Placing her head over the spot of his heart he felt her lips stretch into a smile. “What if Lissa agrees? Would you then consider this arrangement?”
Could he really do this? What if Lissa did say yes? Give him free reign to fall in love with not only her, but pledge his heart to another? If the situation were reversed he wasn’t sure he’d be okay with it. Because then his worry would be, which part of him did she love more?
Grabbing his forehead, he growled. “This feels wrong. As much as I want to say yes, because I want her more than anything, the thought of hurting her wounds me.”
Leaning back to look at him, she took a deep breath. “Then let us ask her, and if she says no. Then you will walk away from the both of us. That is the way it has to be.”
Heart racing, mouth dry, he nodded. Because he knew she was right.
“Aeric?” the soft cadence of her sweet voice, the way she said his name like a benediction, he knew he was talking to Lissa again.
Desperate, he stole her lips. Took them and crushed them beneath his own, swiping his tongue inside her mouth, twining it with his. Never wanting to let her go. Terrified of what her answer might be.
He couldn’t do this to her.
But he couldn’t let her go.
“Lissa,” he moaned, grabbing her backside and forcing her thighs to straddle his hips. Her whimper was full of sensuality and desire.
In seconds they’d worked one another’s clothes off and were on the ground. Aeric couldn’t stop kissing her, caressing her, saying without words how much he treasured and adored her.
Wanted her.
“Come inside, Aeric, please,” she said with a kittenish flick of her tongue on the shell of his ear.
Groaning, he slipped inside her velvet heat and shuddered as her body gripped his tightly.
This was where he belonged. Where he’d always belong. Inside his woman for eternity, bound to her by both heart and soul.
Her nails were sharp as she dragged them down his back and her mating was just as wild and reckless as his. She said she knew what Chrysa did and said. So she must know what Chrysalis had proposed.
She also must realize that as much as he hadn’t wanted to, he’d responded to Chrysalis. That part of this erection was because of the other woman. It shamed him, but she didn’t cry, or pull away. She seemed just as manic to touch him, to brand him, as he her.
“I love you, Aeric,” she hissed out and then her spine curved upward as she moaned her orgasm.
The sight of her flushed face and rosy cheeks sent him spiraling over the edge. Calling out her name, he clung to her body and moved deep inside her, floating up through heaven before finally crashing back down to reality in a sweat, soaked haze.
“I love you, hunter.” She fluttered her fingers across the scratches she’d just given him.
Resting his head on her breasts, he took in deep breaths, his entire body soothed as she kissed his forehead over and over again.
“I love you too, kitten. Only you. I need you to know that.”
“I do. But Chrysa is right.”
Moving up on one elbow so that he could better look at her face, he pushed the hair out of her eyes and pursed his lips. “About which part?”
“About all of it.” Her eyes weren’t sad, so much as they were determined. “It’s not fair for me to ask her to never love. To never have what I already do.”
“And you’re okay with me… with… that?”
It was still hard for him to put into words. Because while that solution would solve both their problems, and on the outside would seem like a fantastic predicament for any man to have, it was vital to him that she understood that he loved her like no other. That regardless of how sexually excited Chrysalis could make him, he didn’t love her the same way. That Lissa was truly his world. And her opinions mattered as much, or more to him, than his own.
She bit her bottom lip. “I can learn to be okay with this. As long as you promise to love us both equally.”
“I’ll always love you more.”
She shushed him with a pinky finger to his lips and he couldn’t help but nibble it. But this time it didn’t elicit the smile it typically did from her.