Chapter 65 Nikolai
Nikolai
She tastes like springtime. Sweet and fresh and melting like snow. I guide her arms around my waist, where they enthusiastically tighten, before slipping my own hands around her back, sliding one up and cupping the back of her head.
Taera doesn’t know how to kiss yet. I smile when, between her little gasps, her lips try to mimic mine. Her quickened breathing only accelerates when I pull her body flush to mine, and she rises to her toes, trying to press closer to me. I let out a groan.
I’m kissing her to sate her desire; I’m kissing her to sate my own.
With one night left of her, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted to spend it like this.
The giddy wonder of her blazing excitement reminds me to go slowly.
But keeping a clear head is difficult with her magic pounding against me like a heartbeat, flooding me with her sensations—compounding my own—and requiring concentration to keep her buzzing power from taking over.
To distract my hands from roaming too far, I tangle my fingers in her hair and tilt her head to the side.
Breaking away from her soft, eager lips, I trail kisses across her cheek until I reach her ear, making her quiver.
I ease down the slope of her neck, supporting her as her knees threaten to give way.
I will not kiss any lower than her neck, despite the delicious heat of her skin calling me.
Taera wriggles closer, rubbing up against me like a leopard.
I’m hardly aware of casting shadows across the room, dimming my chambers until my source is lit only by a warm candle-like flickering.
Fuck, I can’t even help myself as I split the ceiling with darkness, throwing stars across it and letting the desert air catch her hair.
The marble floor dissolves into sand beneath my feet, and Taera gasps, her eyes opening to stare around us.
Her resulting smile is warm and shy, widening until she’s beaming up at me.
This source is my undoing.
I’m just supposed to satisfy her—satisfy my own cravings. Instead, I throw caution to the warm desert wind. My hands find Taera’s waist, and I lift her onto my bed. She pulls at me, clutching my robes, and I yield, leaning down on top of her and letting some of my weight pin her beneath me.
Drunk on her magic, I warm my sheets beneath her back and cool the breeze across her arms. Weaving the wind into a paintbrush, I sweep soft circles over her palms, then trace up her wrists and toward her shoulders.
I hold my power back before it dips lower, seeking out the curves of her chest. Instead, I settle for trailing hot kisses down her exposed neck.
My source is a nervous, sweet, innocent bundle of gasps and tiny jumps as I suckle her skin.
She’s too self-conscious to make any noise louder than a whimper; she cuts off the one moan that tries to slip out.
The intensity of everything, even through the bond of magic, has me pulling away to let her sensitive skin recover.
She shivers and laughs breathlessly before her fingers find my hair and she tugs me closer once again.
My own breath comes harder; I fucking love that she’s pulling my hair.
I growl, working to keep her roaring magic under control so it doesn’t go off between us like fireworks.
Fuck, her magic feels good, though. She aches with need, desperate to be close to me, and my own desire is far from contained.
I want to lose myself in her. Her magic, demanding my focus, is the only thing keeping my own heated impulses in check.
My breathing is labored, and I restrain myself from pressing my erection against her stomach.
But when she curls her foot around mine, I let her capture my thigh between her legs.
The heat of her hot core pressed against me is enough to drive me insane.
She rolls her hips up against the weight of my leg, her earlier bashfulness gone, like she can’t get enough.
It’s sinfully sweet. And incredibly fucking hot.
And through her burning desire, I feel her yearning, her helplessness, even as she squirms and tilts her hips, searching for more friction.
I shift more of my weight between her legs. I know I shouldn’t. I should be a gentleman, help my frazzled source calm down and compose herself. I should not be urging her toward an orgasm against my thigh. Fuck, has she ever had an orgasm before?
Unfortunately, I’m not a gentleman. I’m a magician.
“Do you want more?” I murmur. Her heartbeat spikes—the thrill of it leaping through her magic—she nods. The tension of holding myself back tightens into cords beneath my skin. I need this as much as she does.
“I’m not going to touch you.” It’s a strict reminder to myself, not just for her sake.
“Please.” The source beneath me panics. I frown, then I realize she thinks I’m putting an end to this. I chuckle, grinning down at her.
“I’d like to use magic.”
Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t hesitate. “Okay.”
I send a ripple of power cascading down her body, a waterfall of silk.
