Page 100 of Blood of the Sands

When he leaned forward again, resting his elbows on either side of my head, I wasted no time wrapping my arms and legs around him, tilting my hips up to notch us together. He huffed against my neck, sounding equally wrecked and amused at my impatience, my hair fluttering with his breath.

When the head of him slid in, where I was already so hot and aching, I let out a cry, but not so loud that I didn’t hear what Erix murmured into my ear.

“Mine.”

And that was it. The thing I had yearned for all those years—to belong. Erix offered it to me so earnestly, even as I ripped away his armor to find the man hidden inside who deserved so much yet took so little.

As he slid inside, deeper and deeper until I swore we were no longer separate people, I found my voice enough to moan out my own response.

“You’re mine too.”

His cock twitched inside me at that, and I shivered at the overwhelming feeling of fullness, of oneness. Then he began to move, pulling out partway and pushing back in torturously slowly. I rippled around every inch of him, and it was as if the very fabric of the desert shuddered with me.

As he began to move faster, I could only think of Erix, of where he moved deep within me, the burning pleasure threatening to consume me as his hips snapped against mine. His name fell from my lips again and again until he silenced me with a deep kiss, tongue sliding into my mouth as if he had to be inside me there too.

Sensation consumed me, and more than just my body. Our magic came alive. Mine flowed into him as the threads of his power bound me to him. Just as the knot pulled taught, I shattered around him with a cry. Erix responded with a roar of his own, pleasure ripping through both of us, his and mine indistinguishable.

As the sand settled around us and Erix wrung the last echoes of pleasure from my body, I knew the reason his touch had awoken something within me the very first time we met. His power and mine were one and the same.

The next morning after finishing our forms, Erix and I both looked around at a loss. There was little to do but wait for reinforcements from the encampment.

A thick sense of urgency permeated the air, but there was nothing to be done at this moment. It left me restless, looking for something to do with my hands and constantly fidgeting. The lava wyrm continued cutting its path of destruction through the desert, but we could not follow until help arrived. Right now, there was no foal to birth or monster to fight. I brushed Daiti until his golden coat shone like burnished brass, Erix looking on with a look of utmost skepticism as the fearsome stallion turned pliant under my hands.

Still, I wasn’t able to sit still, as full of energy as I was. The last night, Erix and I had fallen asleep holding hands once more, and I woke with my head tucked beneath his chin, our arms and legs tangled together. It was the best sleep I’d ever had, and now I brimmed with energy.

“Do you want to learn some trick riding?” Erix asked as I went over Daiti’s mane for the third time.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Trick riding?”

“It’s one of the few things I know how to do besides fighting,” he admitted with a shrug.

“What kind of tricks?” I asked, interest piqued.

He only whistled, and Alza cantered over obediently. He mounted easily and urged her into a trot, making wide circles around where Daiti and I stood. I put my hands on my hips, watching expectantly. Erix braced his hands on Alza’s shoulders and shot me a smirk, an expression I hadn’t seen from him before. For a moment, it made him look so uncannily like the statue of Kelvar in the palace courtyard that I had to assure myself that he was flesh and blood and not hewn of stone.

All thoughts of his similarity to Kelvar flew from my head as he leaned forward, heaving his lower body up so all his weight was on his arms. For the briefest moment, he stood on his hands on Alza’s back, who trotted calmly as if he did this all the time. Then, he twisted his body in the air, swinging his legs down on either side of his mount so he now rode backward. I blinked at the feat of acrobatics, something I hadn’t expected from someone as thickly muscled as Erix.

Seeing my stunned expression, he let out a huff that was as close as he came to a laugh.

I folded my arms. “When is that ever useful?”

“If it leaves my enemies half as stunned as you are, then I think it might be a very beneficial tactic,” Erix teased in that dry tone of his.

“I want to try.” I swung myself up onto Daiti’s back and murmured him into a light trot, mirroring Alza. Picturing how Erix had done it, I put my hands on Daiti’s shoulders, shifting my weight forward. Daiti faltered for a moment at my shifting before falling into a more even stride once more.

I swung my legs with all my strength, trying to lift my weight on my upper body. I wavered for a moment before coming to the realization that, as much muscle as I had put on, my arms still had nowhere near the strength of Erix’s. They buckled under the combination of my weight and the unsteady jerking of a trotting horse.

As my elbows crumpled, I tried to land on Daiti’s back, but my balance failed me. I rolled off his side, landing on the ground with a tooth-rattling thump.

“Keera!”

Erix’s boots pounded in my direction. I stared up into the clear blue sky, blinking away the watering of my eyes as I caught my breath. Doing a quick inventory, nothing seemed bruised except my pride. A broad shadow blocked the sun shining down onto my face as Erix leaned over me.

“Are you all right?”

I nodded, no doubt grinding sand into my braided hair. “You made it look easy.”

“I’ve had a lot of practice.” He folded his arms over his chest. Before he could take a step back, I rolled, sweeping my legs at his feet, and taking him by surprise. Now it was his turn to be on his back in the dirt, and I leaped on top of him. Smiling down at him triumphantly, I straddled his hips as he looked up at me in surprise.