* * * * *
Raine felt water close over her head and her eyes flew open.
Grimm floated in front of her, his hair and cloak streaked about him in clouds of ink. His eyes were lights that illuminated the black depths around them, creating facets in the water that glittered across the skin of her floating arms like scales on the side of a great carp.
It was oddly peaceful.
Neither of them moved except for where the current pushed their limbs and nudged their hair and clothes. It was so silent and cool, she couldn’t even hear her heart beating in her ears. There had never been a silence like this for her before and she found it could be just as beautiful as any symphony, if one knew how to listen. She wanted to tell Grimm about it, but that would mean breaking the silence and it wasn’t time to do that yet.
Without gravity it was hard to know if they were sinking or floating, but she was certain they were doing the latter. Sinking deeper underwater. It was due mostly to a gentle increase of pressure on her bones, almost imperceptible, but if she relaxed and gave in, the sensation grew stronger as the seconds ticked by.
There was the temperature of the water to consider as well. It was getting colder.
Raine blinked and frowned quizzically, wondering for the first time why they were underwater. How had they come to be here? Where was here, exactly? She tilted her head at Grimm, still wanting to preserve the silence, asking her questions without openly asking.
He shook his head, giving no answer at all.
Something about this was wrong. Raine didn’t want to wait to find out what that was. She kicked for the surface.
Grimm’s cloak moved in a blur, snapping around her ankles like striking eels, preventing her from ascending. Raine’s eyes went wide and she broke the silence at last, the rising danger of the situation taking precedence. What are you doing?
Waiting.
She scoffed in disbelief. For what?
For you to breathe, Nightingale.
A tiny, lonely bubble escaped her lips. Stunned silence was all she could manage after such an absurd statement.
Have I ever given you a reason to fear me, Raine?
Raine was still too stunned to reply, her hands instinctively covering her child in a protective posture.
You have to trust me, Raine. I know it goes against every instinct, but if you breathe in this water, if you let it fill you, it will change you. It will mend all those broken pieces of you that never worked the way they should. You won’t be a Shikar, but you will be as good as. Better. You will have all our strengths, none of our weaknesses. You will be like Lazarus. And you will never, ever lose your memory again. Don’t you want that, my love?
Raine blinked furiously against the sting of tears, her lungs beginning to burn because even she could not hold her breath forever. Though it seemed that now, through whatever changes Grimm had suffered, he could.
You will be whole and strong, he implored her.
I’ll die. Our baby will die.
No! He shook his head vehemently, his hair a stain clouding the water, his eyes beams of light that blinded her. No, I won’t let that happen. You know me, Nightingale. You know I wouldn’t risk that.
I can’t.
You can.
She kicked her feet, still bound, but it was in vain. Bubbles escaped her lips. Soon the choice would be taken from her and she’d breathe in anyway. Help me! Please, someone help me! she cried, but it was the desperate plea of the dying and no one but Grimm heard it.
Grimm took her hands away from their child, oblivious and safely tucked away in her body, and held them tight in his. Oh Nightingale, your fear is breaking my heart. I am right here with you and I will never leave your side. Just breathe; it can be as easy as a sigh if you let it.
What if it hurts?
Then the pain will not last and you have been through far worse and for no benefit, while this will be for the greatest benefit. Do you want to run the risk that someday you might forget your own child? Your grandchildren? Let this be over and done with now. Let go of the burden of your suffering—you’ve carried its weight long enough, love. Just breathe.
Raine imagined forgetting her child and realized she would rather die than see the pain in her son’s or daughter’s eyes when they came to understand that their own mother didn’t recognize them. If Grimm believed this water had some kind of magical ability to cure her then she would have faith in him, trust that he was right and get it over with as quickly as possible.
Letting go the reins of her fear was not so easily done, but she tried, gripping his hands so tight her knuckles popped. His cloak released her feet and now acted as a bolster instead to support her weight and granted her some warmth as the chill of the water seeped into her bones. The cold and her own stubborn protests had sapped her of strength without her having noticed. Raine met his gaze, her heartbeat in her throat as she came to the realization that the time for any choice in this matter was long past anyway.
You can do this, he assured her. As easy as a sigh.
Bracing herself, Raine breathed out a stream of bubbles, emptying her lungs.
It was so much easier said than done…but in the end, Raine let nature take over. She allowed her body its instinctive urge to seek air, even knowing that there wasn’t any to breathe. Not here in the depths of the cold, silent sea.
She breathed underwater, filling her chest with cold, heavy liquid, until her lungs felt like two lead balloons. That icy, weighty sensation spread outward, through her veins and surrounding tissues, petrifying her into immobility and everything went dark save for two pinpoints of light, Grimm’s eternal, shining gaze acting as a tether as she let go.
Those celestial eyes…such bright beacons patiently waiting to call her home after she was done being dead.
Chapter Thirty
Later…
Raine ran her hands across his broad shoulders, noting the stark contrast of their skin tones. He was so much darker than she. It wasn’t that noticeable until she put her hands on him like this, his bronze so deep, her porcelain paleness became almost translucent by comparison.
