“I would prefer you did not,” he said. “I had fears enough I would not be able to function.”
She hadn’t realized that. There had been one scar on his upper thigh, perilously close to what would have been her knee’s target. But since he had already been aroused to full measure, it had not occurred to her that there might have been doubts.
Since it was already proven he was more than functional, she only smiled. “You cannot say I didn’t warn you this time.”
“I suppose Dax taught you that?”
“And more,” she said cheerfully. “I can dismember a man in the most painful way.”
“Dare I hope that was not the plan you spoke of?”
She did laugh then, and let into it all the joy bubbling up anew inside her. She had meant what she’d said, there was no hiding now, and it went for her as well as for him.
“Eos.” His voice was nearly a growl, the oath sounding as if it had been ripped from him.
And then he moved, rolling on top of her, pinning her. She welcomed him, relished the solid weight of him, gloried in the sudden, surging readiness of his body, and how it betrayed a need she, for now at least, would let herself believe was only for her.
He, too, had learned in the night. Her scars were no match for his, Dax had been too effective in protecting her. But he had learned every part of her, learned how and where to touch. His hands traced the paths anew, and then his mouth. Her face, her lips, down the side of her throat. Lingering at the hollow of her throat, as if he were savoring the beat of her pulse there. As perhaps he was, since he was the one who had set it to racing.
And then he was at her breasts, kissing, caressing. She arched up to him, begging silently for him to hurry.
He stopped. She whimpered.
His voice was harsh when he spoke. “I was not gentle with you when I should have been, that first time. I could not.”
It had hurt, she couldn’t deny that, but she hadn’t cared. She hadn’t cared about anything except him, and having him take her where no man ever had. Because only he could.
“You warned me. Now please—”
He laid a finger over her lips, hushing her. “You gave me a gift without price. The least I can do is show you how much I treasure it. Will treasure it. Until my last breath, Rina.”
With that he began again, slowly, teasing, tormenting. He brushed his fingers over her lightly, then harder, teased her nipples into aching tightness, and then, at last, lowered his dark head and suckled her. She cried out at the slam of sensation that made her body fairly ripple under his mouth.
She opened for him, wanting more than anything that connection, that joining, wanting him to become part of her once more, so close she could, in those glorious moments, believe this would never end. But still he waited, until she was writhing beneath him, beyond words but still pleading with her every movement. She had feared this would never happen, and now that it had she let down all barriers, for this had ever been and forever would be the only man who was worth such a baring of mind, body, and soul.
Some part of her reasoning mind insisted it could not be as she remembered. Nothing could be. Her memory had to have embroidered upon it, made it hotter and fiercer in memory than in reality. But when at last he gave in, when he slid forward, flesh into slick, ready flesh, when he made that sweet, driving invasion, her body clenched around him with a fierceness that made her cry out even as he groaned low and deep. And she knew it had been real, and beyond even her memory’s ability to embellish.
He had driven her so close she felt her body gathering even before he began to move again. One stroke, two, three, and she was flying, his name on her lips as an explosion swept over her. Before, he had gone with her, but he kept his promise and held back, barely letting her crest and ebb before starting anew.
“Tark—”
“Hush, little one,” he said, even as he moved within her, “this is as it should have been the first time.”
It was impossible, she couldn’t, she simply couldn’t, and yet she felt the tension building again. He changed the pace, the angle, until she thought she would die from the growing pressure. She savored every stroke of his body, reveled in the simple fact that it was him, that he was here, not years dead and gone, but very, very alive.
She slid her hands down his back, feeling rather than seeing the sheen of moisture on his body. She felt the muscles flex, tighten as she urged him to move faster, harder. He let out a hoarse, guttural sound and did just that. In the instant before she felt her body shatter, she heard her own name as if it had been ripped from his throat, and he shuddered violently, crushing her against him as if he feared she would somehow vanish.
For a long time after their breathing had slowed, they lay silent. A shiver went through her as she wondered if this was all they would ever have, this stolen night, if the threat from outside might in turn steal this from them. He reached for the roughly woven blanket and pulled it over them, and she burrowed against him as if he were the only source of warmth and safety in her world.
She wasn’t sure he was not. For the first time in her life, she wanted to hide, to run, to stay huddled in this darkened cave, hanging on to this man, letting what would happen outside happen, wanted to ignore the reality she knew was coming.
She wanted to ignore the fact she had learned very early in her life, that fate sometimes had a vicious, nasty sense of irony. And that thinking Tark dead for so long, finding him alive and discovering this unparalleled joy, and then losing him for real and forever, would be just the sort of thing to be expected.
Chapter 32
“IT’S THERE.”
Lyon wasn’t sure how he was so certain, but he was. They stood beside the small pool, looking up at the misty spray, sparkling in the morning light. The mysterious barrier had apparently held, and they had had a peaceful night.
