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The voices fill the air around me. Taste me. Open wide. You want to fuck both of us, don’t you? It’s foreign and never heard of in the world I grew up in. Only words of such vulgarity are said in the beds of husband and wife.
“Bite off more than you could chew?” Dessin muses as he sits down on the bench beside me. Usually, his presence is calming. But today, in this erotic setting, it only churns my stomach into elastic putty.
I shake my head, looking down. “It’s like they’re purposefully trying to be the exact opposite of the Chandelier City.”
“Our people have been here far longer than yours, little girl.” Runa sets down two worn-down, gray chalices.
I clench my cloak in my sweaty hands, lowering my bulging eyes.
Breathe.
The overwhelming urge to draw the puppet, the strings, the sad, upturned brow, triggers a nervous twitch in my fingers.
“We can leave if you’re afraid,” Dessin says into his chalice.
I shake my head. Nope, no backing down. You’re the one who had to open your big mouth. I can do this. It’s just a game. Pretending.
Runa disappears from the tavern to request an audience with their elders. I make a mistake looking for her, scanning the writhing bodies of powdery-white skin and black, lustful eyes. They’re worshipping each other. Teasing. Fondling.
It’s too much.
I remember that Greystone is triggered to the front when the body is sexually aroused. “Will Greystone surface”—I wave a hand around the tavern—“from all of this?”
He shakes his head. “He won’t come near the front when we could be in danger. Even if he’s intrigued by the surroundings.” A quick eye roll.
I gulp. Well, at least the thought distracted me for a moment.
Dessin’s firm hand grips my knee, pushing my leg down to stop it from bouncing. But his touch, although simple and innocent, triggers forbidden anticipation for his closeness. A sharp spike of excitement and pleasure twists through me.
“Your nerves are setting my teeth on edge,” he says, low and strained.
I relax my leg under the weight of his hand, softening my tightly coiled muscles. At this, his grip loosens, but he doesn’t move away. His thumb traces my inner thigh in lazy circles.
I’m a vessel of electric nerve endings.
A soft moan, like a sigh blended with a hum, escapes me. I reach for my chalice, bringing it to my lips to drown out the noises I want to keep making at Dessin’s touch. A silky bittersweetness fills my mouth, and I swallow it down. Wine. Chilled and passing down my throat with ease.
Without glancing down, I can feel his hand shift higher. The comforting caress is a fog that envelops me. Heat simmers between my legs.
I make the mistake of glancing up at him. Those dark-mahogany eyes are hooded and watching me closely. He’s a caged animal, walking the perimeter of our boundaries. But that glazed look in his stare is dangerous. It’s pure heat, an agonizing craving.
And there’s a yearning in my chest. A string pulling my heart from my chest to be closer to him. I gulp and turn away.
My eyes meet a dangerously tall man walking past our table. Long white hair, down to his midstomach. Shirtless. He slows his stride to inspect me curiously.
Dessin’s fingers dig into my thigh, probably aware before I am of the man’s attention.
Terror runs its jagged talons down my back. He could figure out I’m an outsider. He could alert the rest of the room. I act swiftly, like butter coating my joints. I turn to face Dessin, running two fingers down the mountains of his arm.
“When are you going to taste me?” I ask, stealing the command I heard earlier from a woman spreading her legs on a tabletop.
The man keeps walking, but Dessin doesn’t seem to notice. He becomes a living statue. His breath hitches in his lungs, jaw clenches, and that hand on my thigh is a steel clamp that might never come off.
“Is that what you want?” he asks with cruel decadence. “To feel my mouth again?”
That night in the lagoon is a faded dream. A hazed hallucination. His lips grazing my jawline. His tongue running over my ear. A hot, sensitive lash of ecstasy pours through me like lava.
I nod.
