Chapter 28 Astraea
Astraea
We rode Eltanin until our burdens were distant enough to bear the weight of the ground. Now, Nyte’s warmth pressed against my back while we lay in the bath in our room in Nadir’s home. His bare flesh wrapped around me like a shield against the emptiness that always threatened to creep in.
His touch was slow, deliberate, tracing patterns along my skin that sent shivers through me—not from cold, but from the raw, aching fear that this was fleeting, that he could slip away at any moment.
Every brush of his fingertips felt like a promise he couldn’t make.
An invisible tether wound us tighter together every day but I was too afraid to trust in its strength not to break us apart again.
My breath hitched as his hand skimmed the curve of my arm, his presence so solid, so real, and yet a fragile part of me screamed that it wouldn’t last. He’d been taken from me too many times.
Nyte had gone after his father days ago, and though everything he relayed terrified me, and I had been angry because he’d risked himself so soon after coming back to me … right now I couldn’t be anything but grateful he was here.
“How am I going to tell Zephyr?” I whispered, heartbroken about Katerina, who had been such a light, a brave and encouraging spirit, when we’d been captive together in the Keep of Alisus.
“I’ll be right there with you,” he said; it was all he could offer.
The more he touched me, the more I ached to hold him tighter. Zephyr had lost his mate, and he hadn’t even been there for a chance to save her. That fact ached so deep in my soul.
“Don’t leave me.” Those words slipped out in my fear. “We do everything together from now on, promise me?”
Nyte’s lips pressed to my wet shoulder.
“You and me,” he murmured over my skin. “I promise.”
After the hellish month without the real and tender parts of him, lying against his authentic self in these hot bath waters made the misery worth bearing to reach this.
The wound from the wood piercing my side was almost healed with Lilith’s help. Auster’s stab wound had scabbed over too, but the thin black vines of Nyte’s blood continued to spread, so slowly it wasn’t detectable to most. Nyte noticed every fraction they crawled closer to my heart.
I couldn’t let it distract me. While I still had breath in my lungs and fight in my body, I would charge forward in this war to banish the gods for good.
Nyte’s lips pressing to my neck pulled a soft sigh of contentment from me. He’d been so tender and careful with me these last few days, but I needed him closer than he’d allowed.
Now that I was healed enough, I rocked my hips back, encouraging him to drink from me. He groaned against my throat.
“You’re going to feel me deep inside you,” he muttered huskily. “But not like this.”
“Please,” I begged pathetically.
“I don’t need your blood, and I won’t risk it harming you in your condition.”
I hadn’t considered that possibility, and a surge of new rage for the curse Auster set in motion ran through me. Nyte felt my anger and quickly made it melt with the dip of his fingers past my navel while his lips trailed over my shoulder with soft kisses.
“I’ll make up for it in many other ways, I assure you.”
His fingers slipped between my legs. My back arched into him with the sparks of pleasure as he circled my apex, my legs pushed apart as far as the bath would allow.
Nyte’s other hand smothered my cry, anticipating my climax.
“Do you want to announce to the others what I’m doing to you?” he said sinfully. “I won’t mind. I’ll release you and have you calling out my name for this whole house to hear.”
In my cloud of lust, I hardly had consideration for anyone or my own decency, but I was glad Nyte retained enough of his mind to know I’d be hiding in embarrassment when we faced them in the morning. I bit his fingers instead.
“Come for me, Starlight,” he whispered by my ear; then his tongue licked over his mating mark.
I became shattering stars in his arms. Nyte held me against him tightly as my body trembled. He kept up the glide of his fingers, which slowed with the comedown of my climax.
“Good girl,” he said thickly, planting tender kisses along my collar.
Though I was still panting and shuddering, I wasn’t done with him.
I floated around in the water to face him. The tub was big enough, so I straddled him. Sparks of oversensitivity had me gripping the bath’s edge from the friction of his hard cock between my legs. His expression pinched in pure lust as he gripped my hips, aiding the slide of me against him.
“Not enough for you, was it?” he taunted.
“Not even close.”
“I want to take it slow tonight,” he said tenderly. His tongue flicked over my nipple, and he groaned when my chest pushed into him for more. “I’m going to stretch out every hour with you. It seems there’s no rest for the wicked since you’re adamant that we can’t stay here for a few more days.”
