This feels right, being here with him, flesh touching flesh. It’s new and unfamiliar but right in every way.
“Do you...do you still wish to follow my lead?” he asks quietly, and the vulnerable timbre of his voice makes her want him even more. Her safe place, where there are no expectations. No judgment. Just him and his touch. His warm breath against her skin. His comforting heat.
And words to tell him how she feels escape her. Instead, she uses her hand to guide her in the dark, sliding it from his chest to his jaw and cheek before pressing her forehead gently to his.
For a moment, neither of them moves, neither of them speaks, lost in this gesture of devotion and acceptance.
Of love.
Then he softly kisses her, all the urgency gone. There’s no rush. It’s just the two of them, their hearts pounding in sync as she gets lost in him. In his heat and the press of his hands and lips against her flesh.
His touch is tentative. Clumsy at times. But always gentle. Always sensitive to every hitch of her breath. Every breathless whimper of his name. And her body responds to him in ways she never imagined. Does he have any idea what he’s doing to her?
One moment builds into another and another as he leads her in this lovers’ dance where she can’t remember where she ends and he begins. She doesn’t want to remember. His heart beats strongly within her chest—that familiar rhythm that’s been hers since before she realizedwhat it was. The walls between them shatter, the layers peeling away until nothing remains but his flesh against hers, their fire forging something new together. Something intangible but real. So real.
He says little, but somehow, she feels every thought and emotion coursing through him. The words he doesn’t say, words of aching desire and insatiable need, echo in her heart louder than his voice ever could. He wants her—he needs her—as if he can’t survive without her. And as he writes the words of his heart and soul across her flesh, she loses herself to him.
“Cerian,” she whimpers as she buries her fingers in his hair, her palms pressing against his ears as their bodies entangle in this dance she can’t imagine experiencing with anyone else. She could never describe the emotion filling her as she trembles in his arms, but it’s real and raw and overwhelming in its intensity.
It’s him. It’s always been him.
It could never be anyone else.
Soon he collapses beside her, his own heat spent.
As they lie tangled together on this bed of moss in the darkness, the overpowering emotion filling her doesn’t temper. It etches itself on her heart alongside the words of their heartbinding.
Our bodies as one until the beating of our hearts fades.
The misty rain slows and stops, and once Cerian’s ragged breath steadies, he pulls Arisanna to his chest as she clings to him.
“Just be mine,” he murmurs against her damp hair. His magic cocoons every part of her in a familiar and comforting heat that leaves her feeling safe and loved and so relaxed that it’s hard to keep her eyes open.
Before her drowsiness overtakes her, she leans toward his ear and whispers, “Yours, Cerian. Always yours.”
Playing with Fire
Episode 71
Lightfiltersthroughthecurtains in an unfamiliar room as Cerian blinks open his eyes. Arisanna curls against his side, her hair tickling his chin.
The last thing he remembers is falling asleep tangled up together in the heartlanding.
He didn’t realize it was possible to sleep in the heartlanding, but it must be.
He glances at Arisanna’s fully dressed form at his side, and memories of how it felt to run his hands along her bare flesh draw out his heat.
Will she regret it when she wakes? Old, familiar doubts fill him—doubts about himself. Despite the words Mother whispered in his ear all his life, questions still plague him.
Is he enough?
Arisanna stirs at his side, and he doesn’t speak or move. Then she stiffens before turning wide eyes toward him. “Stars above.”
Is that good, or...?
“I feel very overdressed now,” she whispers, and he stares at her for a moment before laughter sneaks up on him, and she buries her face in his bare shoulder. “I always say such ridiculous things to you. We have the most amazing night together, and I wake up and say that.” Shegroans, and he wraps his arm around her, her familiar form melting against him.
She doesn’t regret it. The knowledge floods him with warmth, filling the vulnerable parts of his heart. His feelings for her glimmer so brightly that he just wants more of her. More moments with nothing between them.
