Page 17 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

No, I murmured, watching him.

Even though it already killed me once? He stopped at a particularly bright scale, shining like a newly minted fragg. I let my eyes answer for me, tilting my head in apology. If we returned to the realm of mortals, I wasn’t interested in anything that might end either of our lives early.

He smiled, though something about it tugged sadly at my chest. I don’t care where we are. I just want you within reach. Even in my arms, you feel too far away.

If I’d been alive, heat would have crawled into my cheeks at that. I tamed my hair over my shoulder, a smirk delving into the corner of my lips. Yes, well. Duck next time, lout. This detour was very inconvenient.

Kye’s smile grew. A wicked spark gleamed in his eyes as they dipped, landing on my mouth. Yes, ma’am.

I refuse to fight another house-sized spider.

You looked good with my sword, though.

Of course I did.

Kye’s chuckle vibrated within my head, and I latched onto it. A sound I thought I might never hear again. He reached for me, clasping my chin, drawing me to him. That intent glare returned in his gaze.

It began softly. A smooth, slow lash of his mouth against mine. I rotated my head, the tip of my nose swiping his, and pressed in. Searching his tongue for his brand of mint and thunder, but all I tasted was my own urgency. My own impatience.

My own feral need.

9

Maren

My tail unwound from his hips as I transitioned back to my legs. I straddled them over him, the movement charging something in his body. Breaking the surface of his own control.

Suddenly his hands were everywhere, roaming my neck and waist and body, all caution abandoned. Kneading my back, over my stomach, across my thighs. I whimpered into his mouth as his fingers skimmed between my legs, loosening for him in an instant, but he deserted me just as quickly, splaying his palm wide along my hip and snaking under the chain of my stone to land over the curve of my breast.

His thumb shifted over the peak of my nipple. I arched my spine and Kye clamped a hand onto the side of my collarbone, hauling me back to him to capture my nipple in his mouth.

My jaw unlocked. Bubbles broke through the sparkling water as I gasped. He teased with teeth and tongue, wild and ravenous, then released me only to immediately seek my other breast. My hands scored the roots of his hair, soft curls twisting between my fingers. I pulled his mouth back to mine in sharp demand.

And what began as soft and gentle collapsed into the depths of fervent, reckless claiming. He grasped the side of my cheek, mouth widening enough to devour me as his tongue challenged mine with jealous greed. The sparkling ocean dropped away, the pulsing waves disappearing with it, and I no longer felt it washing over me. I only felt Kye. The dense expanse of his frame, the subtle way his muscles slanted and climbed, the soft brush of dark hair across his chest.

Kye pulled away, dragging his teeth like fangs down the side of my chin, my neck. His hand carved a rough route to my thighs, fingertips splaying me wide as I sat over his hips, and whipped me with the long, hard rap of his thumb.

My body answered immediately, rocking my weight back, widening my thighs. My eyes closed at the tingling trail he engraved over the most sensitive part of my body. He struck me again, and again, watching me slowly collapse. Watching my body arc with every torturous beat.

Until I was suddenly as ravenous as him.

I ripped forward, capturing that wretched thumb in one hand, dragging his pants down with the other, a predator unleashed onto its prey. His mouth parted as I took him into my hand, wrapped my fingers around his length, punishing him with a long, hard stroke.

Golden eyes locked onto mine as I selfishly teased him. Until that gaze grew drunken with desire, a craving deep and carnal and unchecked.

Stop playing, he growled at me.

But I just laughed back at him, twisting my palm around his length, sliding my grip to his base and constricting my fingers on the way back up. Playing him like a meal in which I’d eat only after I’d had my fun. His body cinched under my control, loosening only to tighten again. The flex of his abdomen, the stretch of his shoulders, the underside of his chin as he unhinged his jaw, lax and rigid at once. I was almost delirious with power with the thought of his undoing until he snapped upright, an insatiable gleam in his eyes.

He grabbed my legs, yanking me from my seat, pulling me closer over his thighs, his stare piercing my bare center like a target in range. Any speck of mockery between us dissolved as he guided himself inside me with a single, slow plunge. We rippled together in the aftermath, the glow of languid indulgence snuffed out as our eyes connected.

A low thrum danced in my belly. An ache and pulse with every roll of his hips against mine. He pulled out to thrust back in, his grip clawing into the flesh of my outer thighs, the stretch of my core excruciatingly decadent.

I rocked back, lost in it. Lost in him. Deeper and deeper, I tilted into him, into the disorienting corruption of his body. He moaned into my thoughts, and even in my head, his voice was husky with want, the gravel in the sound scoring the walls of my mind.

I’d let my shoulders fall back, had propped myself with a palm over his torso, intent on the push and pull of my hips against his, urging and pleading for more. He found my chin and tugged me forward enough to meet his eyes, coasting the rim of my lower lip with his thumb.

Wherever you are, he demanded with a single thrust. Whenever you are. Thrust. However you are. Thrust.