His touch was slow, deliberate, tracing patterns along my skin that sent shivers through me—not from cold, but from the raw, aching fear that this was fleeting, that he could slip away at any moment.
Every brush of his fingertips felt like a promise he couldn’t make. An invisible tether wound us tighter together every day but I was too afraid to trust in its strength not to break us apart again. My breath hitched as his hand skimmed the curve of my arm, his presence so solid, so real, and yet a fragile part of me screamed that it wouldn’t last. He’d been taken from me too many times.
Nyte had gone after his father days ago, and though everything he relayed terrified me, and I had been angry because he’d risked himself so soon after coming back to me… right now I couldn’t be anything but grateful he was here.
“How am I going to tell Zephyr?” I whispered, heartbroken about Katerina, who had been such a light, a brave and encouraging spirit, when we’d been captive together in the Keep of Alisus.
“I’ll be right there with you,” he said; it was all he could offer.
The more he touched me, the more I ached to hold him tighter. Zephyr had lost his mate, and he hadn’t even been there for a chance to save her. That fact ached so deep in my soul.
“Don’t leave me.” Those words slipped out in my fear. “We do everything together from now on, promise me?”
Nyte’s lips pressed to my wet shoulder.
“You and me,” he murmured over my skin. “I promise.”
After the hellish month without the real and tender parts of him, lying against his authentic self in these hot bath waters made the misery worth bearing to reach this.
The wound from the wood piercing my side was almost healed with Lilith’s help. Auster’s stab wound had scabbed over too, but the thin black vines of Nyte’s blood continued to spread, so slowly it wasn’t detectable to most. Nyte noticed every fraction they crawled closer to my heart.
I couldn’t let it distract me. While I still had breath in my lungs and fight in my body, I would charge forward in this war to banish the gods for good.
Nyte’s lips pressing to my neck pulled a soft sigh of contentment from me. He’d been so tender and careful with me these last few days, but I needed him closer than he’d allowed.
Now that I was healed enough, I rocked my hips back, encouraging him to drink from me. He groaned against my throat.
“You’re going to feel me deep inside you,” he muttered huskily. “But not like this.”
“Please,” I begged pathetically.
“I don’t need your blood, and I won’t risk it harming you in your condition.”
I hadn’t considered that possibility, and a surge of new rage for the curse Auster set in motion ran through me. Nyte felt my anger and quickly made it melt with the dip of his fingers past my navel while his lips trailed over my shoulder with soft kisses.
“I’ll make up for it in many other ways, I assure you.”
His fingers slipped between my legs. My back arched into him with the sparks of pleasure as he circled my apex, my legs pushed apart as far as the bath would allow.
Nyte’s other hand smothered my cry, anticipating my climax.
“Do you want to announce to the others what I’m doing to you?” he said sinfully. “I won’t mind. I’ll release you and have you calling out my name for this whole house to hear.”
In my cloud of lust, I hardly had consideration for anyone or my own decency, but I was glad Nyte retained enough of his mind to know I’d be hiding in embarrassment when we faced them in the morning. I bit his fingers instead.
“Come for me, Starlight,” he whispered by my ear; then his tongue licked over his mating mark.
I became shattering stars in his arms. Nyte held me against him tightly as my body trembled. He kept up the glide of his fingers, which slowed with the comedown of my climax.
“Good girl,” he said thickly, planting tender kisses along my collar.
Though I was still panting and shuddering, I wasn’t done with him.
I floated around in the water to face him. The tub was big enough, so I straddled him. Sparks of oversensitivity had me gripping the bath’s edge from the friction of his hard cock between my legs. His expression pinched in pure lust as he gripped my hips, aiding the slide of me against him.
“Not enough for you, was it?” he taunted.
“Not even close.”