“I could stare at you for hours,” she admitted in a whisper that seemed suited to the dimly lit intimacy of their bedroom.
“You have stared at me for hours.” His melodic voice never failed to enchant her. “Though I am obliged to admit that I did command you to stare several times—”
“You just can’t stand it when I come with my eyes closed, can you?”
“I like to see your eyes flash blue, I cannot help myself.”
“I wish they were still blue—or that they’d at least turned to Shikar gold.” She rubbed his nipples playfully before bending down to nip one with her teeth. “But at least now I have all of my memories and no fear of losing them again.”
Raine shifted over him. She was already straddling his lean hips so that his massive member, semi-hard so soon after their most recent bout of love play, filled her pussy to overflowing, but with a small nudge she took more of him inside and they both sighed contentedly.
“I love your eyes just as they are,” he promised, stretching beneath her, his cock flexing deep inside her body, wringing a gasp from her lips.
And she’d thought herself satiated. Fourteen times in a row should have destroyed her libido…but she was a Shikar now, or as close to one as she could ever become after her baptismal in the sea of the Wastes, and her stamina knew no bounds thus far. She never tired in his arms.
Grimm’s cock swelled inside her, growing thicker and harder as the walls of her sex drenched him with the slickness of her desire. His stamina was just as boundless as hers—he never failed to rise to the occasion.
Her body was love bruised, especially between her legs, but she wanted more and she wanted it now. Without any preamble, without any need for foreplay—there’d been plenty of that in the past several hours or more to keep her ready for days—she began rocking and undulating on his rigid staff, grinding her clit agai
nst his pubic bone until she could no longer hold back her gasps and moans of ecstasy.
“Where are you going so fast?” he purred, taking hold of her hips to still her movements.
Raine groaned, her chest trembling as she caught her breath. “Please,” she begged prettily, trying and failing to resume her dance upon his loins. “You feel so good.” She tempted him, stroking her breasts, offering them like ripe fruit to his lips.
“I know.” He smiled with masculine arrogance, his tongue darting out to tease her pert nipples. “So do you, love. But there is no rush…” He bent his knees and pushed her back to rest against them so that he could look down at where they joined. His fingers went to her labia and parted the swollen flesh to better see her slick, wet cunt. “Oh now that is lovely,” he marveled, licking his lips.
Raine moaned and tried again, unsuccessfully, to move.
“Oh sweetness,” he chided. “You don’t have to be so eager. I am right here,” He pulled her in closer, rubbing his chest against her tender breasts. “Ever a slave to the desires of your flesh. Ready to see to your every need. Take your time, love. Use me. Yes.” He grinned smugly when Raine’s breathing hitched and her nipples were ruched rosettes that she arched higher and higher toward his descending mouth, begging for his kiss on them as a flower begged for the light of the sun. “Just like that.” He rewarded her with half a dozen suckling kisses on each pouting breast.
“I could kill you,” she panted.
“And you will.” Raine was pleased to note that his voice was none too steady now. “Don’t your people call it the little death?”
“Shut up and fuck me,” she snapped, raking her nails down his chest until he arched into her reflexively. Now it was Raine’s turn for smug triumph as she rode his hips with a hard thrust that nearly brought her home…oh, it was superb, this little game they played. There were no losers, only winners.
“Such a dirty mouth!”
“If it’s dirty, it’s because of what you’ve made me do with it all day long.” She said the last few words between clenched teeth. She reached between their bodies and touched the root of him that was exposed, stroking him betwixt her fingers. “I know you want it, why not just give in?”
“Because,” now he was the one with gritted teeth, “waiting is more fun.”
Raine kissed the corner of his mouth and whispered in his ear. “Liar.” She squeezed him with the muscles deep inside her sheath and heard him moan brokenly. She kissed his neck and repeated the exercise, not knowing anymore who was goading whom, only aware that it felt amazing what she was doing with her pussy right now.
The world flipped around her, she spun on Grimm’s dick and found herself on her hands and knees in front of him. “Holy shit!”
“Language!” he said and slammed his hips forward, shoving his cock into her cunt so hard that she went down on her face on the mattress and screamed.
Grimm slapped her ass, jerked her back against him, burying himself deeper and moving his hips in a salacious circle so that his thickness twisted gently, slightly inside her clinging sheath. “You wanted it hard and fast, Nightingale. Let me give it to you hard and fast.”
Uh-oh. Raine fretted that maybe she’d pushed him too far. There was danger prowling beneath his powerful muscles. It was in the further hardening of his already too-hard phallus, it was in his incredible length and girth. He was wildness unleashed, set loose as she’d never witnessed before.
Her hands fisted in the covers to still their trembling, to find purchase on something solid as the world spun out of control.
Grimm’s hands pulled her tighter into the cradle of his hips, the movement deceptively slow. He covered her body, his shadow looming over her like a promise. His breath whispered warm over her neck. Raine had only a moment to compose herself, a gentle brush of his lips over her skin, before he bit down on her flesh, breaking through to the blood beneath.
She cried out.
He pounded into her, setting a furious rhythm, his mouth drawing on her neck like a hungry beast, marking her as his. It was all she could do to hang on and take every thick inch he gave her, her hips angled high and sharp, the pleasure so close to pain it made her loins heavy and her heart ache with longing for more…more…more.
