When a moth loved a bee, p.69
When a Moth loved a Bee, page 69
I gasped and arched in his hold.
Sucking in a strangled breath, he ran a thumb over my nipple.
I swayed on the spot.
“Ask me to stop, Runa.” He bowed from his tall height.
I cried out as his mouth captured my nipple. The heat of his tongue. The wetness of his lick. It corrupted me, broke me, shattered me apart and the heartlink blazed bright as I tumbled into it.
I flung myself into the tumbling heady sensation of him.
His feelings tripped into mine.
He wanted me.
Violently.
He wanted to hurt me.
Miserably.
He wanted to mount me like Salak had the morning we woke and claim me all for his own.
My eyes snapped closed at the imagery.
At the feral desperation bleeding from him to me.
It lit me up.
It made me liquify.
I shivered as my skin began to glow.
He groaned quietly as he raised his head and let me go. Cool air licked around my wet nipple. His hands dropped to his wolf pelt, yanking at the folds keeping it in place. His smoke-silver gaze met mine. “You finally sense me.”
I struggled to talk as he unwrapped his pelt and tossed it to the side.
His skin pulsed sterling, etching his powerful stomach with ridges and valleys. His thighs were spread and his length hung achingly hard between his legs. I choked on my own desire, glowing brighter the more I melted. My heart raced as raw longing ebbed off him, tangling with my own, blending into one seamless need.
Fisting himself, he groaned as he drank in my bareness. “I’ve sensed you all along,” he spoke into my heart. “Every night you couldn’t sleep. Every day you wanted to come to me but didn’t.”
Letting himself go, he stepped angrily into me. “Every time you decided to keep a secret, I sensed you. Every time you dealt with something painful yet refused to share it with me, I knew. And that’s the worst sort of agony because you didn’t trust me to keep you safe. You refuse to let me fight whatever it is that you’re afraid of.”
I sucked in a breath as his hand landed in my hair, tugging my head back, keeping me prone and at his mercy. “I promise you don’t have to be afraid of me, Runa.” His lips landed on my throat, followed by the scrape of his teeth. “But I’m not going to be gentle. I can’t.”
I couldn’t breathe as every part of me turned to fire.
My skin beamed a golden gleam.
With a sharp nip, Darro guided me down to the fur.
My legs bent and my heart raced as he forced me to my knees.
“I’m going to take you how I’ve wanted to take you since we found each other.”
I shivered at his growl.
I obeyed his pressure and fell backward, trusting him, proving that I did trust him.
I gave myself entirely to him as his heart bled black and billowed with such hostile yearning. Tears pricked of love and loss as he towered over me, spread my legs so he kneeled between them, then planted his hands on either side of my thighs.
His gaze landed on my exposed flesh. Shadows swirled from his back, gathering around us, forming the bubble of midnight that was becoming so familiar. The silver ring around his smoky gaze glowed brighter, and with a strangled inhale, he bowed over me. “In all my lost memories and the ones I’ve remembered, I can say without a shred of doubt that I’ve never felt this way about anyone else.”
I froze as his lips pressed to my stomach.
Sensitivity darted through my blood, swirling right in my core.
“I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you.” He kissed my tender skin, his lips riding the waves of my shallow, quickening inhales. “Never needed anything as much as I need you. And that…” He nipped me before slipping off his knees and folding onto his belly, directly between my spread legs. “…means I could become lost to obsession.”
I couldn’t catch a breath as his nose skated over my belly, dragging down, down…down.
His tongue traced a long, wet, hot line, dipping dangerously close to the part of me that swelled and throbbed.
“It would be so easy to forget about everyone else,” he murmured. “To not care about anyone else. To only care about what I want. And what I want, Runa…” His mouth pressed against my centre. “Is you.”
My hands fisted in the wolf pelt as my chest came off the ground. I gasped and shook, trying to stay in this world when every moment with him threatened to steal me into another.
“I want you,” he breathed into my core. “Like this. At my mercy. Finally aware of how much I feel, how much I hurt and ache and crave.”
Waves of anger fed off him as his mouth captured every private piece of me. Rage at those keeping us apart, despair at my bind to Aktor, fury at not being able to keep me.
His tongue darted out, dipping inside me.
Lust swamped.
Need unfurled.
His hand landed between my breasts, branding me, controlling me. With strength that came from night and shadows, he pinned me onto my back and licked me.
Brazenly, possessively.
I cried out.
I tensed and melted, shuddered and froze.
A primal, gravelly noise vibrated in his chest as he licked me again. “You’re not going back to them, Runa.” His tongue dipped inside me, drawing another whimper from my throat. “Being apart from you sends me too far into the dark. I need your light, your heat, your life.” He nipped me, sending pinwheels of sparks through every bone. “I need you with me, so I stay mortal. So I don’t become the monster prowling inside me.”
His hand slipped between my legs.
I panted as he stroked me, his tongue and finger moving in a deviant dance. My skin glowed brighter, its golden hue bouncing off the shadows cocooning us. My mouth parted wide as he pressed a single finger inside me.
