Alina must have followed the thread of his thoughts, for a knowing smile curled on her lips as she mirrored his pose, resting her arms upon the edge of the pool with easy grace.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked, voice soft as silk, her attention fixed not on him, but on the water rippling gently between them.
Kai hesitated, the name lodging like a stone in his throat. He remembered what Ash had told him, and what Dawn herself had confessed, that Alina had never learnt the witch’s true name.
‘Dawn,’ he said at last, the word barely more than a breath, breaking like fragile glass between his teeth.
Alina’s smile deepened. ‘You care for her.’
‘I don’t.’
‘You’ve always been a dreadful liar, Kai Blackburn.’
Perhaps. But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t let it matter. Whatever feeling he harboured for Dawn, dangerous, tangled thing that it was, had to be extinguished. If Alina ever discovered the truth… if she realised he had brought the very girl responsible for Ash’s pain, one who had helped bring her kingdom to ruin, into the sanctity of this palace, she would never forgive him. And he wouldn’t blame her.
The thought made him move, breaking away from the edge where he had been lounging. He waded through the water, closing the short distance between them until he stood before her, so close her breath became his own.
Without pause, without asking, he reached for her. His hands gripped her legs beneath the water and pulled them around him, drawing her body to his until she was flush against his chest. Her lips hovered a breath from his.
So near he could almost taste the memory of them.
‘Kai…’ she whispered, and the name trembled in the space between them like a spell not yet cast.
Kai kissed Alina with a devotion carved from the deepest parts of him, as if the very act could bind their souls together once more. He folded her into his arms, pressing every heartbeat, every breath, every fragment of himself against her until there was no space left between their bodies, no silence left between their souls. Through the kiss, urgent, reverent and infinite, he made a vow without words: that he would never again let her slip through his fingers. That he would shield her from every shadow the world dared to cast.
And Alina responded with a fervour that matched his own, her hands gliding over his body as though memorising it anew. Their mouths danced, a slow-burning union of breath and heat, until she broke away to gasp softly, tipping her head back in surrender. His lips followed the curve of her throat, trailing reverent kisses down her skin, worshipping the path to her breast with a hunger both tender and fierce.
He lifted her gently onto the cool stone ledge, as if placing something sacred upon an altar. Her hands found their place behind her, bracing against the carved edge, while her body arched towards him with wordless grace. Slowly, she parted for him. A silent invitation, a yielding both fierce and soft, openingherself in full trust, granting him the space where breath, desire, and devotion became one.
Kai surrendered to instinct, to the taste of her and the symphony of sounds that fell from her lips like sacred hymns. She moaned, her fingers curling tightly around one of his dark horns, guiding him with the urgency of a storm seeking shore. He did not think, not of propriety, not of the towering doors that might at any moment swing open. He was wyverian, after all, and such concerns had never tethered him. And Alina… Alina seemed just as unbound, just as gloriously unrepentant in the fire they’d conjured between them.
He slipped his fingers inside her, and a slow, wicked smile unfurled across his face as he watched her body tremble in response, every shiver a silent symphony to his touch. Her thighs clenched, her moans rising in volume, raw and unrestrained the moment she came, as though her very soul answered him in kind.
Kai surrendered to instinct alone as he broke away, drawing her with him into the embrace of the water, folding her limbs around his own like ivy twining a tree. He stared into those warm brown eyes, eyes he had longed for in sleep, conjured in dreams with aching hope. And now, impossibly, she was here. Alive.
A second chance.
He kissed her once more, desperate to anchor himself in the reality of her, to lose himself in the feel of her against him. She matched his fervour, pulling him closer, as if to fuse their bodies into one.
Kai forced himself not to think. Especially not of the purple eyes that haunted his nights with whispers of what once was.
He couldn’t,wouldn’t,allow himself to feel anything forthose eyes.
And yet, with each passing moment, Dawn’s face surged to the surface of his mind, unbidden and relentless, his chest tightening under the weight of it, as if a voice within him was screaming, pleading, for him to stop.
He pressed Alina firmly against the cool stone wall of the pool, his mouth trailing along her neck, grazing her jaw with sharp, urgent bites, as he ground himself against her with desperate need. He needed her, needed this moment like air in his lungs. Alina was the one he was meant to care for, the one destiny had written beside his name. Alina was the one he was meant to be with.
He took her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard, drawing a sharp gasp from her lips that sent a low, primal growl rumbling from his chest. Yes, this was what he craved. What he had yearned for from the very first moment their paths had crossed.
Dawn’s face flashed through his mind once more, uninvited and persistent.
He grasped Alina’s arse and lifted her higher, pressing her more tightly against him, as though by fusing her body to his own he might somehow banish the ghost of purple eyes from his thoughts.
Alina’s fingernails dug into his skin, anchoring him to the present with every sharp bite.
‘Fuck me,’ she moaned into his ear, her voice a breathless plea that sent a shiver down his spine.
He paused, eyes searching hers for the briefest heartbeat, before lowering his lips to her jaw once more, softly, almost reverently, savouring the delicate brush of her hardened nipples against his chest, a whisper of sensation that made his breath hitch.
