Chapter 41
Electra
Some days, I feel like I finally have Cillian Lowry pinned down. Other days, he’s an enigma wrapped in contradictions.
Like now.
He’s braced over me on the bed, observing me like some predator—mouth thinned, jaw sharp, and eyes pure-steel. I can’t figure out his intentions, but murder is definitely in the running. Not mine, mind you—my father’s, given how hell-bent Cillian is on keeping me from leaving.
But then he rasps, “Am I alone in having caught so many fucking feelings?” and I realize his concentrated intensity is worry that I might not feel the same way.
“Believe it or not, Lowry, I went and caught quite a few myself.”
He drops low for a kiss, his engorged crown flopping between my legs. When it hits my clit, my thighs clench and a tingle races through my core.
“We’re both fucked, then.” He kisses the edge of my jaw, then the slope of my neck.
“Soo fucked,” I say around a moan.
He picks his head up and rolls his lips like he’s trying to decide what to say next.
“What?” I ask.
He averts his gaze, focusing on my collarbone. “Nothing.”
I grip his face, forcing his eyes to mine. “You’re giving me whiplash, Cillian. What’s going on with you?”
With a sigh, he rolls over onto his back, propping his head on a bent arm and sinking his gaze on the pendant lamp that highlights every muscle, every scar, every sinew, every lock of damp, unruly hair.
I turn onto my side and reach out, feeling his heart kick as I inch my hand toward the emerald ring pendant.
He says nothing as I play with the gold band, lassoing my thumb with it before sliding it over my index finger.
It doesn’t go farther than my knuckle. I move it to my middle finger. Again, it meets bone.
As I slip it over the nail of my ring finger, his rough voice finally scrapes the air. “I’m afraid of losing you.”
“Babe, I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re going to Texas,” he mutters.
“I meant, metaphorically. Or whatever it’s called. I’m one hundred percent invested in us.”
The ring slides right down to the base of my ring finger. I push it off before… Well, before he notices it fits that finger. He probably wouldn’t, or if he did, he wouldn’t care like I—for some reason—seem to care.
“We’re from two different worlds, Electra.”
Before I—again—jump to the conclusion that he knows what I am and has been pretending otherwise this whole time, I ask, “Is this when you confess you’re an alien?”
He doesn’t even smile. “I’m not an alien.”
“Well, I’m not either,” I murmur conspiratorially.
He catches my elbow and tugs. “Come here.”
I climb him.
His large, callused hands shape my waist before sliding around me and holding me so tight that it smooshes our chests together, and I’m forced to lay my cheek in the scoop of his shoulder. “Would you marry me?”
I try to push up to see if he’s kidding, but his grip is unyielding.
“Not now, obviously. In the long run. Would you ever consider marrying a man like me?”
“No. You have way too many mood swings.”
“If I weren’t so moody, would you?”
“I’ve known you for all of two weeks. Plus, I’m only twenty, Cillian.”
“You see…”
“What am I supposed to see?” I manage to press up onto my forearms this time.
“That you’d never consider it.”
My mouth purses. “Do explain how you drew that conclusion?”
“From how fast you’re finding reasons why it wouldn’t work.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m being real. Even though I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything before, I’m starting to think we’re impossible.”
“Whatever happened to the cocky dance instructor dead set on making me fall for him?”
“He backed up and took a good, long look at his life—and himself.” Cillian’s expression is no longer tortured, just plain tragic.
“How about he stops navel-gazing and looks around him instead? Maybe then he’d see that he managed to get the girl and land an invitation to visit her homeland. A privilege, since tourists aren’t allowed in Atlantis.”
His pupils shrink before dilating when I sit up and straddle his hips.
“In case that was too subtle for you, what I’m saying is that you won me over. Which, let me tell you, is an actual feat, Lowry. So quit your pity party.”
His hardening dick brushes against my ass. I lift off his abdomen to welcome his length through, then sit back down and begin to torture him and myself with a hip thrust.
Like rubbing a magical lamp, the friction clears his sullenness right up. In minutes, his stare has taken on a feral, possessive quality, and his fingers have claimed my flesh.
He grinds me against him. Although his ridged length against my clit feels divine, I lift up once again, not to relocate myself elsewhere but to relocate him elsewhere.
“Electra,” he gasps-rasps when I’ve made his crown vanish.
Before he can yank me off him, I sink him in to the root. He hisses, then groans, then hisses again.
“You’ll be the death of me, woman…” The words are low and gravelly. Overwhelming. And not in a romantic way.
This man is a human. He might not be weak, but he’s killable. How do I keep him alive in my world?
Since I’ve stopped moving, he takes the lead and rocks me against him.
His pulse rattles his mother’s ring. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you.”
I push up onto my knees, evicting him from my depths. “Fine.”
Panic flashes through his stare. Panic and disbelief. “What are you doing?” he asks, fingers clenching around my hips, trying to ease them low again.
“Getting off your dick since you’re apparently not done with your pity party.”
He sits up, abs rippling, grabs my thighs, and hauls me forward so fast my palms fly to the headboard. “I may not deserve you, but I’ll take every damn thing you offer me.”
