It seemed like so long ago, but I was still jarred by the memory.
“Lokkas,” he murmured, running his palm down the creature’s wide snout. Its hot breath came in heavy pants, silvering the air around it.
Lokkas. It was hispyroki’sname. I wondered, briefly, ifpyrokis’given names were just as secretive as their masters’. Somehow, I thought it might be the case, and I wondered why Seerin would share it with me so easily.
“Hello, Lokkas,” I said softly to him, reaching out hesitantly to stroke the side of his neck. Right then, I remembered that I’d been on his back before. I’d awoken on our way here from my village, bandaged and aching, and I’d felt the beast’s strength underneath me.
I was all too aware that Seerin was close to me. How strange it seemed now that I’d slept beside him for over a week, yet just being within arm’s reach of him now sent a shiver down my spine.
Perhaps that was why I couldn’t quite meet his eyes. And when I did, it wasn’t for long.
“I will help you up,” he rasped. Before I could protest, his hands were around my waist, strong and sure, and he lifted me easily, settling me feet above the ground on the back of hispyroki,as if I weighed nothing more than a feather.
A moment later, he swung up behind me and my face heated when his thighs clasped around my own. Though I’d touched his cock, bathed him, and seen him naked more times than I could count, just being cradled between his clothed, thick thighs was enough to make me question whether this had been a good idea or not.
He took Lokkas’ reins in one fist, his hand coming around my waist to steady me as he urged hispyrokiinto a gentle trot.
The entrance to the encampment came up quickly.
Without hesitation, we went through the gate…and out onto the open plains of Dakkar.
Chapter Twenty-Six
We rode on Lokkas’ back in silence beyond the gates of the encampment. An easy, gentle pace so the wind didn’t chill Nelle too much.
We rode until the encampment was nothing more than a glowing speck, until theHitrimountains grew sharper through the thick clouds.
“Why did you want to come out here?” she asked.
I’d felt starved for her voice and the way it wound through me, pulling away the tension that had been building over the course of the last four days and nights.
“Because I feel less like aVorakkarout here,” I rasped. “I am simply a Dakkari male on the back of mypyroki, as it should be.”
“I don’t think you could ever simply be a Dakkari male, Seerin,” she said quietly. “You will always be aVorakkar.”
And therein lay the problem.
“I knew who you were the moment I saw you in my village,” she added. “You were dressed no differently than the others. But I knew that you were one ofthem,a horde king we’d only heard about in legends and stories, because I felt it. You could be nothing else.”
“Would you wish that I weren’t aVorakkar?” I asked, my fist tightening on the reins.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told me and I could hear the confusion in her tone, her confusion as to why I would ask such a question. “This is who you are. This is who you’ll always be.”
I dropped my head, pressing my forehead to the back of her warm neck. My breath fanned out over her flesh and I felt a responding shiver rack her body.
“Seerin,” she said quietly as I inhaled her soft scent, letting it fill my lungs. “You shouldn’t—”
“Iamyours, Nelle,” I rasped.
She froze as a gust of wind whistled past us, rustling her braid.
Then she turned in her seat until she met my eyes.
“And you are mine,” I said. “You know this.”
“Yet you denied it,” she answered.
“I am sorry for that,” I murmured, reaching out to cup her face. “I am sorry for pulling away and for hurting you,thissie. You do not know how much. I have thought about it every moment of the day, every moment of the night.”
