Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ARKEN
Shortly after I sent Kieran my last, not-so-vaguely threatening message, I heard a knock at my door.
Who in the Hel…?
Tugging on a robe, I walked up to my front door, mildly irritated by the interruption until I peered through the small sentry window and saw it was him.
Breathlessly, I opened the door. “How the fuck did you get here so fast?” I demanded.
And why did you bother knocking? He knew damn well he could enter at any time now that my wards were keyed to his blood as well as my own.
“I was highly motivated,” Kieran purred. “Are you complaining, Little Conduit? I’d hate to have to waste any more time begging for your forgiveness.”
I decided at that moment, I didn’t care how he got here faster than reasonably possible, no matter how athletic the man was. All that mattered was he was here, right here, where he belonged.
Our mouths met, and all was right in my world once more.
As I came down from my third orgasm of the night, my quivering body was reaching capacity for holding any further ecstasy, no matter how perfect the release.
Kieran, too, was slowing down—gasping and spent as he rolled off me, kissing my forehead before stepping away to fetch us both some water.
Fates fucking help me, I am lost to this man.
Sated and satisfied, we curled up together beneath my sheets as I wondered how any of this lunacy was possible. How any of it was real.
Because delirium aside, this man who pulled me closer now was real, and the things I felt for him—Gods, it was the realest thing I’d ever known.
Kieran’s existence laid me bare, the truth of everything I’d ever wanted, everything I needed so concrete that it was impossible to deny what had been exposed by skin and sweat.
I thought I’d been certain. So sure, so very convinced that what we had here couldn’t possibly last. That pleasure and comfort to this impossible end was an ephemeral thing, because surely it had to be. No one could be this happy forever. Certainly not the likes of me.
But as I laid breathless in the welcome arms of Kieran Vistarii, listening to the steady beat of his heart, I had to consider the slim chance—the finite possibility of having this, having him forever.
The ever-increasing possibility that for what this man had given me already, I might never be able to let him go.
Even if I should.
“This is dangerous, Kier,” I whispered beneath my breath as he began to hum some sort of foreign lullaby, leading me down a path to slumber as he played with my hair.
So very dangerous.
“I know, Little Conduit,” he murmured, though his voice sounded content with the matter.
His slow and gentle rasp was so casual, so confident. Like the reckless game we’d been playing didn’t scare him at all. And so, I allowed the safety found in Kieran’s soft, self-assured voice to lull me back into the sweetest of dreams.
“I know.”