“Yes,” I whimper. “Since I first saw you.”
“Despite everything, we seem to have so much in common,” she teases as she pulls my hands up to her breasts.
Fire roars through me as I cup her perfect flesh in my palms. When I brush my fingers over the tip of one breast, she lets out a gasp that turns me to little more than molten hunger.
Nyatrix bows over me and kisses me again. I lose myself to her dark tide, burying one of my hands in her hair. I could kiss her forever, I think, all blackberry mouth and asphodel petal and sharp, wolfish teeth. When she pulls away, she takes my breast band with her—though I didn’t even feel her undo the closure at the back.
She guides my hands around her waist and then cups my breasts in her palms. “You are utterly divine,” Nyatrix groans, rolling her hips into mine. The movement pulls a long moan from my mouth that hardly sounds like my voice. She lightly pinches the tips of my breasts, and I cry out, seeking the heat of her against the throbbing place between my legs.
“Ahh,” she drawls, teasing my pebbled nipples again, her mouth against my neck. “I think I know what you want.”
She slots our bodies together differently so only one of her muscular thighs is between my legs. And then she kisses me until I’m dizzy, her hands roaming my body. She finds the small of my back and pulls me closer to the end of the table, until that tender, damp place between my legs rests against her thigh.
“Roll your hips,” she murmurs, capturing my lower lip between her teeth for the barest of seconds before releasing.
I do as she commands, finding an incredible burst of pleasure, just as I did in that ruined chapel. I cry out, and she pulls me closer.
“Again,” Nyatrix purrs. I obey, and she pinches my nipples at the same time. A moan frees itself from my throat, loud enough that anyone in the hallway would certainly hear me. “Perfect, little dove. You’re absolutely perfect. Don’t stop.”
I don’t—Icouldn’t—not with the way my entire body seems to exist only for this, to entangle myself in her darkness, to drink ofher splendor. I drive my aching place against her thick, muscular thigh, my hands hungry for her skin, as she captures my mouth in hers, kiss after kiss.
Soon, I am trembling with want, the pressure low in my belly building to absolute torment. I beg her for more, more,moreuntil her teasing of my nipples becomes near-painful in the most delicious way, until she’s driving her thigh into me at the same time I arch my hips in search of her.
“Good girl,” Nyatrix gasps, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other playing with my breasts in exactly the way I want but could never explain. “Do you want to come apart like this, all tangled together, my hands in your hair, my mouth on your skin? Using me for your pleasure, your joy?”
“Yes, Nyatrix,” I whimper, increasing my pace. She kisses me, capturing the last of my words with her tongue, and the tension building like a thunderstorm between my legs crescendos and then snaps. I fall into her, little more than pleasure and wonder and the taste of her name in my mouth.
She holds me as my breathing returns to normal, tucks my head beneath her chin. We’re both covered in a light sheen of sweat, naked to the waist, lost in our selfish prayers.
“Little dove,” Nyatrix murmurs into my hair sometime later. “Would you like me to carry you to the bath?”
How, I wonder, could I ever say no to the woman who made me want to forsake God?
Out on Liminalia’s night-drenched cliffs, the wind whips up, spraying my hair with sea salt. Steam curls from the bath, making Nyatrix appear divine, gowned in shadow and fog, an avenging goddess returned with the taste of bloodin her mouth. I can barely believethisis what I carved out of myself, offered up on the altar of supposed saintliness, all for a god who only ever pretended to care.
“I love the noises you make,” Nyatrix breathes against the curve of my neck, her lips brushing my earlobe. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t, particularly not as she slides her hand between my thighs. She presses me back against the tiled edge of the hot spring, her kiss growing more insistent.
“Might I be permitted,” she murmurs, her hands winding into my damp hair, “to taste you?”
I pull away slightly, meeting her gaze, confusion surely crossing my expression. “Haven’t you already?” I ask, thinking of the bells we must have spent bathing each other, drowning in the feel of the other’s kisses, so much stolen wonder in a world that seems intent on destroying itself. Destroying us.
“Not completely,” she replies, her mouth curving into that dangerous smile, the one that makes me completely willing to pitch myself off the edge of the cliff, straight into the darkness waiting below. “Not where I want to taste you the most.”
She illustrates her meaning, her fingertips working slow circles at the apex of my thighs. I cry out, my back arching.
“Yes,” I gasp. “Please.”
“That’s my good girl,” Nyatrix murmurs, slipping her large hands around my waist. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I cannot,” I manage to get out as she lifts me, placing me on the steam-warmed rocks at the edge of the springs, “imagine such a thing.”
“And yet,” she says, gently pushing my knees farther apart until I’m completely exposed to her, “you need only say the word. You have bent me utterly to your will, Ophelia.”
Her words send an impossible thrill through me, all lightning strikes in my chest, a bonfire sweeping up from that aching place between my legs. For a moment, she just watches me—my heaving chest, heavy breasts anointed in bathwater, the soft slopes and folds of my belly, generous thighs outlined by the weak moonlight. Then her eyes come to the tangle of curls between my legs, and it is pure, simple hunger that I see in her expression.
The Lupa Nox lowers herself into the spring. Her dark hair is slicked back against her skull, black strands plastered to her collarbones. The looping, vine-like ink across her shoulders stands out in the moonlight, perfectly symmetrical, accentuating the musculature that already makes me feel weak. Then her mouth meets the inside of my thigh, and I cry out her name. I can feel her lips curve into a smile against my skin, and it makes me want her closer,closer. I tangle one hand into her soaked hair, desperate.