He squeezes my ass cheeks, driving my pussy into his face. My heart jumps, scattering beats everywhere. To think I’d scoff at passages where romance authors used the word “feasted” to describe the hero’s hunger for his companion’s body.
There is no better term to describe the fervor with which Cillian eats me out. Although his eyes are on my face, I can’t help but peek over my shoulder at his dick to check that he’s enjoying being smothered, or merely intent on my enjoyment.
When I catch his thick cock standing proud, I let go of my reservations and give in to the sensation. I even begin to ride his face.
Tiny constellations ignite behind my lids and flare as the mother of all orgasms hits and billows outward—into my nipples, my toes, my fingertips. Even the roots of my hair crackle like I’m combusting from within, transforming into vaporous heat.
Though Cillian’s grip on my ass is firm, I find myself clawing at the headboard to stay upright, probably ruining it like Cillian has just ruined my body with his expert tongue. He keeps lapping at me, seemingly intent on absorbing every last drop of my release.
He’d probably keep at it if I didn’t take mercy on his lungs and remove my pussy from his face. I collapse onto my side, right at the level of his very erect penis.
“That—right there—was the single best orgasm of my whole, entire life.” I grip his sex and tug at the skin, intent on returning the favor.
He licks his lips, watching me through half-lidded eyes, then palms my raw pussy before slipping a lazy finger through my folds.
“I’m going to be dreaming of tonight.”
“Me, too,” he murmurs.
“When I get back, I request a repeat.”
Cillian freezes up again, like he’d somehow forgotten I was leaving.
I tug on his silken length, loving how pliant and warm and veiny it is. I slip my thumb over the thin slit that’s shiny with precum. Though his abdomen contracts and his ribs spread, his expression remains pinched.
I prop myself up on an elbow and bring my mouth to his dick. When I close my lips around him, he shudders. I work his shaft and suck until he growls, “I’m about to blow.”
I pop him out to say, “Blow away.” And then I draw him back in.
He blows.
Oh…how he blows.
His climax comes out in powerful spurts that ribbon down my throat and cause me to gag.
He sweeps a finger along my cheekbone. “You’re incredible,” he murmurs reverently.
When I release him, he shifts in order to prop his back against the headboard and holds out his arms to beckon me forward. I knee-walk toward him and settle in a straddle.
He brushes a strand of hair out of my eyes, gazing at me with an intensity that feels more intimate than the joining of our bodies. And then he slants his mouth over mine in a kiss so tender I feel it in my heart.
It’s only in the early hours of the morning, as I get dressed while he remains asleep on the sex-rumpled sheets, that I realize Malachi hasn’t crossed my mind in days.
Cillian Lowry didn’t just obliterate my crush. He eclipsed it.
Who would’ve thought? Besides Fiona…
Gaea, how she’ll gloat once I confess she was right and I was wrong.
I stop on the threshold between the bedroom and the sitting area to gaze back at Cillian’s peaceful figure. At his muscled legs tangled in the stone-gray sheets, and his mussed hair falling across his brow.
I’m not even gone, and I already miss his weight and scent. How is it possible to fall for someone so quickly?
As I enter the elevator, I turn my phone back on, wanting…
no, needing to phone Calanthe and tell her everything.
Before calling her though, I text Gael that I’m on my way home and will need a few minutes to pack.
And then I stop by the front desk to order one of everything off the breakfast menu for Cillian, settle the bill, and order a taxi.
It’s only once I’m inside the cab that I notice twenty missed calls and six text messages from Calanthe. My heart flatlines. I call her back immediately, but the phone rings and rings.
When it goes to voicemail, I pound out a message followed by six question marks and double that in exclamation marks, and then I call Tarian.
“I’m in a meeting, Elle. Is this an emergency?” he asks.
“Is Callie okay? She called me a hundred times, but now she’s not picking up.”
“She’s at your house.”
“But she’s okay?”
“She’s fine.”
“Okay.”
Tarian’s promise should calm me, but it doesn’t, because I still don’t know the reason for her numerous phone calls.
As Tarian warned, Calanthe is in my kitchen, propped on a counter stool, chatting with Gael and Alexander.
She takes a sip of iced water from a tall glass, her hazel eyes assessing me. “Brought some muffins. Didn’t realize I’d be feeding half a football team, though.”
“Your phone,” I say, a little breathless. “I called you.”
“Called you too.” After a beat, she says, “I hear we’re heading to Texas.”
Have I just entered some alternate dimension? “We? You’re coming?”
“Of course, I’m coming. Do you know that I’ve never visited that state?”
I sense sightseeing isn’t her motive, and I’m proven right the moment we step into my bedroom.
“You’d better not have been planning to leave without telling me,” she hisses as she shuts my door.
“I would’ve told you.” Eventually… Just like I plan on telling Dorian…eventually. “Are you really coming with me? I mean, I appreciate it, but—”
“I’m really coming.”
“Is Tarian also coming?”
“He’ll join us for dinner tonight.” She looks me up and down, lingering on my finger-combed hair. “Now tell me…where did you sleep last night?”