“Good. Because I intend to use that.”
My mouth finds hers. The kiss is slow and thorough. I take my time under the water learning every curve and line all over again with this new amplification. Finding every place where theheightened sensitivity makes her twitch and gasp and grab hold of my shoulders to stay upright. The hot water laps at our skin.
I lift her out of the water. One motion, gripping under her thighs, and I carry her to the edge of the pool where the thick moss grows right to the waterline. I set her on the edge, her legs still in the water, and drop to my knees in the pool in front of her. The water comes to my chest.
“Lie back,” I tell her.
She lies back on the moss, her hair spread around her and her marks blazing, and her chest rising and falling with the rapid rhythm of someone who knows exactly what I’m about to do.
I push her thighs apart. The Bloom-infused water is still on her skin, every nerve ending amplified, and when I press my mouth against the inside of her knee I feel her entire body respond, her back arching off the moss.
“The water,” she gasps. “It makes everything feel like—”
“I know.” I work up her thigh with my mouth, and each kiss lands with an intensity that makes her hands fist in the moss beside her. “That’s why I brought you here.”
I reach the place where her thigh meets her hip and I stay there, breathing against her, gripping her hips to hold her still. The Bloom water is on my lips, my tongue, and when I finally put my mouth where she needs it, the amplified sensation tears a sound out of her that fills the entire chamber and bounces off the roots overhead.
“There she is,” I say against her, and the vibration makes her vision blur. I can see it in the way her eyes lose focus, the way her golden marks flare so bright they compete with the aurora. “I want to hear that again. Louder.”
I give her no choice. The Bloom water amplifies every stroke, every press, and I use that amplification thoroughly. Her hands fist in the moss. The flowers on the walls bloom in cascading waves that race toward the ceiling. The golden glow of her marksflares and pulses and I can feel the echo of her pleasure, a mirror of sensation that feeds back into my own body and makes my hands shake against her thighs.
The first one hits fast and brutal. Her whole body locks up, her hips lifting off the moss, and I hold her through it, my mouth on her thighs, not stopping, drawing it out, using the water’s amplification to keep the waves rolling until she’s shaking and oversensitive and pushing at my head.
I don’t stop.
“One more,” I say, and slide two fingers inside her while my mouth continues. The Bloom water makes the internal sensation devastating, every nerve magnified, and I find exactly the right place with a precision that I have earned through devoted study.
“I can’t,” she gasps. “Kaelren, I can’t—it’s too much.”
“You can. You will.” I curl my fingers and press harder with my tongue. The second builds on the first, climbing from the wreckage of the last one. I don’t even think. I turn my head, and bite.
She screams, and it breaks her apart so thoroughly the moss blazes gold, flowers explode open, and the aurora overhead pulses in time with her heartbeat. She is nothing but light, nerve endings, and my name spilling from her mouth in sounds I’ll remember on my deathbed and in every life after this one.
I lap up the blood on her leg, and gently kiss the mark.
I climb out of the pool. Water runs off my body in rivulets that glow faintly from the Bloom infusion. I crawl over her on the moss, and the weight of me pressing her into the warm ground makes her body go loose and pliant beneath me.
“Hi,” I say.
She laughs. It comes out wrecked and breathless. It’s the best sound I have ever heard. “Kaelren, what was that?”
I marked you. I made you officially mine. Now no one will question whose body and soul you own in return.
She looks down at the mark. The mate mark is blazing from her inner thigh, and where my wet skin touches hers, my corruption marks flare in response, dark veins pulsing against golden light, and the two colors blend at the edges into a thin line of heat that shimmers between us.
The Verdance responds to the dual magic. Vines grow from the moss beside us, thin and smooth, curling in slow spirals. Not reaching for us. Offering. The room is reading our combined intent and providing.
“Mine." She growls back at me possessively. Before I can process what is happening, she flips us, and I'm on my back. She's sliding back into the water, pulling me along with her. She wraps her arms around my neck and starts kissing my jawline slowly, working her way down to my collarbone. She nips at the area and says, "You know it's not fair I don't get to mark you in return."
I chuckle darkly, "Oh my love, you can bite me anytime you want. I am more than happy to oblige."
She looks up at me with pure mischief in her eyes, "Is that so? Well, then I'd better get to tasting."
"What are you—" She cuts me off as she slides down my body and submerges beneath the water. I am confused for about one second before she takes me into her mouth. I throw back my head and groan at the intense pleasure of the feeling of her tongue in combination with the special water. I'm pretty sure the sounds coming from my mouth are not normal, but I can't even begin to care. She works me fast, and when she reaches up and cups her hand beneath I lose all control. I'm honestly embarrassed at how fast she made me come.
She resurfaces from below and licks her lips. "Yummy."
Any control I've had up to this point snaps. I'm instantly on her and have her backed up to the edge of the pool. The kiss Igive her is savage, and she returns it with the same fervor of a woman starved, even though she just feasted on me.