“Behind the fall?” Shaina asked.
“Yes.”
“All right.”
He glanced at her. “You don’t want to ask how I’m so sure?”
“Do you know?”
“Not in any way I can explain.”
She shrugged. “Why I didn’t ask.”
Lyon couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “You’re handling this rather well.”
“And you accept that I can sense things you can’t. Why is this different?”
“It’s not, I suppose,” he said.
He turned back to study the waterfall. It wasn’t particularly wide, coming as it did from a narrow notch in the cliff above, but the volume of water was impressive, and the chaotic swirling in the pool below rather forbidding. The large boulder that had split blocked the bottom of the fall from their view.
. . . the cavern of the waterfall shall open when the two halves are joined.
He walked closer, leaned as far as he could, but still could not see behind the broken rock. There was nothing for it but to climb it, he thought, eying warily the surface that was wet with spray from the falling water.
“If we had climbing rope, it might be easier to come down from above,” Shaina said.
He didn’t react to the fact that she had seemingly read his mind; after all, it was a regular occurrence, and only the fact that it went both ways allowed him to be at ease with it.
He glanced upward, considering her words even though they were decidedly short on any rope or line strong enough for climbing. He quickly spotted what had likely inspired the thought, a bare stretch of the cliff alongside the falls, where a quick, easy descent could be made if you had the line, could get up there, and find something big or heavy enough to secure the rope to.
“Even if we combined what’s in our packs, I don’t think it would be enough,” he said.
She sighed. “I know. I was just trying to avoid climbing that wet rock.”
&nb
sp; “You don’t have to climb it,” he pointed out. “The old man said—”
“Graymist, I know. But if you think I’m letting you tackle that alone, you’re crazier than he is. You’ll end up shedding some of that Graymist blood.”
He grinned. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Doesn’t mean you need to court it.”
He lifted a brow at her. “What’s this? You, favoring caution?”
She lowered her gaze. “Maybe I don’t want to be responsible for bloodying the heir to the throne of Trios.”
“You wouldn’t be responsible, Shay.”
Her head came up then. She looked at him steadily. “Yes. I would.”
He studied her eyes, those jade green eyes he knew so well. “Does it feel wrong to you?” he asked, not even sure where the words rose from. He searched for the words to explain what he meant, but as usual she grasped what he hadn’t said.
“Us?”
He nodded.
She drew in a deep breath. “Not in the way I think you mean, but I keep thinking of what you said. About a passage to something even better.”
“I cannot guarantee that I am right.”
“Life has no guarantees, isn’t that what your father always says?”
“Yes.”
“My mother always adds, ‘Except that what you expect rarely happens, and what you don’t expect often does.’” There was a long pause before she spoke again, and in keeping with her mother’s words, it was something he hadn’t expected. “I’m not a coward.”
He stared at her. “Of course you’re not a coward. Shay, you’re the farthest thing from it.”
“Then why am I so afraid?”
His mind was racing, searching for the right thing to say, because he sensed whatever he spoke would be crucial.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “because what we have is so precious. And you fear that we will lose that.”
“What if we do?”
“Our parents did not. Besides, you’ve never feared what-ifs before.”
“I’ve never thought of losing what I treasure most before.”
Her words, so earnestly and honestly spoken, warmed him more than the rising sun ever could. He reached out and cupped her cheek, looked at her familiar, beloved face. She tilted her head back, and just slightly turned to rest her cheek against his palm. And in that instant he could no more have stopped himself than he could have stopped the waterfall beside them with a wave of his hand.
He lowered his head. Nuzzled her cheek. And at last found her lips with his.
Fire blasted through him. As if that first kiss had been but a primer, and his body had since learned, the spark caught, burned, exploded.
It was hot. It was fierce. It was flooding him with feelings he’d never known. And knowledge he’d never had, of life, of love, of the why of it. And of the future.
And most of all, of inevitability.
Chapter 33
RESISTING DID not even enter Shaina’s mind. Some part of her realized there was no point. He swept away her doubts, her fears, as if they had never existed. Or as if compared to what was happening now, they didn’t matter.
They didn’t lose their friendship. . . .
He hadn’t had to remind her of that, the thought had been tumbling inside her since he’d pointed out that simple fact.
She should have known, she thought. She should have realized long ago. She had only two options. Be with Cub, or be alone. She trusted only Cub to see beyond the physical to her heart and soul. The very idea of being with anyone else was absurd. She should have seen that long before now. Should have realized that the fact that others wanted it as well didn’t make it any less her choice.
He deepened the kiss, and a hunger unlike anything she’d ever imagined possible seized her. Her body fairly sang with the rightness of it, and she wondered why she had ever doubted that this, that they were meant to be. This was it, the moment she’d feared, as if she’d somehow known how fierce, how consuming, it would be. But she feared nothing now—she was beyond that, far beyond. It was as if a wall she hadn’t even realized was there, as that invisible barrier around this meadow, had been blasted away. The future, their future, together, seemed spread bright and clear before her.
