“Iwillclaim you, Leela. I will enter you now and make you mine unless you ask me not to.” His jaw flexed, the timbre of his voice changing to something that was almost a plea. “Tell me to stop.”
He throbbed against me, and my lungs emptied on a gasp. I wanted him. I needed him. All of him, and I was done fighting what my soul already knew. This was my drohi. And he was now a god.
He was mine, and Iwantedto be claimed.
“Don’t stop…” I cupped his jaw. “I want you. I need you…Araz. My Araz.”
His eyes flared like flame. “Yes.” He buried himself inside me in a single thrust, swallowing my cry and devouring my mouth with tongue and teeth, his body a cage, hips retreating only to snap back and meet mine again.
He broke the kiss, still deep inside me. “I want to watch you come undone. I want to hear you call my name.”
He carried me into the shallow water and set me on the ledge, still deep inside me. “Look at us, Leela. Look how well you take me.”
I looked down between us to where we joined, biting my lip and swallowing a moan as he dragged himself almost all the way out of me. My hips jerked toward him, begging him to stay.
He gripped my jaw, forcing me to look him in the eye. His gaze was feverish. “Tell me to stop,” he bit out. “Before I’m too far gone.”
I raked my fingers through his silken locks. “Don’t you dare fucking stop.” I shifted my hips forward, desperate to bring him home. The fever in his eyes dimmed to something ancient and molten.
“Fuck…” He thrust hard, burying himself deep in me once more.
“Oh!” I gripped his shoulders, nails biting into his taut flesh.
“Yes.” He scraped his teeth along my jaw, sending a shiver through me. “Like that.” He fisted my hair, thrusting slow and deep, chest vibrating in a growl that mingled with my moans. “Unravel for me, Leela. Let go.”
His large hands gripped and anchored, and his hungry mouth tasted my skin, my neck, my jaw, my mouth, his tongue thrusting in a mimicry of his cock which thickened inside me with each stroke, testing my body, my capacity to take him whole and deep. He opened me wider, relentless in his need to consume me in my surrender. I unknit and unraveled, opening for him. Giving him everything. My heart, my soul, my every gasp and cry until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Until the only sound I could make was his name, over and over.
A cold fire flared behind my sternum, tightening then shooting down to the apex of my thighs in a pulse of release so strong I was momentarily breathless. Suspended in nothingness and yet cocooned in him.
My love. My Araz.
I clung to Araz,my body trembling with emotion, overtaken by sensation and the connection to this new version of us. I felt the bond stronger now, a heat low in my belly that reached into my chest in a pulse. It was flame. His flame and something else…something more, like a sliver of ice nestled within. Pulsing and powerful.
“Did I hurt you?” Araz asked, his gaze almost reverent as it searched mine.
“No, it was wonderful and…different.”
He relaxed, chuckling softly. “I may have been a little…exuberant in my attentions tonight, but Leela, I have missed you so very much.”
“And I missed you. But we can be together now. No need for war. No need to be on opposite sides of a battlefield.”
“You were right. There was never any need for war. But we had to be apart for me to learn that. For me to become whole again. And you…” He stroked my cheek lightly with his fingertips. “You see me. You accept me as I am now.”
“I fell in love with you as Araz, and you’re still the same person. You’re just more. Ancient. Vast. But I feel you. I know you.”
He kissed my temple. “You gave me the gift of your body and trust, and tonight we will bind fully, soul to soul.”
My stomach fluttered. “Explain it to me. We’re already bonded by the shakti, and we’re twin flames. Why isn’t that enough to get you through the wards of the royal domain with me?”
He pulled me closer so I was nestled with my head on his chest. “Yes, we are bound by the shakti, but only a fraction of me is…the part that is drohi.” He ran his fingers through my hair as he continued to speak. “And yes, we are twin flames, but being twin flames doesn’t automatically bind us. We must choose to entwine in each life that we meet. Freely. And tonight, we will finally, truly, become one.”
The red andgold lehenga that had been provided for me wasn’t heavily beaded or glittery, but I recognized the colors as significant to marriage in my culture, and it hit me that Araz and I were about to be married, in a way.
We were twin flames, yes, but this ceremony would make us more. It was a confirmation and an affirmation of our union. It would bring us together, connecting Araz to me and me to the devouring force, and tomorrow…Tomorrow we would take the throne. I’d face Chandra and demand the truth of his intentions. I’d get to see Blue and my friends again. The nightmare that the people of Svargana had been forced to live would be over.
Tonight was the beginning of a new era.
There was a soft knock on the door.
