Chapter 128 Rhea #2
He snaps his head back up to look at me, and even beneath the darkness of the room, the golden light of the candles scant here, his eyes glow with unbridled longing.
And for a small eternity, he just watches me with ragged breaths, that reverential expression tugging at my heart.
The muscles in his stomach clench, his fingers tightening on my hips, but he drinks in the way I become flustered at the mounting craving that braids its way through me.
Then he’s sitting up, one hand bracing his weight behind him while the other weaves back into my hair.
“I missed you too,” he finally says, tilting my head to the side so that my lips slant over his. “I missed you so fucking much.” He kisses me hard, making up for that lost time. As if we have more than enough of it now.
But I know that we don’t and that reality is waiting just beyond this door.
That waiting is a luxury we do not have.
So I lift higher on my knees, my inner muscles clenching in preparation as I position the tip of his cock right at my entrance.
My thighs shake, and my hands tremble, and I might laugh at the nervous energy that rolls through me if I wasn’t so utterly lost in the way Nox looks at me.
How he's always looked at me. As if I’m a goddess walking amongst mortals.
As if I’m more than the flesh and bone that makes me. More than the magic that fills me.
The first inch he consumes shocks me, air stilted in my chest as my lips part and my fingers curl into the hard muscles of his shoulders.
When my eyes try to fall closed as my body consumes another inch and then another, he calls my name on an uneven rasp.
“Rhea, watch what you do to me,” he begs, and what can I do but let my eyes flutter open to take in his gaze as it falls to where our bodies are joined.
I sink even deeper, molding to the shape of him as he demands another inch, then even more, until I can’t feel where he ends and I begin.
It’s just him and me and this all-consuming, ever-present, maddening love. Infinite. Destiny. Fate.
Chest heaving, I breathe through the fullness of him seated to the hilt, once again torn between taking our time and wanting him to make me forget my own name.
I aim for somewhere in the middle as I rock my hips, my back arching at the blinding lust that pools within me.
Time becomes lost to our movements. To the sound of sawing breaths and whispered benedictions.
Magic rises at our joining, mingling in the space around us, and something in me splinters at the feel of it.
The easing of a fear that has sat heavily on my bones since that horrifying moment on the beach.
I had always thought of our magic as two sides of the same coin, and I was afraid—so afraid—that something had changed in our time apart.
That this integral part of us both was no longer suited for each other.
But as wisps of black and glimmers of white dance around us, that fear ebbs away, and once more, I surrender to the knowledge that Nox is mine.
In every way. In every form. And I am his.
He draws me to his chest as he lays back, never severing our connection but changing the angle at which he enters me.
I moan at the feel of him, at how deeply he hits me, the change in position giving him leverage to pull me down onto his thrusts.
I want to kiss him more than I want to breathe, so I fuse my mouth to his as he drives into me, my body softening around him.
Every part of me pliant to his will, and every part of him desperate to fulfill my own.
Quicker than before, release rolls in on a fast-moving tide, pulling me under and sending a spike of panic through me because I don’t want this to end. But my body craves the peak that Nox and I are climbing together. “I love you,” I croak, my vision flashing as need pulses through me.
The words make Nox groan as his hips fall out of any sort of rhythm, his arms banding around me to hold me close while he hits harder, deeper.
“I love you,” he promises. “Rhea—” He groans again as I meet his next thrust. Each of my breaths become shorter than the last as I’m finally pushed off that ledge, left freefalling as my entire world shifts.
He slides a hand down to my low back and holds me in place, my muscles clenching so tightly around him that I feel the moment he finds his own release.
His body unraveling beneath mine as shared breath caresses our lips, my hands still clutching at his shoulders.
When I claw myself out of that sated haze, Nox is there, heavy-lidded eyes staring at me.
Devotion written all over his face and evident in the content smile he gives me.
I force my limbs to move, reaching up to trace his lips with my fingers.
“I love your smile,” I tell him, heat rising to my cheeks when it widens.
“And what else?” he asks, leaning up to kiss me.
Though hunger is present in the movement, it’s softened as he glides his hands up and down my back softly, the featherlight touch drawing out goosebumps.
I smile as I lean back, though it quivers at the feel of him still very much inside of me.
We both let out a sighing moan before I carefully slip off of him and lie on my side, Nox mirroring me.
“I love your hair,” I continue, smiling at the half-dried waves that tumble over his forehead messily. “Though this is new.” I run my fingers over the shadow on his jaw, the stubble there pricking my skin. “I think I like it.”
“Good,” he chuckles, watching my hand move down to his chest and the chain now dripping onto the bed.
A different sort of silence falls over us as I look at the ring, the elegant cut of the diamond glinting despite the low light.
“I know a lot has happened. I know that the idea of marriage right now—or maybe ever—might no longer be appealing because of what that bastard did to you.” His hand reaches out to tip my chin so that I’m looking once more into his eyes.
“But if being married to me is still something—”
“Yes,” I interrupt, chewing on my lower lip until Nox’s thumb moves to gently pry it free.
I lay my hand over his cheek, blinking back the pressure that builds behind my eyes.
“Yes. I want to marry you.” His answering grin is brilliant—incandescent—as he sits up and undoes the necklace’s clasp, pulling the chain through the ring.
He gently takes my hand in his, kissing my knuckle before slowly sliding the ring on my finger.
I worry that the sight of a ring at all might take my mind to a darker place, but as I stare down at the pink and green diamonds that flank the center one, all I can think about is what it felt like to put it on for the first time that day in the garden.
“I thought it might have been lost forever,” I say quietly, swallowing down that bitter knot at the memory of the night Daje and I were attacked.
“When she commanded that they take the ring…” My voice trails off as I tug on that thread, the one that leads to the memory of the voices from that night. “Her voice…”
“Rhea? What is it?” Nox tilts his head, catching my eyes with his.
“That night, on the pathway where we were attacked, there was a woman,” I rasp, my hand trembling as I stare at him.
“I couldn’t remember much before, nothing beyond seeing Daje lying on the path unconscious and bleeding, but there was a female, one who commanded that I take the ring off. That she needed it.”
His jaw hardens as he curls his fingers around mine and brings them to lay on top of his leg. “Did you recognize it?”
“I didn’t at first, and I could still be wrong, but…” I swallow, my stomach souring with the accusation, even if a part of me can’t deny that it’s possible. “I think it was Haylee.”