Page 113 of Damned and Broken Gods
Notyou look beautiful, but youarebeautiful.
Then he led me into the dance, a gentle sway that locked us in harmony.
A surge of warmth rushed up my neck, and my throat pinched because this was the last time that we’d be together like this. The last time he’d hold me this way.
We danced past the stage, past the musicians. The music shifted and changed into a melody unlike any I’d ever heard—haunting and filled with the longing of a promise. A promise of forever.
Something inside me shifted, and Araz’s grip on me flexed, tightening. I met his gaze to find it swirling with orange flecks, his chest heaving in time with mine as my body heated from within, as if a flame had been lit in my solar plexus, as if a warmhand was sliding down my belly toward the core of me. I bit back a gasp as he pulled me flush against him, his lips at my ear. His low groan teased my senses.
The music filled me, surrounding me, pressing at the edge of my consciousness like a memory just out of reach.
“Leela…” His voice was a growl, and Ifeltit between my thighs like a vibration, an echo, a sweet symphony of sensation. Oh god. Oh fucking hell.
The music swelled, and I pulled away, my eyes hot, my body thrumming. He met my gaze with a wild one of his own. Somehow, we’d danced toward the edge of the floor and a dark exit.
“Araz, I?—”
He took my hand and led me out.
We left the ball.
We walked in silence, and then we ran, back to the barracks, back to our room, where he closed the door and turned to face me in the gloom, his eyes like fire as they settled on me.
My clothes were too tight, my skin too hot. I opened my mouth to speak, but he crushed his lips to it, silencing me with a passion that left me reeling. I grabbed his shoulders, then his nape, hauling myself closer, needing to be closer. To feel him against me as he assaulted my mouth, and oh god, his tongue…His sweet fucking tongue.
A low growl vibrated his chest, and an answering throb bloomed between my thighs. Hungry. Desperate and clenching.
I tugged at the tie in his hair and sank my fingers into the thick silken strands, losing myself in the feel of him—the way he drank me in until I was dizzy, until my knees were too weak to hold me.
My feet left the ground as he lifted me, his arms around my waist. The next moment, the mattress was beneath me, hislarge frame hovering over me. He stilled, his chest heaving as he looked down at me.
ARAZ
She lies beneath me, gathered in starlight fabric, light catching the thread work of her lehenga like the gods embroidered it just for this moment, and the way she looks at me…Not like the drohi bound to her by force, but the drohi shewantsto run toward. Like I’m hers, not because she was forced to claim me but because she wants to, and that…gods, that undoes me.
I reach for her hand, not to grasp but to touch because this is the moment, the heartbeat between what we were and what we’re about to become, and it’s sacred. I linger at her wrist. Her pulse stutters beneath my fingertips, and mine answers like it’s been waiting for this call.
Our gazes lock, and I drop the veil, allowing her to see the full extent of my need, want, desire…The full extent of how desperately and irrevocably I’m in love with her.
Her breath hitches, her eyes welling, and although her mouth parts, she doesn’t speak. She blinks back the moisture and opens to me, her eyes shining with an answering longing, reverence, and so much fucking love that it leaves me breathless.
The coiled heat inside me expands as I carefully brush her hair back.
“Can I have you, Leela?” My voice cracks with emotions that threaten to undo me. “Can I have you this night? This once? Will you let me nestle deep in you, as one? Flame to flame?”
Tears spill down the side of her cheek. She nods and whispers, “Yes…”
That one word, her consent, breaks the last of my control.
LEELA
Myyesbroke him, softened him, and he fell onto me, into me, his body a delicious pressure that mine had been aching for. I accepted it with open arms, lips, and hands. Exploring his silken skin beneath my fingertips, taut and shifting as the muscles beneath contracted and pulsed.
He undressed me, his breath shivering across my skin, his battle-scarred palms branding me with a promise of heat.
He bared me, his hot gaze lingering on every part of me as he pulled away, reaching up to peel off his tunic, his gaze leaving me only for as long as it needed to.
His skin gleamed in the moonlight, familiar to my eyes but not to my hands, and oh gods, did my hands want to explore him.
