“I thought I’d lost you,” Raine whispered, sensing it was important for him to speak out loud right now.
Thoughts and minds were beautiful, but they also could be hiding places, spaces for unspoken wishes andlonging and words that were too precious—too frightening—to share in the open.
He didn’t have that luxury anymore. Nor did he want it.
It hadn’t just been on the ship, when her chair had tilted backward. He’d been afraid this whole time he’d known her. First he’d been afraid to feel something. Then he’d been afraid not to feel enough. Then… he’d been fucking terrified to lose her. When he’d never even had her in the first place.
“I want you to be mine.” He’d never heard himself sound so certain, and his hands locked in her hair when he felt her shift in his lap, as if they couldn’t even fathom he’d once thought it better to let her go. “I want you to be mine, whatever comes with that.”
His grip loosened when Frelina pulled back to look at him.
“Raine,” Frelina said softly, and his heart stopped at the look in her eyes.
It was as if she could tell, because Frelina’s eyes dipped for a second before she continued. “I’ve always been yours. Like I think you’ve been mine since I met you. I was just waiting for you to realize it.”
His heart started beating so hard that he had to let out a breath not to get dizzy.
“How?” Raine’s hands moved to her back, settling her legs around his body when she shivered at the breeze whistling around the wet cliffs. “How did you know?”
Frelina’s smile was instant. “You understood me when you just met me. Yousawme, Raine. How could I be anyone’s but yours when you tried to give me everything you had, even when it broke you? You gave meyou, Raine. You fought and came back to life and faced yourfears, and while most of that was for you… I think maybe, just a little bit, it was also for me.”
He just stared at her.
How was she fucking twenty-four years old and she understood him so completely? How did she know he’d stopped reaching for that flask because he wanted to be able to see her clearly—hear her properly—know her entirely?
“You know I am a mind reader, too, right?” she teased when Raine flipped through their memories of their first kiss, of the teasing, of the unspoken conversations, of her yelling at him when he lost track of what she already knew he needed, realizing at every moment Frelina had pushed him when he needed it and stepped back when they depended on it.
Because Raine and Frelina were athey.
It was so clear to him now.
He might have saved her that day on the plateau, but she… she had saved him every moment before and after. Not from an enemy or from danger… but from himself.
She’d loved him when he wasn’t worthy of it, and that… that had allowed him to dare love her back. She’d shown him that love didn’t have to be perfect or pure. It could be messy and painful and filled with guilt. But it was still love.
“I love you, Raine. I love every messy and painful and guilty part of your soul.”
The words settled in the Mind Capturer’s heart, and something dangerously close to tears dimmed his vision as Raine let out a shuddering breath.
The love he felt from her… it healed that last little broken piece within him, and Raine couldn’t describe it, but it was as if the world around him blew out a deep sigh, one word echoing within it.
Finally.
Another breeze blew Frelina’s hair around her face, but this one—it was warm.
Gentle. Familiar. Loving. So loving.
Raine smiled toward the darkening sky, and he knew Solana approved.
The strange feeling faded until only Frelina and Raine remained in the moment, the air so filled with tension and the words they’d ultimately said that he didn’t dare speak, as if any other word might ruin this moment.
It wasn’t until Frelina sent him an image of her own, a vision of her sliding up and down his cock on this stone, longing racing from her core out to her limbs, that he snapped out of it.
Raine threw his head back and laughed, his chuckles darkening when the perfect female in his lap actually pouted.
“You know exactly what you’re doing to me,” Raine rasped as he finally calmed, his hands sliding lower down her back.
She just sent him another vision.
