Page 99 of Blood of the Sands

Emboldened by our fight, I squirmed a bit, not trying to get away, but just enough to rub up against Erix. A choked noise escaped his throat. A smile tugged at my lips, and I did it again, watching his eyelids flutter. I had been so alone for so long, that now with Erix over me like this, my body could only cry out for more.

He transferred both of my wrists to one hand, letting the other stroke down my hair to land at my neck. The touch was light, more of a caress than anything, but I recognized the gesture. We had been in this same position before, the night he first stumbled upon my oasis. I felt the same spark of life in me now as I had then, this time laced with a burning desire.

He leaned imperceptibly closer, his eyes holding something smoldering as well as something pleading.

“Let me kiss you,” he begged, as if he thought I would say no.

I nodded fervently.

The simmering in my gut burst into flame as his lips met mine, hot enough that I was sure Erix could feel it too. I licked into his mouth and groaned at the taste, as if I had been dying of thirst and he was my oasis.

He was just as greedy as me, pressing my hips into the ground. The heat from his bare torso soaked through my light clothing, and I reveled in the way his weight grounded me, even as his kisses made my head spin. He tasted salty like sweat and blood and life. For the second time, I felt his hardness against my hip, making my head spin faster than any laka. I ground against him, purposefully this time. He broke away from my mouth with a strangled sound at the friction, but I wasn’t done devouring him. My lips and teeth and tongue found his earlobe, tracing down his neck to taste the bead of sweat that had caught my attention earlier.

“Sands, what do you do to me?” he murmured. His hand at my neck tightened, not in violence, but as if he were trying to ground himself.

“The same thing you do to me.”

I knew he could sense it, our magic curling together in the inches between us, flaring as he pressed his hips against mine. Erix now traced his free hand down my body, fingers dipping into the hollow at the base of my throat, between my breasts down to my bare abdomen. His fingers danced around my navel, toying with the hem of my shirt as if asking permission. I wasted no time nodding enthusiastically.

It took both of his hands to lift my clothing over my head. I itched to touch him in return, to run my palms over the sculpted planes of his chest and shoulders, but I kept my hands where he had put them over my head. Something about the methodical way he removed each piece of fabric kept me pinned, his gaze catching on each piece of skin he exposed.

Once I was bare from the waist up, he finally let his hands wander where I wanted them. His calluses rasped the underside of my breast, but I didn’t care about the roughness as his thumb brushed over my nipple, teasing it to a peak. I arched against the touch, body begging for more in ways I couldn’t put words to.

My hands flew to his shoulders, fingers digging into corded muscle. I scraped at his skin with my blunted nails, pulling another groan from him.

He lowered his mouth to me again, his breath hot on my skin as he trailed his lips down my collarbone toward where his fingers toyed with my breasts.

“Do you have any idea”—he paused to drag his tongue across my taught nipple, and I whimpered—“how much you make me want?”

In response, I rolled my hips against his again, and he used a hand to pin me to the ground. Part of me insisted that I should push back against him, but the louder part reveled in having him like this, wanting me like this. He was the only person who could truly see what I was to the very core of me, and yet he still looked at me as if he hungered for more.

“I haven’t let myself want anything for so long.” His words were pressed into my skin as he kissed down my stomach, fingers pulling at the knot of my belt. I shimmied myself out of my pants with his help, feeling as though I would burst into flame otherwise. The look he gave me when I was completely bare made me think I might just combust anyway.

“I never thought I would care for anything as much as I cared for the desert,” he admitted, fingers stroking gently through the curls at the apex of my thighs, “but you are just as wild and twice as beautiful.”

I tried to tell him he was beautiful too, but my words caught in my throat as his thumb found my most sensitive spot and traced a light circle over it. He pressed open-mouth kisses over my hipbone then dragged his teeth over the sensitive skin of my inner thigh in a way that made me mewl. Then his mouth replaced his fingers, and it was as if I had been struck by lightning all over again.

“You taste even better like this,” Erix growled before licking a hot stripe up my center once more.

Erix explored every inch of my sex with his lips and tongue, as if trying to memorize the feel of me with his mouth alone. I twisted against him, whether to escape the onslaught of sensations or to get closer, I could not tell. He responded by throwing one of my legs over his shoulder, opening me up further to his explorations.

“Sands Keera,” he murmured against my heated flesh, “you’re so perfect—so wet that I could drink.”

He was right. Slick dribbled down the cleft of my ass and coated the top of my thighs, but if the way Erix lapped at it was any indication, he would never have enough. I plunged my fingers into his hair and tugged, causing him to groan against my center. I keened at the vibrations, unable to contain myself from grinding up into him. He didn’t seem to mind, devouring me with me with single-minded efficiency. He added his fingers, pushing them inside me, working in rhythm with his tongue.

My climax ripped through me with earthshattering speed. My back bowed off the sand as a long breathless moan escaped me.

“Erix.”

He kept licking me as I shook, a growl of satisfaction pulling painfully exquisite shocks of pleasure from me until I laid boneless and trembling. Erix crawled up my body, the achingly gentle way he pressed kisses to by belly, my breastbone, my forehead, at odds with the ravenous way he had feasted on me minutes before.

The Viper, the Prince of Kelvadan, gentle for me, an exile. Yet for all his power he had been just as alone as me.

I traced my fingers up his back, brushing over rows and rows of uniform bumps before bringing my hands to cup his face. His gaze burned into me.

“Erix,” I murmured, relishing the way a tremor ran through his body at his name on my lips. “Please, Erix.”

He sat back on his heels to untie his belt, pushing his pants down and kicking them off. I watched his face as he undressed, baring all of himself to me for the first time. Once he was completely naked though, I couldn’t resist looking down to where he stood hard and proud—for me. My mouth went dry.