And we broke that suspended silence at the same time.
I didn’t know who moved first. The kiss was like a thunderstorm over the summer desert—a torrent that swept in all at once, obliterating the heat, so all-consuming that suddenly you remember nothing but the rain.
All at once, he was everywhere.
44
ORAYA
The bag of coins made a distant THUMP as it fell to the floor, Raihn’s hands abandoning it for my body.
He kissed me like he was starving. Kissed me the way he had fed from me in a cave once, many months ago—desperate and deep and full of hunger, like I was the only thing tethering him to the world. And Mother, I felt that way, too, like I was grasping hold of something solid for the first time in so long.
Like I had come home.
I had told myself I’d forgotten what it was like to kiss Raihn.
That was a lie. A body doesn’t forget a thing like this—it was carved into my muscle memory, a piece of myself that had awakened from some dormant state. He kissed me with not just his mouth, but his whole body—just like he fought, with every muscle rearranged to the task, centered around me alone.
This dress was so fucking thin.
The silk let me feel everything. His hands, large and rough, trailing down my body like he wanted to memorize every muscle, drink up every curve. The warmth of him, so close I could’ve sworn I felt the throb of his heartbeat beneath his skin. His cock—Goddess, his cock, hard and thick and straining between us already.
Yes, the silk let me feel everything. It let me feel how much Raihn had wanted this, for so long.
It forced me to feel how much I’d wanted it, too.
Lust pooled low in my stomach, my breasts peaking against the too-flimsy fabric of my dress and Raihn’s hard chest beyond it, the apex of my thighs tightening. My body remembered what it was like to kiss him, yes, but it remembered more than that, too. It remembered what it felt like to fuck him. Like a missing piece replaced.
And now, it wanted that. It begged for it. When Raihn’s hands slid down over the curve of my backside, brushing the sensitive flesh at the top of my inner thighs, my breath hitched.
The sound he made in return, barely audible, rolled through me like thunder.
The wave of desire made me suddenly dizzy—desire, though, with a darker edge, sharp and dangerous, forged in the anger I’d held so close for so long.
In one abrupt movement, I pushed him down to the bed. He fell against it roughly, the frame squealing in protest against his sudden weight. I started to crawl over him, but a wince flitted across his face, and I hesitated, noticing again the extent of his wounds—brutal, even if they were already starting to heal now that he was out of the sun.
“Don’t you dare stop, princess,” Raihn rasped, reading my face, the wince giving way to a twisted half smile. “Please. I don’t care if it fucking kills me.”
His calloused fingertips brushed my cheek, sweeping dangling black hair behind my ear.
“Only good thing about the last time it happened was that you were the last thing I saw.”
His voice still had that lilt to it, light and joking, but the smile had faded. Nothing light about that. Nothing light about his touch, either. All of it was steeped in such agonizing tenderness.
It made my chest hurt. Made my eyes burn.
It—it made me angry.
I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. Not when the remnants of my anger were still so sharp in my veins, the dregs of it tearing at the wounds they’d opened these last few months.
He started to sit up, reaching for me, but I pushed him back to the bed.
“No,” I said.
Confusion flitted over his face.
“Don’t move,” I said. “You don’t get to control this.”
The confusion melted into understanding. Even that, at first, was too affectionate, too soft, until he replaced it with a slow smirk curling over his lips.
I pressed down on his shoulder again, firmly, in a command to stay put. Then I shifted my attention to his clothing. I started at the buttons of his jacket, undoing each knot of silver across his chest. With each one, the blue silk fell away, exposing bare skin—a landscape of swells and dips of muscle, rising and falling heavily beneath his breath, covered with fresh wounds and old scars and soft dark hair that narrowed as I worked down his abdomen.
I’d hated that costume from the moment I saw it on him. And that’s exactly what it was: a costume, trying to make Raihn into one of the people who had once subjugated him.
That wasn’t who he was.
It now seemed so sickeningly obvious, I wondered how I’d ever even questioned it. No, the version of him that I revealed with every opened button, every new expanse of imperfect, once-human skin...
This was him.
I finished with his jacket, and he helped me by lifting his shoulders as I pulled it off of him and tossed it to the floor. I lowered myself over his chest, tracing his muscles with my fingertips, pausing over his nipple as it hardened beneath my touch, then tracing down, over each raised ridge of abdomen, to his stomach and the darkening trail of hair leading to his trousers.
And Raihn, ever obedient, did not move, though I could feel his ravenous stare. Not even when my hands fell to his waistband, unbuttoned it, and set him free.
The first time I’d seen his cock, I’d been shocked that such a thing could be considered beautiful—and yet, this time, too, it was the only word I could think: beautiful.
His entire body tensed when I wrapped my hand around it. It twitched a little against my touch, his abs tightening. I watched the bead of liquid at its head swell.
He wanted me. He wanted me so much he wasn’t even breathing anymore, his hands tight around the bedspread. And Goddess, the ache between my own thighs was getting harder to ignore. So easy, to just crawl over him, let him slide inside me.
Too easy.
There was no such thing as easy pleasure.
I wanted him to suffer for this.
I lowered, brushing my lips over the tip of him, tongue darting out against the salty sweet of the liquid on his skin.
Raihn drew in a sharp hiss. His entire body tensed, straining, like it was taking everything he had not to lunge across the bed and grab me.
Still, he didn’t move.
I softened my mouth against him, this time in a slower, longer lick—still gentle, gentle enough that I knew it would be torturous.
This time, his exhale had a hint of a groan to it.
“You’re vicious,” he murmured.
He had lifted his head just enough to watch me, his gaze predatory, like he’d rather die than blink.
An intense wave of familiarity passed over me at this—me leaning over him, him watching me, and that look of such barely restrained lust.
Should I make you beg? I had asked him then.
I swept my tongue over him again, slow, and he let out another hitched exhale.
“You told me once you would beg for me,” I murmured.
Another brush of my lips.
“So do it.”