Only, she’d flown out of his room so fast, her face leached of color like she’d been horrified by what she’d witnessed.
And afterwards?
“You never brought it up,” he murmured to Valerie. She was still sitting in his lap—almost naked—in his bed, where that life-changing orgasm had happened. “I thought you wanted to forget it ever happened, so I didn’t say anything either. I feared…I feared that I had ruined everything. You barely looked at me for weeks.”
Then Khiva left with Eve. And everything seemed to shift between them again.
“I was surprised by what happened,” she murmured to him, that same flush still coloring her cheeks. “I was surprised by…how I acted, how you acted. I didn’t want to…”
“Want to what?” he rasped.
A look of desperation crossed her face, making him furrow his brow.
“You’re my best friend, Dravka,” she told him. “Besides my mother, you’re the one being in my entire life that I ever allowed myself to get close to. To…to love.”
His hearts filled to the brim at her words.
“You know I love you,” she whispered, those damn tears filling her vision again. “I love you in every way possible.”
“Val,” he murmured, his grip tightening on her.
“And I know you love me too,” she said. “But I didn’t know in what way. And that day, I thought that our friendship would be changed. A part of me couldn’t deal with that because—because...”
Dravka murmured soft words to her in Keriv’i, telling her she was beautiful and perfect, while she shivered in his arms.
Her fingers clutched at his sides and she buried her face into his chest, until he could feel the wetness of her tears.
“So yes, you’re right,” she whispered. “Sex would’ve changed everything. I wasn’t certain I was ready for it.”
She lifted her face.
Her eyes were sovaukingbeautiful. Though there was a sadness in them that made him want to bellow in frustration.
“So, I’m sorry for pawing at you just now,” she said, trying to smile a bit. “I know I shouldn’t have—”
He cut off her words with a growl and then he was pulling her forward to kiss her, to silence her, to taste her, to feel her.
Valerie let out a shuddering gasp but then her lips were soft and tentative against his own. She shifted in his lap, making him aware that he still had a raging erection that had refused to die down and that his pants were soaked in pre-cum like an untried youth.
“Sometimes,” he rasped, breaking their kiss, pressing his forehead against her as she let out little pants and gasps, “sex can change everything for the better.”
And Dravka knew that when—notif—they had sex…itwouldbe life-altering. Dravka had known his feelings for her since he first laid eyes on her. Sex wouldn’t destroy them. It would lift them to where they were always meant to be with one another.
Tie them to one another, for the rest of their lives.
Thenuvur’u drava. The linking. Just like Dravka had always sensed, always known.
Her eyes were shy as she absorbed his words.
“Yeah?” she whispered.
Dravka almost groaned at the curiosity in her gaze.
He shook his head, knowing that if he didn’t act now, he would end the night buried between her thighs—a place he’d always meant to be.
But he didn’t want that.
“When we have sex for the first time,mellkia,” Dravka told her, feeling his chest fill with sweet anticipation and determination andpurpose, “it won’t be on Everton.”
