I lean down and kiss him again. “You’re allowed to feel hurt, too. Emotional hurt is just as damning as physical.”
“Maybe that’s true,” he says, tracing my bare shoulders with his finger. “Come here.” He pulls me into his mouth and moans softly as I kiss him. He parts his lips, so I kiss him deeply, cupping his face in either of my hands.
“Wait,” he says as I pull back. I move on top of him, straddling his hips as his hands land on the back of my thighs. “Is there anything you want to tell me?
“What do you mean?” I run my fingers down his bare chest.
He shrugs, but I can see a question hiding in his eyes that he refuses to ask. The ink on the back of my neck burns beneath the mask I’ve placed over it.
Tell him.
“There’s nothing more to say tonight.” I kiss him again as he pushes my nightgown up, his fingers gliding over my bare skin.
“We don’t have to, if you’re not ready.” A bit of color has flushed over his cheeks, and for the first time since he came for me, he looks happy. He looks likehim. All of the betrayal and the pain and the impossible work we still have ahead of us can wait one more night.
Our mouths collide. I run my hands through his hair as his teeth snag on my bottom lip, his fingers firmly planted on my hips. Sitting up, I peel my nightgown over my head. Drunk on the taste of him, I flinch as the cold air bites my skin, and beforeI can think of hiding the remaining bruises, Sorin sits up and slides me off of him so I’m laying on my back.
“Each kiss,” he says as his lips pepper kisses along my skin, “is a promise.” He kisses the bruises on my stomach. Then my shoulder. “A promise to never let you get hurt again.”
He gently rolls me on my side and his lips make their way down my back, then up again. “A promise that so long as I live, I’ll be by your side.” He lays back down and pulls me on top of him. “As your partner and as your friend.”
Sorin closes his eyes for a moment, and my stomach swirls. “As much as I am devastated and hurt, having you here has begun to heal me already. I can live with the betrayal, but I’m not sure I can live without you. At least, I don’t want to.”
He frowns and it looks so unnatural on him that I bend down and kiss the crease between his brows. “There’s something here”—he rubs a circle over his heart, then mine—“between us. I felt it after the Wicked Wood, and I feel it now, even stronger than before.” His hands drag lightly down my back before landing on my hips. “Whatever burdens you carry, just know that you’ll never carry them alone. Not again.”
I don’t give him the chance to speak again before my lips crash into his. I roll my hips forward as Sorin’s hands grip the back of my thighs. My body heats with every breath and touch of his tongue against mine. His hand dips between my legs as I lean forward and scrape his shoulder with my teeth.
“Elora,” he groans as I move away to pull off his breeches. I kiss down his bare chest before I slide my tongue across his length. He moans and clutches the sheets, so I do it again before taking him in my mouth. His hand finds the back of my head, guiding me. His hips begin to move quicker and so I match his pace with my mouth. He groans again, and that’s when I move from between his legs, situating myself back on top of him. His dark eyes are heavy as he watches me slide onto him.
Our moans and breaths come together as I begin to rock my hips forward. He places one hand gently on my hip and the other at the apex of my thighs, his thumb swirling just in the right spot.
My head rolls back as my pleasure begins to build. “I missed you.” The words are short and breathy and not nearly as much as I want to say.
I thought of only you in my darkest moments.
Your touch.
Your heart.
There’s so much I want to say but “I miss you” is all I’m able to manage. But it’s as though Sorin hears those unspoken words because he pulls me closer and kisses me deeper. Our hips continue to move in time with each other, working as one, and as I roll my hips again, he hits something deep inside of me and I gasp aloud.
“There?” Sorin whispers against my mouth, his hands planting firmly at my hips.
“Yes.”
He moves, hitting that same spot again and again until my vision is gone and pleasure shoots through my body. My fingers rake against his chest as I come down from the pleasurable high, and Sorin chases his own release. I continue to roll my hips and kiss his neck and throat until he joins me on the other side, panting and whispering my name.
The fire continues to crackle and burn as Sorin and I drift off to sleep. When I close my eyes, the nightmares that I have become so used to shift.
Instead, I dream of Sorin and wolves and an endless forest.
The Jade Guildis similar to the Onyx Guild in that it’s made up of dozens of small mazes. As we wind through the halls, I run my fingers over the exposed stone walls painted with ivy and bursting with tiny, yellow flowers. Unusual given the time of year. The rainy season is perpetually gray, but the Jade Guild has somehow found a way to bring life into space.
Sam and I round another small hallway that leads to the exterior wall, but attached to that wall, is a tiny greenhouse. The large rectangular windows offer some light to the space. Though it’s gray and muted the plants still shine.
“Tallulah will be in soon,” Sam says. The greenhouse has been overthrown with makeshift cots and beds for those wounded in the Loxley fires but only Sam and I occupy the room at the moment.
“You said Tallulah was a Florecas? An Enchantress who can grow and conjure plants?” I sit down on one of the cots. My fists clench and unclench about a half dozen times before Sam grabs them.
