I’d make him make it.
The taut muscles in his stomach contracted.
Without warning, he sat up, grabbed me, and spun me around. I reached to catch myself on the dirt floor, but he pulled me back instead, tethering me against his chest with a hand across my sternum. His opposite hand delved between my thighs, and the stretch of his fingers returned, gliding in and out as I melted in his lap, my legs putty over his.
Pheolix’s arm wrapped around my shoulders, guiding me down until I sank fully onto him. His groan echoed across the cavern walls.
The world vibrated in color. Ripples danced in the shallow pool of rainwater beside us. The line between stark light and cool shadow ripened at the cavern mouth as the sun crested the mountain peaks. I let my head fall backwards on Pheolix’s shoulder as we moved together. He leaned in, his breath loud and heavy in my ears, but I loved the raw sound of it. His teeth and lips skimmed my neck, tongue licking away his own bites.
He moved lazily enough to make my head spin. I couldn’t think beyond the roll and grind of his hips, the building tension and ebbing patience in my legs, seeking that burning high again. I tried to push against him, tried to entice him to move faster, but his hand tightened at the base of my throat, holding me where he wanted.
“I do have good dreams,” he breathed in my ear. “And this is one. Dreams of how you’d feel wrapped around me. I intend to enjoy you as slowly as I please.”
I turned my head to answer him as he hit a sudden and particularly sensitive note under my flesh, and my mouth parted in a sudden gasp, my voice all but lost in a silent moan. Nose to nose, he lifted his hand to my chin, locking me in place while his mouth captured mine.
Even if I wanted to move, I don’t think I could have. He held me more securely than ropes tied to a wall, moored by vines and gnarled roots. His opposite arm wrapped around my waist, snaking between my legs, and at the sweep of his fingers, my entire body lifted as though pulled taught by a string. A deep rumble grated against my shoulder as he repeated the move, winding me tighter and tighter.
Until suddenly, I broke.
I cried out as the waves of it threatened to bowl me over, every tendon yanked tight and then cut like the wires of a trap. My body broke loose for a second time, spasms sending me through a whirlpool of ecstasy, around and around. He shifted, laying my limp body down, kissing the column of my throat where he’d held me the moment before. I was vaguely aware of his hands at my thighs, spreading me apart. But he did, and the drowsy spell that overtook me vanished with a sharp crack.
My hips rose to meet him as he thrusted in. We watched where our bodies joined as he claimed me hard and fast. He gave a sudden lurch, abdomen contracting against mine, his groan sending dark fire into my belly.
We lay there, content as the bright sun climbed above the cavern mouth, ascending through fresh clouds and wind. I closed my eyes. His heart thrummed softly against my cheek, and I leaned into it. Let myself sink into it. Down, down, down. Into the comforting drum of his chest. Fingertips slid across my back, sweeping between my shoulder blades with idle strokes.
My eyelids grew heavy. I didn’t want to sleep. I wasn’t ready. But Pheolix was too warm, the gentle pull of his fingers too lulling. He dropped a kiss into my hair, and I knew he was watching me fight it.
I meant to say something. To incite conversation from him. To keep myself awake with the sound of his voice. But everything began to blend and blur. I fell slowly. Softly. Quietly.
58
Selena
Fingertips cascaded down my forearm, lacing between my knuckles. Hours had passed, but neither of us had moved, our skin bare and dusted with goosebumps where our bodies didn’t touch. The cavern was dim, night lurking just beyond the edges of the mountainside.
Pheolix didn’t notice I’d woken. He lifted my hand into the air, pulling it close and studying my nails like he’d never seen something so fascinating as the moons of my cuticles. His thumb grazed over them, and he uncurled my fingers to trace the lifeline in my palm all the way into my wrist.
He stopped at every freckle, every thin vein. As though the imperfections in my skin were painted with a magic brush. Up my arm and across my shoulder, slowing as he followed the arch of my neck. His hand stroked across my jaw, heat oozing from his touch, and his thumb drifted across the hollow between my mouth and chin.
A smile hovered in the bow of his lip like a ghost lurking in the shadowed corners when he noticed my eyes were open.
“How does it feel,” he asked, "to be officiallycordae-less?”
I’d thought about it briefly before drifting off. Naiads were said to feel their bonds attach as they mated, an invisible cord attaching one to the other. A tether that always pulled them in the direction of their mate. Somecorda-cruorsthroughout history had been separated by miles. By continents. And they’d always had that cord to find each other.
Although I’d known it wouldn’t come, I suppose some part of me subconsciously waited to see if it would. Just in case Pheolix was wrong.But the fresh scent of thecorda-cruordidn’t hang in the air, and I couldn’t decide if the hopeless enamor that burned through me now was any more or less than what a human might feel.
Still, I smiled at him. Found the side of his face with my hand and let my fingertips drift through his russet hair, twisting at the ends. “You are mycordae, Pheolix.”
He cupped the corner of his jaw in a hand, propping himself over his elbow. The shadow of his smile deepened.
I let my hand whisper down his chest, tracing the tattooed lines down his abdomen. Thirteen of them, one for each year he’d spent in the inbetween. “How are you luckier than the other drones?”
He glanced down, observing the trail of my fingers. “What do you mean?”
“You said you were luckier than them. They lost themselves and you didn’t.”
Pheolix chewed the corner of his lip. He caught my roaming hand in his, then pulled them together to rest over my navel. “Most of them watched their families die,” he said, his voice a rough murmur beside my ear. “I’d been taken from my mother, but I knew she’d escaped. I knew she was alive. I didn’t have to struggle with the idea that she’d been killed. And I had my brother. We weren’t supposed to see each other, but Thaan was away for years at a time. When he was young, my brother stayed as a guard for the dungeon under the mine.” Pheolix scoffed, the sound half chuckle and half sigh. “He snuck in to visit me every night. Told me stories in Rivean. Taught me to dance. The rest of the drones in the inbetween would sit at their bars and listen, but he wasn’t their brother. They all lost themselves eventually. I managed to hold on because of him. That’s what saved me; my confinement wasn’t solitary. When he couldn’t visit, I’d pretend he did. I’d sit and talk to him for hours. Holding on to my humanity by a thread.”
