Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
AIRIK
Every cell of his body trembled, ruined. Buried deep in a woman who he wanted to ruin him more. Airik wanted it so much that he feared for them both.
Untouched.
He’d never felt more worthy of his body than now. Touching her. Inside her. She was so delicate beneath him, but he felt life pulse strong and vibrant.
Untaken.
As Nora had promised, she had taken him. All of him. Taken the violence within him and made it thrum softer and softer until it was something else entirely.
Unconquered.
From the moment she’d opened her eyes in his bed all those days ago and spoken to him like he was just a man, he had surrendered. On his knees, beside a life he shouldn’t have saved.
He might not have known it then, but he knew it now, feeling her hot core flex around him, taking him deeper.
Something tightened within him. Fates save him—he was going to spill.
Only the torment of leaving Nora’s body kept him from releasing, holding him at the edge.
He wanted this moment with her to stretch for eons, to let the pressure build within him as she gripped him with her entire being.
A morazir knew how to control his body. Though he knew resisting Nora was impossible, he could at the very least control his release.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered, stroking her lashes. “Please. Look at me.”
Slowly, Nora let out a breath and opened her eyes, gazing at him, all lust and marvel. Tears gathered on her lashes, like a string of sparkling stars. She smiled, her crooked tooth peeking over her lip.
He could not help the small whimper escaping him. He’d never known beauty like this before, and how could he go on without it?
“You are…okay?”
She nodded. “More than okay.”
“What…should I do next? Tell me what to do.”
Brushing the hair out of his eyes, she held his face in her palms. “I want you to move. In and out.”
With a sharp inhale, he flexed his hips back.
As he did, her wet heat squeezed him tight, and it would only be a stroke or two more before he couldn’t stop himself from spilling.
Craving urged him to sink back in immediately, unwilling to part from her body for long.
But the way she held her breath and bit her lip forced him to stop.
“Are you sure?” Airik asked. “Do you want me back in?”
“Yes,” she moaned, pulling him into her, rolling her hips a little to meet him. “Like this. God, yes…just like this.”
With each thrust, it was as if she reached a hand between his ribs and squeezed his heart, bringing him back into a life where he could feel joy and peace.
He watched her as he fucked her, a dream conjured from the last goodness of his mind. Sweat mingled together on their skin, the scent of river, soap, and flowers shrouding them in memories he knew would destroy him for the rest of his life. “You’re mine now. Forever. Do you understand?”
Nora’s body coiled around him, her nails scratching his back. “Yes. Yours.”
Pleased with her words, he surged into her again and again, feeling her tighten as she met him with equal passion. Rising above her, he held her wrists together beneath her navel, which brought her breasts together. He watched them bounce with the force of his thrusts.
“I’m…so full. So close.” A tear slid down her face, and he dipped down to catch it with his tongue.
“I can feel it,” he said, widening his stance so he could fuck her harder. “I am, too. Give it to me, cheranna.”
For the briefest of instants, his breath ceased and his heart stopped. Everything did.
My light, he’d called her. The deepest, most intimate term of endearment. A word too old for the common tongue. Of no use in a world that no longer valued love and deemed it an active threat to progress.
He’d heard this word before, but he could not remember when.
Airik swallowed, regaining his rhythm, lifting her onto a throne built of pleasure. Higher and higher until her eyes rolled back and she cried out his name. Her walls fluttered and throbbed, then clamped down around him.
Hers. He had earned her. He had given this to her.
Every muscle in his body went taut. It felt like lightning rippled on his skin, shooting down his spine and into his cock.
All of his years of forging had been for this—to hold back until she could take him.
Ecstasy crashed through him, and a howl tore from his throat.
He came into her with brutal force, pumping her full of seed as it exploded from his cock.
She milked him as if he quenched a soul-deep thirst. “Nora,” he said, suddenly desperate for her, “touch me. More.”
She spread her hands on his back, urging his body into hers. Entranced, Airik watched as her pupils blew wide. A dazed smile opened on her lips.
“Your come…”
“Yes, cheranna—” He stopped, swallowing the euphoria of uttering the word again. “Tell me…tell me how your pussy takes what I give.”
Her fingers dug into his biceps, leaving crescent-shaped dents.
She shook her head, laughing. “It feels like…we’re melting together wherever we touch.
But with tiny little orgasms that reach here.
” She cupped her left breast, rolling her nipple between her fingers, lost on some ethereal plane that he wanted to join.
Airik dropped his mouth, sinking his teeth around her nipple. In the glow and clarity of their shared climax, he had just enough control to stop himself from drawing blood.
