Page 67 of Destinies of Diamond
Looking Toward the Future
Pollux
“I have a feeling that if Commander Trevor made a note of how badly we messed up, we should be trying to improve.”
“Gee, you think? What gave you that idea, Your Highness?”
I listened to Knox and Brendan bicker and wondered how the hell we’d let our relationship deteriorate so much. We’d been inseparable once. Granted, Brendan had made a serious mistake when he’d hidden the secret of the tablet from us, but it hardly warranted this reaction.
And yet, none of us had been able to approach him properly in the months since the incident. Knox and Brendan were at each other’s throats, both in their own way. Knox had become utterly vicious with everyone except Selene. Brendan had turned icy and almost impossible to talk to.
I didn’t even know what to think about August. We weren’t alienated per se, but there were times when I saw fiery shadows in his eyes. I couldn’t reach him anymore and it scared me.
Not that I was doing much better. Two days ago, I’d gone to see my sister. I’d felt next to nothing when I’d spoken to her. The wound of my chimera’s death still ached, months after her destruction.
I felt lost, adrift. How in Tartarus’s name were we supposed to fight a battle this way?
And then, there was Jared. It was only because we’d seen him injured that we were able to have a coherent conversation without fighting.
Staring at my own shaking hands, I acknowledged that Commander Trevor was right. We had no choice but to talk this out properly. Otherwise, when the time came for us to say goodbye, we’d all regret it.
No one else was going to make the first move, so I decided to take the proverbial chimera by the horns. I got up and stalked to Selene’s side.
Kneeling in front of her, I leaned over and brushed a kiss over her lips.
She had time aplenty to pull away. I was broadcasting my intentions, which was on purpose, since the last thing I wanted was to force her into anything.
But she didn’t reject me. Instead, her lips started to move slowly against mine, responding to my kiss. It was hesitant and slow, nothing like the explosive passion we’d shared in the past, but I could hardly expect anything different after how badly we’d shredded our relationship.
I delved in a little deeper and dared to lick over the seam of her lips. She gasped slightly and I took advantage of it to thrust my tongue into her mouth. I’d wanted to take it slow, to make this about her, about our reunion, but my good intentions were already flying out the window.
If I managed to not pull her into my arms and ravage her on the spot, it was just because the others decided to join in. There had never been any real jealousy between us, but that didn’t mean anyone here was willing to be excluded.
Of course, it was awkward now that Jared was present too, but I focused on Selene, on what she wanted. And as she relaxed in my arms, I found it strangely easy to forget about that discomfort.
When she melted against my chest, for the first time in months, I felt like I could breathe. It was the air in her lungs that gave me life, when everything else was suffocating me. The concept might have made no biological sense, but it was the only thing that reassured me, that kept me going.
We couldn’t take things further on the floor, so I picked her up and headed toward her bedroom. We shared an apartment by necessity, because none of us had been willing to leave Selene’s side while we were in the Apsid Quasar. Even so, we’d never been in her quarters, respecting her privacy.
Now that we were here, it seemed foolish that we’d waited for so long to come in the first place. Because the moment I set Selene down on the bed, the feeling of rightness I’d been missing for the past couple of months finally returned.
As we joined Selene, we threw aside all of our misgivings in favor of more practical matters—getting one another naked. It was a little more complicated than it used to be, since Jared was there too and we couldn’t exclude him. But in the end, Jared solved that problem himself. It was pretty useful to be an apsid, because with a thought, he managed to summon a burst of power that carbonized all of our clothing.
I had no idea how he’d managed to do that without scorching our skin too, but this was the Apsid Quasar, and even before, he’d proven he could manipulate the energies here to do whatever the hell he wanted. At this point, I didn’t care anymore. All I wanted was to stop thinking for a few hours, to stop hating, to stop being afraid, and to just let myself love.
The others must have agreed with me, because the shadow of their resentment faded. Knox hugged a now naked Selene from behind and kissed Selene’s neck. “Tell me you want this. Tell me you want us.”
“I… I do. I’m not sure about anything else, but I do want this. I want us to work.”
My heart hurt, because I knew the chances of that happening weren’t very high. I suspected she knew it too, but like me, she didn’t want to think about it. And when Knox met Brendan’s eyes, a switch seemed to flip.
Fire exploded around us, tachyons and photons dancing around our bodies in a wild array of power and need. Knox’s hands grew claws. Scales sprouted over Brendan’s body and my own. The abyss of the quasar burned inside Jared and August. And Selene… When I met her eyes, I saw something deep and ancient. Archibald had told me his interest in her was because of the child she carried, not Selene herself, but I knew then that he hadn’t been truthful.
Desperate to wipe that thought out of my head, I crushed my mouth to Selene’s. This time, our kiss was very different from before. She stabbed her hands through my hair, moaning, clutching my locks so tightly my scalp hurt.
As I pulled Selene into my lap, August’s hot hand landed on my thigh. Power vibrated through every cell of my body, into my bones, reaching Selene through our point of contact. She let out a small, muffled moan, but I didn’t let it get to me. Instead, I reached between her legs to play with her folds.
She was already so wet, and oh, Tartarus help me, I’d missed this so much. I’d missed her, and I wondered how the fuck I hadn’t lost my sanity completely when I’d been deprived of her for months on end.