I lost myself.
I sank into the darkness with him.
I accepted the absolute truth that he was right. I’d never felt this way about anyone else. I knew I never would. It wasn’t from finding each other in this lifetime but the universe-deep knowledge that we, us, this, was fundamental.
I didn’t just love him.
I was because of him.
I needed him to exist—just like light needed night to function.
“I’m going to show you just how much we belong together.” His finger pressed deeper, his tongue lapping up every desire he wrung from me. “We aren’t opposites but mirroring refractions. I’m done fearing visions and beasts. I’m done allowing elements and lightning to control our fate.”
I moaned as he inserted a second finger, stretching me.
My eyes refused to open, my body heavy, wet, and begging.
My golden glow switched to the pearly luminescence that only appeared when I tapped fully into my power. Sunlight poured through me, drenching me in warmth and need. So, so much need.
Darro licked around where his fingers entered me, his tongue tasting me, dragging me deeper into a corrupted world of—
“Selfishness,” Quelis hissed. “A world so sickeningly selfish.”
I flinched at the trespass.
I squeezed my eyes closed and focused on the heartlink. I poured trust and lust into the male between my legs and—
“The wolves might have given up. Rivoza and Vetak too, but we won’t stop so easily. It’s too late to save you. But…we have to try for the others. For all those you condemn to death with your selfish choices.”
A fireball blew through my head, delivering a horrifying vision.
I walked on the bottom of the dried-up seas.
Every droplet had evaporated from my fires.
Every life was incinerated.
Colossal skeletons dotted the desiccated oceans.
Whale jawbones and swordfish flukes.
Creatures I’d conjured, now burned.
There was no sound, no air, no light or breath or life.
Just me.
Wandering a world that I’d slain—
“Get out!” I shouted in my head. “Leave me be.”
Darro stilled, his fingers still deep inside me. His eyes hooded, watching me like a hunter ready to eat his prey. He licked his glistening lips, groaning at the flavour of my arousal, but then his gaze darkened. “Your attention strayed. While my tongue was inside you, your attention split—” He shook his head and withdrew his touch. With a heart-breaking sigh, he shifted until he sat on his knees, looking down at me. “Tell me. Tell me what was strong enough to take you away from me.”
My heart clenched at the sublime beauty of Darro kneeling with his hands upturned, two of his fingers wet, and his jaw tight with barely controlled rage. His hardness looked fierce and angry, spearing upward.
He’d fought for me since the day in the grasslands. He’d tossed me over his shoulder as if it was his divine right to claim me.
I struggled to hold onto that.
To not let another vision scare me or Quelis’s haunting despair to stop me.
Sitting upright, I shifted until I mimicked his posture, our knees touching. I hung my head and told him a little but not everything. “You’re right that the flames are speaking to me. They’re angry that we haven’t taken heed.” I still didn’t have the words to confess that one day, some day, I might be the cause of mass extinction. “But you are the only one I want, Darro. Regardless of what they say.”
My heart stuttered with sudden discomfort.
A single misstep but it made my breath catch and worry flare.
The bind…
Aktor.
Darro let out a heavy groan, raking both hands over his face. “You’re thinking about him.” His lips curled into a snarl. “You’re thinking of him while your essence coats my tongue.”
I rubbed my arms as grief cloaked me.
I cursed how sensitive he was.
He’d learned to tap into our link in ways I hadn’t yet mastered.
I hated that I’d hurt him. Again. That even here, in this wolf den where we first sank into knowing, I’d found a way to ruin everything.
My heart tripped again, barely there, hardly noticeable, but then it fisted with agony as Darro dropped his hands and shook his head. His every thought and insecurity, his every anger and hope painted his handsome face. Shadows danced over his bareness, highlighting ropes of power in his forearms, chiselled planes of his stomach, and old scars on his ribcage.
My mouth dried up as my stare went between his legs.
To the part of him that stabbed upright, heavy and hard, glistening with need.
He stilled as I studied him.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his incredible body. His magnetic power. His absolute mastery of who he was becoming.
“I’m only thinking of you,” I whispered.
His chin dropped and he sighed. “That’s a lie.” His tone darkened with fury even as his face cracked with pain. “And the fact that you thought you could do such a thing shows me just how—”
I didn’t let him finish.
I wouldn’t let Quelis’s visions, my tripping heart, or my fears of what I would do ruin this. I fell forward. I bowed over his lap. And I did to him what he’d done to me.
He grunted with shock as my fingers latched around his velvet length and my mouth encircled the tip. The scent of his musk and the tang of his lust exploded in my nose, followed by the salty erotic taste of him.
His thighs turned to stone as I licked.
He snarled as I sucked.
His hands sank into my hair, gathering the curtain of white, twisting it into a tight rope, holding me, keeping me locked over him. His breathing turned harsh as I sank my hand down his rigid length, following with my mouth.
He groaned as his hardness nudged the back of my throat and jerked as if lightning had found us as I hollowed out my cheeks.
