Page 47 of Joy Guardian

How was I supposed to know for sure that this was the right time? The right place? The right man?

I’d made mistakes before. Huge mistakes. Once broken, trust was hard to repair, and it was so scary to trust my heart again.

Leaning away from him, I caught the sight of his soggy boots and the soaked wrappings on my legs and blurted out the first thing that came to my mind through the hurricane of conflicting feelings, “We’re wet.”

I was sitting on his lap with his legs and mine dangling in the warm pool of water.

“You ruined your fancy boots.” I smiled.

He seemed a little disoriented after my hug. Running a hand over his black hair, he nodded, collecting himself.

“We should have a bath,” he said.

Now that thirst no longer tormented me, the awareness of the dust on my skin and the sand trapped in every crease of my skin and crevice of my body became the new torture.

“Are we alone here?” I glanced at the shallow niches carved in the walls with round beds inside them, then at a wide archway leading to another room on this floor.

“I believe we are,” he said. “If there was anyone else here, they would’ve come out already.”

“Is it normal to leave the temple empty like that?”

“Not really. I, for one, have almost never left it before. But with the Joy Vessels now in the kingdom, we have all been busy. Either way, the doors to the temple are locked and only a Joy Guardian can unlock them. We’re safe. Let me just take care of you first, then I’ll try to find out what is going on out there.”

Setting me gently on the stone path next to him, he pulled off his boots, then unclipped his skirt. Anticipation thudded in my chest. It was a pleasure to watch Kurai undress as he revealed every inch of his perfect body. His well-defined muscles shifted and bulged under his skin so absolutely dark, it seemed to absorb all light and every color.

Even when fully naked, however, shadow fae always looked less nude as compared to humans. The area between his legs remained innocently smooth.

He glanced at me with a flash of curiosity in his green eyes, then put his skirt away and reached for the bindings on my legs. “Let’s get these off now.”

He’d been calm and even indifferent when he’d put the bindings on my legs back in the desert. Now, he seemed to be aware of his every move. When his fingers touched the skin on my thigh, a shiver scattered along my skin, and Kurai stilled as if afraid to touch a live wire.

“Ciana?” His voice came out with a deep rasp. “Out in the desert, you said you weren’t afraid of dying because there was nothing else you had left to experience in life.”

I didn’t recall the exact words I used. The memories of our journey through the desert were muddled, filled with the torture of heat, thirst, hunger, and exhaustion. But I remembered the sense of being invincible that came over me once I’d realized that death no longer scared me.

“But there is a need in you,” he continued. “An unfulfilled want that grows more intense when I touch you.”

With his tendrils connected to my feelings, I couldn’t hide anything from him.

“You didn’t just bringmeback to life, Kurai. I’m afraid you’ve revived the things I thought have long died. I like you far more than a friend. I…I want you. I want more with you. And if it makes you uncomfortable…” I moved my arm forward with the smoky ends of his tendrils buried deep in theleilathasof the ribbons circling my bicep. “It’s probably best to disconnect these now.”

“But I don’t want to disconnect. I want to feel everything you’re feeling, good and bad. I want to give you everything you long for, including showing to you what it’s like to be with a man who really cares.”

His words resonated with my heart’s deepest desire. Excitement fluttered in my belly like a kaleidoscope of butterflies.

He pressed his forehead to mine. Standing in the pool with the water reaching up to his hips, he was eye level with me as I saton the stone path that ran through the pool to the drinking fountain in the middle. It made it easy for me to slip my hand behind his neck, pull him to me, and kiss him.

He swallowed my breath in a gasp. Tenderness, deep affection, and desire swirled inside me in a sparkling hurricane of emotions. Doubt tried to weigh it down, but I brushed it away. I got a second chance in life both physically and emotionally, and I had to live it to the fullest, to have everything I wanted. And what I wanted was him.

My lips stung, still rough from the desert’s storm. But I didn’t care, and he didn’t seem to mind. Unsure at first, he mirrored me, cupping the back of my head with his large hand. As our kiss grew longer, his confidence also grew. Tentatively, I slid the tip of my tongue along his bottom lip, and he met it with his tongue.

I couldn’t hold back a moan, and he held me tightly, sliding his palm down my back.

A shiver of pleasure ran down my body, and I pulled back, needing to catch my breath.

“You like it…” he rasped. “You enjoy my hands on you when I remember you begged everyone not to touch you before.”

The bewilderment in his voice made his words sound like a question. I was tempted to answer it with a kiss instead, but he was trying to learn more about my body just as he’d been learning all about my soul.

---