Chapter 28 Astraea #2
Nyte ran his fingers lightly over the black spiderwebbing around my abdomen. I wished I could erase his pain every time he tracked the growth of it with panic in his eyes. He pulled out of me and knelt, pressing his lips over the darkening skin.
“I’m going with you,” he muttered. The vibrations scattered over my skin. He kissed the tip of the vines just over my ribs. “Wherever you go, I’m going with you.”
Even to death is what he didn’t say. The thought inspired a soul-deep ache.
“You can’t just give up on life like that,” I said quietly.
Nyte sucked my nipple and I bit my lip. He kissed between my collarbones; then his hand cupped my nape and he devoured me with a kiss that left me lightheaded by the time he let me breathe.
“Have I not made myself clear? You are my life.”
Nyte sank his cock into me again; this time he picked up pace, which had me clawing at his back.
He kissed me to swallow as much of the noise escaping me as he could.
With this pace and demand, the noise from the dresser was too much.
Nyte seemed to realize that too as he lifted me off, only to drop me next to it and spin me around.
I was so delirious in my lust that I barely had time to reorient myself when he kicked my feet to widen my stance.
“Hands on the wall and arch your back for me,” he instructed. I did and he wasted no time in sinking back into me. Far less noise in this position, save for his skin against mine and the mixed sounds of breathless pleasure we tried to contain.
It was torturous to be … mindful of the household.
After a while of building ecstasy, Nyte’s hand curled around my throat, testing my flexibility by pulling me up to him with my back still curved so he could fuck me.
“I’ve dreamed of the home we could have. Not just in the castle. I’d build you whatever you want, wherever you desire. A place that is just ours.”
“Yes,” I breathed, wanting that more than anything. “Just ours.”
The bell tower was high and precious, but if we were triumphant in finding our peace, if I could live through this deadly ailment, there would be nothing to hide from anymore.
I wanted a house with water and forest nearby.
Somewhere private but not hidden. I wanted that gift for us more than anything, and we deserved it.
Nyte pulled out suddenly, and I stifled a whimper when he released me.
“I need to taste you,” he said thickly.
He led me over to the fireplace and knelt on the rug.
I copied his movement and he claimed my mouth in a long, deep kiss, coaxing me to lie back.
He stopped only to reach for the cushions on the armchair and slip one under my head, then he took another, tucking it under my lower back.
I melted over his tender care with me as his mouth descended on my body.
“Quiet, remember. Or I’ll have to punish you,” he muttered, reaching past my navel, and my hips lifted, greedy for him to reach the growing heat between my legs.
His fingers dipped through my slickness, and a guttural sound resonated in his throat.
“You’re soaked for me,” he said, kissing the inside of my thigh. “Just as I hoped.”
Nyte licked me, and my hand lashed down to grab a fistful of his hair. He took his time at first, teasing me until I was so breathless and needy that I couldn’t stop myself from rolling my hips against his face.
“So greedy,” he said sinfully. Then he devoured me.
His hands hooked around my thighs, trying to keep me still, but I was quickly chasing an orgasm, undulating my hips in tandem with his assault.
His tongue dipped inside me and flicked at my opening.
I was conflicted over whether I wanted his fingers or cock inside me to make me finish or if I wanted to come with his mouth alone.
I wasn’t getting a choice when his hold tightened and he focused all his attention on the sensitive bud, racing me toward another shattering end.
My thighs clamped around his head, and my hands splayed out on either side of me, my back bowing off the ground with a silent scream.
I came down in a shaking, helpless mess as Nyte slowed his movements.
The climax was still tingling my skin when his cock pushed inside my tight channel. Then it was like that orgasm wouldn’t end, only roll into another with his thrusts hitting a perfect spot inside me.
“Fuck,” he rasped, voice strained with his impending release. “Say you’re mine.”
“I’m yours,” I rasped, meeting him stroke for stroke with the lift of my hips.
I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours.
“Ready to come with me again?”
“Yes,” I mewled.
“Good fucking girl.” He said each word between thrusts before he came, spending himself inside me in long, jutting strokes.
