Page 20 of The Healer and the Warlord

“Kelvar,” I gasped, my power still dancing with his, unwilling to pull back into the confines of my own skull. I was overwhelmed with pleasure, but still I wanted more.

Kelvar had made me greedy for so many things. For adventure and the endless horizon and him.

“You don’t…” he started, even as his hand drifted down to palm his bulging length through his pants.

“I want to,” I insisted, voice firm even though I still panted.

Kelvar shrugged out of his own vest before kicking off his pants, and now it was my turn to stare. His tanned skin practically glowed in the sunlight, as if the desert herself bent to his lethal beauty, casting deep shadows under the swell of his pectorals and the divots of his hip bones that accentuated the power of his form.

My mouth grew dry as I followed that V of muscle to the hard length between his legs, and my core fluttered at the way it seemed to strain toward me. Before I could stare too long, Kelvar fell forward, bracing on his elbows and cupping my cheek gently in one of his hands. My eyes snapped up to meet his and found them molten and soft.

He leaned forward to kiss me once more, and I sighed into his mouth at the heartbreakingly gentle press of his lips against mine, even as his steel-hard length rubbed at the sensitized flesh between my legs.

Without pulling his mouth from mine, he slotted against my entrance and pushed just inside. I gasped against his mouth, and he swallowed it down greedily.

My thoughts turned into nothing more than a frenetic buzz, overwhelmed by the onslaught of Kelvar above me, around me, inside me. His smell enveloped me, and his magic consumed me and still it wasn’t enough. I angled my hips to try and draw him further inside, and it was his turn to gasp as he slid in another inch.

“Sands, Alyx,” he cursed against my lips. “You feel so perfect around me, it’s like you were made for me.”

As our magic danced and melded together in my mind, all-consuming in its rightness, I thought he might be right.

He slid in inch by delicious inch until all other rational thought was driven from my mind. With his hips flush against mine, he paused, peppering kisses to my cheeks and forehead while smoothing my hair back from my face with reverent touches.

I couldn’t imagine anything more perfect, until he pulled back slightly before driving back in, somehow seating himself even more deeply inside me. My gasp was drowned out by his groan of pleasure. I rolled my hips, urging him to do it again, and he obliged.

Slowly, we found a rhythm, moving against each other in a way that brought tears of pleasure to my eyes. I wrapped my arms around Kelvar and dug my nails into his back, trying to ground myself in this moment even as I felt as if my soul were about to fly out of my body. He ducked his head, panting into my neck as his motions became quicker and more feral.

I urged him on with whimpers of encouragement, every thrust driving the breath from my chest with a high-pitched sound of desperation. He needed no explanation, redoubling his efforts until a sheen of sweat coated both of us.

Another release barreled down on me, as untamed and undeniable as a stampede of wild horses. I buried my face in Kelvar’s neck and cried out wordlessly at the intensity of it.

“I know,” Kelvar murmured into my ear, his voice as broken as mine. “I know.”

I bit down on Kelvar’s shoulder, and the copper of blood coated my tongue a moment before I came apart, conscious of nothing but white-hot ecstasy and Kelvar moving within me.

His own groan of release cut through the thunder of blood in my ears, as he buried himself deep inside me one last time, twitching and shuddering with the raw power of his pleasure.

It was long moments before I had the wherewithal to relax my jaw, releasing the tendon between Kelvar’s neck and shoulder where I had buried my teeth. I kissed it apologetically as he wrapped his arms around me and rolled to the side, bundling me into his chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said, nuzzling the blood-tinged mark again for emphasis as he wrapped his arms around me. I braced my hands on his chest, feeling his heart still hammering under the thick muscle there.

“I’m not,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “I like that my Flower likes to bite.”

“Why do you call me that?” I asked, my voice still breathy from our exertion as I craned my neck to look up at him.

He pulled back to look down at me with darkened eyes.

“Besides the fact that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen?” he asked.

A blush would have colored my cheeks if I hadn’t already been flushed from head to toe, but I nodded, wanting to hear more.

“Because it’s hard to believe something so fine and delicate could exist in the same desert that is full of war and death,” he said, the thumb of his hand on my waist tracing a soft circle into my hipbone.

My brows furrowed, and a bolt of annoyance threatened to cut through the pleasant haze I had been drowning in. His words sounded like something my father might say, justifying his suffocating protection. I moved as if to pull my hands away from Kelvar’s chest, but one of his own grabbed my wrist, keeping me near as he shook his head.

“But that kind of beauty takes incredible strength. To push back against the conditions that make so much of the desert’s flora tough and brittle and choose to be soft and kind.”

Kelvar’s fingers tightened around my wrist as my breath caught. He lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to my palm that liquified my insides.