Chapter Eighteen #2
Perhaps he found a partner of his own and headed back to the villa.
The thought makes me inexplicably tense, though I cannot explain why. It is no business of mine who he brings through the warded doors of his bedchamber. For all I know he keeps a full harem behind that thick slab of crystal.
I’ve heard you’ve quite the appetite…Melité’s voice purrs in my memory. You like to sample a wide variety of flavors…
I press my spine harder against the rocky edge of the pool, attempting to ground myself in the present.
Clinging to my fraying sense of calm, I close my eyes on the stars and pull in a huge gulp of air.
My emotions are uncomfortably close to the surface, however I try to force them down.
My heart aches like an open wound, each beat pumping with contradictory feelings.
And between my legs, at the very core of me, a different sort of ache—one stirred awake by siren song and building in strength all evening, no matter how I try to suppress it.
One I am desperate to relieve before it consumes me from the inside out.
Through slivered lids, I scan the steaming surface for witnesses, but there is no one around to see.
This particular pool was mostly unoccupied even before the mass exodus.
On a sharp exhale, I allow my hand to slip between my parted thighs.
My teeth score into my bottom lip, containing a gasp as my fingers find the source of all my pent-up pleasure.
Yes.
Gods, yes.
This is what I crave, what I’ve been craving for hours. Blissful release from the torturous uproar within. My fingers circle, chasing gratification with an impatience that normally might embarrass me, even alone beneath my bedcovers. But in this moment, I feel nothing except pure need.
I am so caught up, it takes me a moment to detect the gentle churn of unseen currents flowing around me—starting at my feet, moving up my legs, climbing from my fingertips to my arms, then winding around my shoulders.
It is like being wrapped in an embrace. My back arches against the stone as warm tendrils of water slide over my damp skin with languid caresses, massaging every ounce of tautness out of my submerged shoulders, sluicing down the length of my spine as it bows under rolling waves of mounting satisfaction.
In combination with my fingers, it feels unbelievably good.
Unnaturally good, I realize with a start.
My hand stills as my eyes crack open, searching for him.
For though Soren has long since shrouded his presence from me, I know with instant surety that he must still be here somewhere.
This is his doing, this fluid glide of water across my skin, this kneading of muscle and sinew I feel all the way down to my marrow.
Calling a swift breeze, I sweep the steam from the surface and finally spot him.
He is clear across the pool, some twenty paces away.
Hardly more than a shadow. Still, I can see the faint silvery gleam of his irises as his maegic courses over my skin, never pausing in its quest to alleviate every bit of my tension.
Did he know that I’d been—
My cheeks are aflame. Of course he knows. Gods, how embarrassing. And, if I’m being entirely honest, frustrating. Need still swims within me, unsatisfied. But I cannot continue now. Not with him here to witness it.
Can I?
As though feeling my indecision, his tendrils of water keep at their soothing strokes up and down my body. He is not touching me; he is not anywhere near me. And yet, this phantomlike contact makes my heart pound so hard, I’m certain he can hear it.
My mouth opens to call out to him, fully prepared to tell him he has to stop, that this is wholly inappropriate.
No words escape. Instead, a shallow huff of air slips from my lips as a thready breath hitches inside my throat.
At the sound, our eyes lock across the moonlit pool.
The moment they do, faint silver turns star bright as he stops muting his maegic.
It floods into me, furls through me—sweeping away all my best intentions to stop whatever is happening, along with all my mortification that he is bearing witness to this most private of moments.
Not only bearing witness, in fact, but…
Participating.
There is no longer room for embarrassment, though.
The need coursing through my bloodstream is too strong to feel anything else.
I am caught in a current of desire and can no longer hold it back.
Even if I could, I no longer care to try.
My fingers begin to move again, sending spikes of pleasure rocketing through my frame.
I hear a sharp intake of air from Soren as he senses what I’m doing beneath the surface.
In the same instant, the water resumes its play across my skin, moving with new intent.
Not mere relaxation anymore, but a sinuous seduction.
I feel his maegic moving all over me, underneath me. Flowing down my back and up my limbs.
