Ivy’s hand stopped. She looked up at him, surprised.
“A rose,” she said. “They appear on the ivy here, sometimes. I don’t know why. Back home, ivy doesn’t have roses.”
“It must be significant,” Vale said. “The heatbloom only turns into something that lures you in.”
Ivy said nothing. She looked oddly shy.
“I didn’t know why at first,” she admitted. “But now, I think it’s because of a storybook my mother read to me as a child.”
“A storybook,” Vale repeated. He had never heard of this.
“A book for children,” she explained. “With pictures. It’s about a gardener who falls for a princess. He sacrifices himself for her and dies. But she plucks the rose he grew for her and places it on his grave, and he comes back to life. That story was why I fell in love with plants in the first place. That illustration of a rose… It was so beautiful.”
She grinned, her cheeks still red. Vale was, once again, struck by an annoying amount of want that he never had to bother with until she showed up. If this was what others had to contend with, he had no idea how they got any work done.
He wanted to tell her that she was gorgeous. But he had already complimented her a moment ago, and he was still not used to spilling his thoughts so often. So, he allowed her to step forward and touch the center of the rose.
It sprang open immediately. Vale was almost triumphant. His void might be sick, but it was not dead. And unlike him, it wanted loudly and unabashedly.
Pollen gushed out over them both. Vale closed his eyes, letting the warm fragrance wash over him. Golden motes stuck to his antlers and clung to his skull mask, showering over his robes and the exposed part of his chest.
Finally, the torrent ended. Before Vale even had time to open his eyes, he heard a gasp beside him.
He blinked pollen out of his eyes and looked over.
Ivy was radiant. The pollen did not just cover her—itadornedher. Tangling in her braid-crown and dusting her fair skin, making her body shine. She looked like a creature from a myth.
“Do you feel it?” she asked breathily.
Vale concentrated. He could not feel the pollen’s influence. Hecouldfeel the void, but only faintly. He could only catch glimpses of its exhaustion, nothing of the words it had been sending him sporadically since Ivy showed up.
“No,” he replied. “Can you?”
She nodded, her smile trembling. “It’s…wonderful. I can… I can almost…”
She stumbled into his arms. Her hands caught on his chest, smearing pollen. And suddenly, he was seized by a wild desire unlike anything he had felt before. It made his entire body clench, a growl tearing out of his throat.
His exhaustion vanished as the world narrowed down to Ivy. Her slick skin and her even slicker thighs, still dripping with him from their last coupling. Her hot breath against his chest, her skin heavy with pollen. She was moaning, grinding against his leg like an animal in heat.
“Have me again,” she gasped, eyes still glowing green. “I’m close.”
Vale did not know if she meant she was close to her peak or to finding answers to the void. But he did not care. He cared for nothing but Ivy, the only thing he had truly wanted in centuries.
He pushed her to her knees and yanked their clothes out of the way, then shoved unceremoniously inside her. He had mated her less than an hour ago, but they both groaned like it had been an eternity. His spend slicked the way, but even without it, the slide was easy. Her inner walls strained and squeezed but never protested—even when he pushed all the way to the hilt.
Ivy went lax, moaning into the dirt. There were no vines to hold her down, but Vale made do. He grabbed her hands,listening to her breathing hitch in excitement as he pinned them behind her back.
He could not get close enough. He licked salt from her neck and golden pollen from her cheek, his tongue curling around her throat. If he were not so pollen-crazed, he would have worried he was taking her too roughly—even more roughly than he allowed himself before. But there was no pain in her scent, only desire so wet it squelched each time he drove back in.
“Yes,” Ivy slurred into the dirt. “Yes, I’m—I’m soclose?—”
She cut off with a cry. It turned strange and otherworldly, almost a howl as green light radiated out of her, overshadowing the golden pollen coating her skin.
Vale thrust one last time and came, pumping deep inside. He slumped over her, his hands trembling around her wrists as the pollen-lust faded from his blood.
Ivy hummed tiredly. Vale circled an arm around her waist and dragged her up, dusting the dirt from her cheek where it had been pressed into the ground.
“What did you see?”
