He’s so deep in me that our bodies stay joined.
His hands glide down my back, then up and forward, tingling past my neck to capture my tarnished hair where it falls across my face. He brushes it back, his thumbs soothing my heated skin as he strokes my cheeks.
My body clenches around him, sending echoes of pleasure through me.
His deep-gray eyes take me in and a hint of a smile plays around his lips, his serious expression lifting. “Asha.”
“Mmm?”
He rears up a little beneath me, his stomach muscles bunching so he can plant a kiss on my lips before he drops back to the bed, his dark hair splaying across the sheets.
The movement takes him out of me.
I’m surprised at the rush of warmth from my body and the puddle now forming on his lower stomach as gravity does its work.
The mechanics of sex aren’t a surprise to me, but even so, I’m not sure what to do, my cheeks flushing with uncertainty.
Without fuss, he grabs the edge of the sheet and sweeps it between us, cleaning up before he pushes the sheet away again and rolls us onto our sides.
The kiss he gives me drives every other thought from my mind. A kiss on my lips. Another on my chin. One at the base of my neck. Two more above my heart.
A whisper against my breast. “You are everything.”
For long minutes, he strokes my skin, his fingers gliding across my curves while I press closer to him, soaking in the contact.
I close my eyes.
More than the heady pleasure of sex, this peace between us, this feeling that nothing else exists beyond this room, is all I want in this moment.
Too soon, I sense him adjusting his position and I open my eyes to find him contemplating me.
His expression has become serious again and I want to fight against the reality that’s trying to push back in on us.
I trace his jaw, trying to ease his tension. Trying to read the suddenly haunted shadows in his eyes. “Erik… What is it?”
His hand slides down my arm to my hip, making my skin tingle, a pleasant sensation that contradicts how subdued he’s become.
He speaks slowly. “I want to believe that if I’d made different choices ten years ago, a different path would have been possible for us.”
“What choices?”
“Split-second choices. Mere heartbeats of time.” He shakes his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Your family would never have let you go.”
My forehead creases. I’m not sure what choices he thinks he had, but I’m certain that he’s wrong about my family. “They would have been happy to be rid of me.”
“No.” He props himself up beside me. “Malak would never have allowed you to leave.”
I’m even more confused now. “Malak ridiculed me. He made me go to classes with the other Blacksmiths my age just to stand me in front of an empty anvil without a hammer. They mocked me and hurt me and?—”
I close my eyes. I willnotremember.
Erik’s voice is low. Gentle. “He wanted you to learn to hate.”
Sudden tears leak from my eyes. “How would that benefit him? If I hated anyone most of all, it was him.”
“He wanted to destroy your heart because heknew.” Erik’s jaw clenches. “He knew you were left-handed like him.”
Chapter24