She spared a split second to take joy in the certainty that he was feeling it too; they were both of Triotian blood as much as Arellian, and to them bonding was real and true and forever.
That joy spread, until it practically bubbled up out of her. When he at last paused, whispering her name, she could do nothing more than cling to him, nearly shouting, “Yes. Yes!”
“You’re certain?”
“Beyond certain.”
She went down to the ground, letting her weight pull him down with her. The grass was not as soft nor as green as the famed Triotian carpet, but it would do. For this, the very rocks would do, for what was beneath her mattered nothing next to the man above her.
She knew without asking that this was as new to him as it was to her. Such was Triotian culture. Besides, not only had she always known where he was, he had also told her of his few forays into experimenting—usually carelessly, as a man who had tried sips of various brews and discovered he liked none of them—although he was too well-bred to name names. She couldn’t blame him for those, not when they practically lined the paths he walked with velvet.
She had once wondered aloud why he took none of them. He had given her a crooked grin and answered, “Maybe I’m waiting for you to join them.”
“You’ll be old and gray before that will happen, half-wit.”
The memories flashed through her mind in an instant. She felt the odd need to acknowledge this, now. She reached up, cupped his face. Her words were statement, not question. “It truly was destined, wasn’t it.”
“Of course,” he said easily, and kissed her again.
She knew little of this, beyond the basics once explained to her as a girl by her mother in a session she’d mostly ignored because what did a mother know of it? That her mother obviously knew a great deal or she herself would not be here was something that had only come to her later.
There was fumbling, a bit of awkwardness, but none of it shook the sense of destiny, that the inexorable journey toward this had indeed been inevitable. It was only the physical they didn’t know. Their hearts, their minds, all else was work long done. They knew each other as few did. They had only to focus on the moment, the now.
Any lingering resistance, born of stubbornness, was seared away by the heat of his mouth, his body, and when the fumbling with clothing was done and they were bare to the sun in each other arms, it felt so right she couldn’t wait another moment.
“Now, Lyon,” she whispered, opening her body to him.
He froze even amid caressing her until she could barely breathe. “You never call me that.”
“And so now I do. As you call me Shay.”
He seemed, as always, to understand. He kissed her, even more deeply this time, and she let go of all restraint and kissed him back with every bit of heat and fierceness she was feeling. He let out a sound much like his namesake, low and rumbling. Then again his hands were stroking her, while his mouth trailed down her throat. He cupped her breasts, lifted them for his lips. She arched in delighted shock at the way her body fairly rippled in response, an almost violent clenching of every muscle. Uncontrollable.
But there was no need for control. Not here, not now, not with him. Her hands slid over him, stroking, urging. From this moment, that beautiful golden body was hers, forever, and she wanted to start that journey with an urgency she couldn’t mask.
It hurt, in that first moment of his body joining hers, but the strange feel of it distracted her. And then he was there, and the sound of his low groan was enough to make her body clench a
new.
She breathed her earlier thought. “Forever.”
He settled deeper into her. “Yes. How long we’ve waited. How long it will be ours.”
The rough words arrowed through to the last protected corner of her heart, and she gave him that as well, as she had given him everything else, and always would.
It was wild, and a bit mad as the unbearable tension built with his every move. He drove hard, as if overtaken by the same frenzied need that had filled her. She arched to meet him, clinging to him even as he slammed into her. All the years of waiting, when she hadn’t even known what she was waiting for, culminated in the moment when her body hit the peak, when fire and emotion and need and drive all exploded at once, and her entire being seemed to clench around him. He gasped even as she cried out, unable to hold back.
She felt the hot pulse of him inside her. Her name burst from him in a voice she’d never heard before. The world seemed to spin, even to rumble beneath them. If it were to fly apart at this moment she wouldn’t care, for they had achieved this and there could be nothing more.
At last it ebbed. She waited, cradling him, savoring his quickened breath, his hammering heart as evidence he’d been on the same soaring flight she had. Not that she needed evidence, she knew as well as she knew the color of his eyes and that small scar on his right shoulder, that he had.
She wished they could stay like this, lying quietly in the sunlight, bare to a world that in this moment seemed without shadow, without threat. That they would have to speak of this, she knew, but not yet, she pled silently, not yet.
Long moments spun out, and she was momentarily glad she did not have Rina’s internal clock; she wanted time to stop, just as it was now. She stroked his back, fingertips tracing the line of lean, strong muscle. Her other hand touched his hair, fingers threading through the golden strands, letting them slip through her fingers. It was said a mating between a golden Triotian and a dark one such as she, one of those known as the Children of the Evening Star, could produce either, although the golden coloring was more the norm. She wondered what—
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