He sucks me into his hot mouth, drinking from me as if he’s been existing in starved agony. Pleasure and power crest within me, threatening to unravel my very being. But I want to be undone, unmoored, so long as Anrai is the one to do it; to break me apart and piece me back together as something new, something known. With something between a moan and a sob, I am thrown into the center of the storm. Wild and terrible in its beauty, it overcomes me hotter than any flame, deeper than any ocean.
Anrai kisses me reverently as the last waves of pleasure wrack my body. Then he lays beside me, pulling me into the warmth of his chest. I breathe him in, woodsmoke and spice, feeling for the first time, at home in my skin.
* * *
Later, when the moon is high and we are both tucked beneath his cloak, Anrai asks, “Is that what your power feels like all the time?”
I turn to him, wide eyed. His head is propped on one hand, while the other twists in my hair, twirling the tresses around his fingers. “You could actually feel it? I thought I hallucinated that.”
He smirks, and for once, it doesn’t embed itself beneath my skin. Tonight, his arrogance is well earned. “Well, I know I’m good, but I’m not sure I’m make-you-hallucinate-good.”
I roll my eyes, shoving playfully at his chest. “What did you feel?” I ask curiously.
He grows thoughtful as he pulls another curl and watches it spring back up. “I don’t know that I have words for it, really. It felt ancient and deep like an ocean, but also shallow and calm, like this pond. And it…it soothed me. I almost felt…” he trails off, searching for the right word. Finally, he sighs, “extinguished. But in the best way possible. Like I’ve been burning my whole life and you were my first sip of water.”
Odd, that I felt almost the exact opposite at Anrai’s touch. Like I could burn forever happily.
“Touching you is the best I’ve ever felt. And I don’t think it was because of your magic.” He smiles shyly. I could get used to the rarified humility that adorns his face.
“But you didn’t…” I clear my throat, my cheeks flaming. “I mean, we didn’t…”
Anrai laughs gently. “It was enough,” he says firmly, “whatever you gift me with will always be enough.” He buries his face in my hair and inhales deeply. “I’ve wanted you for so long, I have no intention of rushing. I am going to savor every delicious bit. Slowly.” He punctuates each word with a wicked flick of his tongue along my throat and just like that, heat curls low in my stomach once again.
He takes my lips leisurely beneath his, as if he is sipping at a fine wine. My body goes boneless. “I intend to be thorough in your pleasure education,” he says, moving his hands down my stomach.
I laugh in his mouth, arching up to meet his deft fingers. “Why do I get the feeling that books are no longer at all what you mean?”
“Maybe we can get creative and do both at the same time,” he says with a teasing nip at my shoulder. His eyes light with fresh hunger as his fingers brush the wetness between my legs. “How is it that I just want you more? We could have until the end of the Darkness, and I still don’t think it’d be enough time.”
I freeze beneath him, a block of ice forming in my chest. Time has never felt like such a looming enemy. We leave for Yen Girene at first light, and after that, I will be gone. For as much as I never want to leave Anrai’s arms, I cannot sacrifice Easton. I have to go back. The thought is a wave unearthing the long-buried secrets of the ocean floor and my deepest dreads rise to the surface.
A line of concern appears between Anrai’s brows as he senses the shift in my mood. “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, suddenly wary.
Tears brim, hot and unwelcome. Before coming to the Dark World, I haven’t cried since my parents were Outcast and now, my tears are a faucet I can’t turn off. “We don’t have time.”
“Are you worried about Yen Girene?”
I shrug helplessly, the weight of anxiety pressing on my shoulders and making them ache. “And after. Anrai, even if we make it back from Yen Girene with my father, I still…I have to leave. I can’t leave Easton to die. I have to go back to Similis.”
Back to where my voice is a silent scream in an echo chamber. A tear spills over, running a familiar track down my cheek. Anrai follows it with his finger, before wiping it away along my jaw. There is no sadness in his eyes, only determination. Ever the soldier, he doesn’t accept defeat. But this isn’t an obstacle he can fight his way out of. The enemy is invisible and ancient and moves with no deference to us.
“I know,” he says softly, “you wouldn’t be who you are if you didn’t go back. But that doesn’t mean it’s the end. We’ll figure something out. There are too many unknowns to worry about it now. Let’s get Denver back first.”
I nod, knowing he’s right. There are far too many unknowns: if we can bargain with the Achijj, if Shivhai catches up with us, if my father is still even alive; and if he is, if the Covinus will allow us back into Similis to save Easton. I bury my face in Anrai’s chest, breathing in the warmth of his skin and allowing it to settle in my lungs, soft and soothing.
I listen to his heart beating, strong and sure in his chest, until my eyes flutter closed, and exhaustion overtakes me. Sometime in the night, we reach for each other once more. His lips are a warm welcome from the depths of sleep, and his body wraps around mine like it was made to shield me from the world. I clutch at his fevered skin as his fingers wring pleasure from me, and he devours my cry of ecstasy like they alone are his sustenance.
At the top of my crest, just before I am poised to fall, I realize that home has never been a place. It is a feeling, a sweet breath, a familiar touch, a rasping word. And when I leave for Similis, I will not just be leaving the Dark World behind—I will be leaving home.
ChapterThirty-Six
Shaw
I have always stepped outside myself before a mission. I learned early that emotions are a liability I can’t afford, and disassociating is the most prudent way to protect myself. It’s a habit that stuck with me long after I left my father, one that has kept me alive on countless occasions.
But today, instead of the mask of a soulless assassin, I am more aware of my body than ever. I feel every piece with acute sharpness, as if I occupy all the spaces and edges—there is no room to pack away the parts of myself that feel, becauseallof me feels. My hands feel Mirren’s skin, my mouth is filled with the taste of her and my heart—my godsdamn heart—is twice as large and exposed, as if half of it beats outside my body. A ripe target.
I don’t know yet whether to be terrified or amazed and I settle on some combination of both as we ride toward Yen Girene. The fortress lies on the other side of the Girenia range, mountains that sprawl across the land rather than tower over it. It will take all day to reach the foothills where we will camp and prepare to enter in the morning.
