Chapter Twenty Zephyra #2
I can’t respond, and I’m not sure I’m meant to.
His phantom touch circles my clit now, agonizingly slow, as he pushes my legs even farther apart.
My shirt shifts upward. I’m bared to him.
Bared, and I don’t care. He sits up, bent over and resting his elbows on his knees as he continues watching me with that hungry gaze.
His hand clenching white around his wrist. His entire body clenching as if in physical pain.
And there is something so erotic about watching him as he watches me, touches me with those phantom hands, and feels everything I’m feeling.
The cord blazes so brightly, it’s nearly as intense as the sun now.
“I am still a warlock, Zephyra,” he says, clutching it while he uses his magic to fuck me. “This can never mean anything else.”
“Y-yes,” I agree with a throaty gasp, writhing to his magic’s unabating rhythm. “You’re an asshole. I expect nothing less.”
“I’m an asshole,” he says with a delicious thrust of magic and power. “You’re a demon.” Another thrust. “There is no world where we are anything other than enemies.” Another and another and another.
I ride the waves of pleasure as they crest over me, inside me, all around me. My skin tingles. Starlight bursts in my veins.
“This is wrong,” he says. “You and I—we are wrong.”
His hold presses my wrists into the ground, and those thrusts reach an exhilarating crescendo.
It feels like swimming—so fast and so far, in a wide-open ocean, with waters whipping around me and the sun beaming down on my flesh.
It feels like freedom. Just for a second.
For one beautiful, heart-stopping second where the world falls away and Arion growls my name for only the two of us to hear.
“Look at me,” he demands in that moment, and he sounds desperate. He sounds as if everything he’s just said is a complete lie. “Look at me when you come, Zephyra.”
I do. I look and look and look, my gaze snagging on the depths of his own need. It pools in his silver-ringed eyes. Along with something else, something fearsome and forbidden. “Arion,” I breathe.
“That’s it.” Voice hoarse, strained, he coaxes me deeper and deeper into pleasure. “Come, and say my name. Come, and tell the world who’s responsible for it. Come for me, Zephyra, and only for me.”
His touch turns frantic, hard and unrelenting and frenzied, and my mouth opens on a silent plea, my body arching, tightening, breaking as the world shatters behind my eyelids.
My chest heaves. My legs shake. My head falls back against the hard cavern floor as I struggle to catch my breath.
As residual warmth spreads from my belly to my limbs, and my mind floats, languid.
“Holy shit,” I whisper after another moment. He growls in response, and his hold falls away. From my thighs. From my wrists.
Just like that—it’s gone.
I shiver in the sudden cold, the cord between us dimming to a soft gray. But Arion doesn’t move. He doesn’t stop watching me with that burning intensity. With a snap of his fingers, he cleans up any mess we’ve made.
I slide my legs closed before leaning up on my elbows and nodding toward his own desire. My heart still thunders. Not enough. More, more, more. “Your turn?”
His jaw tenses. His eyes shutter. “No. No touching, remember?”
“Right. No touching.” I tilt my head, throwing my hair over my shoulder, and raise a brow. “Are you sure? That was fucking incredible.” And it was. Better than anything I’ve ever done before. Lower, I add, “Arion, I want to—”
“No,” he repeats harshly. He sits up straight. His wings stretch—away from me now. “Go to sleep. We can discuss how we’re traveling to the Sol in the morning.”
“But—”
“Please,” he rasps, desperation seeping back into his words. “I can’t. We… can’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We just did,” I say with a small grin.
“It doesn’t matter. None of this mattered.
I meant what I said, Zephyra. There isn’t a world that exists where we are anything but enemies.
” Except—he reaches out and brushes a rogue pink wave from my face, as if not in control of his own hands, and his fingers graze my cheek.
A simple touch. A small touch. But it hitches my breath and darkens his gaze again.
He curses, lingering for another second as desire rushes back through me.
It’s as if the last few minutes never happened.
I’m aching. He’s aching. The cord is burning.
But he pivots on the ground. Lies down and rolls to face the wall. “Go to sleep, Zephyra,” he murmurs.
I want nothing more than to argue. Demand an explanation and then demand more of his hands. This was… tonight was… almost inconceivable. Not just the sex, but before. Talking to him. Knowing him.
No matter what he claims, something happened in this chamber with Arion and me. Like flint striking between our souls, but—my stomach sinks as my mind finally catches up with my body—he’s right.
This is wrong.
I ignore the rustle of Arion’s wings. I ignore his shallow, ragged breaths.
I meant what I told him too—I don’t participate in shame.
The bitter cold turning my chest to ice has nothing to do with regret, instead sharpening into something more like despair.
But—no. I refuse to call it that. What I feel toward Arion is resignation, and nothing more.
Eight years ago, I fell in love with a human, and it wrecked my life.
Jacin is gone. Forever. I roll over to stare at the cavern wall.
I won’t be part of anything like that again.
Arion is a warlock and a human. I am a mermaid.
We are enemies. We have to be enemies. One day, when our bond vanishes and my life debt is repaid, hopefully we can become strangers.
But that’s the only happily ever after waiting for us.
Not lovers. Not even friends. Just strangers who once had no choice but to hate each other.
I force myself to shut my eyes. This time, when I fall asleep, it’s for good.
I don’t wake until I hear screaming and smell blood.