My whole body spasms as a warm rush of water slides between my parted legs, weaving its way to the precise spot where my fingers are rotating with ever-increasing speed. Doubling the sensation in a way that makes a cry catch in my throat.
Gods.
My breaths are shredded pants, coming fast. The ache within climbs to new extremes, higher and higher, moving toward an unquestionable peak. I feel its swift approach and do not attempt to stop it. Instead, I call it forth, eager to feel that moment of release.
Desperate for it.
I am nearly there all on my own. Yet when I see the unexpected movement of Soren’s arm across the pool, the rhythmic jerk of his fist beneath the surface as he strokes himself to the same precipice on which I am poised…
I shatter to pieces.
It is brilliant. Blinding. I throw my head back as I fall apart, teeth bearing down to contain a cry as waves of sheer exaltation wash through me. Soren’s throaty groan of release rings out at the same moment his maegic swells down the bond, infusing my very soul with stardust.
It takes several long moments for the pleasure to ebb. When it does, I am left with the hollow echo of disbelief. I can hardly wrap my mind around the shocking intimacy of the moment we have just shared.
He did not touch my skin, did not kiss me, did not even come within a stone’s throw of my body. Still, I feel flayed open, as though he has split my rib cage with a sword and peered inside my chest cavity.
All the feelings I pushed aside when caught up in the moment of blinding satisfaction come crashing back. Embarrassment, surely, but also an intractable sense of guilt. I tell myself I have done nothing wrong. I have committed no betrayal.
So why is my skin aflame with mortification? Why does my pulse pound twice its normal speed? Why is my head even more tangled with contradictory emotions than it was in the wake of the Frostlander battle?
The godsdamned siren song, that’s why.
It must be. There is no other explanation for my wanton display, for caving to my basest bodily instincts.
Soren and I had both been momentarily lost in it.
That’s all this was. A lapse in judgment, stirred by forces beyond our control.
An aberration, never to be repeated. As soon as we awaken tomorrow, fresh eyed and clear headed, things will go back to normal.
They must.
There is no other option.
If Soren senses my brimming disquiet, he does not comment on it.
He seems caught up in his own thoughts as we climb from the pool and locate our discarded clothing.
He says nothing as we dress, though he whisks the water away from my skin before it can settle into the fabric with a wave of maegic that whispers across every part of me.
My cheeks burn as I recall the feeling of that touch beneath the water.
I am grateful for the darkness, so he cannot see the blush.
We make our way back to the city side by side, our footfalls soundless as we walk along the narrow sliver of sandbar that remains.
Soon, it will disappear altogether. Our silence lingers as we cut through the stone passage, and throughout the winding walk along the canals that leads to the royal grounds.
With each step up the many stone flights to the villa, my thoughts grow more murky, my feelings more tangled. I do not know what to say to the man at my side any more than he seems to know what to say to me. We are swimming in uncharted waters.
Should I make a joke about it? Laugh it off, as though it was nothing? Or would it be better to pretend it had not happened at all—a mutual agreement to move on without ever addressing our shared submission to the most hedonistic of impulses?
I have no answers.
It is not until we reach the door to my suite that he finally breaks the heavy quiet. His voice is oddly serious.
“Rhya.”
My hand freezes on the handle. I am too cowardly to turn and look at him; afraid of what I might see in his eyes when I do. “Don’t.”
He pauses. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t say anything. I’m not…” I swallow hard and lean my forehead against the wood panel, where carvings of coral and seashells press back at me. “I can’t. Okay? Not now.”
He moves close to my back. So close, I can feel the heat of his chest. I still, terrified he is going to touch me; equally terrified he won’t. But he holds back, maintaining a small sliver of space between us.
“I only wanted to say good night,” he whispers, breath stirring the hair at my nape. There is another pause—this one longer. I think he might not say anything else. But then…
“You aren’t ready for the things I want to say to you,” he says finally. “So, I’ll wait.”
I suck in a breath.
He’d wait?
His voice warms a shade, returning to something more like his normal sardonic tones. “Gods know, I’ve had enough practice at it.”
With that, he walks away, long strides carrying him down the hall to his chamber. I remain there, frozen in place with my forehead digging into the wood, until I hear the click of his thick crystalline door. Only then do I haul in a breath and step inside my suite.