Chapter 18
Jarin watched over Riella while she slept.
He’d taken her to a treehouse in a secluded part of the tree-borne labyrinth, the thatched roof blending almost seamlessly with the surrounding palm fronds. Torches in brackets cast light over the doorway as he guided her inside. It’d been difficult to get any words out of her after those sad, terrible sentences she uttered on the beach amidst flowing tears.
I don’t want to die. I’m scared.
What could he say to that? What could he do? He couldn’t look her in the face and tell her that fate was incorrect. Jarin didn’t pretend to know more than Ferrante. So far, everything the old Seer said had come true. Riella was indeed the rare ocean jewel he’d referred to. It was too late for Jarin to distance himself from the siren—her fate and the fate of the clan were already entwined.
In the treehouse, she’d taken him by the hand to the unmade bed. He removed his shirt while she curled up on the white sheets. When he lay beside her, she pulled his arm under her neck and rested her hand in the middle of his tattooed chest.
He’d expected her to lie awake for a long time, as he knew he would, but after a few minutes of fighting to keep her eyes open, she fell into a deep sleep.
Jarin was left with his churning thoughts and the conflicted burn in his chest. What if he’d ruined fate by bringing Riella aboard the Pandora when she needed to get to the Black Cliffs? His feud with Artus blinded him to the possibility that fate had bigger concerns than Jarin usurping his old mentor.
But the truly shameful thing? Jarin would use the amulet to save Riella’s life, even against her wishes. He’d let the elf die a thousand deaths if it meant keeping the siren alive. It was not rational, but it was so.
Maybe he took after his mother more than he realized.
He’d always been afraid of his dark side veering too close to hers. Obsessive, deranged, intense-beyond-words. For that reason, he’d sworn to never let himself grow close to a woman, fearful of triggering the traits for which his mother was infamous.
But now, he cursed that he wasn’t more like her. What he wouldn’t give for her magic, her power. Although she’d done terrible things, at least she’d never had to feel helpless, the way he did now.
Jarin had never considered himself a good man. He’d never been a good man, and he’d never cared, because darkness was innate to him. But Riella deserved better than imminent death. She was remarkable and brave. One-of-a-kind, in every sense.
He stared at the shifting moonlit patterns on the walls and smiled faintly to himself. How ironic that he’d sworn to never let himself care about a woman. That was still true. He cared about a bloody siren instead—one who’d stabbed him in the heart, no less.
Maybe his true purpose was to assist the siren-who-walks during this fateful time. His whole life, he’d felt adrift and like he belonged nowhere. Was this why? If it wasn’t, could he make it that way? Force himself into fate?
He and Riella would find the amulet, and they’d use it to save her. She wouldn’t know that, of course. Riella was adamant the amulet wasn’t meant for her.
There would no doubt be another way to save the elf. If being a pirate had taught him anything, it was that every impossible situation had a way out. There was always an escape hatch, a hidden weapon, a secret solution. It was just a matter of finding it. Or, failing that, inventing it.
He ran his fingertips through the spun silk that was Riella’s hair. Her eyelids lightly fluttered as she slept, indicating she was dreaming. She appeared uncharacteristically sweet when she slept, her signature fierceness dormant.
Gods, he wanted her. It felt profane, to lust so intensely for a siren doomed to die. He had no business allowing his blood to be stirred. And yet, he was a man. He could not help his body’s reaction to her.
“It seems like such a waste to sleep,” came her breathy voice.
Jarin had been tracing the infinity symbol on her fabric-covered hip, over and over again. He hadn’t noticed her eyes open.
But now, she gazed at him in the creamy moonlight, wide awake.
“Time goes too quickly in the land of dreams,” she said. “That’s not how I want to spend the nights I have left.”
“You have to sleep sometime,” he replied in a low voice.
“Sleep isn’t what I want right now,” she murmured, studying his face. “If I am to die, first I want to live.”
She batted her long eyelashes at him and blood rushed to his groin. While holding eye contact, she picked up his wrist and placed his hand on her waist. His fingers dug gently into her soft flesh beneath the fabric of her dress.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “It might not be what you expect.”
“That’s the point. And yes, I’m sure.”
Riella lifted her knees toward the ceiling as Jarin’s pulse increased. He’d never wanted anything more than he wanted her in this moment. She let her knees fall open, revealing her translucent underwear, through which he could make out the delicate lines of her entrance. The material lying over her opening was dark with dampness, making him half-mad with desire.
Jarin pulled himself up to kneel between her legs, his hands resting on her slender calves. The sight before him made his erection harder than steel. She rested her arms above her head, her platinum hair splayed around her like a halo. In the pale moonlight, she glowed like the otherworldly being that she was.
Grasping one of her ankles, he lifted her leg to his mouth and kissed the inner line of her calf. His eyes were still on her face, and she smiled. As he kissed his way over her knee and to her thigh, he trailed his fingers up her other leg.
The intoxicating scent of her arousal reached his nostrils, making his blood surge. He put one large hand on her hip and with the other, traced small circles on the damp spot of her underwear, barely grazing the tender flesh beneath it. She squirmed with pleasure.
“I want more,” she whispered.
You and me both, he thought.
Every muscle in his body was tense with the effort of preventing himself from taking down his trousers, tugging her sodden underwear to the side, and spearing himself into her sweet pinkness.
But he couldn’t do that to her. Not tonight. Despite her insistence that she wanted to experience everything life had to offer, she didn’t truly know what she was asking for. She couldn’t comprehend how overwhelming his cock would feel if he unleashed himself on her, when she’d never had sex before. He would work up to it.
Licking his lips, he tore off her underwear and cast them aside. She was even more perfect without the constraints of the fabric. Her slick opening was flushed a delicate rose color, the paler outer edges merging with the pearly cast of the rest of her skin.
At the top of the folds was her shining, swollen little clit. With a groan of longing, he leaned forward and pressed his mouth firmly to her drenched folds. She exhaled sharply in surprise, then sucked in a long breath while writhing on the sheets.
Jarin ran his tongue from the very bottom of her slit, all the way up the center. He stopped on her clit and applied a pulsing pressure, which made Riella moan. Before she could get used to the sensation, he ran his tongue in random, ceaseless patterns across her wet folds. Whenever he reached her clit, he encircled it with his tongue and kissed it.
When he felt the telltale tensing of her body, he slid his tongue into her entrance, as far as he could go, moaning at the exquisite fragrance and tightness of her. He smiled to himself, because she really did taste like the ocean, only sweeter.
He worked his way back up to her clit, running his tongue across it in a steady, coaxing rhythm. Then he slid two fingers inside of her slick folds, the pressure of her muscles immediate and intense against his intrusion. But she drilled herself down on his fingers, moaning, and he drove a third inside.
He alternated smoothly between thrusting into her depths and hooking his fingers to touch the soft spot inside that turned her moaning into rapid pants. While sliding his fingers into her, he kept the relentless pressure on her swollen clit with his tongue.
When she reached the pinnacle of pleasure, he felt the waves moving through her body, from her core outward.
Yet, he did not let up. His face drenched with her desire, he continued until she crested another wave, and then another.
Only when she was weakened and breathless on the sheets did he finally release her from his mouth and hands.
When he moved to lie next to her, she buried her face in his neck. And it made his heavily guarded heart burst wide open.