“Do I even want to know why?”
The South Wind leans forward, nips the side of my neck. My eyelids sink low as the heat of his breath dampens my skin. “I’ll tell you,” he murmurs into my ear. “Just not now.”
My smile rises more readily. I suppose he has a point. Lower my fingers travel, the lightest graze down his firm upper thigh, inward to his jutting shaft. Notus shudders beneath my touch. “Are you trying to kill me, woman?”
“You’re immortal,” I remind him coyly.
“It makes no difference when your touch is fatal,” he murmurs, “your tongue the sweetest poison.” Then his gaze drops to the subject in question. Thumb pressed into my chin, he draws me forward, a soft kiss pressed onto my bruised mouth.
One eases into two, this kiss longer, wetter, deeper. When we separate, I struggle to catch my breath, piece my thoughts into something resembling order. My skin is so flushed the biting air feels practically balmy. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” I whisper shakily. Gods, have I wanted. “Now that it’s here…”
“I know.” Notus cups the side of my face. “Can I tell you what I wish for?”
I nod.
“What I wish,” he says, thumb smoothing across my heated cheek, “is to pleasure you as I have longed to do since our parting.”
And just like that, my heartbeat quickens. “What do you have in mind?”
In answer, he hooks his hands beneath my arms and, gently, eases me onto my back.
The ground: abrasive. The ceiling: a black hole overhead. But the labyrinth fades as Notus positions himself at my side, my head propped against his arm, my hip crowding his abdomen. Close, but not close enough. The tips of his fingers skim my bare breasts. My skin quivers, warm waves of sensation branching down my arms and legs. He pinches one nipple, rubbing it firmly with the pad of his thumb until it throbs painfully, rosy with blood.
He moves to the other breast, gives it a gentle squeeze. I watch his hand, mesmerized. A soft sound of need slips past my throat before he takes the nipple into his mouth, sucking gently, his gaze never leaving mine.
I bite my tongue, tilt back my head, but the moan pours out. It is… too damn good. His tongue flirts with the tip in teasing strokes. Around and around and around, a tight coil of heat. Another gentle bite, and an answering pulse throbs between my legs. I’m seconds away from catching fire. I’m certain of it.
Down, down his fingers trail, the scrape of his calluses drawing bumps in their wake. My hips lift, seeking penetration. Instead, he slides his fingers through my drenched flesh and plucks at the small,sensitive bud before circling it with a fingertip. The friction causes my core to clench, this emptiness that seeks to be filled.
“Eyes on me,” he says.
A delirious laugh tumbles free. “As if I would look anywhere else.”
His eyes flare with satisfaction, pupils flickering like candlelight. It sends another wave of heat scorching my face, neck, and chest, yet as he plays with me, I dare not look away. For his expression is one of rapture. An exaltation reserved only for the gods.
My attempts to shift my hips nearer to his hand are thwarted, his low, rumbling laughter a joy to hear as he skirts the area, moving elsewhere for a time. I scowl and curse his name. He only laughs harder, which in turn ignites my own laughter—that is, until he touches me in a way that draws an exquisite shudder up my spine, rendering me breathless.
My legs fall open further. The brush of cooler air against my exposed center coils the sweet agony in my pelvis ever tighter. He brushes my entrance once, twice. A harsh breath stutters out of me. My heels dig into the ground.
“More?” he asks.
“Yes. Lower. There. Oh.” My toes curl as the burn intensifies and the pleasure burrows deep. “Please don’t stop.”
His pace quickens, circling, always circling, dipping low to slide one, then two fingers into me. Notus withdraws, my wetness providing an easy glide across my swollen flesh. It is agony. Ecstasy. The South Wind forces me to the edge over which I now hover, pleasure-pain served to me on a knife point.
“You are, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on,” he whispers. “To watch you come apart…”
My back arches off the ground.Yes, this, more. I am so,soclose.
Clamping his arm, I tug him upright. “I need you inside me. Now.”
The South Wind rises to his knees. The span of his shoulders cuts a darker shadow against the labyrinth wall. His body is beautiful. That hard, taut stomach, the bunched thighs that spread as he abruptly rolls us over, so that he lies on his back and I’m seated atop him, legs splayed over his muscled abdomen.
As our eyes lock, I fall into the memory of our first lovemaking. Then, it was new and undiscovered, the future cloaked behind the twisted sheets of our joining. What was then is also now, for I question what awaits us, should we escape the labyrinth. Ammara having fallen to ash and ruin? Or the dawning of a new day?
But then Notus says, “Sarai.” So simple a thing, but never was a word threaded with so much love and trust and commitment. My apprehension settles, redirects to the strength of his body between my parted thighs, the curling hair coated thickly across his pectorals. Positioning him at my entrance, I sink onto him, slowly.
And it is an inexplicable joy to be stretched by this god, to feel alive and desired and seen. My position allows me greater control over the speed and depth of our union, and I use that to my advantage, drawing myself up, sinking down with slow deliberation, thoroughly enjoying the sounds of pleasure I draw from the South Wind. I watch his expression as the clasp of my body tightens around his shaft. The flicker of his eyes, which cloud with hunger. How the tendons in his neck draw taut.
