest—that familiar rhythm that’s been hers since before she realized what it was.
The walls between them shatter, the layers peeling away until nothing remains but his flesh against hers, their fire forging something new together. Something intangible but real. So real.
He says little, but somehow, she feels every thought and emotion coursing through him.
The words he doesn’t say, words of aching desire and insatiable need, echo in her heart louder than his voice ever could.
He wants her—he needs her—as if he can’t survive without her.
And as he writes the words of his heart and soul across her flesh, she loses herself to him.
“Cerian,” she whimpers as she buries her fingers in his hair, her palms pressing against his ears as their bodies entangle in this dance she can’t imagine experiencing with anyone else.
She could never describe the emotion filling her as she trembles in his arms, but it’s real and raw and overwhelming in its intensity.
It’s him. It’s always been him.
It could never be anyone else.
Soon he collapses beside her, his own heat spent.
As they lie tangled together on this bed of moss in the darkness, the overpowering emotion filling her doesn’t temper. It etches itself on her heart alongside the words of their heartbinding.
Our bodies as one until the beating of our hearts fades.
The misty rain slows and stops, and once Cerian’s ragged breath steadies, he pulls Arisanna to his chest as she clings to him.
“Just be mine,” he murmurs against her damp hair. His magic cocoons every part of her in a familiar and comforting heat that leaves her feeling safe and loved and so relaxed that it’s hard to keep her eyes open.
Before her drowsiness overtakes her, she leans toward his ear and whispers, “Yours, Cerian. Always yours.”