Her nails clawed at his back.
“I don’t want gentle, Aeric. But I do want you,” she whispered between heated moans and those words were like a seal upon his soul.
She’d branded herself in deep.
“My beautiful, wild kitten.” He claimed her lips, and as he thrust inside her body, he shoved his tongue against her own.
What they did was wild and rough and uninhibited. It was pure need and lust, and much, much more than that. But he wouldn’t think that far ahead, because here and now, he needed her and she needed him.
“Lissa!” He cried as a coil inside tightened, taking him to the precipice of no return.
She tossed her head back then, exposing the long length of her neck, and he buried his face in the column of her throat, laving the hollow of it with wet kiss after wet kiss and when her thighs began to quiver and a scream tore from her throat he fell headlong over the cliff. Shattering into a thousand fragments of nothingness and everything.
And when he blinked his eyes open, she was there, holding him, moving the sweaty hair out of his eyes and murmuring words he couldn’t quite make out, but heard in his soul all the same.
They coupled twice more after that. With an almost frantic need to it. But now, hours later, when the forest was completely quiet, they whispered into the dead of night. He held her against him, rubbing slow circles into her back.
“Do you know the story of Chrysalis?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Some of it. That she was moon marked, and cursed to eventually die.”
“Yes. But you know I heard something once, that not only was she cursed, but she was also blessed. That she had a choice and depending on the outcome of it, was the path she’d ultimately take.”
She pulled slightly back to gaze at him. Just then a balmy breeze picked up and the scent of roses filled the air, mixing with the musk of their bodies. This memory would be forever burned into the recesses of his mind.
“So she can choose to be good or evil? I’m not planning to kill her, Lissa, you know that.”
“No,” she patted his chest, “that’s not what I’m getting at. I’m telling you, that to every curse, there can be a blessing. If you let it be. Your sands can strip the flesh off bones, but it can also heal.”
He cocked his head. “How?”
She shook her head and he could see the strain of the past few days on her face. She was exhausted and it finally showed. One eye especially looked dark, like there was a smudge beneath it. Figuring it to be dirt, he rubbed at it with his thumb and then frowned. It was gone, but not because of him rubbing at it. Maybe the night was playing tricks with him.
“What?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he shrugged, “thought I saw some dirt. We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he gave her a soft smile, “you need sleep. Stay with me tonight.”
Shaking her head, she stood up. “I sleep better beneath the ground.”
“Then I’ll stay with you.”
She didn’t argue.
*
Morning came faster than either one of them would have liked. Aeric’s body ached. He was rolling his shoulders from side to side to work out some kinks when she found him. He’d already brushed his teeth and gotten dressed. But she’d been sleeping so hard; he hadn’t had the heart to wake her. It was now well past sunrise. Hopefully they were close today.
Aeric had the sense that they didn’t have much time, if any, on their side before Chrysalis figured out what they were up to.
“Hi,” Lissa said as she stepped her left foot onto her right in a shy stance. “There are a few more hours to walk, we should probably go.”
She didn’t seem inclined to talk about what they’d done last night, neither was he really. Not yet. After they got the net and found Chrysalis (which he had no doubt they’d do) then they’d tackle this. But it was best to remain focused for now.
“Yeah,” he stood from his crouching stance and with a final roll of his neck, gestured for her to lead on.
The trail was moving away from the smoothed grassy trail they’d traveled yesterday and was now more overgrown.
Neither of them spoke, too busy just trying to get to where they were going. Aeric still wondered how it was that she seemed to know exactly where she was going. Had she seen Chrysalis hide the net? Was she just too scared to tell him that? Or was this really a wild stab in the dark?
Her hair was no longer blue, it was now fully black. And her eyes were the radiant blue of last night. It was yet another oddity of hers that he found strangely endearing.
She was wiggling through a narrowish hole in a thorn bush, grunting as she tried to slip through without scraping herself up too badly.
“Hold on,” he said, as he drew his knife from its sheath and hacked at a vine blocking her way.