Page 43 of Shadows and Flames
Help him. I swallowed and dared a step closer. Another and another until I could reach out and touch him. “I’m sorry.”
Elián killed the remaining space between us, grabbing my hips and pulling me into his chest. He planted his nose in the curls I’d tried my best to set to rights and breathed. My gloved hands met the anchor of his biceps.
“We have already apologized to each other. I would rather focus on this.”This, he emphasized with a tender kiss on my brow.
What was there to do but lean into his embrace? I quickly abandoned the halfhearted attempt to keep from truly melting into him, releasing an embarrassing noise that some may say was a whimper. Resting in the bare hollow of his throat was more than I deserved. That light Tana had gone on about? I was basking in it. Letting it carve itself in my memories, so when this all ended, I’d be able to run my fingers over the etchings.
“You are thinking loudly, my queen.”
Thinking and crying, but I tried my best to hide the evidence of tears in the blue fabric on his chest. Never in my dreams of Elián did I imagine him wearing color. But the blue made the amber and orange of his eyes brighter. Made the picture of him fuller.
“Not a queen anymore. Never was.”
He hummed, running his palms against my spine, caressing each dip and knot. “And yet, you’ve had me bowing to you since we met.”
“Oh, goddess,” I groaned and smashed my face further into him so that he could feel the noise in his veins. “Also not true. You broke my arms the first time we met, asshole.”
We shook but not with waves or an earthquake. It was the rumble of Elián laughing. “Yes. I did.”
The soft, deep noise persisted, reverberated into the cabin, and I enjoyed it. Like lying next to a roaring river. Hearing the breeze race over the sand on a hot day. If anyone bowed to the other, it would be me to him. So that he gave me only what he felt I deserved.
“I am so glad to have you in my arms, Meline,” he whispered after some time. And what was I to say to that?
Something stupid. Honest, but stupid. “You’re talking so much. And being so nice. I don’t know what to do.”
This time, he forced me to look at him, pulling back until my chin was trapped in the vise of his hand. The tip of his nose was not far from mine, the strands of his hair falling softly over his shoulders and brushing against mine. “Do notdo. Just be. With me.”
I frowned, and he thumbed my lip that poked out at him. “What in the hell does that mean?”
But in that moment, instead of fighting with me, spitting wrath, Elián curled further over me and dropped the most delicate kiss of my long, long life. One with the calming sweepof his thumb against my jaw, the possessive pressure of his arm around my lower back.
He was going to fucking kill me.
No stranger to death, I sighed into his lips against mine. The warmth of his body around me. And when he separated the contact for a breath, just long enough to return and pull gently at my bottom lip between his, I followed his lead. Parted my lips and kissed him back.
Hollers carried off into the sunset as the ship pulled away from the docks, setting us off to Vharas, but I was fully lost in Elián, now. His tongue flicked against mine, and I whimpered—again—as something like life sparked beneath my skin.
When we’d been together before, the kisses, caresses, and thrusts were harried, or, at the very least, urgent.
Now, with multiple days’ sail ahead of us, Elián’s tongue licked at mine like he had all the time in the world to pull me apart. Could he truly sort through the pieces and put me back together?
Just as I started to succumb to the flutter below my navel, the first real stirring of desire since the last time he’d touched me, Elián broke the kiss. My lashes fluttered fiercely, glaring at his spit-glistened lips and peek of the white tips of his fangs.
“That.Being, with me.”
Before I could respond, Elián bent again, this time latching onto the tender skin of my throat. Where he sank his fangs yesterday—goddess, was it only yesterday? This time, instead of vicious bites, he nibbled and sucked, continuing to treat me softly.
Not like I was too fragile but as though I was precious. To be cared for.
And like this morning, I felt the way I affected him, the way we affected each other. His cock was hard against myfront, answering the growing urgency of my arousal with the confirmation of his.
But as over breakfast and yesterday evening while he held me, Elián made no move to push us there.
I palmed him through his trousers, forcing a groan out of him as well as a sharper nip of his teeth against my neck. He canted his hips, pressing into the friction of my touch.
He’d said he’d lain with many—his Shadow siblings and anyone else he saw fit to share pleasure with during his long life. The flash of possessiveness within me at the moment was twisted, dark and gnarled at the edges. I had no right to ask it, but remnants of the Meline I’d once been, bold and outspoken, bobbed to the surface. Gasping for air.
“And have you been with anyone since me?”
