“You’re supposed to be relaxed now,” Saina protested with a squeak.
“You missed a spot,” Bastian murmured near her ear. “But my headache is gone.”
Saina could not keep her hands from continuing to stroke the tanned lines of his shoulders. “What if… what if you’re wrong?” she asked quietly. “What if this is just enchantment, like I said?” She didn’t want to stop touching him, she wanted his skin against every inch of hers. It didn’t feel like song-fantasy. It was so beautiful and right-feeling, just being with him, held in his strong arms.
Bastian put a hand at her chin and gently tipped her head back so he could look into her eyes. His eyes were all gold now, glimmering like distant treasure. “I will take a moment of enchantment with you over a lifetime without you.”
But it wasn’t her magic looking back at her, it was Bastian. Not Bastian-on-goldshot, not Bastian-entwined-in-her-spell, just Bastian.
Bastian, who loved her without magic.
Bastian, who wanted her as much as she wanted him.
Saina opened her mouth, and it wasn’t to sing.
Chapter 20
Bastian hadn’t been honest about his headache; it still lurked behind his eyes and in the pit of his stomach.
But it was nothing compared to the joy of having his love in his arms, her sea green eyes tender and her fingers lithe and clever over his skin.
When he kissed her, he forgot the pain in his head and the hunger in his belly, happy to lose himself in the taste and feel of her against him.
Her dress slipped easily off over her head, his shorts followed swiftly, and for a long, delicious time, they simply touched each other, hands over exposed flesh.
Bastian didn’t want to rush her, and held himself to worshipping each plane and curve of her body. He kissed and sucked and nibbled. She did the same in return, cautiously, then eagerly. Mutual fingers traced every sensitive place, looking for the spot that drew the hiss of breath and flush. Her hair tickled him as she kissed his chest and cupped his ass. He licked her neck and traced the small of her back.
Breath grew ragged and Bastian couldn’t tell where hers began and his ended; he wondered if her magic would help him breathe without air out of the water as well as it did under it.
Urgency mounted, and the touches grew more intimate; he slipped a questing finger into her wet entrance and kissed her neck as she arched into him. She put her fingers around his eager cock and stroked him until he was ready to cry out loud.
He lay her back on the pillows, loving the dark hair spread on his pillows as it took a hundred hues from the gleaming sea glass he had called treasure before he’d known his true prize.
He slipped into her slowly, with the same deliberate care he had explored her body, and she moaned in pleasure as she spread her legs in welcome.
Bastian was careful, gentle, pausing when she tensed, and she made a little noise of need and pressed herself onto him in a rush.
She was his shield, his holt, he thought. Being deep inside her was the safest place he could imagine.
For a moment, an ugly, unwelcome need interrupted, urging him to be the dragon he’d been so briefly again.
Then Saina cried out as the muscles in her body clenched in orgasm, and that need was forgotten, washed away in cleaner desires.
He returned to his mate, not ready to sate himself and end their bliss, and let her pleasure wash away in a slow, controlled wave.
When she returned to herself, they rolled across the bed so that she was straddling him, and she moved with the same slow, deliberate strokes, drawing him deeper, and deeper, like they were swimming together on a fathomless ocean floor. His senses constricted; he was pressure and slick skin against hot velvet. Her touch, her little sounds of joy, were all that anchored him.
He was ocean and fire, she was tide and flame. They moved in perfect symmetry and as she cried again in release, he lost himself in the only magic he needed from her.
Chapter 21
After bringing her to unknown heights of delight, Bastian collapsed next to her, and Saina didn’t have the breath left to hum him to the sleep she knew he needed after his exposure to the goldshot.
She was glad that by the time she had gathered herself, she didn’t have to do anything. He was asleep, one strong arm splayed over her belly possessively.
Saina closed her eyes and enjoyed the moment as long as she was able to.
Then, unbidden, doubts crept back.