Page 90 of The Last Wish of Bristol Keats
A dragon.
Yes, a dragon with sharp claws and teeth, but he didn’t use them on me.
They sat silently for a while, their words and feelings settling in, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Bristol’s fingers strummed the arm of her chair, another thought still tugging at her. “In the last letter I wrote, I told my sisters my mother was alive, that I was bringing her home. Bringing both of my parents home. I shouldn’t have said it. But I wanted it to be true. I’m afraid now. I can’t let them down.”
Tyghan leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs again, repeating the words she had said to him a few days earlier: “All of us are given powers from small to great. There is only so much one person can control.” His brows rose. “See? I do listen to you. Every word.”
She stared at him. A lock of hair dangled over his forehead. He looked as drained as she felt. “What are we doing, Tyghan?” she asked.
He was silent, his dark eyes simmering with thoughts, but still locked on her. His shoulders rose then, in a bare shrug. “We’re stumbling, messing up, and loving each other.”
“We’re quite good at the first two,” Bristol replied.
A faint smile creased his eyes. “But most of the time we’re spectacular at the last one.”
A weak laugh stirred in her chest.
He stood. “Are you ready to go back?”
She pushed against the arms of the chair, standing too. She took one last look at the room, the fire still flickering, casting warm shadows. “Yes, I suppose it’s time.” Tyghan walked toward the door, apparently intending to walk back instead of nightjump, the urgency gone. But something inside her wasn’t ready to leave. She still needed more. More healing. More closure. More of each other.
“No,” she said. “Not yet.”
Tyghan turned, trying to understand what she was saying, and his eyes soaked her in. He took a hesitant step forward. “I’m not sure what—”
“I’m not ready to leave.”
It was her eyes that spoke to him, more than her words. He swallowed.
“You can touch me, Tyghan. If you want to.”
His eyes slowly swept over her. He stepped forward, his movement slow and considered, stepping close until heat radiated between them. “I want to.” He raised his hand, swiping a strand of hair from her brow. “Bri,” he whispered. Something was different between them now. It wasn’t just desire driving them forward. A new reverence reverberated between them, a shared vulnerability.
His finger grazed the hollow of her neck and trailed across her collarbone, and then down to the first button of her shirt. Needles of heat shot through her, his fingers searing her skin. He worked the button loose like he was unlocking a treasure he had almost lost. One by one, each button was freed, and he slipped her shirt from her shoulders. It fell, whisper quiet, to the rug beneath their feet. His words were spent, but she felt his love in every measured move, every glance, even in the flutter of his lashes as he gazed at her.
Heat blazed over her skin, but she didn’t want to rush the moment. She wanted to savor his breath, his touch, his gaze devouring her. His mouth came down, his tongue parting her lips, his hand at her back, expertly popping her bra free. He moved on to her trousers, no fumbling. He knew exactly how to make everything come undone, including her.
His lips slid across her cheek to her earlobe. “You are my soul, Bri, my light, and I will die before I ever hurt you again.”
“Never say the worddie,” she whispered back. “We have a lifetime ahead of us. I don’t care how many times we stumble, I will always come back to you.”
She reached up and slipped his buttons free, a slow languid parting of his clothes, belt, shirt, trousers, all falling to the floor until every bit of his flesh and muscle was exposed, the hard planes and angles carved by firelight. He was still and yielded everything to her touch, even the scar he had once tried to hide. Her finger traced its jagged line, not in curiosity but in love, acknowledgment of what he had shared with her and her new understanding. She skimmed her hand up his arm, following the hard rise of his biceps, his skin burning beneath her palm. Her hand swept to the side then, pressing against the broad firmness of his chest, and her thumb circled his nipple.
His eyes drank her in, his breath grew husky, and then he gathered her up in his arms, his lips on hers again, and the darkness of the room swallowed them whole as he carried her to the bed.
He laid her down gently, the soft furs of another era beneath her back, the feeling of something ageless gripping them. Something inevitable. It vibrated in the air. History was written within these walls, not in great swaths of time but in fragmented moments like these. They were another layer of that history.
Bristol sank into the softness of the furs, waiting for Tyghan to join her. He was a black silhouette at the side of the bed, flames licking his outline like he was a dark specter about to consume her. Her skin burned. She wanted to be consumed. By him.
And he did, touch by touch. Her mouth, her breasts, her nipples, even places she didn’t know that drove her to madness, his tongue skating down her spine, then nipping at the flesh of her lower back. They explored each other’s bodies like it was the first time, taking nothing for granted. His fingers reached into her, plundering the slick wetness between her legs, stroking her, her pleasure building, breaths skipping, the throb growing. Her fingers dug into the blankets beneath her, and her breaths and moans intensified as she lost her grip and her mind crushed into one blinding thought. But then she let held breaths slip loose, and nudged his hand away.Not yet, she thought, and rolled over, pushing Tyghan onto his back. She wanted this single moment to be long, torturous. A memory they would never recover from.
She sat on his thighs, her fingernail barely grazing the full length of his shaft. “Let’s talk,” she said.
His breaths quivered. “Now?You expect me to talk while you do that?”
“I expect you totryto talk.”
Her finger grazed him again. He swallowed, his arousal making his brain and mouth stop working together. “You want to play? How about if we change positions?”
