17. Chapter 17 #2
There she was, a goddess on her knees, and I was all but helpless beneath her hands. She took me into her mouth and lightning shot up my spine. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I forced myself to watch as she hollowed her cheeks around my length.
I struggled to breathe as she worked the rest of me with her callused hands, the rasp of her rough skin a heady contrast to the slick heat of her mouth and the gentle stroking of her tongue.
Sands, I wished to just let her have her way with me, but I couldn’t help how my hands drifted to her hair and my hips stuttered. My sanity hung by a quickly fraying thread, and my control with it. Keera looked up at me through her lashes and nodded slightly.
It was all the encouragement I needed before pulling her down on my length until her nose brushed my stomach. She gagged but didn’t fight me. The nails of her free hand scraped against my thigh, the slight sting only heightening the blinding pleasure of her throat tightening around me.
I plunged myself into her waiting mouth again and again, as a string of profanities and praises tumbled from my lips unbidden.
“You’re so perfect. I’d cross the desert a million more times and dive into another nest of tricriths to have your mouth on me.”
My voice was gravelly with pleasure as Keera moaned around me, the vibrations shooting straight up my spine.
“I need you more than I need air. I feel as though I’m dying every moment I go without touching you. If loving you could save the desert, then the way I feel about you could protect its existence for all time.”
Keera squirmed on the ground, trying to rub her legs together, and I couldn’t deny her pleasure any longer. With a pained groan, I pulled out of her mouth, watching the way her tongue chased after me as if mesmerized, before remembering I had something better in mind.
I scooped her up off the floor and deposited her on the altar again, this time on her back.
I nearly ripped her pants with the force I used to pull them down her legs.
I couldn’t get them all the way off over her boots in my haste, but she managed to kick one off, leaving them hanging around one ankle.
It didn’t matter. Her tan skin glowed in the moonlight, and my goddess lay splayed open on her altar, waiting to be worshipped. Keera’s beauty as her dark hair splayed across the pale stone and her chest heaved was otherworldly, and I was helplessly caught in her gravity.
Finally, I ran my fingers through her folds, finding them already soaked, before circling her entrance. Her wetness coated my hand and dripped over my wrist, making me growl in equal parts hunger and satisfaction.
I wanted to drink down all of her, and I knew it would still never be enough. I crooked my hand to slide my fingers inside her, but where I had intended to be gentle, Keera angled her hips to drive herself onto me.
“So greedy,” I tried to tease, betrayed by the way my own cock strained toward her. “And it won’t do to let a goddess beg in a temple.”
I pulled my hand from her, and she made a noise of protest, but I shushed her by shoving my dripping fingers into her mouth and lined up my cock at her entrance. Her whine cut off in a sharp gasp as I drove into her in one sharp thrust.
I paused, reveling at the way she fluttered around me and the rightness of the moment.
We were meant to be one, just as the desert’s Heart was meant to be whole and unbroken.
Our magic danced and twisted, just like it always had since the first time I had buried myself inside her, but now it was just as frenzied and desperate as I was.
I moved my hands to her thighs and held Keera’s legs wide as I began to move. Her breaths came in short pants, and she threw her head back in pleasure. It wasn’t enough. I wanted her—needed her—to come apart at the seams like I did.
I hooked one of her legs over my shoulder, freeing up a hand to rub where we were joined. She whimpered and tightened around me to the point it became nearly a chore to pull back out. But I did, so I could drive back into her again, hard enough to make her slide up the altar with each thrust.
My head was spinning and my vision blurred, but I wouldn’t relent until I felt her shatter around me.
I rubbed her faster, my fingers slipping through the obscene wetness as I traced circles around her most sensitive point.
Finally, she stiffened, mouth open in a silent cry as the rush of her pleasure washed down the tether between us.
My own release slammed into me so hard my vision went white, and I bit down on her calf where it rested on my shoulder to stifle my roar.
When my sight finally returned, I met Keera’s dazed golden eyes. If passion was what the desert needed to heal her Heart, we had certainly given her more than enough, sacrificed willingly on her altar.
But my mind didn’t want to think about such things right now.
Instead, it wanted to keep Keera close. So, I did.
I pulled her into my arms and slid us both down, so I sat with my back propped against the altar, and Keera lay cradled against my chest. She was safe in the cage of my arms as our breathing evened out.
A languid warmth settled into my veins, even heavier than the peace that normally overcame me after laying with Keera. A quiet voice in my mind reminded me that we shouldn’t linger here, with enemies so nearby.
But for the moment, Keera was safe and appeared equally sleepy and sated.
I inhaled the sunshine scent of her hair and found that a strange, sweet smell mixed with it.
In fact, the air was hazy, as if with the smoke of burning incense.
Or perhaps my vision was still blurred from the intensity of our intimacy.
I inhaled deeply again. I had the brief, uneasy thought that the smell was oddly familiar—like the steam from the lyra leaf tea I choked down as a child.
But even the panic brought by such a thought was drowned out by the lethargy working its way through my veins.
I relaxed as darkness took me, my mind strangely quiet after so much noise and Keera asleep on my chest.
A hand on my shoulder and a clamoring in my head woke me violently. It wasn’t just the voices in my skull—although those were loud too—but the splitting headache like after a night of too much laka that brought me to awareness with a groan.
“Erix,” a sharp voice demanded, firmly, but not unkindly. It was Aderyn’s signature no-nonsense tone, indicating something serious was afoot.
I opened my eyes to find myself still in the temple, only barely dressed with my pants slung low on my hips and my tunic still discarded.
“What happened? Why didn’t you and Keera return last night?” Aderyn demanded, looking around the temple as if it could provide answers. I almost reddened thinking what the walls had witnessed and was glad they couldn’t speak. But the urgency in Aderyn’s tone drew me away from such contemplations.
“Keera…” I looked around, finding her notably absent, explaining why my mind, which had been strangely quiet when I went to sleep, was now all but screaming in protest. Her clothes, which had been laying crumpled on the ground with mine, were also missing.
I looked to Aderyn, but she shook her head, indicating she hadn’t seen her.
Fear started to rise in my chest, tinged dark with an edge of anger.
I shot to my feet, ignoring the pounding in my head and striding out of the temple.
I was still barely clothed, but that hardly mattered as I looked around, trying to find Keera’s silhouette.
I reached down the tether at the same time, finding her end fuzzy and muted. She wasn’t gone, like she had been the time she had shut herself beneath the mountain, but it was hazy, as it had been when she’d been drugged in the palace infirmaries.
Drugged. We must have been drugged by the odd smoke I smelled on the air.
I whirled around finding Aderyn looking at me with apprehension.
“Where’s my wife?” I nearly spat. I tried to reign in the terror and rage that overwhelmed my mind, but they were too strong.
Aderyn pressed her lips in a line. “If she didn’t wander off on her own for some reason, there is only one place she could be.”
She pointed over my shoulder, and I spun to look at the encampment of General Warrick’s men. I blinked, finding it had nearly tripled in size from the patch of beached boats and campfires we had seen flickering in the distance last night. Now there were tents and…
“Horses,” I murmured in confusion before horror washed over me like icy water from the mountain springs in Kelvadan.
A black banner flapped at the top of the largest tent, and I couldn’t see it from this distance, but I knew it would be emblazoned with the snake that I once fashioned myself after.
Izumi and the other clans were here.