So I won’t.
But that doesn’t ease the building ache between my thighs. Arion’s hand lingers near his cock, palm lying flat on his hard abdomen, and, dear goddess, I wish he’d lower it. Just inches. Just enough to stroke himself and free me from this goddess-damned prison of lust. The silvered cord pulses once more, undoubtedly with a throttle of my own desire, and his gaze snaps to mine. He clenches his jaw tight. His molten eyes spark with frustration.
I am still staring. Still aching.
His shirt feels more like a burden now, the material too thin, tooscratchy, toonot him. I want to rip it off. I want to crawl toward him on my knees. I want his hands, his mouth, his tongue, his everything. I want to feel him against me. On me. All over me. I want thrusts, rough and brutal. I don’t want control. I want reckless. I want—
Him.
The ground trembles with his restraint. He glares at me. I glare at him. This is his fault. His fault for saving my life and entangling it with his own. This is… this is the bond. Just the bond. However, it feels like so much more, and I can’t fucking breathe. I’ve been reduced to kindling. Made to burn.
Suddenly, a burst of hot magic encircles my wrists. It pins them above my head. Arion’s gaze flares with his magic, his muscles tense as I lie, still silenced, mere inches from him. I arch into the enchanted hold, sweat beading down my neck and between my breasts. Arion curses—I watch him curse, though I can’t hear it either, can’t hear anything but my own pulse—and that magic sweeps lower. A phantom touch of what I’m craving, but enough that I moan. It glides down my body like a searing palm, over his shirt, andfuck, I wish he would just tear it away. I wish there was nothing between us. The bond is driving me mad. I’ve lost my mind, and I don’t know I can get it back until we… until he…
“Zephyra,” he groans—and the rough sound punctures the night. Punctures my nerves too. I gasp as Arion’s phantom touch rakes up my thigh. He slides my shirt higher, his magic grip on my wrists ironclad.“Fuck.”
I nod frantically, urging him to do more. He is a human. I am a mermaid. But maybe—maybe we can have this. A single moment in time. “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” I breathe. And goddess, ithurts. It must hurt him too, because he reaches down. Fists his cock with a shuddering breath. Just to move it. To adjust it.
It’s not enough.
“The life debt,” he rasps. “This isn’t—it’s not us.”
“No, it’s not,” I agree, pushing my legs open.
His phantom touch curls around my thigh, stroking the soft flesh near my core. I moan, uninhibited, because it feels good. Not bad. Not fine. Not evengood enough. For the first time in a decade,something feels really fuckinggood. And I want it. I want more of it. The heat and the pain and the pleasure—it feels like living, and I crave it. “More,” I demand.
His gaze sears through mine. “What about tomorrow? When we wake up and have to face what we’ve done?”
“I don’t participate in shame,” I say honestly, nearly panting now. “I don’t believe in regret either. We are two consenting adults, and you are”—breathtakingly handsome—“attractive enough. I, myself, am extraordinarily gorgeous. Why wouldn’t we? Unless warlocks are celibate—”
As if to answer the question, his magic presses a hot finger against my clit. “Shit,” I hiss. “Can he—can the historian hear us?”
Arion swears too, his breathing even more ragged than my own. Another burst of magic. It smells like lemons and honey. It smells likehim.
“No. He can’t.”
The warlock holds on to his control by a single thread—a thread that seems to be unraveling more and more with each passing second. “I shouldn’t be feeling any of this,” he growls, snatching the cord and pulling it taut. The sudden force—the accompanying unbridled rush of ecstasy—arches my back even more. A ragged moan wrings from my throat. His golden gaze flashes. Darker,hungrier. As if he’s going to devour me.
“Warlocks cast aside their emotions,” he declares, voice hardened and enraged. “We sacrifice our past to ensure our future. We don’t need mortal vices to live.”
I can’t respond, and I’m not sure I’m meant to. His phantom touch circles my clit now, agonizingly slow, as he pushes my legs even farther apart. My shirt shifts upward. I’m bared to him. Bared, and I don’t care. He sits up, bent over and resting his elbows on his knees as he continues watching me with that hungry gaze. His hand clenching white around his wrist. His entire body clenching as if in physical pain. And there is something so erotic about watching him as he watches me, touches me with those phantom hands, and feels everything I’m feeling. The cord blazes so brightly, it’s nearly as intense as the sun now.
“I am still a warlock, Zephyra,” he says, clutching it while he uses his magic to fuck me. “This can never mean anything else.”
“Y-yes,” I agree with a throaty gasp, writhing to his magic’s unabating rhythm. “You’re an asshole. I expect nothing less.”
“I’m anasshole,” he says with a delicious thrust of magic and power. “You’re ademon.” Another thrust. “There is no world where we are anything other than enemies.” Another and another and another.
I ride the waves of pleasure as they crest over me, inside me, all around me. My skin tingles. Starlight bursts in my veins.
“This is wrong,” he says. “You and I—we arewrong.”
His hold presses my wrists into the ground, and those thrusts reach an exhilarating crescendo. It feels like swimming—so fast and so far, in a wide-open ocean, with waters whipping around me and the sun beaming down on my flesh. It feels like freedom. Just for a second. For one beautiful, heart-stopping second where the world falls away and Arion growls my name for only the two of us to hear.
“Look at me,” he demands in that moment, and he soundsdesperate. He sounds as if everything he’s just said is a complete lie. “Look at me when you come, Zephyra.”
I do. I look and look and look, my gaze snagging on the depths of his own need. It pools in his silver-ringed eyes. Along with something else, something fearsome and forbidden. “Arion,” I breathe.
“That’s it.” Voice hoarse, strained, he coaxes me deeper and deeper into pleasure. “Come, and say my name. Come, and tell the world who’s responsible for it. Come forme, Zephyra, and only for me.”
