Chapter 33 #2
Corinne’s breath hitched when he nipped at her ear. That pleasant tug in her abdomen sent heat tingling downward, to her core and between her thighs.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly.
Aryel kissed her jaw and pushed upward off the bed until he was standing. He grabbed the hem of his shirt and quickly pulled it over his head before discarding it on the floor.
Corinne sat up, gazing at the tattoos on his chest and shoulders, more of that need settling in her lower abdomen. Goddess, he was beautiful.
She stood, too, running her hands up his muscular chest, tracing one of the moons inked onto his skin.
Aryel’s hands glided from her hips up her torso, tracing tingles up her sides, and he leaned in again to press his lips to hers.
He kissed her slowly, deliberately this time, his fingers grasping the fabric at her lower back.
Gathering her courage, Corinne stepped back from him and began pulling the hem of her shirt up. Aryel placed his hands over hers gently.
“Can I help?” he asked.
With a tentative smile, Corinne nodded, releasing her shirt.
He continued the work she’d started to pull it over her head, and when it was off, he tossed it to the floor to join his own.
She shivered as he slipped a hand beneath the fabric wrapped around her breasts at the back, loosening it until it fell away too.
His expression as he took in her bare torso, her breasts, was nothing short of reverent.
Corinne placed a hand on his face, brushing her thumb over his cheek before pulling him in to kiss him again. A newfound boldness overtook her as she reached for one of his hands and guided it upward, placing it on her left breast, over her thundering heart.
His breath came out in a huff as he yanked her closer by the small of her back with his free hand. When he ran his thumb over her nipple, she whined, nearly startling herself.
Corinne drew back, covering her face with her hands and letting her forehead hit his chest.
Aryel breathed heavily for a moment, wrapping his arms around her. “Are you all right?”
Corinne shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m making the most ridiculous sounds.”
“Corinne,” he said, removing her hands from her face. She peeked up at him. “I would sell my soul to hear you make those sounds again.”
She blinked. “Well…we can’t have you doing that.”
“No,” he said, one corner of his mouth lifting as he tucked a curl behind her ear. “Far simpler to use my hands and mouth to make that happen.”
Corinne’s breath shuddered out of her as more heat flooded her abdomen, her thighs. Aryel’s mouth found her neck again, and she wrapped her arms around him, relishing the heat from his chest pressing directly against hers. He pushed her back onto the bed, pausing before she could kiss him.
“We go only as far as you want to,” he said, his face serious as he hovered over her, one arm braced above her head. “If you change your mind at any point, if you want to stop, we stop.”
Corinne nodded, her breathing uneven.
She hadn’t really thought it all through, only that she wanted him, and he wanted her, and she trusted him to soften the landing as she fell into impiety and whatever that meant for her afterward.
Corinne lost herself in him, in his mouth claiming hers, the feeling of his hands roaming over her breasts, down her stomach. Lower.
“Can I take these off?” he asked, his lips close to her ear, his fingers at the waistband of her trousers.
“Yes,” Corinne said.
He worked quickly to unlace them, and Corinne wiggled out of them once they’d loosened around her hips, tossing them to the floor by her shirt.
He laughed, his fingers brushing her lower abdomen, and Corinne thought she might die with need, an ache building between her thighs.
He paused again, though, as his fingers glided over her left thigh, over the scar she’d almost forgotten was there.
“Corinne, what—?”
“Not now,” she whispered. She didn’t want that to tarnish this moment. “I’m fine, Ari. It’s old.”
He searched her face for a moment. “All right.”
Corinne tugged him downward, impatient to taste his lips again, and his fingers continued their light, teasing dance around her lower abdomen and thighs. He stopped as his hand drew closer to her center.
“Can I touch you?” he asked.
Corinne nodded, breathless.
“I need to hear you say yes, Corinne.”
“Yes,” she said, almost begged. “Please, Aryel.”
When he kissed her this time, his hand slipped between her legs, and she thought she might truly catch fire.
His fingers brushed her clit before running down to her entrance and back up.
Corinne had done such things to herself before, but to be touched by someone else.
..she forced herself to remember how to breathe.
Breathy whimpers huffed through her lips as he continued, his mouth finding her neck again. Her mind became a haze.
One of his fingers slipped inside her, then, and a low moan rumbled in her throat, vibrating against his mouth.
Something tightened in her lower abdomen as she dug her fingers into his back.
He added another finger and then withdrew them to draw circles over her clit again, and her hips lifted of their own accord.
“Corinne,” he said, and Corinne opened her eyes, unaware that they’d rolled shut in the first place. “Would you mind if I used my mouth?”
“I…are you not using it already?” she asked.
A smirk graced his lips. “I meant in place of my fingers.”
Oh. Oh. Corinne stared at him. “You want to do that?”
Aryel leaned in, his breath cool against her ear. “If you’ll let me.”
The thought of how he’d kissed her, his tongue and lips in place of his fingers…Corinne nearly stopped breathing. “I wouldn’t mind.”
With a wicked grin, Aryel kissed her once more, then shifted downward, trailing his mouth along her collarbone, her breasts, her stomach, lower until he settled at the edge of the bed.
His lips traced over her scar, too, lingering to kiss it so gently, before his head dipped between her muscular thighs.
The first brush of his tongue nearly shattered her.
It was an echo of what he’d done with his fingers, but somehow more indulgent, the strokes languid and intoxicating, then faster.
Corinne reached for something, anything to grip onto as he brought her ever closer to climax, her moans pitching higher each time.
