I pulled my fingers out of her. Wetness clung to me, proving she was ready, that she wanted me. I needed her, but not at the expense of causing her pain. I needed her to think back on this positively, to not regret it just because I’d rushed and fumbled and hurt her.
The touch of my own hand to my cock drew another deep groan from me, but it was nothing compared to the sensation when I ran the head along Hera’s drenched folds. I allowed myself a brief moment of teasing, of savoring how soft and giving she was against me. I’d wanted this from the first day I’d seen her, when I’d found her cowering after a face-off against Brax, and this desire had shown then.
I hadn’t expected it, hadn’t even really recognized it at the time, but now, looking back?
It was as if fate had told me it was time to move on, time to rejoin the world, to wake up after slumbering for so long.
And that was miraculous on its own. When little else could have moved me, she had.
So I took one last breath before shifting forward, before sliding into her and reveling in the way her tight heat wrapped around my cock.
She seared me, reaching into those cold spaces inside me and warming them.
It made a mockery of the times we’d touched through our bond, when I’d only felt the spark of electricity instead of her true skin. Now that I could taste her, now that I experienced every wonderful bit of her actual body, I knew before had been just a cheap imitation.
And it snapped all my control—or what little I had. I took her lips in a possessive kiss, as if I could feed directly from her. Instead of consuming everything, I wanted to feast on her, to take her apart and gorge myself on her. The intense desire terrified me.
She roused my hunger, but she sated it as well like some endless cycle. And I gave myself over to the feeling.As if I could resist.
I slipped my tongue into the sweetness of her mouth as I pulled my hips back and plunged into her harder. I took her as roughly as I dared, wrapping one of my arms under the small of her back to pull her tightly against me.
Her running from me, her trying to resist the bond between us, it ate away at me. I wanted to prove to both of us that we belonged together, that no matter what, she should have been with me.
I tried with my body to silence the doubt inside us both, to prove to her that she should never run from me again no matter the reasons.
I knew she wasn’t runningfromme, but that didn’t change the way I wanted to own her.
This tiny part of me, the part that was an elder shade, the part who by its very nature was used to turning people into tools to be used, to stripping away their personality and free will, it wanted to do that to her. It wanted to force her to my side, to make it so she could never leave me again, but I easily resisted.
If I did that, I’d break her. She wouldn’t be this woman, wouldn’t make me feel the way she did. I craved that smile of hers, the spark of fun she brought to my life by behaving in a way I could neither predict nor understand. She made my life interesting, made it worth experiencing despite the years I’d already lived, the years that had made me grow bored with existing.
So I held her tightly, rewarded by Hera digging her blunt nails into my back. I didn’t care that I dirtied my clothing, that I gave in, that I showed a part of myself I had never exposed to another person. My carefully cultivated exterior shattered, the darkness lighting up, the coldness warming until we melted together.
I took her with frantic, deep thrusts, drowning us both in the pleasure. I left no part of her untouched, no part hidden from me.
It didn’t last that long, all things considered, but that didn’t matter. She broke apart beneath me, her lips parted on a silent scream I could hear in my head through our bond as she clung to me desperately. I doubted I’d ever seen a look like that, that I’d ever experienced something as beautiful as she was lost to sensation.
So I followed her over that edge, diving deep into her and the pleasure right along with her. I spilled into her, biting gently at her bottom lip as I did so, humbled by her offering me something so precious.
I remained over her, having her small, soft body trapped beneath mine, even as I softened and slipped from her tight cunt, reluctant to lose any of this. I broke the kiss enough to stare down at her, to see her hazel eyes even in the darkness—the sun now having fully set.
What shook me more than what we’d just done, then the way that she destroyed the calmness I’d lived so long with, more than how deeply I still craved her, was the trust in those eyes.
I wasn’t sure if any other person in my life had ever fully trusted me. I’d have called it stupid before Hera, would have chided her for doing something with so many risks and so few rewards.
Except…wasn’t this what had made me fall for her? That she did as she pleased without reservation? She loved with her entire being, she cried with her whole heart and she did so no matter how it might have terrified her.
It was a form of bravery I’d never felt myself, that I’d never experienced or even witnessed.
And maybe that was exactly what had allowed Hera to do what no one else had been able to do. Maybe that was what had let her best Larkwood, and it was what would end up saving her.
The same action both risked her and offered her salvation. Her trust would either kill her or save her.
I could only hope the latter happened.
* * * *
Hera