Donning one of Keris’s shirts that she’d taken from a trunk, she picked up her ruined gown and went to the window where he stood, then tossed the garment into the surf. The jewels she wore swiftly followed, a hint of relief filling her. Not because she’d disliked the garments Coralyn had chosen, but because being forced to wear them had been as much a form of control as the bars and shackles.
Keris abruptly turned, one arm wrapping around her body and hauling her against him, the other braced against the wall as the ship rose and plunged. She wrapped her arms around his neck, resting her cheek against his, feeling the dampness of sea spray.
“Coralyn was right.” His breath brushed her ear, sending a tickle of sensation through her that made her shiver. Made her ache. “I do want to remake the world so that I can be with you. So that I can get down on my knees and ask you to be my wife. So that I can put a crown on your head and make you my queen. So I can build a shrine and worship you as my goddess. I want all of these things, yet I face a future with none of them, and I don’t know whether I want to fall on my own blade or burn everything to ash because I do not want to let you go.”
An impossible future, and yet his words made her blood sing even as the visions he painted flitted across her mind, twin to the forbidden dreams she’d had in the darkest hours of the nights. Dreams that had driven her fingers between her legs in search of release, but when the waves of pleasure had faded, had left her with only grief, because they could not be. Not unless both of them abandoned everything. “You have me now.” She tangled her fingers in his hair.
“It’s not enough.” His hand slid down her back, curving over her ass and jerking her closer. “A lifetime wouldn’t be enough. Eternity wouldn’t be enough. Not when I want to map every star in the sky with you in my arms.”
For a heartbeat, Zarrah felt like she couldn’t breathe as the weight of what it would be like to lose him hit her with full force, driving the air from her chest. Making her eyes sting. To live a lifetime without his voice in her ears, to never again feel his touch or taste his lips…
Tears threatened. And not just tears, but great heaving sobs that would tear her chest apart. Except she didn’t want to spend any of this precious moment grieving. “This is the time we have. And I forbid you to squander it, Keris Veliant.”
He didn’t speak, the only sounds the grumble of distant thunder and crash of the ship breaking through the rough surf. His head turned, their lips so close they shared the same breath. “There is nothing I wouldn’t give you,” he said softly. “Nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
Her skin was ablaze, every brush of the mist-soaked breeze sending shivers across her body, her thighs already slick. “There is only one thing I want from you right now. Only one thing I need.”
Keris’s lips met hers, and rational thought departed.
Whether it was weeks of being denied his touch or his touch itself, Zarrah wasn’t certain, but the taste of him on her tongue unleashed a wildness she hadn’t known herself capable of. Like a feral creature, she tilted her face, consuming him as surely as he consumed her.
The time for words and sentiment was over, and all that was left was blazing, blinding need.
Her mouth opened for him without hesitation, and she groaned as his tongue stroked hers, savage and demanding, every inhale filled with spice, making her hungrier for more of him. For all of him, though she knew it would never be enough.
His fingers trailed from her ass up her spine, then back down again, the sensation causing her body to buck. Causing her to tangle her fingers in the silk strands of his hair and kiss him harder, but Keris broke away from her mouth. His lips brushed her throat, nipping at the sensitive skin beneath her ears, and Zarrah panted, the sensation almost more than she could bear.
And then he moved lower.
He kissed fire down her throat, then over her collarbone, pausing only to catch hold of the hem of the shirt she wore, pulling it slowly upward, the feel of the linen brushing over her peaked nipples nearly sending her over the edge.
The ship plunged over a wave, and she nearly lost her balance. Keris caught her around the waist to steady her, the shirt slipping from his fingers to the floor.
He held her at arm’s length, drinking her in. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on. The most beautiful thing I’ve seen in all my life.” His blue eyes were dark with a mix of lust and sorrow and something she knew they both felt but hadn’t put words to. Might never put words to, for to do so might be their undoing.
And she’d had enough with words. Enough of being seen and not touched. She wanted more.
Her fingers fumbled with the buttons of his coat in her haste, and she tore the garment from him and cast it aside. His dark laugh filled her ears as she moved on to his shirt, nearly tearing it in her desperation to have him free of it.
The ship tacked west, and the dawn light spilled into the room, illuminating him with its glow. It turned his hair, damp from the sea spray, to gold, every muscle in his arms and torso appearing carved from alabaster. Her eyes tracked down his abdomen to the v of muscle that disappeared into his trousers, then to the hard length of his cock straining against the fabric. He was perfect. Everything she wanted, mind, body, and soul, but her desire was still tempered by an edge of fear, for outside this stateroom were dozens upon dozens of Maridrinians who’d see her dead just because she was Valcottan. Would see Keris dead for daring not to care about that damning fact. “What if someone comes in?”
“It’s locked.” His fingers flexed where they gripped her, sending a flood of heat through her core. “And there’s a trunk in front of the door.”
“They might still hear.”
“I suppose that depends on how loud you scream my name, Valcotta.” He let go of her with one hand, trailing a finger between her breasts and over her navel, slipping it between her thighs. She watched his eyes darken further as he found her sex hot and slick with desire. “With what I intend to do to you, everyone hearing you is a very real risk.”
Her heart skittered, some strange, mad part of her soul relishing the risk, the adrenaline it sent coursing through her veins making her body throb, already on the rise toward climax. “Show me,” she breathed.
Keris gave her a feral smirk, then pulled her down with him onto the seat before the open window, her knees to either side of him. His mouth captured hers, biting at her bottom lip and making her whimper, her aching sex rubbing against the exquisite hardness of his cock, still constrained by his trousers.
“Fuck, Valcotta,” he groaned into her mouth as she ground against him, then he caught her wrists in one hand, pulling until her spine arched, her head falling back.