“Runa…fuuuuck—” His head fell back as I drew up, doing my best to gift him pleasure. Wanting to worship him, thank him, prove to him that my thoughts were full of him and not—
I sat looking at the moon.
At the distant mocking moon.
Its silver light and night shadows wrenched bone-deep sobs from me.
I fell to my side onto the lava rocks my power had conjured, hugging myself as I broke.
Agonising sorrow wracked me.
I cried until I couldn’t breathe.
I cried until grief welled up and choked—
He stilled as my fingers paused on his length. His scent of night sky and earthy woods seeped stronger as if power gathered in his belly, ready to ignite.
Had he sensed my mind had fractured again?
Did he see the visions I saw?
With a soft moan, I squeezed him and sucked harder. His hips twitched, feeding more of his length into my mouth.
“I feel what you’re thinking, Runa.” His fingers tightened in my hair, pressing himself deeper into my mouth as if to punish me. He stroked my cheek as I sucked him, ran a finger around my lips as they stretched around his girth. “Why won’t you tell me what scares you?”
Tears sprang from nowhere, trickling past my eyelashes. The droplets ran into the corner of my mouth, flavouring his dark taste with another layer of salt.
“You’ll shed far more tears if you don’t stop!” Quelis shouted.
My heart stumbled, struggling to find its regular beat.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Quelis whispered. “The blood bind is calling to you, Life Bringer.”
I didn’t care.
My heart could pound and flounder all it wanted but I wasn’t going back. Not yet. Not ever.
“Silly, silly bee. Stupid, stupid moth,” Quelis lamented.
The fire fell quiet as Darro drove upward into my mouth, wrenching my attention back to him. “I could make you tell me. I could pin you down and tear into your mind.”
My fingers shook around his hard length. Could he do that? Was he capable—
“I’m capable of anything,” he whispered coldly. “I’m death, but it seems that is merely the beginning.” His hips rocked again, setting his own brutal pace. He grunted as my teeth scraped his sensitive skin. “Every memory brings another one. And each one hints that I have far more power than any monster should ever have. You’ve said as much. Our forgetfulness hints as much. And one day, Runa, I promise you, I will walk in your mind as if it were my own. And you will walk in mine because I have nothing to hide. We will share everything. Because I’m so sick of you hiding from me. Of dealing with hardships on your own. Of refusing to trust me.”
With a snarl, he tore my head up with his handful of hair, holding me upright on my knees.
Our eyes locked.
Silver to gold.
His shadows slithered and tangled around us.
My glowing light beamed and glittered.
And in his feral-passionate hold, my heart dared to falter.
Not a skip this time or a gentle warning flutter, but a breath-gasping, blood-wrenching halt.
For the briefest of moments, I feared I would die.
That this was my end.
And part of me was grateful that at least it would happen in the arms of the man I loved, but then it struck up its rhythm again, slightly quieter, less determined, debating on whether or not to keep me breathing.
Darro’s gaze scorched mine, melting with love. “What do you see? What has that fire element done to you?”
This was the perfect moment.
The only moment to tell him the truth.
I opened my mouth to speak—
The dust of so many burned bones wafted around my ankles as I walked.
I’d walked alone for so long.
Hoping, begging, pleading.
But there was nothing.
Just me. And my sins. And the ash of what I’d done.
Only I existed and that was the greatest punishment.
I stopped walking.
My eyes fell upon a wolf fang.
An aching sob tore through me.
I made a choice.
The only choice.
I fell to my knees.
I snatched the fang.
I drew it firmly over my throat.
Blood sprang.
Golden nectar, immortal ichor, ethereal toxicity.
I grew cold, dull…lifeless.
I closed my eyes—
The vision disintegrated as Darro’s mouth captured mine.
I shivered as his hands cupped my cheeks, cradled my jaw, and held me firm as he kissed me back into this world. He kissed me as if he’d sensed how despairing I was, how broken and lost and…dead.
“Fuck, Runa.” His tongue traced my bottom lip. “Come back to me. Stay with me. Just stay with me and everything will be okay.”
I moaned as he kissed me again.
It started sweet, mingled with my taste and his.
But then, it changed.
It darkened.
Deepened.
Became bitter and sharp with danger.
It kept me locked with him.
It overshadowed the visions. It muted my failing heart.
I threw myself into the kiss.
I flung my arms around his shoulders and pressed my bareness to his.
In his taste, I could stay. In his overwhelming love, I could ignore the warnings and pretend that the breaking in my heart would never become real.
But the cracks in my already failing heart widened a little more.
Another flutter.
Another ominous cautioning.
I needed to return.
I knew that.
But…I couldn’t do it.
Maybe this was the way it had to be.
To die so no one else had to.
“More,” I commanded through our heartlink. “More. Please…give me more.”
Darro obeyed with reckless ferocity.
If he’d felt my distraction, at least he didn’t know what caused it.
He didn’t know that the longer I remained, the closer I tiptoed to death.
