The wild rhythm of my heart is a song made just for him, each frantic flutter repeating the same chant over and over again:I love him. I love him. I love him.It sings out, surpassing this room and kingdom and moving out through space and eons and the Middle. Out into foreign worlds and past the gods that roam among them.
“Okay,” he whispers, looking down at me like I might be one of those very goddesses made flesh.
I don’t know how much time passes, only that it’s measured in the way he moves slowly—delicately—his hips rolling and bringing him in and out at a pace that my body can adjust easily to. The discomfort soon morphs into something incandescent, born out of how safe and cared for he makes me feel and cradled by the love burning brightly between us.
He takes small pauses between kissing me, as if he doesn’t want to miss a single twitch of my lips or gasp of my breath. And then finally,finally, he’s inside fully, stretching and molding me.Remakingme.
“What do you feel?” he asks again, the dark waves curling over his temple drawing my gaze.
Everything. I feel his breath cascading over my lips, the rush of it in time with my own. I feel the way his heart beats soundly within his chest, reverberating directly over mine, and the weight of his body, most of it held away from me but still blanketing me with his warmth and his scent. I feel him inside me, filling me so entirely—sowholly—that I wonder if an emptiness will linger when we’re done. If there will always be a part of me that is missing until our bodies come together again.
“I feelyou,” I finally answer. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and Nox leans down to kiss them away. “I feel like you were made just for me.”
“We were made for each other,” he rasps as he pulls out a few inches before pushing back in, the movement still cautious, still tender.
My mind races wildly as I try to understand how he can feel so incredible. How we can fit together so perfectly.
It’s a thousand answers to a thousand questions not yet formed.
It’s the beginning and the end and the eternity in between.
It’s the power of the sun and the moon and every single star in the night sky.
It’s bliss and happiness and desire andlife.
And it’s mine.He’s mine.
I close my eyes as his gentle thrusts grow faster, my body begging to move with his. So I dig my heels into the bed and meet the next roll of his hips halfway. My gasp mixes with his groan, the noises joined by the sound of our bodies coming together.
“Rhea.”
My hips tip into his next thrust, the pleasure blinding as I begin to unravel.
“Fuck,” he groans.
My brows draw together, the dull pain overshadowed by my unyielding need for him. I don’t stop, matching his movements while he gently pulls one of my hands free of his hair to interlace with his, resting them both on the bed above my head.
Visions of glittering white and black tendrils, like loose ribbons billowing in a breeze, fill my mind’s eye. It looks like my magic, but there is something else there now too.Nox’s magic.Shadows of deep purple woven with onyx wrap around it, fusing with it. Not to form something new but to finally become whole.Coming home. As if two star-crossed lovers found each other across worlds.
My breaths turn choppy, and tension coils and curls inside me, my core pulsing and tingling while Nox’s own movements fall out of rhythm.
“Tell me that you want me to come,” he whispers raggedly, his grip tightening on me. “That you need me to stay inside of you.”
“Yes.Stay.” Stay inside me. Stay like this forever. Juststay.
Nox kisses me hard, his teeth grazing my lower lip. I don’t want it to be over yet, but my back arches as my inner muscles clench around him and a groan rips from my throat. Stars burst behind my eyes as I squeeze Nox to me, falling into blissful oblivion. My name is called out as his hips jerk and he finishes with me.
My magic thrums throughout my body, tugging at my chest like it’s guiding me towards him—invisible strings looping around us both and pulling taut. For a brief moment, the air around us shifts, electricity building like that of an impending storm. My arms break out in goosebumps as the fine hairs there lift. I force my eyes open, only to see Nox’s gaze already on me, a wondrous look in his eyes.
“Do you feel that?” he asks, his body trembling.
Nodding, I take the hand not holding his and push the hair back from his forehead. “It feels almost like static electricity.”
Every part of my body aches, none more so than where he is still very much inside of me, but the joy—the utter peace—is something I’ve never felt this strongly before. With our eyes locked, so tenderly that it threatens more tears, he begins to pull out of me. We both let out a half sigh, half moan when he’s fully out before he rests his forehead on my chest and mumbles something into my skin.
“I can’t understand you when your face is pressed into me like that,” I say, giggling when he responds by planting smacking kisses in the dip between my breasts.
He rolls to my side, only to take me with him so that we are facing each other, my head resting on his arm.
