“Wow. Raylen. It’s beautiful here.” Sylar leans down to skim his fingers over the water. “We must take a dip. It’s the perfect temperature.”
The search for the sisters completely evaporates from my mind. The atmosphere is too thick, too heavy, and entirely too romantic to ignore.
I look at Sylar. The colorful light of the lilies is dancing across his pale skin, casting long, elegant shadows over his sharp features. His breathing has already gone shallow, his eyes tracking the steam rising lazily from the water before lifting to lock on mine.
Without a word, the unspoken tension that has been building between us for a solid week snaps like an overdrawn bowstring.
We strip off our clothes in a frantic, silent blur, our cooling cloaks, leather boots, and my vest discarded onto the mossy bank. We slip into the pool, but the supposedly cooling, soothing effect of the water is instantly lost the exact moment our bare bodies collide.
The heat between us is scorching.
I reach out, calloused hands gripping Sylar’s waist and pulling him ruthlessly against the slick, mossy stone wall of the grotto. His usual stoicism shatters into a million pieces as a sharp, desperate gasp escapes his throat.
I don’t give him a chance to overthink. I lean in, capturing his jaw with my mouth, kissing a fierce trail down his throat to the hollow of his collarbone, where my silver necklace rests against his bare skin. As we move together, the heavy sap from the lilies swirls around us, transforming the water into a rich, slick oil that coats our skin like a decadent bath oil. Every slide of my hands over his skin feels impossibly smooth, making the friction between our bodies an intoxicating, effortless slide that drives us both wild.
I take several long moments to stretch him open with my fingers, using the velvety sap of the lilies to turn his tight heatinto a slick, effortless slide. He grinds against me until I’m desperate, and horny with need.
“Enough,” he breathes, guiding the head of my cock to his entrance and sinking onto my length.
“I’ve wanted this since we were teens,” I groan against his heated flesh, my voice rough. Raspy. Stripped of my usual playful filter. Despite his eagerness, he’s tight. Too damn tight. There’s no way I’m moving until he has time to adjust. “It’s true. Every single day I was away, Sy. Every damn day. You were always on my mind.”
“Prove it,” he whispers, his amber-brown gaze unsure, but I can tell he wants to believe me.
I tuck some of his obsidian hair behind his ear, the pendant of my bracelet catching in the light of the Glow Lilies.No, it’s too much. I can’t tell him about the pendant. Not yet.
My mind races through the millions of things I can say and settles on a particular fact I’ve never told anyone. “Do you remember the night I left Moonscliffe? The night you told me all those fascinating stories and myths?”
He nods. “Of course.”
“That night was when I finally realized my true feelings for you,” I say, a fond, slightly bittersweet smile tugging at my lips as I look down at him in the water. “And let me tell you, it is really fucking inconvenient to realize you have deep feelings for someone right before starting an apprenticeship that forces you to leave the territory. But I couldn’t just let that day go.”
Sylar stills, his brilliant eyes tracking the movement of my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“Exactly one year later, on the anniversary of that night, I chose that specific date to finally tell the world who I am. I announced my nameday and my pronouns. I legally changed the spelling of my name. FromRaelintoRaylen.”
Sylar catches his breath, his chest lifting sharply against mine. “Raylen… I always wondered about that. I knew it was the day you chose for yourself, but why that specific spelling?”
I reach up, my thumb gently tracing the elegant point of his ear, tilting his face up so he can see every ounce of devotion in my eyes.
“Because I know how much the sun and the stars mean to you, Sy. That day, right after I left, when everything felt dark and uncertain, your memory was like a sudden ray of sunshine. You were the very celestial body you cherish most in this world. I wanted to carry a piece of you with me out on the open road. My own little ray of starlight woven right into my name. A quiet, permanent representation of exactly how you made me feel.”
Sylar’s long arms tangle desperately into my damp hair, his fingers gripping tight as he arches his back into my touch. In a fluid, breathless motion, he wraps his long legs securely around my waist, pulling my hips flush against his, leaving absolutely no space between us as he begins to ride my cock.
“Less talking,” Sylar pants against my ear, his nails digging into the muscles of my back as he shivers against me. “More of…this.”
We come together with a frantic, desperate passion that completely mirrors the suffocating Midsummer heat outside the cave. The grotto dissolves into a sensory blur of slick skin, arched backs, and the heavy, rhythmic sound of the cool water splashing violently against the stone cave walls as we move as one. It is a slow, deeply worshipful exploration of every touch, every look, and every unspoken confession we have cruelly missed out on for a decade.
I lose myself entirely in the taste of him, the heat of his skin, and the fierce, possessive way he clings to me. When the tension finally builds to a breaking point, we tumble over the edgetogether, a shimmering, breathless release rippling through us that echoes softly off the cavern ceiling.
Long after the waves slow, I hold him tight against my chest, our breathing gradually syncing up as the glowing lilies pulse quietly around us, leaving us tangled together in the warm, protecting embrace of the spring.
Chapter thirteen
Sylar
Iwakeupslowly,the heavy tension that usually binds my shoulders entirely absent. Cinder is curled into a tight, purring ball of crimson fur right against my ribs, her nose tucked beneath her tail as she snores softly.
Beside me, Raylen is still fast asleep. His face is buried in the pillow, one heavy, ink-stained arm slung possessively over my waist to pin me to the mattress. He looks incredibly peaceful like this, stripped of his heavy leather archer’s gear and the public weight of his title.
