So, Cecelia kissed him harder.
NINETEEN
“I am a weak male,” Rixavox rumbled into his female’s skin.Water trickled from his hands as he lifted them from theRilliraxto run over the bared expanse of Sessela’s back.
Her skin was impossibly smooth, soft, vulnerable.He frowned, knowing that it would be so easy for something to harm her.It only made him feel more protective of her.
“Why?” she whispered, her voice relaxed, leaning her flushed cheek against his chest as they soaked together.Usually, theRilliraxwas energizing, but hisluxivaseemed tired, probably due to their activities once he’d returned from the command center and right when they’d entered the sacred pool.
“I told myself from the beginning that I would not touch you,” he admitted.“Not only because of the vow I had sworn to Privanax that we would not mate.I made a vow to myself.”
He felt her smile as she teased, “You haven’t broken your vow to Privanax.”She turned her cheek to look up at him and smiled.“Not yet at least.”
His cock jumped at her words and a growl tore from his throat.Earlier that span, he thought he’d journeyed to the blackworld because of the pleasure she’d wrung from him.The mere thought of mating his female, being with her in the way the Fates intended, was…overwhelming.He couldn’t mentally—or physically—conceive what that experience would be like.
And she teased him with the possibility of it coming to fruition.It took everything in him not to nudge his cock between her legs right there and then.
He couldn’t help but ask her, “Once you have been healed, do you think you will have me?”
A soft smile touched her lips as she said, “I would have you now, if you weren’t so insistent on me being healed first.”
He purred, but his Instinct prowled inside him.“Be careful what you tempt,luxiva.”
“What does that mean?Luxiva?” she sounded out slowly.Rixavox went still.“You call me it all the time.”
“One span, I will tell you,” he hedged carefully, his fingertips tracing over the back of her neck, drawing unknown patterns over her skin.
Her voice sounded hesitant when she murmured, “We might not have that many left.”
Rixavox’s jaw clenched and he had to make the effort not to clasp her too hard to him.Her words battered at his mind, like spears or hammers would, knowing that there was a possibility for an end.He’d gone his entire life span thinking he would never find his fated mate and he was resigned to that knowledge, had accepted it even…and now that he had her, he could envision no other life he wanted.No life that didn’t include her.
“We have as many spans as you wish,” was the only thing he could think to say.He said the words slowly, as if they were delicate and might break.
Sessela sighed against him.She was no longer smiling when she said softly, “The others are waiting for me.One of the women—Bianca is her name—has a child and a husband back on Earth.She cried every day and night, being away from them, thinking she might never see them again.I feel guilty prolonging her sadness like this.”
Rixavox’s chest ached at her words.His female had a heart the size of Luxiria, but to Rixavox, no other being was more important than her.
“Your health comes first, Sessela,” he told her firmly.“This is the remainder of your life span.Her sorrow is temporary.There is no reason for you to feel guilt.”
“And yet I still feel it,” she said, her shoulders shrugging slightly.
Rixavox let out a long breath but said nothing more about it.
She changed the subject.“Do you know Kate very well?”
“Thelavrix’an?I have spoken with her at length, yes.”
Sessela went quiet and Rixavox could practically see her mind at work.Finally, she asked, “And what does she do?Here, on Luxiria?How does she spend her days?”
“Her duties are in the archives in the Golden City.It is like…I believe you call it a library.It is filled with scrolls and tomes of Luxirian writing, and lore, and history.Of battles we have waged and accounts of the Fates,” he said.He thought for a moment and then said, “I think that Kat said her profession on Earth was a book maker.A ‘publisher’ is the word she used.Do you know what this is?”
Sessela’s smile returned as she nodded and Rixavox purred when he saw it.“Yes.She likes books then.I like them too, but you don’t exactly have any written in English,” she teased.
Rixavox frowned, racking his brain.“Perhaps there is a way to get them for you,” he said slowly.“And for Kat,” he added.
Her chin was on his chest as she looked up at him and she slid her arms around the expanse of his back.“Are you going to go raid a bookstore on Earth for me?”
“I would if you asked it of me,” he answered honestly.Of course, he would have to figure out a way to acquire another Luxirian crystal to power a vessel back to Luxiria.But he would.He knew he would do anything for hisluxiva.