One of her hands found his, and the other ran through his hair, tugging at the roots in encouragement.
Nothing on Helaera’s earth could have made her stop him right now, not when her muscles began to tense, that tightening returning in her lower abdomen.
“Ari,” she panted, and his grip on her right thigh tightened. “I—”
Before she could say anything remotely coherent, she came undone entirely, back arching as release overtook her in waves.
He guided her over the edge and back downward with his mouth and fingers, and when she blinked herself back to reality, uncurling her toes, he lifted himself up, returning to the bed beside her.
“Holy Goddess,” Corinne whispered, and Aryel laughed softly, kissing her neck.
She’d experienced climaxing a number of times, but that…her whole body had come alive. A bit of guilt began to settle in her bones, but it couldn’t overshadow the warmth that had flooded her entire being.
Aryel got up to retrieve a damp towel from his washroom, wiping his fingers and face before handing it to Corinne. It was hard to miss the straining bulge in his trousers as he climbed into bed again. Corinne swallowed hard, but he didn’t make to remove them, simply sidled closer to her.
“You—” Her voice failed her, and she cleared her throat. “You don’t want me to…?”
Aryel propped himself on his elbow, brushing her cheek with his fingers again before leaning down for a soft, chaste kiss.
“Trust me, Corinne, I want you to do whatever you want to me,” he said. “But if you’re worried about returning the favor, don’t be. You have no idea how much I enjoyed that.”
A bit of the pressure in her chest eased. “Really?”
“Really. The rest can wait.”
“If you’re sure—”
“Listen, Sunshine,” he said softly, holding her gaze in the darkness. “I’ve imagined making you come like that all week. I am more than happy for tonight to just be about you.”
Corinne was silent for a long moment, her mind scattering again. How was he able to just say such things when even dreaming about him mortified her? She lay there as he glided his fingers along her chest and neck, her thoughts a blur until they landed on something he’d said earlier.
“Weeks,” she said, turning over so she wasn’t facing him. “You said I was all you could think about for weeks.”
“Yes,” Aryel said, tracing the tattoo on her back. He pressed his lips to it, and Corinne’s eyes fluttered shut. “Since you got back from the monastery and wouldn’t talk to me or anyone else.”
That guilt overtook her again, and tears filled her eyes, her breath coming out in a shudder. Aryel wrapped an arm around her middle and drew her close, so her back was pressed against his chest.
“What is it?” he asked, his breath cool on her cheek.
The tears wouldn’t stop now, one falling across the bridge of her nose and onto the sheets beneath them.
“I’ve been terrified my whole life of being like my father,” she whispered hoarsely. “He was a Lightguard who defected. He abandoned the ways of the Goddess and kept me from the other Lightguards as a child, and then he…one day he lost control, and his magic turned to fire.”
Aryel squeezed her tightly, no doubt certain what came next.
“My mother died. I almost died. The Lightguards took me in and gave me a home, but I always felt like I had to be perfect, or else they would find out where I came from, see me for what I was. If I wasn’t perfect, if I wasn’t the best of them, I was nothing but the daughter of a defector.”
Aryel ran a hand up her arm, tracing soothing circles along her skin, over her tattoos.
“That’s why I tried to stay away from you,” she said. “And from Danai and Nik and Iliana.”
His fingers drifted downward again, lightly brushing the scar on her thigh, tracing the marred skin.
“Fire,” he said quietly. “Lightguards can summon fire?”
“Only particularly powerful ones.”
“Have you summoned fire before?”
Corinne shuddered. “Once. Before I lived at the monastery. Without Helaera’s blessing, our magic is dangerous to ourselves and others.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment, and Corinne focused on the feeling of his chest rising and falling against her back.
“I don’t want to cause you pain, Corinne,” Aryel said finally. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to abandon yourself and the Goddess. But I—”
He cut off, burying his face in her hair.
“I know it’s only been a few weeks,” he said. “And I know you’re the one protecting me, but I would do anything to keep you safe. I would do anything for you.”
Warmth enveloped her so entirely it triggered her light, her markings beginning to glow along her hands and up her arms, all the way to her chest. Aryel leaned back, and she turned to face him finally, watching every emotion play across his face in the light of her magic.
He took one of her hands and pressed his lips to the back of it, his mouth cool against her heated skin.
Corinne could only stare at him, at how beautiful he was in the glow. This wasn’t unholy or heretical. This was devotion and care and ease between two people who had spent their lives feeling like they would never be good enough.
That’s how he made her feel, she realized. Like she was enough. Like she was the sun.
“Ari,” she whispered, and he met her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to say, but her bravery faltered, and her magic faded again. “Can you get my shirt?”
One side of his mouth lifted. “I’ll get a fresh one.”
He quickly kissed her cheek before climbing out of bed to riffle through his wardrobe, returning with a loose black shirt.
“I can’t wear that outside,” she said, her brow furrowing. It would barely cover her to her thighs.
“You won’t need to,” he said. “I told you you don’t have to stand outside my door.”
Corinne took the shirt uncertainly, and he sat on the bed, one hand cupping her face.
“Please stay, Corinne,” he said.
She couldn’t deny him anything when he looked at her that way. “All right.”
While he retreated to his washroom to change into looser trousers for sleeping, Corinne slipped his shirt over her head.
It was the softest fabric she’d ever felt, falling over her bare skin like a gentle caress.
Tiredness settled deep in her bones as Aryel returned to bed and pulled her close again, her back against his chest like before.
She closed her eyes and fell into the bliss of feeling truly safe for the first time in her life.