He felt her heart beat, and he wondered if he could ever be bothered to do anything else again in his life but to lie with Nora and pleasure her.
Unwilling to part from her, he stayed that way, his cock within her and his body curled over hers, stroking her cheeks and kissing her lips, writing the word cheranna absently on her face until she giggled and he realized what he’d been doing.
The Veynari were wrong. Breeding—creating a child—was secondary to what he’d just done with Nora. The word she’d given him back. One she couldn’t have possibly known, but she’d shown him by opening her body and heart.
He felt it too—the melting she spoke of. How he wished to take her being into his, or the other way around—it didn’t matter to him, as long as they could stay together and not even the laws of nature could force them apart.
“How do they control you,” Nora said finally, her breathing still a bit labored, “from not fucking when it feels like this?”
He felt himself leak out of her, so he thrust back in. She clamped on him tight, whining as he forced himself deeper until he hit a hard limit.
She let out a soft grunt, and he stopped. “I don’t think what happens between our bodies has happened before,” he told her, holding firm in her body but not pushing in more.
Nora’s cheeks pinkened—in fact, her whole body—in a glow that rendered Airik silent. “So…this happens between just our kinds? A human and a ti’rosi?”
He shook his head, tracing her kiss-plumped lips. “Only between you and me.”
She smiled, but it broke into a yawn. Though he wanted to stay inside her forever, he couldn’t bear to keep her from sleep any longer.
He slid out of her with a groan. Come spilled out—so much of it that it dripped down her ample ass, pooling on the ground in a glowing puddle.
What a stunning brilliance against her skin.
Unable to resist, he dipped a finger inside her and drew some of his come from her cunt. With the precision of a calligrapher, he drew the symbol for cheranna on her lower belly, carefully placing the final dot of the vowel and sealing the words with his lips.
Looking where he’d drawn, she asked, “Is that your name?”
A part of him urged him to do just that—to mark her with his name. He forgave himself for the oversight and for missing the opportunity—his mind now thought only in the shape of Nora, his body rewiring to serve her whims.
“What if it is?” he asked quietly, tracing the symbol. “You’re mine.”
“Then I want to write mine on you, too.”
He whimpered at the thought.
Accepting that as enough confirmation, Nora sat up and reached between her legs. She slipped a finger through herself, then winced.
Airik sat back to see her better, something gnawing at him that he had done this wrong.
The come on her finger was tinged with a little blood. “Oh.” She looked up.
His stomach dropped. “I was too hard—”
“I’m fine.” Her eyes brightened. “It was exactly what I wanted. Now lie down so I can claim you properly.”
Without hesitation, he lay back in the citrus-smelling grass. “Give me your name, Nora. Mark me as yours.”
She kneeled beside him, her glee bubbling into laughter. He purred as she wrote her name on the left side of his chest, and then a smaller shape beneath it. His come glowed against his own skin. There wasn’t a brand in this great universe that could break the oath she’d just written on him.
He touched the strange symbol, a curved line with three strokes—like a feather. “What’s this?” he asked, turning his head. “A…chicken?”
“No.” She covered her face, embarrassed. “It’s supposed to be a wing.”
“Why a wing?” He looped his little finger through one of hers, bringing her hand away from her face. “I don’t have any.”
“You do.” She took his hand and kissed it. “You’re an angel.”
“Nora,” he said softly. “I told you not to use that word.”
She looked down, biting her lip. “But…what if I say you’re my angel? Only mine?”
He pushed the hair out of her eyes—brown, beautiful, and celestial in their depths.
The image of a child winked into his mind. The thought fled before it fully formed, but his heart raced with the magnitude of it.
Sweet brown eyes.
Blink.
Or maybe they glowed blue.
Were they two pairs of eyes?
No, impossible.
His breath stopped, at the mercy of a woman who could only be his if everything else burned.
Ulliel, make it so, he fiercely hoped anyway. Make it so that my life can be hers and hers can be mine. So that we can have a life that’s just ours.
“I’ll be your angel, then,” he whispered. “If that’s what you want. It’ll be our secret. Until I can fix everything, so you can stay mine.” He lay back again. “Now cover me in more of your name. Everywhere that’s yours.”
By the time the suns had set, his entire belly, chest, and thighs were covered in her name and his own seed. He caught her hair and pulled her to him, laying her body on top of his. Well-fucked and exhausted, she fell asleep a few moments later.
The first stars of the night twinkled in the sky. Airik searched them with intent, driven by a sudden obligation to thank something for her existence in his life.
She held him tight, even as she slept. Safe in her arms, the urge to find his sword never fully formed. There was only Nora—her hold on him as imminent as the turning of a planet or the rising of a sun.