Then, he ripped away from her, and her body trembled against the nets without him to anchor her back.
"Go," Graves said, forcing every bit of ragged want out of his tone, until he sounded as emotionless as he wished he could be.
She shuddered against the nets, carefully pushing her body off of them, and he watched as her flushed cheeks grew darker as she stared at his chest, unable to look into his eyes, and he hated that. As she stood before him, he caught her face and tipped it up to his. Stray white hairs framed her face, damp from water. Flushed cheeks.
Graves leaned forward and took her bottom lip between his teeth, tugging on it. He pulled free with a soft sound, and the delicate line of her throat worked with a swallow. Her hands came up, fingers tangling with his, holding on as if for dear life as she shivered.
The groaning creaks of the swaying ship echoed her words as she asked, "Why send me away?"
Graves held her gaze, disentangling his fingers from hers. "I don’t have enough control to be near you."
She exhaled, her breath hitting his chest as she peered up at him. Her hands were still before her, as if she didn’t know what to do with herself now that Graves no longer touched her. He knew the feeling. From where her cheek had been pressed into the netting, there were small lines imprinted on her skin. He reached for the impressions, tracing the back of his hand over her cheek.
"Go," Graves repeated, "before I do something you may not be ready for."
She looked back at the netting and nodded, dazed. Graves bit back a gruff laugh. She had liked it—there was no denying that. But her mind may take time to catch up to the wants of her flesh.
She stumbled away, unmoored. Graves saw her plea for direction. He couldn’t help but answer the call as he murmured into the night:
"Go to your demon. He’ll care for you in ways that I can’t."
23
ENDLESS SEA
LUELLA
Days passed in a haze of salt air and desire. Tension surrounded Luella like the water that carried them on.
Surely, there must be a breaking point?Luella thought, time and time again, pacing below deck. She couldn’t handle being out in the open, staring at the vast sea, faced with the reality of what surrounded them.
She had not been with anyone since that day with Az in the bath; she was abashed and desperate, held back by her upbringing and forbidden urges.
So, she kept it all concealed, covered by the sadness that clung to her like the salt-tinged air and rusted hinges of the door to her tiny cabin with the swinging hammock, creaking every time she pushed it open, heart in her throat. Who would be on the other side?
Some nights, it was Az. Her demon would be lying on the hammock, water glistening on his bare chest. He would hold out an arm, and she’d nestle against him, his hands always careful of her wings, which no longer ached.
She still wore her bandages; though, Tharen said she no longer needed them. Maybe habit, or Graves’s words about flying—binding herself to delay the inevitable fall.
That night with him, it haunted her, but it was a haunting she welcomed with shaking arms.
On the rare occasions she had her cabin to herself—the hammock swaying softly, water lapping against the side of the ship—she stared at the slats in the wooden ceiling, recalling how it felt to be pressed against those nets. The sea had roared beneath her with ferocity, dark and depthless. Graves had utterly distracted her until she forgot about the consuming fear of being suspended over the ocean.
Luella knew fear well and was coming to know of desire. But nothing could have prepared her for their union…
She was adrift in want, tethered only by the presence of the males she shared the sea with. Desire rocked through her like the tide, like the wind—inescapable.
Some nights, when Az helped above deck, she would find Bastian in her cabin but never alone. The vampire was always with company. Sometimes Tharen, mostly Graves, and never Vale.
The dragon shifter King stayed far, far away from Luella, but she felt his eyes on her, felt the weight of their thread, tugging at her where it was wrapped around every bit of her body, her heart, her soul. True to his word, the King wanted to possess all of her, and she felt that consuming possession in her every waking moment.
Her nights were plagued by hazy nightmares, kept alive by the dream amulet. Tharen’s gift—a curse. But she no longer dreamt of the King’s half-brother, Caliban, and his human lover, Enora.
Those two haunted her, as well, but she often wondered why her dreams of their past had stopped. Was it because of her wings? Or something more…
Sometimes, when she was truly alone, below deck, trapped by the wooden walls, she recalled her time in the Temples,flashes of pain-soaked pleasure. The stardust, curling around her fingertips, drifting over her body, how Tharen’s touches had chased it across her flesh. And that made her remember another time she had seen the stardust, and the pieces clicked in her mind, an assumption she was sure had truth, but never voiced to anyone else, not even Az.
The stardust had taken the dreams from her.