“It’s a race out there. For dragons and for key pieces.”
“You’re right. Though a part of me still wants to convince you to watch the world burn with me, because I’d still have everything. I’d have you.”
It was then, in his beautiful words and unwavering devotion, that I knew no matter what wounded my heart it would always be healed.
As long as I could find him, I would never be lost. I was made of many fractured parts, but Nyte was all the light and darkness between the cracks which held me together.
That made something broken feel stronger than ever before.
I kissed him deeply. The kind of kiss that warmed and tangled in our souls.
When we broke apart, our faces stayed close, and I traced my finger idly over his scar across his cheek.
The one I’d carved on him during a time I thought he’d betrayed me.
It was always in the most perfect moments that vulnerability clawed within.
Recalling the chaos we’d escaped from at the temple, a new fear had been unsettling me.
“When you found me—when I was Lightsdeath—I didn’t know who you were. I remember it all now, but at the time … your soul was so dark all I wanted to do was reap it. I don’t ever want to look at you and not remember who you are, and I’m scared I don’t know how to control this new power inside me.”
Despite my confession, Nyte didn’t appear the least bit concerned.
“I know,” he said thoughtfully, playing with the wet lengths of my hair. “We’ve been through this before with Nightsdeath, and you never left me. I’m never leaving you, even when you want to kill me.”
His lips twitched in humor, and it released the tension from my body.
“I need to learn to control it. With all we’ll face, Lightsdeath is going to surface, and I don’t want to be afraid; I don’t want it to be a curse. I want to use this power.”
“Good. We’ll practice every moment we can on our journey.”
He kissed my arm, my chest; Nyte was so relaxed and unafraid that it was contagious.
Then something disturbed him. “I can’t apologize enough for what you suffered because of me.”
I was confused for a moment before I realized what he meant.
“Nightsdeath isn’t you.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No. We are not our worst selves. There is so much good in you, Rainyte.”
“For you. But if you left me again … I wouldn’t just watch the world self-destruct, I would collapse it myself. If I’m poison, you’re the antidote. If I’m fire, you’re water. I am completely destructive without you. That has not changed.”
I contemplated his words. “If I’m the star, you’re the night. If I’m the rose, you’re the vine. I’m completely lost without you. So I think it’s in everyone’s best interest that we win this war together.”
Nyte’s smile was so endearing it hurt before he kissed me softly. My fingers threaded through his hair and tightened, my mouth opened for the sweep of his tongue. I moaned lightly in the breaths that shorted between us.
When my hips next rocked forward, his cock lined up perfectly to sink into me unexpectedly when I eased back. I couldn’t stop the noise that left me then, breaking our kiss suddenly.
Nyte reprimanded me with his teeth pinching my nipple, which had the opposite effect.
“I wish we were alone so you could scream for me,” Nyte said, voice gravely with lust.
Neither of us moved with him seated and fully inside me. Nyte’s fingers reached for the tangled wet hair over my shoulder, pushing it behind me so I could marvel at his bite.
“So beautiful,” he said. “I missed you so fucking much.”
I started lifting my hips, which sloshed the water around us, close to spilling over the edge.
“I want to fuck you, but we’ll flood the place if we stay in here,” Nyte said.
I gasped, clamping around him tightly when he stood with me from the tub.
“We’ll soak the sheets,” I protested in a near squeal when he was about to drop me, my skin dripping wet, onto the bed.
“If you want me to fuck you against the wall you need only ask.”
He headed over to the side of the room, but instead set me upon a dresser.
“Touch yourself for me,” he said, holding one of my ankles to keep me spread wide while he watched.
My cheeks flushed, but I reached between my legs and began circling my apex. Nyte swore, pumping his cock slowly with his other hand, eyes wild with my every movement. I curved two fingers into myself with slow strokes, alternating between fucking myself and rubbing myself.
“You can go deeper,” he groaned.
I sank into myself to my knuckles, and Nyte’s expression pained pleasure. The next time I pulled out, Nyte stepped forward, plunging into me fully and without warning. His hand planted on the wall by my head as his rugged breaths broke a shiver down my chest. He stared down to where we joined.
“Fucking incredible.” He fucked me slow and deep, savoring how perfectly we fit together, and I was so euphorically full.