His own body was hard as a rock. His sex was so engorged, it was a wonder the tightly stretched skin hadn’t burst. He had long ago passed the point of pain. When he finally allowed himself to enter her, he knew he wouldn’t last long, but this wasn’t about him. This was all about and for her.
She had poured herself into him—all of herself, holding nothing back—giving him her grief, her fear, her fury, her lust for vengeance, her pain. And he was giving her back every pleasure he could think of. More pleasure than she’d ever known before. More than she thought herself capable of taking. And he wasn’t done yet.
“Yes,” he murmured, his breath a hot fan against her most sensitive flesh. “More.” And with a wicked smile, he lowered his mouth and feasted until, screaming, she came again.
And then, at last, he slammed his rock-hard sex into her body with a single, powerful thrust. He groaned at the furiously tight grip of her body as he pulled back to thrust again. He went deep—ah, goddess! So deep—and she was so hot and wet and sofarkingtight, and his sex was like a raw, exposed nerve rubbing against her. Pain and pleasure shot through him in equal measure. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her rounded hips. His muscles strained, the tendons in his neck standing out like ropes, as he drew back and thrust a third time. Her body clamped hard around his. She screamed. His control shattered.
Gripping her hips, he came in a fury of wild, staccato thrusts, filling her with his seed and his magic. Emptying himself until he had nothing left to give her. And then he collapsed beside her on the bed, pulled her into his arms, and they both fell into exhausted slumber.
Chapter 25
Gabriella woke numerous times in throughout the rest of the day and the night, pulled from sleep by dreams of loss and grief that made her magic flare and tears dampen her face. Each time, Dilys held her in his arms and took away her pain, giving her pleasure after ecstatic pleasure in return until at last, as dawn broke over the ocean, she woke to find her cheeks wet with grief for the loss of her sisters but no corresponding hint of dangerous magic.
He held her as the storm of tears rained down, then tenderly sipped the salty wetness from her face.
“I love you,” he told her softly. “I am so sorry I was not able to save your sisters. I would give my life to bring them back to you. You know this.”
Tear-reddened blue eyes regarded him through spiky black lashes. “I know. You aren’t to blame for what happened. You did everything you possibly could.”
“I did,” he agreed. “But I still failed you. My death is yours, should you wish it.”
It took several seconds for his words to register, and when they did, she rose on one elbow to glare at him. “Don’t be ridiculous! You know how I feel about that barbaric custom. Even if I blamed you for not being able to save my sisters—which I don’t—I would never want that. And I’ll thank you not to even suggest such a thing to me ever again.” Clearly irritated, she rolled away from him and sat up, dragging the sheet up over her breasts and tucking it beneath her arms to hold it in place.
He rolled to one side and slid a hand across the bed. Reaching the sheet she’d pulled up around herself, he gave it a tug. She tried to hold on, but he was persistent and kept tugging until the sheet slipped down to bare her beautiful breasts.
“If that is your Command, then so shall I obey,” he vowed. Lust turned his voice thick and throaty. It didn’t matter that he’d just spent the better part of the last fourteen hours claiming her body over and over and over again. All he had to do was look at her, and he wanted her again.
He came upon all fours and slowly stalked across the short distance of the bed until he could reach her nipples with his mouth. He licked them intently, loving the way they beaded on his tongue.
“I will never again offer you my death,” he said, rising up on his knees to claim her mouth, and trailing heat and magic in his wake, “if you claim me as yourakua,and bind me to you for all times.”
“Dilys...” She pulled back, frowning at him, and pushed him away so she could scoot back. She leaned against the headboard and dragged a pillow across her lap and another across her breasts. “You are not going to seduce me into doing what you want. Not about this. It’s too dangerous.”
He scowled a little, but his irritation had less to do with her stubborn refusal to marry him than it did with her determination to hide her body from him. “No, it isn’t too dangerous,” he told her. “As we proved yesterday beyond a doubt.”
“Proved?” She gaped at him then gave a harsh bark of laughter. “The only thing we proved is that I nearly killed you!”
“You’re wrong, Gabriella. That may be how youroulanimind sees things, but it isn’t remotely what happened.”
“Oh, really?”
“Tey,really. I failed you. I couldn’t save Spring or Autumn.”
“I don’t blame you for that.”
“I know you don’t. That’s the point, don’t you see? Given my inability to protect the ones you love, you had no cause to trust me with your pain. Yet you did. You trusted me to bear your grief, even though I failed your sisters and I failed you.”
“And you think me sharing my grief with you somehow proves I’m supposed to claim you for all times with some sort of Calbernan woo woo?”
“Tey,it does. Because whether you want to admit it or not, the Siren in you has already decided that I am strong enough to be your mate.”
“I think whatever happened yesterday must have scrambled your brains.” She threw the pillows aside and jumped out of the bed, stalking across the cabin to snatch up the white robe the men had made her. “Do you even remember what happened?” she demanded as she thrust her arms into the sleeves and tied the belt around her waist. “I lost control of my power completely. I nearly killed us all!”
“But you didn’t!” He jumped out of the bed and followed her, not bothering to cover his nudity. He caught her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Look around you,moa leia.Are we dead? Has the ship sunk? Did any of us receive so much as a splinter yesterday because of your grief? No! Because you gave me your pain and let me bear it for you. And it worked. As I told you it would.”
Her eyebrows shot up towards her hairline. “It only worked because you shoved me away before I could kill you, then dove through a glass window to get away from me and started afarkingtsunami in the middle of the ocean!”
He blushed. He couldn’t help it. “Tey,well, I admit I could have handled things better, but in my defense, you are the first Siren whose pain I’ve ever tried to ease. I wasn’t properly prepared for the enormity of your grief, and then you started trying to soothe me. I should never have snapped at you and pushed you away the way I did. It’s just that I was barely holding what you gave me, then you kept giving me more. It was too much.”
