“But—”
I kiss her before she can flagellate herself any further. “There is nobut.We both have blame to shoulder for our time apart, but allow yourself reprieve from this one. I have experienced the divine sacred of what it is to be inside you, to taste you, to hold you. And because I know what it is to have you, for the rest of my days, I cannot settle for less.”
She makes a delectable little sound in the back of her throat; of want, of hope, of desperation. And leans her forehead to mine. I trace the splashes of greens and golds in her eyes, finding comfort in the fact my desperation hadn’t exaggerated their multitudes. They are just as vibrant as I remember.
“It was no sacrifice or burden. It only drove me to come home to you that much faster.”
Her thighs tighten on my waist as I trace the curve of her spine with my fingers, and the curve of her throat with my lips, whispering along her skin, “The agony was not in denying myself some other’s touch. It was indreamingof the one I lost.”
“I dreamed too, Niko. Every night, I dreamed of you. You were right…it never mattered that we existed in separate worlds, I have always been yours. I’m sorry we got so lost.”
A tight knot unfurls somewhere deep in my chest; her words an unlocking. I spoke true when I said I didn’t need an apology for sending me away, but now, she isn’t apologizing for herself—but for the universe that forced us into what we are. The damage, the desperation, the hunger—all of it has been so thick from the moment we met, it was impossible to see a way through it.
I see clearly now. The way through is with her hand in mine. She is my star guiding me home, and I will always be the darkness to shield her.Mine.
“Tell me, Darling.” I lean in, tracing her lower lip with my tongue and reveling in her soft whimper. “Speak to me of what ismine.”
Her eyes flare, flickering with a heat mirroring that which ratchets tighter at the base of my spine.
“Everything,” she replies, pulling my hand to her lips.
My cock hardens instantly, as she locks her gaze onto mine and slips one of my fingers into the heat of her waiting mouth. A tight breath shoots from my lungs as she flicks her tongue over the tip, massaging it with a tight sucking motion. Her eyes glint in mischief as she releases it with a lewd pop, and says huskily, “Your mouth.”
Fuck me.It’s no wonder I’ve been half out of my mind since we met. It’s all I can do to keep still as she threads her fingers through mine, and slides my hand slowly down her body; all I can do not to pounce on her and bury myself inside her as, together, our hands cup the soft flesh of her breasts.
“Your breasts.”
When she drags my hand down the tight slope of her stomach to her glistening center, a strangled noise sounds in the back of my throat I don’t think I’ve ever made in my life.
“Yours,”she snarls fiercely, her words my undoing.
“Mine,”I growl back, a predator unleashed.
I curl my fingers inside of her, pulling her body closer until she rides my hand. She throws her head back with a moan of pleasure, her arousal dripping from her. It coats my cock as she rolls her hips, meeting the slow thrust of my fingers.
“All of it is yours, Corpsey.” Her words are breathless and untethered, her body wild above mine. “Everything is yours.”
Her words are a covenant; a claiming of the highest measure. For though I’ve always been selfish enough to steal all of her for myself, that she would willingly cede it to me settles in my chest like starlight.
“Fuck,Willa.”
The words tumble from my mouth in prayer as her wet warmth clenches tightly around my fingers. There were dayson the mainland I thought I’d die without the heat of her cunt around me, the taste of her on my tongue, the scent of her burrowed into my brain. And now, I feel like I’ll die with the pleasure of it all.
My heart slams against my ribs as I slide Willa slowly down onto my cock, unable to wait even a second longer. I lose my grip on my magic at the first feel of her, my death flaring from me, untethered and wild. The cabinet behind my desk explodes, rum and whiskey raining down from the ruins, but there is nothing in the universe that could tear my attention away from the way Willa moves.
Her olive skin glows in the sunlight as her body undulates. Her nails dig into my skin as greedily as her body grips my cock, drawing onyx blood to well at my chest and a moan to reverberate between my lips.
“Deeper, Darling. Draw me deeper,” I coax her, thrusting my hips. “Take me home.”
The words slip from me before I can weigh their clarity, but I’ve never had a claim to sanity in Willa’s presence. And no matter their incoherence, their truth entwines between us. The sea, the Lunaedon, Letum, and a hundred other worlds—none of them were ever home.
Here, seated inside Willa—thisis home.
Perhaps it took so long to recognize because I’d mistaken it for a gentle thing—a soft beckoning, a tranquil place to land. But home is violence. It is blades and blood and protection. It is roots piercing your skin, shattering your veins, weaving our hearts together until they share a beat.
It is us, the most beautiful horror.
And Willa revels in it the same way I do, because though our magics are the antithesis of each other, we are the same at the base of our hearts. Honed on the blade of pain and loneliness,baptized in blood. Each crawling and scraping to carve out the smallest bit of power for ourselves.