I only allow for a sliver of sensation to caress her nipples, her stomach, the ache between her legs.
Taera’s mouth pops open when my magic brushes her there, and she lets out a small, needy noise.
Her eyes fall closed, and I memorize her every twitch, every breath, every way her body reaches for more.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” I murmur, lowering my lips to her ear. “Or not enough.”
I wait for her shy nod before I free my leg from between hers. She whimpers at the loss of pressure—until I seat myself atop her hips, pinning them down.
Leaning forward to capture her lips, I let my magic run free.
It caresses her body, fluttering feather-light across her skin and finding the apex of her thighs.
Taera breaks the kiss, gasping and squirming.
Her hips jerk even as I hold them in place.
When her magic slowly adjusts to the intimacy, I thicken the sensation into a rumbling pressure.
Her eyes flash open, her face thrilled and afraid. I pull my power back.
“Too much?” I ask.
Her face flushes, her lips parting to whisper, “No.”
“No, as in you want me to stop?” I grin.
“Please don’t stop, Nikolai.”
My magic returns with a deep purr, exactly where she needs it, and she shakes beneath me. When her need spirals out of control I offer her more pressure, then pull back when the intensity becomes too much. She quivers, unable to hold still.
“Nikolai!” she gasps, and her eyes fly to mine. I brush a kiss across her reddened lips and set my power free.
Taera screams, and her body quakes. She cries my name until it turns incomprehensible, and her magic explodes through me.
I tense, fighting to keep the spike of power from consuming me, from destroying the entire room.
She thrashes and writhes in her pleasure, her hands fisting in my hair and pulling hard, and I ride out her orgasm in short, shallow breaths.
When her fingers finally go limp, I relax my magic into a soothing warmth that blankets her body.
My heart thunders in my own chest, and it takes a full minute to catch my breath.
I have to adjust my painful hardness. My beautiful source doesn’t notice.
Taera’s eyes rest closed, and her breathing deepens, with a faint smile still painted across her lips.
I shift her to the center of the bed, and she makes a sleepy noise. Her eyes flutter open, find me, and she sighs.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she murmurs.
“What part?”
“Mmm, yes.” She closes her eyes with a smile before snuggling her cheek against me. “All of it.”
I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Chuckling under my breath, I lean against the headboard, looking down at her. I briefly think of moving, but her smile is too endearing. Looks like I’ll be sharing my bed again tonight.
After all, I’m leaving her tomorrow.
The thought hollows me more than I care to admit.
Even though this is what she asked for, one night, she deserves better than a single evening of pleasure before I leave her behind.
She was the one to unlock the mirror, for the labyrinth’s sake, allowing me to study the lost language from the figure behind the mirror.
I would be a fool to let her go—to let her become anyone else’s source.
My chest grows heavy as I watch Taera’s innocent, hopeful face, as I imagine what the other students will do to her once I’m gone.
I’m struck, violently, by the need to protect her, to keep her close.
The force of it blindsides me. I care for Taera too damn much to leave her in the hands of monsters.
“Do you want to come with me?”
For a moment, I think my source is asleep and my foolish proposal will be swallowed up by the night. But then, Taera tilts her head and blinks up at me with soft eyes.
“Where?” Her eyebrows scrunch slightly.
“When I leave the Halls, do you want to come with me?” I frown, not wanting her to misinterpret. “You will still have to return here, to train your magic. But if you like, you can come with me tomorrow.”
I still don’t know why I’m offering this to the desert girl I met not a month ago. This isn’t me. I don’t go soft after a kiss. It must be something to do with Taera.
“Okay.” She smiles. Her eyes fall closed again, and she tucks her nose into my side. It’s sweeter than it has any right to be. My mind feels quiet. Whole.
I slip away to prepare for sleep, and Taera just curls up into a ball on my bed, her breathing even and slow.
Once again, I’ve turned my life upside down for her without a second thought.
The perplexing part is I don’t regret inviting her.
If anything, I’m tentatively pleased she’s going to meet Hazel.
I also find myself smiling as I imagine what adorably flustered expression Taera will make upon waking up in my bed. Again.
“What is this source doing to me?” my shadow murmurs, carefully out of sight and sound of my sleeping source.
“I don’t know.”