He opened his eyes and looked down at me, held my gaze. “And that’s not just the Ardor talking?”
Strangely, the Ardor was on a low simmer, as if it had a mind of its own and knew what was coming, content to wait for this moment to be just right. I shook my head. “It’s not the Ardor. It’s me. I’m falling in love with you, Nix.”
I’d never said those words before. Never loved someone like I loved him.
“Thank the gods, because you were killing me, female.” He swung me up into his arms like I was a new bride and carried me to the bed with a huge smile on his face. A happy smile. A smile I’d never seen before and would do almost anything to see again and again.
I wrapped my arms around his neck as he settled me gently on the bed and pulled him down for a kiss. “Maybe I can make it up to you.”
He waggled his eyebrows and it made me smile.
“Whatever you need, mate. I will provide.”
“So selfless,” I replied.
He grinned at my teasing and pulled my uniform tunic up over my head. “Of course I am. I am the most magnificent male on all of Alera.”
I watched, biting my lower lip as he pulled his own tunic from his magnificent body and lowered himself over me, his weight on his elbows so I could breathe. I kissed him. Again. “Yes, you are.”
His mouth settled over mine, our tongues tangling, our bodies pressed together, chest to chest, skin on skin. Soft kisses. Slow kisses. I-love-you kisses. I could have stayed there, pinned beneath him, his mouth on mine for hours. Days.
This was what my Ardor craved. Slow. Gentle. For the first time, we weren’t ravaging each other. We weren’t frantic or even desperate.
But his cock grew hard, pressed between my hips and my Ardor rose to meet him. Not wild this time. There, but not boiling over, as if even my body had been tamed, gentled by Nix and his feelings for me. Or mine for him. As if since my mind had finally accepted him, my body did, too.
My heart still ached, but the dagger-like pain was gone. Now the hurt filled me with power. With hunger and the need to make this man happy. No one else mattered. Only him. And me. And this heat flaring between us.
“I need you, Nix.”
He kissed me with a soft groan, lowering his mouth to my neck. Working his way lower, he took a slow exploratory path across my heated skin to my breasts. He sucked my hard nipple into his mouth, then the other, giving them due attention, as if he had all the time in the world. When I was gasping and writhing beneath him, he smiled and went lower still, kissing my stomach before lifting his head to pull off my boots. The rest of my clothes.
He tried to slide back over me, his pants still on, but no way I was allowing him to get away with that. I wanted skin on skin. I needed him. I put up one foot and placed it square on his chest, but I didn’t kick. Just held him back. His eyes met mine. “You are not getting back into this bed until you are naked, mate.”
He chuckled, but undressed quickly. “As you wish.”
When he came back to me, I spread my knees wide, making room for him. Inviting him in. “Hurry.”
His gaze was fixed between my thighs. I’d been bold, but he made me confident in my body, in my sexuality. There was no shame or embarrassment between us. Perhaps that was why we were mates.
“Not this time.” He was on me before I could protest, his tongue working my clit as I arched off the bed. He lifted my bottom with one hand and pressed two fingers deep with the other, zeroing in on my G-spot with ruthless precision. My Ardor screamed through my bloodstream like a tsunami of boiling liquid in my veins and I came. Hard. My fingers tugging at his hair as I twisted and tilted my hips, trying to take him deeper. Harder. It felt so good. Exquisite. Bliss.
“More.”
I felt his smile in his cheeks as he kissed the inside of my thighs. He moved up my body with kisses, in no particular hurry, and I felt like I was being worshipped. Learned. Not possessed, treasured.
When he reached my lips, I kissed him with tears streaking along my temples and down into my hair. He was killing me slowly, twisting my soul into an aching, needy thing. And I didn’t care.
He slid deep, taking me with one slow thrust of his hips and I wrapped my legs around him, locked my ankles around his back. I never wanted this to end.
His body fed me, the Ardor taking energy from him like it had dozens of times before, but this time was different. Slow. Gentle. If energy could be soft, like a warm blanket spreading through my body, this was it. Nix would be part of me forever and the thought made my pussy clamp down in hunger as another orgasm rocked through me.
We kissed. Nix rocked his hips, not pounding into my body as he had in the past, but stroking me. Loving me, now that I had finally let him. It was bliss, his fingers entwined with mine, our mouths connected, chest to chest. Slow. Deep.
He pulled his lips from mine and I felt his cock swell, knew he would come inside me. Fill me with his essence and his seed. And I wanted everything, everything he would give me.
His cock jerked as he filled me, his lips next to my ear, my name like a prayer on his lips. A harsh growl that said… mine.
God help me, I’d never felt anything so intense in my life. I exploded, crying out for him as I came, wrapping every part of me around every part of him. I didn’t want to be Destiny, I wanted to be us. Whole.