He gave it.
His hands slid up and down her sides, more possessive than she’d ever guessed he could be. He claimed every inch he touched. He palmed her breasts, squeezed them and kneaded them. He petted her stomach. He stroked her back. He pinched her ass. And oh dear heavens, he played with her cunt ruthlessly, never allowing her release, always stopping short of the mark.
“Please, Grimm, please.” She was begging him, pleading. Promising anything. Pledging her soul to him. “I love you so much, I need you, I need this, please.”
“I am the master of this body.” He slapped her ass none-too-gently. “Say it.”
“You are, you are,” she rambled.
“Say it!”
“You are the master of my body.”
“You come when I say.”
She didn’t need coaching this time. “I come when you say, only when you say. Please, Grimm.”
He growled low in his throat and bit her neck again, his hips pounding out a steadier rhythm now, rewarding her for her obedience.
God, what kind of animal had she unleashed? Raine wondered.
Grimm was drunk on the taste and scent of her. Mindless from the salacious words he’d wrung from her swollen, bee-stung lips. He wanted to fuck her inside out, but he would never hurt her, and it took every ounce of his self-control now to gentle himself and refrain from hurting her. Gods how he loved this amazing creature!
He reached up and grabbed her chin, turned her to face him and kissed her with all the love and passion he felt in that moment. She was his world, his life, his everything. He needed her to understand that, to experience the ardent emotion he carried in his heart for her.
When she moaned into his mouth he tasted the pure love of her and knew she felt the same.
He released her lips and moved faster, pounding into her. Raine was mewling in the back of her throat, and even such a raw sound from her was an ethereal music that made him catch his breath. She was a siren. Always had been—from the first moment he’d heard her voice, his life had belonged to her—and her song made him strong, even as it conquered his self-control.
The long slide into her, the tight pull out, each movement was now a strain because he wanted her to come one more time. Needed her to come when he finally did, because when they came together he felt their souls fuse as one bright star and was wholly complete in a way nothing else could ever come close to matching.
He reached around and found the swollen pearl of her clit. It was slick beneath his finger. He rubbed little circles around it, wanting it in his mouth, but knowing there was no time for that now. Right now was for the hard, fast ride to oblivion inside her tight, wet heat. Her sheath was made for him, her body his temple wherein he could worship forever.
They were both panting and Grimm felt the first tiny fluttering of her climax with all the awe of a spiritual awakening. With a triumphant roar, he pushed her body over the edge of passion’s highest peak, the fist-tight squeeze of her pussy around his cock assuring him it was safe…and he let go himself.
Raine sobbed into the blankets, racked by the most amazing orgasm she’d ever dreamed possible. Then the flood of his cum spurted deep inside her and she wept tears of overwhelming joy.
He’d given her all of him. Everything.
The thick, rich cream of his seed filled her until it spilled smoothly out the edges of their conjoined flesh. Grimm let out a roar that vibrated her skull, clutched her so desperately as his hips pumped convulsively that she knew without doubt he’d never let her go.
She didn’t want him to. Not ever.
His seed was hot. As life was a fire that ignited everything it touched. Her skin was scalded from the inside, alight with his desire.
Li
ke everything else in Grimm’s fierce embrace, it formed the most perfect melody—a secret song composed by their immortal love.
Epilogue
Much later…
“She tells me everything changed when Daemon tore his cord from her. There is no way for her to see what cords may or may not remain. Only the cords between her, myself and our child remain, that I can see.”
“I can no longer feel him, Grimm. Not even a whisper,” Tryton admitted. “Many are the times we thought him dead, but never did I feel such a void where he should reside in my heart.” Tryton’s eyes were edged in tears. “He is gone. My brother is dead.” A sob ripped its way out of The Elder’s chest, the wrenching sorrow he suffered palpable in the air.
Grimm bowed his head, the curtain of his hair offering his friend some privacy as he mourned. There was only the tiniest twinge of guilt for having uttered the lie…but Grimm knew the ghostly jet-black cord that floated out from his heart did not necessarily mean Daemon would ever return alive and well from the Gray Land. Most likely he was a lost, wandering soul that would eventually fade—the cord along with him.
He felt a twinge of something close to…was it empathy? He couldn’t be certain.
Grimm knew he was different now, not just a Traveler anymore. He was something beyond the Shikar phylon, and because of that, he understood Daemon’s misfit ways a little better. He didn’t condone them—he simply understood how Daemon could have felt like an outcast among his own kind.
After a long while had passed and silence had fallen between them, Tryton cleared his throat. “Still, at least a piece of him still lives on through you. We can take comfort in that.”
“You may take comfort in that, but I never have and never will.”
“Please, can you not let go of your anger, even now? At the end, did he not prove himself to you? He gave you the key to healing Raine’s malady. He saved us all with his final act, but most especially Raine and your child—he took her place, you realize. Raine meant to be the one to throw herself into the heart of the Leviathan. It was her last desperate bid to save you, but Daemon forbade it. Instead he sacrificed his life to save yours; he gave his life for you in the end.”
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