He pulled out abruptly, replacing his cock with his fingers, pushing his release back inside me, and I came again to the primal claim it felt like. He didn’t stop until I was a shuddering, sweat-slicked mess. He knelt between my legs with his other hand pumping his cock.
When I deflated from that earth-shattering climax, I lay there near bursting from happiness and love. So much love for Rainyte, who kissed his way slowly back up my body.
Nyte went to retrieve all the cushions from the bed to bring before the fireplace while I was reluctant to move from the warm bliss. When I saw the two angry purple scars from his torn-out wings, a piece of me withered inside.
I pushed up, the black bedsheet half covering me now as he settled back down, arranging the cushions. He stopped moving at my touch on his shoulder.
Neither of us spoke, but as Nyte turned a little more, I took that as permission to trace my fingers over his back.
“I don’t miss them,” Nyte said, as if that was my concern. “I have a far bigger set of wings now. I can’t decide if it should be humorous or not.”
He was hiding what losing his wings meant to him. Though he had Eltanin to fly with, I couldn’t imagine the void that had been left inside him when his wings were taken. I felt compelled to touch those thick scars, like they called for me to discover something about him.
When I touched his wing scars, I gasped at the tug within me.
As if it pulled me through a void. I didn’t know where I was, stolen away from our room.
It was a similar sensation to when my own memories filtered their way into the present after they’d been lost, trying to get me to understand something I couldn’t remember. Except this was Nyte’s memory.
I saw a woman with flaming red hair whose beauty was too perfect to be of mortal nature. She seemed so angry, but an anger that was crafted of pain. She reminded me a lot of … Nyte.
I was sucked back to the brown surroundings of Nadir’s home by Nyte, who held my wrist while fire danced across his concerned expression.
“When you were asleep … where did you go?” I asked, a little breathless because the vision had felt so raw and real. Nyte harbored such strong pain and yearning toward that woman that my eyes pricked with the echo of his emotions.
Nyte’s face relaxed in surprise. “I think I went … home. Or at least my mind did.”
“Who was that woman? With the red hair?”
His brow twitched as he stared at nothing in particular. “My mother.”
I was slammed with shock. He didn’t elaborate, and I tried to read his face, wondering if it had caused him more pain or given him closure to have met her.
“What was she like?” I asked, tracing the golden marks absentmindedly up his forearm.
“She was … everything I could have become,” he said honestly.
His tone was haunted. “I would have … if you died and weren’t going to come back, I would have fallen down a similar dark path.
She started a continent-wide war because of me.
Five hundred years ago when I was taken from her.
She’d suffered a lot before that, and I guess losing me snapped her for good. ”
A fist tightened in my chest; my lips pressed to his shoulder where we sat in a comfortable entanglement of limbs.
“Being in that realm, did you find what you were looking for?”
A part of Nyte had always been lost and, while I couldn’t comprehend how his experience was possible, I hoped he gained the closure about his mother and the birth realm he didn’t know he’d been looking for.
“I think so,” he said quietly. “Or at least … I know without a doubt I don’t want to go back. I learned where I came from, and I also discovered the only place I truly belong is with you. Wherever that might be.”
I kissed the corner of his mouth, and he cupped my cheek.
“I belong with you too. I always have,” I whispered.
I climbed onto his lap, breaking into a slow grin when I felt him.
“We might have a lot of irritable friends to face in the morning,” he murmured huskily, getting the same idea as me. His arm snaked around me, pulling me down fully on his hardening cock.
“Friends,” I repeated, then kissed him softly.
The term was so endearing, so hopeful, coming from him. He’d lost most of the golden guard, who he’d only started to regard as such before they were murdered right in front of him. It flared hope in me that his heart hadn’t sealed completely because of it.
“They are more like pesky little rodents we can’t seem to get rid of,” he muttered.
I giggled, and Nyte smiled when I did. He was such a precious sight when he smiled.
“I want to hear more about your realm,” I said.
Nyte blew out a long breath, seeming to tunnel back. “It’s a very long story.”
I lifted my hips and reached between us, taking him into my body again. His fingers dug into my side with his arm still hooked around me, and he groaned, planting his lips on my chest.
“Tell me when we win,” I whispered.